These structures have been less fully described than those of the other metafunctions; they were brought to the notice of grammarians by Mathesius and his colleagues of the Prague school in the first half of the [20th] century.
In this guise, the clause functions as a quantum of information; it is construed as a message, with a range of possible structures providing for different interpretations according to the discourse environment in which it occurs.
Since these resources are oriented towards discourse, many of the “textual” systems in any language have a domain potentially higher than the clause and the clause complex; they set up relationships that create semantic cohesion, and these are not restricted by the limitations of grammatical structure.
Relative to the other metafunctions, therefore, the textual metafunction appears in an enabling rôle; without its resources, neither ideational nor interpersonal constructs would make sense.
The “textual” metafunction is the name we give to the systematic resources a language must have for creating discourse: for ensuring that each instance of text makes contact with its environment. The “environment” includes both the context of situation and other instances of text.
… and if we observe children developing their mother tongue we can see how the ideational and interpersonal resources of the system gradually emerge from the earliest semiotic encounters, in a way which may plausibly mimic how the metafunctions originally evolved. The textual metafunction is different because it does not originate in an extrinsic context of this kind. Rather, it is intrinsic to language itself.
The concept of metafunction is “meta” in the sense that it refers not to functions of individual utterances — functions of the instance — but to functional components of the system of language. They are, of course, “functional” in origin — that is, they derive from the functions of language as manifested in instances of use;
There is a third component in the linguistic construction of meaning; this is what we refer to as the “textual” metafunction. If we were trying to find a term to match the expressions “language as reflection” and “language as action” that we used to gloss the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions, we might come up with “language as information”; but this is itself not very informative. It is a difficult concept because unlike the other two, the textual metafunction has no obviously distinct function at the back of it. All uses of language involve the creation of text. But at the same time this is precisely the context in which the textual metafunction may be understood.
Interpersonal meaning is mapped onto ideational meaning at all points from the most micro to the most macro: from modality and speech function in the clause (or even features built into the morphology of the word, like the diminutives characteristic of many languages), to settings affecting the whole of a particular register, like the aura of power and distance that we associate with the language of bureaucracy. These are the various ways in which language functions as a mode of action; and these meanings, no less than the ideational ones, are brought into existence by the grammar.
… and because human societies are inherently hierarchical, the interpersonal component of the grammar in many languages enacts networks of social relationships with varying degrees of inequality and of distance. Thus there may be regular lexicogrammatical variants used to maintain different alignments of speaker and listener, and even of third parties, on vectors of power and familiarity; such forms may be located at one point in each grammatical structure (for example in the endings of the verb) or dispersed prosodically throughout the wording of the clause. But even in a language such as English, where there are no such systematic speech styles institutionalised in the grammar, there is always some functional variation along these lines: we have no difficulty in recognising what are the more formal and what are the more informal variants among different samples of spoken and written discourse.
Unlike ideational meanings, which tend to be located at definable locations in the grammatical structure, interpersonal meanings tend to be strung throughout the discourse, by an accumulation of grammatical and lexical features or by other devices such as voice quality and intonation contours. This signals the fact that interpersonal meanings are more diffuse: they relate to the figure as a whole, rather than to one of its elements; or to a whole turn in the dialogue, or even to more extended passage of the discourse. Some particular interpersonal colouring may inform the whole of an individual speaker’s interaction with another person;
These include comments about how desirable or plausible or self-evident something is, expressions of attitude in referring to persons and objects, sets of words with similar experiential meaning but distinguished interpersonally by connotation (sometimes called “purr words” and “snarl words”) and numerous forms of personal address and reference (kinship terms, personal names, honorifics, endearments, insults and the like).
Although these are derived from the sense of proposals (‘you are required / supposed / allowed; I am able / willing’), they are not restricted to clauses having these speech functions; obligation and readiness are construed by the grammar propositionally and hence are used freely with third persons. But they still represent the judgements of speaker or listener on the obligations or inclinations involved (he ought to help, she will help).
… it is always the judgement of the speaker or listener that is represented as a choice of modality, not that of any third party (this is one of the boundaries drawn between ‘me–&–you’ and ‘the rest’).
In English, there are four distinct grammatical traverses between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, two [probability & usuality] deriving from the polarity of propositions (‘it is/it isn’t’) and two [obligation & readiness (inclination & ability)] from the polarity of proposals (‘do/don’t’).
This is the area of “modality”, where the interactants present different aspects of their own judgements and opinions, exploring the validity of what is being said and typically locating it somewhere between the positive and negative poles.
The system provides scope for argument by incorporating an opposition of ‘on’ or ‘off’; each clause assigns either positive or negative polarity.
The mood system constructs the clause as a move in an argument: either as a “proposition” (statement or question) or as a “proposal” (offer or command).
… there can be no “first person” unless there is a “second person” with whom these rôles can be alternately acted out.
