Relating Mode To Orientations Of Language To Field And Tenor

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 38):

However, we can relate these particular categories [of rhetorical mode] to the orientation of the text (i) towards the field of the situation, (ii) towards the tenor or (iii) towards some mixture of both.

Blogger Comment:

Note that this new addition to IFG by Halliday's reviser, Matthiessen, misrepresents the stratificational relation between context and language.

The relation between an instance of language (text) and an instance of context (situation) is realisation, which is a subtype (symbolic identity) of an intensive identifying (Token-Value) relation. 

an instance of language	realises	the field, tenor and mode of its situation
Token	Process: intensive	Value

'Orientation', on the other hand, means the alignment or positioning of something relative to other specified positions.  An alignment relation between a Token and a Value is circumstantial (spatio-temporal), not intensive.

an instance of language	faces	the field and tenor of its situation
Token	Process: circumstantial: spatio-temporal	Value

Consequently, the spatio-temporal relation of 'orientation' — like other circumstantial relations, such as cause — is inconsistent with the theoretical meaning of stratification.

Rhetorical Mode

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 38):

Rhetorical mode encompasses a number of rhetorical categories concerned with the contribution of the text to the situation it operates in: informative, didactic, persuasive, exhortatory, pragmatic, and so on.

Taxonomising Text According To Field

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 35-6):

In principle, such a taxonomy would be based on all three contextual variables – on field, tenor and mode. However, here we will present a contextual taxonomy of text that is based on field in the first instance, more specifically on the variable of socio-semiotic activity (see Matthiessen, 2006c; Matthiessen, Teruya & Lam, 2010; Teruya, 2007). … So let’s consider the nature of the socio-semiotic activity that constitutes a situation. In a sense, the activity that constitutes a situation is either one of behaviour or one of meaning; this is the traditional distinction between action and reflection. So we will make a basic distinction between activities of ‘doing’ and of ‘meaning’, and then further distinctions within ‘meaning’:

⦁ ‘doing’: the situation is constituted in some form of social behaviour, involving one or more persons. Language or other semiotic systems such as gesture, gaze and facial expression may be engaged to facilitate the performance of the activity, as when language is used to coordinate a team

⦁ ‘meaning’: the situation is constituted in some process of meaning. There are seven primary types:

○ ‘expounding’: expounding knowledge about the world – about general classes of phenomena, categorising them or explaining them 

○‘reporting’: reporting particular phenomena, chronicling the flow of events, surveying places or inventorying entities 

○‘recreating’: recreating any aspect of prototypically human life imaginatively by dramatising or narrating events 

○‘sharing’: sharing personal experiences and values, prototypically in private 

○‘enabling’: enabling some course of activity, either enabling the activity by instructing people in how to undertake it or regulating the activity by controlling people’s actions 

○‘recommending’: recommending some course of activity, either for the sake of the speaker through promotion of some commodity or for the sake of addressee through advice 

○‘exploring’: exploring societal values and positions, prototypically in the public arena.

Blogger Comment:

Note that this new addition to IFG by Halliday's reviser, Matthiessen, blurs the distinction between field ('what's going' and 'what it's about') and symbolic mode ('the rôle of language').

Field, Tenor And Mode: Taxonomising Situations And The Texts That Realise Them

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 35):

Field, tenor and mode variables are the basis for any attempt to develop a taxonomy of situations. At the same time, since text is language functioning in context, the field, tenor and mode variables are also the basis of any attempt to develop a taxonomy of texts operating in situations. It is certainly true that in developing a taxonomy of texts, we can adopt – we need to adopt – a trinocular perspective, matching up contextual, semantic and lexicogrammatical considerations to support the taxonomy. However, to be meaningful, a taxonomy of texts must be grounded in contextual considerations. If the taxonomy is ‘on the right track’, semantic and lexicogrammatical considerations will align themselves with the contextual ones.