… the basic distinction constructed by language is not, as sometimes claimed, that between ‘me’ and ‘the rest’; it is that between ‘me–&–you’, on the one hand, and the rest — the ‘third party’ — on the other. This distinction is coded in the grammar at many places, for example in the system of modality …
… the interpersonal [metafunction] is language in its “first and second person” guise; the interaction of a ‘me’ and a ‘you’. The ‘me’ and the ‘you’ are of course constructed in language; they have no existence outside the social semiotic. Once constructed, me and you become a part of experience and can be referred to alongside the him, the her and the it; but note that (unlike the interpersonal meaning, which does not change) their ideational meaning changes every time there is a change of speaker (this is what makes me and you so difficult for children to learn).
Choosing a particular speech function is, obviously, only one step in a dialogue; what the grammar creates, through the system of “mood”, is the potential for arguing, for an ongoing exchange of speech rôles among the interactants in a conversation. The mood system, together with other systems associated with it, constructs a great range of speech functional variation; and since in principle any ideational meaning can be mapped on to any interpersonal meaning, this makes it possible to construe any aspect of experience in dialogic form.
If the commodity being exchanged is goods–&–services, then the action that is given or demanded is typically a non-verbal one: what is being exchanged is something other than a construction of meanings, and the meanings serve to bring the exchange about. … If on the other hand the commodity being exchanged is information, then this is in fact made of meaning; the speaker’s action, and that of the listener if responding to a question, is bound to be a verbal one, because here language is not only the means of carrying out the exchange, it is also the nature of the exchange itself.
Grammatically, each time he says a clause, he is not only construing a process but also, unless he makes it logically dependent on another clause, acting out a speech function; and this embodies two simultaneous choices. The speaker is either giving or else requiring the other person to give — i.e. demanding. And the commodity being given or demanded may be either “goods–&–services” or “information”.
All dialogue is a process of exchanging meaning, in which the speaker is enacting, at any one time, a particular interpersonal relationship, including his own rôle and the rôle he is assigning to the listener (i.e. he is specifying a network of interpretations for his own and others’ behaviour).
The most immediate way we act, grammatically, is through our choice of speech function. One kind of speech function is a command; this is obviously a way of getting someone to do something, but we tend to think of it as being in this respect untypical. However, all speech functions are modes of action, whether command or offer, question or statement, or any other innumerable combinations or subcategories.
We tend to be less aware of this metafunction of language, at least in more learned contexts; partly because, as adults in a literate culture, we are conditioned to thinking of meaning purely in ideational terms (language as a means of “expressing thought”), and partly because it is less obvious that talking is a way of doing — of acting on others (and through them, on our shared environment) and in the process constructing society. But the interpersonal and the ideational are the two facets of our everchanging social semiotic.
When we say that the grammar enacts interpersonal relationships, we mean relationships of all kinds from the transient exchange of speech rôles in temporary transactional encounters … to the enduring familial and other networks that constitute the structure of society.
If the ideational component is language as a mode of reflection, the interpersonal component is language as a mode of action…If the ideational metafunction is language in its “third person” guise, the interpersonal is language in its “first and second person” guise.
In the last resort each language construes experience in its own way — has its own “characterology”, as the Prague linguists expressed it. But every language embodies a working, and workable, schedule of compromises, that taken all together constitute its speakers’ construction of reality.
In its ideational metafunction, language construes human experience — the human capacity for experiencing — into a massive powerhouse of meaning. It does so by creating a multidimensional semantic space, highly elastic, in which each vector forms a line of tension (the vectors are what are represented in our system networks as “systems”). Movement within this space sets up complementarities of various kinds: alternative, sometimes contradictory, constructions of experience, indeterminacies, ambiguities and blends, so that a grammar, as a general theory of experience, is a bundle of uneasy compromises. No one dimension of experience is represented in an ideal form, because this would conflict destructively with all the others; instead, each dimension is fudged so that it can co-exist with those that intersect with it.
… in a projecting relationship, the two elements in a verbal projection are typically equal in status, while those in a mental projection are typically unequal. This is not surprising: since you can hear what a person says, you give the wording the full status of a direct experience … whereas you cannot observe what a person thinks, so this is more likely to be construed as dependent on the process that projects it …
In principle, any particular type of expansion or projection can be interpreted in either way, either as “paratactic” or “hypotactic”; but in fact there is some degree of partial association: certain combinations are favoured, and others corresondingly disfavoured. For example, in English, when one process is construed as a simple restatement of, or addition to, another, the two are likely to have equal status; whereas where one is seen as enhancing the other they are usually unequal — a means is secondary to what has been achieved by it, a cause is secondary to its effect.
In projection, one process is used to construe another one, such that the latter becomes a representation of what someone says or thinks. The types of process that have this power of projection are the verbal and mental processes … Thus the projection operates at either of the two strata of the content plane: either that of the wording, where the projection is by a verbal process, or at that of the meaning, where it is by a mental process. Because the grammar can project in this way, semiotic events, both those which are externalised as sayings and those which are internalised as thoughts, are brought within the overall domain of the phenomena of experience.
The third type of expansion is one of enhancing the first process by another one setting up a specific semantic relationship, of which the principal ones are time, cause, condition, concession and means. Here again the grammar deploys a range of different conjunctions, which mark either the enhancing clause (when, because, by, though, if and so on) or the one that is being enhanced (eg then ‘at that time’, then ‘in that case’, so, thus, yet).
The second type of expansion consists in extending one process by construing another one as an addition to it (with ‘and’ as the limiting case); or as an alternative to it, a replacement for it, or as some form of reservation or contrast. Here the grammar typically employs conjunctions, like and, or, but, instead, besides.
Conceptually, perhaps the simplest way of expanding a process is by elaborating on it: saying it over again (or something very like it, with repetition as the limiting case), or else exemplifying it, or clarifying it in some other way. The grammar represents this relationship symbolically in English by prosodic means: the same intonation pattern is repeated … But since this does not appear in writing, various purely written symbols are used instead, typically ie, eg and viz.
One is that of “expansion”, in which the two processes are of the same order of experience and the second one is interpreted as in some respect expanding on the first. The other is that of “projection”, in which the second process is construed as belonging to a different order of experience: it is projected, by the first one, on to the semiotic plane. Each of these defines a complex region of semantic space.
… the logical system, within the ideational metafunction, engenders a different type of linguistic structure from that of the experiential system. In the logical world, the parts are not constituents of an organic configuration, like the process, participants and circumstances of the clause. They are elements standing to each other in a potentially iterative relationship; and each element represents an entire process.
The changes that constitute our experience are not all independent of one another. On the contrary; our experience is that one thing leads to another, and there is in principle no limit to an experiential chain. But the exact nature of the relationship may vary from one transition to another; so the grammar construes the relationship between processes dyadically, in the form of a nexus between a pair of clauses. The first process may have a second process related to it, by a relationship such as sequence in time, or cause and effect; this in turn may have another one related to it, either by the same relation or a different one — in either case, the relationship is construed as holding between members of a pair.
Turning now to the logical part of the grammar's ideational resources: this is the part that is concerned not with individual processes but with the relation between one process and another. In calling this "logical" we are using the term in the sense of natural language logic: that is, grammatical logic, not formal logic — although, of course, this is the source from which formal logic is ultimately derived.
The line between direct and indirect participants is a fuzzy one, and sometimes what seems to be the same rôle in the process can be construed in either way … Here the grammar is in fact using the structural resource of plus or minus preposition to construe a different kind of contrast, having to do with status in the message. But the distinction is significant because, as we saw above, such “circumstantial” elements tend also to function as qualifications not of the process but of some entity that is itself a participant … And since the prepositional phrase has a nominal group inside it, this opens up the possibility of further expansion …. Thus incorporating the circumstantial element into the representation of a participant does not merely add one feature to the specification; it allows more or less indefinite scope, particularly in combination with the incorporation of an entire process. (We have already pointed out that the prepositional phrase is in fact a miniaturised clause; so the two really constitute a single resource, that of using a process to specify a particular class of entity.) This potential was crucial to the development of science and mathematics ….
The third type of constituent of the clause, referred to above as “others” (that is, elements that are neither verbal nor nominal groups), evolved as the representation of a kind of “third party’ to the process. This may be some qualification of the process in terms of its manner of occurrence (an adverbial group, in the case of English); or it may be an entity that is involved in the process but only indirectly (in English, a prepositional phrase, consisting of preposition plus nominal group).
The other resource for constructing taxonomies of things is the expansion of the nominal group, and here the picture is very different from that with verbs. Nouns are expanded lexically as well as grammatically, so that, while entities (like processes) are located deictically relative to the ‘here–&–now’, they are also (unlike processes) extensively classified and described. … Thus the grammar has the potential for construing a complex arrangement of classes and subclasses for any entity which participates in a process; or on the other hand, of naming it as an individual, by using a “proper” noun instead of a common one. Proper nouns are already fully specific, and hence seldom expanded experientially (they are often expanded interpersonally!); but common nouns are almost indefinitely expandable, and it is this resource which organises our universe into it elaborate taxonomies of things.
The participants, on the other hand, which represent the prototype of entities persisting in time and space, are usually not subject to this [grammatical] kind of modification; but they are organised in fairly elaborate taxonomies. These may be construed as systematic relations among different lexical items: thus eyes, nose, mouth, chin are all different parts of face, and lamb, pork, mutton, beef are all different kinds of meat. Something of the same sort happens with verbs, but to a much lesser extent.
Processes take place in space-time, which the grammar may model in a variety of different ways: the happening is upstream or downstream, past or future, real or imaginary. Typically, the point of reference is the speech situation: there is some deictic feature relating what is being said to the current “moment” in time and space. In English, the deixis is achieved by locating the process on a linear time-scale with ‘present’ as a fulcrum between ‘past’ and ‘future’, or else by locating it on one or other of a cluster of scales whereby the speaker intrudes his or her own judgement on it. There may be a wide variety of other attachment s to the verb — modalities, aspects, phases and the like, which the grammar construes as features of the process; consider English examples like wasn’t going to start trying to help. On the other hand, the processes themselves are not, in general, construed into systematic taxonomies, and the verb is expanded by grammatical rather than lexical means.
As for the elements that make up a process configuration, we have seen that the foundation of the grammar’s theory of experience was laid down in the simplest terms in the evolution of word classes: verbs, nouns and others. But the constituents of a clause are not, in fact, verbs and nouns; they are more complex expressions that have expanded from verbs and nouns, which we call “verbal groups” and “nominal groups”. At this point, we find considerable difference between the two, in the kind of expansion that they engender. The formal patterns vary, as always, among different languages; but the underlying principles seem to be fairly constant.
When it comes to mental processes (and here is one of the contradictions referred to above [p516]), the grammar is uncertain whether the participant other than the Senser is doing duty as agent or not; if I’m doubtful about something, for example, I may say your story doesn’t convince me, which makes your story look like an agent, or I may say I don’t believe your story, which makes the rôle of your story very different — not exactly a goal, but like an expression of scope. Many languages display some such ambivalence about mental processes, which do not match up neatly with material processes in our experience in any obvious way.
At the same time, all processes are interpreted as having something in common, in that typically there is one participant that is inherently associated with the process — without which the process could not take place at all, like birds in birds are flying. That may be the only one, in which case that participant is held accountable (even if involuntarily!) and the process is said to stop there. Alternatively, another participant may be involved; either as an external agent, like children in children are flying kites, or as a goal, like letter in I’m writing a letter.
With each type of process, the grammar associates one or two favourite configurations of participants. These usually vary considerably from one process type to another; in English, there is a strong link between the rôle of “Senser” (the one who knows, thinks &c.) in a mental process and the personal pronouns he and she, such that putting it in this rôle (it didn’t believe me, for example) creates an anomaly — we wonder what this “it” could be?
In construing experience in this way, the grammar is providing a resource for thinking with. A strict taxonomy of separate process types would impose too much discontinuity, while a bipolar continuum would precisely be too polarised. What the grammar offers is, rather, a flexible semantic space, continuous and elastic, which can be contorted and expanded without losing its topological order. Since it evolved with the human species, it is full of anomalies, contradictions and compromises; precisely the properties which make it possible for a child to learn, because only a system of this kind could accommodate the disorder that is inherent in experience itself.
This part of the grammar, then — the grammar of clauses — , constitutes a theory about the types of process that make up human experience. In English (which is probably fairly typical), the three principal categories that we are calling the material, mental and relational are rather clearly distinct on a number of formal grounds; the other three appear as mixed or intermediate categories lying on the borderlines. (In fact the category of verbal process is more clearly distinct than the other two; and in view of its central place in the semantic system, we have treated it throughout the present study as a primary category.) The total picture is of a continuum; but not between two poles — rather something that we would represent in the form of a circle.
What is said to exist may be an entity, something that persists through time, like there’s a letter for you; but it may also, in many languages, be a happening, as in there was a fight. Here we have something that could alternatively be construed as a material process (people were fighting), which suggests that “existential” processes are another intermediate type, something between the relational and material.
They [relational processes] are modelled, in fact, on the two basic relationships that characterise semiotic systems: realisation (identifying processes such as this is (‘realises’) my sister), and instantiation (attributive processes such as she is (‘instantiates’) a student of law).
… these [verbal processes] shade into something else, which the grammar again construes as phenomenally distinct: relations of identity (including symbolic identity, like red means stop) and attribution. Expressions of this kind, which in English often have the verb be, hardly seem to fit the label “process” at all; but the grammar firmly represents them as such, so we call them “relational processes”.
Language itself, of course, is a form of human behaviour; “languaging” constitutes, for the grammar, another distinct type of process, that of “verbal” (or better, “symbolic”) processes. An act of saying is not simply externalising inner events; it is actively transforming them, into an event of a different kind. It then resembles other semiotic events, many of which do not require a conscious information source (… the light says stop).
Here [in English] the grammar postulates a third type of process intermediate between these two [material and mental]: “behavioural” processes, in which inner events are externalised as bodily behaviour, like staring, thinking (in the sense of pondering) or crying.
At the same time, while recognising a general category of “process” to construe our experience of change, the grammar also recognises that not all processes are alike. As human beings we become aware (and again we can see this in the actions of tiny infants) that phenomena fall into two distinct types: those happening outside ourselves, which we can see and hear, and those happening within our own consciousness — thoughts and feelings, and also the sensations of seeing and hearing, as distinct from whatever is seen or heard. The grammar construes this as a distinction between “material processes” and “mental processes”. Mental processes are specifically attributed to conscious beings …
Typically, the most complex is the class of circumstantial elements, because these are themselves often formed as complex constructions; there may be simple words (a class of adverbs), but here may also be constructs like English prepositional phrases, the function of which is to bring in other potential participants but to bring them in indirectly … The theory behind this is that there are two ways in which an entity can be involved: either directly as a participant in the process, or indirectly in a circumstantial rôle, such as the place where the process happens. This indirect participant is often construed as participating in a kind of secondary process tangential to the main one (grammatically, a prepositional phrase is a reduced variant of a clause).
… construing processes in this way clearly depends on generalising whole classes of phenomena; the grammar sets up classes of process, of participant, and of circumstance. There are various ways of doing this; one that is familiar in many languages is by means of a taxonomy of different kinds of word. The classes of word may be distinguished by their internal form, or by the way they are able to enter into larger constructions (or both).
[A] significant step that took place in human grammars … was … the evolution of common nouns — or rather, of common words, since verbs are “common” in this sense: that is, words denoting classes rather than individuals. It is usually assumed that these evolved out of “proper” words, prototypically the names of individual persons; the ontogenetic evidence suggests that this is one source but not the only one, another source being rather in the interpersonal function.
The basic component of all experience is change: when something changes from one state to another, it projects itself on to our consciousness. This may be something in the external environment … The grammar construes this experience of change in the form of a process configuration: the fundamental element of grammar is the clause, and the clause presents the parameters within which processes may unfold.
The grammar does this by deconstructing the process into component parts. Typically … these are of three kinds: first the process itself, secondly certain phenomena construed as participants in the process, and thirdly, other phenomena that are associated with the process circumstantially.
In all these metafunctions, the language does not take over and reproduce some readymade semantic space. There is no such space until the grammar comes along to construe it.
… the patterned forms of wording that constitute meaningful semiotic contexts.
Textually, the grammar is the creating of information; it engenders discourse, the patterned forms of wording that constitute meaningful semiotic contexts. From one point of view, therefore, this “textual” metafunction has an enabling force, since it is this that allows the other two to operate at all. But at the same time, it brings into being a world of its own, a world that is constituted semiotically. With the textual metafunction language not only construes and enacts our reality but also becomes part of the reality that it is construing and enacting.
Interpersonally, the grammar is not a theory but a way of doing; it is our construction of social relationships, both those that define society and our own place in it, and those that pertain to the immediate dialogic situation. This constitutes the “interpersonal” metafunction, whereby language constructs our social collective and, thereby, our personal being. The word “construct” is used to suggest a form of enactment — though something on which we inevitably build a theory, of ourself and the various “others” to whom we relate.
Ideationally, the grammar is a theory of human experience; it is our interpretation of all that goes on around us, and also inside ourselves. There are two parts to this: one the representation of the processes themselves, which we refer to as the “experiential”; the other the representation of the relations between one process and another, and it is this that we refer to as the “logical”. The two together construe the “ideational” metafunction, whereby language construes our experiential world. The word “construe” is used to suggest an intellectual construction — though one that, of course, we then use as a guide to action.
We have stressed all along that a language is a system for creating meaning; and that its meaning potential has evolved around three motifs — what we refer to as the “metafunctions” of ideational, interpersonal and textual, with the ideational in turn comprising an experiential component and a logical component. These are the multiple aspects of the content plane — the grammar (in its usual sense of lexicogrammar) and the semantics. Since the powerhouse of language lies in the grammar, we shall refer to them here as aspects of the grammar; but it is important to insist that they could not be “in” the one without also being “in” the other. It makes no sense to ask whether the metafunctions are grammatical or semantic; the only possible answer would be “yes”.
Meanwhile what has become clear is that there is the (by now) familiar interplay between phenomenon and observer. Wehave talked of physical, biological, social and semiotic systems as being categories of phenomena — which in an important sense they are. But they may also be thought of as different stances taken by the observer; thus we find physical and biological systems being interpreted as semiotic systems, in a kind of intellectual game which turns out to reveal new aspects of physical and biological processes. It is obviously beyond our scope — and indeed beyond our capabilities — to pursue these matters here. But they add a whole new dimension to our grammatics, to the concept of a theory of grammar as a metatheory of human experience.
There are two aspects to this problem. One is that we do not yet fully understand the nature of a linguistic fact: this is the problem of instantiation. The other is that we do not yet fully understand the relationship that is the semiotic analogue of the “cause : effect” of classical physics: this is the problem of realisation.
Language is set apart, however, as the prototypical semiotic system, on a variety of different grounds:
it is the only one that evolved specifically as a semiotic system;
it is the one semiotic into which all others can be “translated”; and
it is the one whereby the human species as a whole, and each individual member of that species, construes experience and constructs a social order.
In this last respect, all other semiotic systems are derivative: they have meaning potential only by reference to models of experience, and forms of social relationship, that have already been established in language. It is this that justifies us in taking language as the prototype of systems of meaning.
It can be studied as a physical system, in acoustics and in the physical aspect of articulation (air pressure measurements and so on). It can be studied as a biological system, in the physiological aspects of articulation and in the neurophysiology of the brain. It can be studied as a social system, as the primary mode of human interaction. And of course it can be studied as a semiotic system, in the core areas of lexicogrammar, phonology and semantics.
Meaning can be thought of (and was thought of by Saussure) as just a kind of social value; but it is value in a significantly different sense — value that is construed symbolically. Meaning can only be construed symbolically, because it is intrinsically paradigmatic, as Saussure understood and built into his own definition of valeur.
A biological system is a physical system with the added component of “life”; it is a living physical system. In comparable terms, a social system is a biological system with the added component of “value” (which explains the need for a synoptic approach, since value is something that is manifested in forms of structure). A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of “meaning”. […] Semiotic systems are social systems where value has been further transformed into meaning.
For understanding physical systems, the critical approach was that of measurement; the dominant theme was mathematics, and the perspective essentially a synoptic one. But this did not serve well for interpreting biological systems; these are better understood in terms of change, so the perspective had to be altered, to become dynamic, with evolution as the dominant theme. For social systems, however, the dynamic perspective lacked explanatory power, and in the [20th] century it was overtaken by another synoptic approach, the theme of structuralism. Our conception of the nature of social systems has been largely moulded in structuralist terms.
What is problematic is the relationship between the system and the instance; or, to put it another way, what is the nature of a “fact” in these different realms of experience? A biological fact is different from a physical fact, and a social fact is different again; the relationship between that which can be observed, and the system–&–process lying behind what is observed, is significantly harder to establish when the system is a social system, because the phenomena involved are simultaneously all three kinds.
Physical systems are just physical systems. Biological systems, however, are not just biological systems; they are at once both biological and physical. Social systems are all three: social, biological and social. This makes them increasingly difficult for us to comprehend. This is not the same as saying that social systems are more complex than biological ones, or biological than physical; there are too many ways in which things can be complex, for any such observation to make sense. But they are increasingly complex in this particular respect; and this means that it is increasingly difficult to recognise the essential nature of the phenomena concerned.
There is an ordering among these four types of system, which we can appreciate most readily, perhaps, at the “meta” level: this is the order in which they have come to be studied and interpreted, in the past five hundred years of human scholarship. […] In other words, there was a certain intellectual distance to be covered in bringing a comparable kind of insight into these different types of system–&–process.
As we conceive of it, the term “semiotic” is framed within a linear taxonomy of “physical – biological – social – semiotic”; and the term “system” is a shortened form of “system–&–process”, there being no single word that encapsulates both the synoptic and dynamic perspectives (we have referred to the term “climatic system” with the same observation on how it is to be understood).
The system is polysystemic from the point of view of contextual diversification: given a particular context type or a set of related types, some parts of the overall semantic system will be deployed in a systematic way whereas others will remain inactive. For instance, if contexts where the goal is to instruct somebody to a procedure were the only source of evidence for the semantic system, we could safely ignore figures of sensing and saying and the logical relationship of projection. And yet in the general system, which is the overall meaning–making resource deployed across all the different types of context, these figures and sequences turn out to be essential both to the functioning of the semantic system and to our understanding of its fundamental principles.
The system often embodies complementarities providing more than one way of construing similar types of experience — for example, construing perception either as inert sensing or as active behaviour, or construing phenomena of all kinds either congruently or metaphorically. If one is concerned with a restricted, designed semiotic system, then the appropriate strategy, when one is faced with more than one option in natural language, may be to select one canonical form; but if one’s concern is with language as a whole, the only response that will hold up in the long term is to acknowledge the variation and explore its function.
Fawcett’s alternative model for relational processes, with its particular features such as treating ‘giving’ and ‘placing’ as agentive possessives and locatives (‘make…have’, ‘make…be at’) rather than as material dispositives, has to be understood in its total explanatory context:
(i) in relation to its repercussions within the transitivity system, both the trinocular perspective on transitivity itself (from above, as generalisations about meaning; from roundabout, its consequences for agnateness, delicacy and the move towards lexis; from below, as regularities in the realisation) and the overall topology of content — transitivity in relation to the semantic construal of causality, agency, disposal, and so on;
(ii) in relation to Fawcett’s architectural design, which differs from ours in having a single system–structure cycle for the two strata of semantics and lexicogrammar (his “syntax”) and then adding a further level of description that is expressed in cognitive terms.
This is not to say, of course, when a choice is made among a set of alternative descriptions for representing features in grammar that are inherently indeterminate, like the types of process in a transitivity system, that the choice is insignificant, or merely random. On the contrary: it resonates through the grammatics as a whole (or should do, if the description has any claim to be comprehensive). Again there is the analogy between the grammatics and the grammar: just as no region of the grammar is isolated from the rest, so every descriptive statement has consequences throughout the description.
… there is no unique ‘correct description’ of a semiotic system, or any other phenomena that have to do with meaning. Stratal relations are not relations of cause & effect, and a stratified system cannot be reduced to constructions of content–expression pairs.
His abandonment of the distinction between attributive and identifying seems harder to motivate, since this cannot in fact be explained as a textual (thematic) system in the way that Fawcett proposes.
Fawcett incorporates into the “relational: possessive” category, processes of giving and acquiring; reduces the circumstantial to locational processes only; and includes within these, processes of going and sending. As is to be expected, this alternative analysis embodies certain generalisations that are not made in our account of figures, and ignores certain others which are.
As we have already noted, Martin, in his systemic treatment of processes in Tagalog, offers a different interpretation of nuclear transitivity: he defines it in terms of orientation, rather than configuration, and hence operates with a significantly different concept of participant function.
A stratified semiotic defines three perspectives, which (following the most familiar metaphor) we refer to as ‘from above’, ‘from roundabout’, and ‘from below’: looking at a given stratum from above means treating it as the expression of some content, looking at it from below means treating it as the content of some expression, while looking at it from roundabout means treating it in the context of (i.e. in relation to other features of) its own stratum.
In our treatment of figures in the ideation base, we stressed the fluidity of the boundaries among the various types of figure: doing–&–happening, sensing, saying, being–&–having. We construe these in the grammar as a system of process types: at primary delicacy, material, mental, verbal, relational. These are sections on a continuum — or better, regions in an n–dimensional semantic space; but they are not demarcated by any uniquely self-selecting set of criteria.
We have tried to show that such indeterminacy [inherent in language] as a positive feature, and build it into our meta-construal — not as some wayward or exceptional extravagance but as an unmarked state of affairs that is recognised to be the norm. To this extent, our grammatics becomes itself a metaphor for the grammar — that is, to the extent that we are able to enact this indeterminacy in our own representations.
We have drawn attention at various points to the overall indeterminacy of language, something that we see as a necessary condition of its ability to function in the construal of experience. Our experience of the ‘goings-on’ in and around ourselves is so rich and multi-faceted that no semiotic system that attempted to impose on it a rule-bound, determinate frame of reference would be ‘functional’ as a resource for survival.
… we treat transitivity both within semantics (the paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation of figures) and within lexicogrammar (the grammar of transitivity): it is a system construed within the content plane of language — both in the ideational component in the lexicogrammar and in the ideation base. This two-stratal approach to transitivity makes it possible to model the resource of grammatical metaphor and is fundamental to work on multilingual systems for generating text.
The participant rôles Medium, Agent, Range and Beneficiary embody not just a different degree of generality from the process-specific participant rôles Actor, Goal, Recipient; Senser, Phenomenon; etc but more importantly, a different perspective. They capture different kinds of facts about the transitivity system of a language.
… the process types used in systemic interpretations are based on considerations of the nature of nuclear transitivity — how participants interact, what kinds of entities they are, whether projection is possible, etc.
… in addition to the Medium, there may be another participant functioning as an external cause. … Either the process is represented as self-engendering, in which case there is no separate Agent; or it is represented as engendered from outside, in which case there is another participant functioning as Agent.
… the Medium is restricted relative to the Process in the same way regardless of whether the clause is effective (+ Agent) or middle …the Medium is the participant that is most bonded to the Process by lexical collocation.the Medium is the element which combines with the Process to form the clause nucleus; it is the nucleus which determines how the process is subclassified and interpreted …the Medium is the one participant that cannot be treated circumstantially; hence (other than one special kind of clause, the medio-passive) it is never mediated by a preposition.
Every process has associated with it one participant that is the key figure in that process; this is the one through which the process is actualised, and without which there would be no process at all. … It is the entity through the medium of which the process comes into existence.
…the different types of expansion (elaboration, extension and enhancement) are manifested as different subtypes of being & having — intensive, possessive, and circumstantial…
…one of the other reasons for recognising sensing as a distinct type: as we have seen, a figure of sensing may combine with a metaphenomenon or fact (It frightened/surprised/pleased John that there was no reply to his letter). They are, of course, quite different from figures of doing in this respect. For example, while metaphenomena can please and frighten conscious beings (sensing), they cannot open doors (doing).
In other words, a figure of sensing, configured as Senser + Process + Phenomenon, can be represented either as the Phenomenon impinging on the Senser’s mental processing (effective: Phenomenon as Agent) or as the Senser’s mental processing ranging over the Phenomenon (middle: Phenomenon as Range). This kind of a reversal of perspective on the figure (like/please, fear/frighten, believe/convince, etc.) is a special feature of sensing and one important reason for recognising it as a distinct type. (This is also true of the metaphorical variant; cf. John was afraid of the dog : The dog was scary [to John].)
Grammatical metaphors do reorganise experience; that is one reason why they are identified as metaphors, rather than simply being incorporated into the congruent options.
Intentionality can be construed in the clause as circumstances of Manner (‘according to plan’, e.g. he found the book by chance; he turned left by mistake; he turned left intentionally) and as verbal group complexes of projection or enhancement realising the Process (e.g. she intended to leave at 4; she happened to be in the neighbourhood). It may also be a factor in certain lexical contrasts within delicate process types; but we have found no evidence that intentionality is a primary variable in the semantic system of figures and its grammatical construal in transitivity. Rather, whether an example is read as construing something as intentional or non-intentional will depend on a variety of factors, such as the consciousness of the most active participant.
In English, intentionality can be enacted within the interpersonal system of imperative modality (modulation) in the form of inclination, as in he won’t be ordered around (‘refuses to be’). It is independent of ideational agency; inclination is oriented towards the Subject, i.e. the modally responsible element of the clause, rather than (say) the Actor or Agent (as our passive example illustrates).
To the extent that intentionality enters into the semantic system of a language, it could in principle be construed ideationally as some aspect of the overall system of figures or be enacted interpersonally as a modality of inclination. If it is construed ideationally, it could in principle be a global property of a figure as a whole or a local property of the process or a participant.
The two perspectives are not unrelated of course. As we shall see the specification of an element of transitivity structure may determine the temporal profile: the created Goal that constitutes the completion of the performance of the process (as in Mr. Blandings built a house), a Range that constitutes its finite scope (They sang two Hungarian folk songs), a destination that gives its spatio-temporal endpoint (He walked to the store), a resultative Attribute that constitutes the (qualitative) endstate (He was shot dead), and so on. But the mere presence of such an element is not sufficient to determine the temporal profile; it is also influenced by the ‘boundedness’ of the elements: are they in infinite supply or not — a definite number of units, or an indefinite number? In general, then, the temporal profile is determined by other factors such as the presence, and the boundedness in quantity, of participants and circumstances.
… the two perspectives represent two different kinds of profile. One is the configuration of process, participants and circumstances — the transitivity profile; the other is the occurrence or unfolding of an event through time — the temporal profile.
The distinction most commonly drawn here is based on change. Is there change over time or not; i.e. is there a change in the course of the occurrence of the process? The most common dichotymy is state vs non-state (with terminological oppositions such as stative/dynamic)… . States and non-states have different temporal profiles. States are homogeneous; any time we check a process whose occurrence is a state, it will be the same. Non-states, or changes, are not homogeneous; during the course of the occurrence of a process something will have changed, for example the spatial location of a participant (as with processes of movement) or parts of a participant, or some other attribute of a participant (e.g. possession or location in a ‘quality space’ such as colour or temperature).
In the temporal instantiation perspective, the issue is the occurrence of the process as an event located in time: how does it unfold through time, and what is its temporal profile? Here the relevant variables are such as the following:
1. Is the process homogeneous during its occurrence or does it decompose into a sequence of distinct phases (stages); is it a mini-tableau or a mini-drama?These questions lead to typologies that include terms like stative, dynamic, perfective, imperfective, punctiliar, iterative, and so on.
2. Is the period of occurrence a relatively short interval, or is it an extended interval?
3. Is the whole period of occurrence in view or only a phase of it (e.g. beginning or end)?
4. Does the process tend to occur once or repeatedly?
In the typology presented here as part of the ideation base, there are two very general considerations:
1. process type: what kind of reality does the figure or process configuration pertain to (the material world, the world of consciousness, the world of symbolisation, the world of abstract relations)?
2. agency: is the occurrence of the process (in conjunction with the medium) caused by an entity that is external to it (an agent)?
In the participant-organising perspective, it is the nature of the participants involved in the process that determines the different process types. Relevant variables include the following:
1. Is some participant created, brought into existence, by the process?
2. Is some participant restricted to conscious being?
3. Can some participant be a metathing as well as a thing?
4. Is the process directed towards some participant?
5. Does the process benefit some participant?
6. Does the process occur spontaneously or does it need an input of energy?
7. Does the process affect some participant materially or does it impinge on its consciousness?
8. Is the process symmetric?
9. Is the process reflexive?
… a process is both an organiser of participants and an event that is instantiable in time. These two perspectives lead to different criteria for establishing process typologies. … The two perspectives are associated with different grammatical units, the clause (for the participant organising perspective) and the verbal group (for the temporal instantiation).
… we have to keep in mind that we are dealing with a semantic system and not with a collection of unrelated items. … For example, if we recognise figures of saying … this goes together with certain other features: with the distinction between phenomena and metaphenomena, and between ideas and sayings, with the organisation of projections as sequences rather than figures, with the identification of symbol sources as a kind of participant, and with the recognition of circumstances of matter. In other words, we have to consider syndromes of features that occupy a region of semantic space.
A characteristic of work on grammatical semantics, where this has been based on linguistics or on natural language philosophy, is to move in at the lower ranks of the grammar rather than the higher ones, and to start with classes rather than with functions. This is a continuation of the method of traditional grammar, which (because it originated with the study of observable features of language) was word-oriented and leant heavily on word classes in its descriptive statements. We find this tendency in discussions of word classes and their semantic values — the issue of the proper interpretation of adjectives, the exploration of various verb types, and so on.
… ascriptive intensive relations … represent a relation of inclusion … Identity and inclusion are two versions of the intensive relation: identity is the limiting case of inclusion and inclusion is partial identity.
… although ascriptive relational processes are typically ranged, with the quality ascribed to the Carrier as the Attribute/Range, we find ascriptive non-ranged processes as well. For example … The problem matters … In a sense, the Attribute is incorporated into the Process ‘matter’ in the same way as the Means is incorporated into a verb such as hammer. This class of ascriptive processes includes matter, count … suffice and figure, and also an evaluative set, such as stink, suck, drip, reek. … these processes are clearly not material, as is shown by the unmarked tense selection …
Both transforming interpretations can be seen as attempts to find a canonical logical form, either Subject – Copula – Predicate or Subject – Predicate, rather than have to operate with different forms. These two logical structurings correspond to relational and material models respectively:
According to the first approach, verbs are really adjectives (their true shape is revealed in the adjectival participle), while the second approach assumes that adjectives are really verbs; they just happen to be superficially defective (in English) in that they cannot be inflected. The third approach aligns adjectives with ‘substantives’, but it still allows for two possibilities. They can be either treated as independent classes or they can be grouped together as nouns.
The third position accepts both the material process model and the relational process model without trying to interpret one in terms of the other. According to this model, Socrates is white is not primarily like Socrates ran but is more directly related to Socrates was a philosopher and, by an additional step, to Socrates was the teacher of Plato. In this model, nuclear processes are verbs and participants are nominals (substantival or adjectival).
The second position is the reverse of the first in terms of the distribution of the nuclear process and participants. A relational process is interpreted on the model of a material one; the attribute (participant) is interpreted as if it was a nuclear process. Thus, to continue with the same artificial examples, Socrates is white is analysed as ‘Socrates whited’. The copula is not interpreted as representing a process but is thought to be only a “bearer” of tense, person and number.