Context And Lexicogrammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 35):

Still, while field, tenor and mode resonate with semantic systems in the first instance, they do penetrate into lexicogrammar: field values put ideational wordings at risk, tenor values put interpersonal wordings at risk, and mode values put textual wordings at risk. … Indeed, the tenor variables of power and contact may be grammaticalised as part of the core interpersonal system of mood in a language, as in Japanese and Korean.

Correlating Tenor With Speech Function And Mood

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 34):

Thus combinations of tenor values relating to (a) status and (b) contact correlate with different semantic strategies open to speakers for demanding goods-&-services of their listeners – for commanding their listeners. If (a) the status is unequal, with the speaker being subordinate to the listener and (b) the contact is minimal, the speaker’s semantic options are very limited: it is very hard to command a stranger who is of superior status to do something; but there will be certain semantic strategies. Lexicogrammatically, these strategies will be far removed from the congruent realisation of a command, a clause of the imperative mood – perhaps something like I wonder if you would be so kind as to ... and they will be ‘dispersed’ in the grammar of mood, involving not only ‘imperative’ clauses but also ‘declarative’ and ‘interrogative’ ones and in fact not only clauses but also combinations of clauses; but semantically, they are still within range of options associated with commands. … Tenor is, as it were, refracted through semantics so that the lexicogrammatical resonances with tenor values are more indirect than the semantic ones.

Correlating Context With Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 34):

The ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings at risk can be stated in terms of systems at the semantic stratum in the first instance. However, since semantics stands in a natural relation to lexicogrammar, the two being the content plane systems of language, meanings at risk can also be stated, by another stratal step, in terms of systems at the lexicogrammatical stratum as wordings at risk. For example, when we consider the correlations between tenor values and terms in interpersonal systems, we should really focus on interpersonal semantic systems such as SPEECH FUNCTION in the first instance rather than on lexicogrammatical ones such as MOOD.

The Relation Between Context And Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014; 34):

Field, tenor and mode are thus sets of related variables, with ranges of contrasting values. Together they define a multi-dimensional semiotic space – the environment of meanings in which language, other semiotic systems and social systems operate. The combinations of field, tenor and mode values determine different uses of language — the different meanings that are at risk in a given type of situation. There are systematic correspondences between the contextual values and the meanings that are at risk in the contexts defined by these values. As Halliday (1978) suggested, field values resonate with ideational meanings, tenor values resonate with interpersonal meanings, and mode values resonate with textual meanings (see also Halliday & Hasan, 1985: 26).* In other words, the correspondences between context and language are based on the functional organisation of both orders of meaning.

* We use the term ‘resonate with’ because the relationship is not a one-way causal relationship, but rather a two-way realisational relationship (cf. Jay Lemke’s, 1984, notion of metaredundancy, discussed in Halliday, 1992). Contextual values influence linguistic choices but are also influenced by them.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Note that this is the culture as meaning— as a semiotic system — not language as meaning (i.e. semantics).  Confusion in this regard led to Martin's (1992) misconstrual of diatypic varieties of language (register, genre) as context, and subsequently, to the inability of his students to tell the difference.

[2] Note the contradiction inherent in Halliday's reviser, Matthiessen, claiming, on the one hand, that the relation between context and language is not causal, and on the other hand, that context 'determines' uses of language and that contextual values and linguistic choices 'influence' each other; 'influence' means to have an effect upon, and an 'effect' is the consequence of a cause.  As the expression 'two-way realisational relation' suggests, context and language are construed together, since they are in a relation of identity at two levels of symbolic abstraction.  As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 354) say:

we may model the relationship in one direction or the other, but text and context are construed together.

Causation can be more coherently associated with the process of instantiation, since the selection of features, and the activation of their realisation statements, can influence the selection of others, given the probabilistic nature of the system.

[3] The masturbatory metaphor 'meanings at risk' appears to have been introduced into SFL by Martin (1992: 464, 476, 477, 486-7, 489, 502, 508, 528, 531, 536, 538), drawn from a notion in Barthes (1977: 102):

However minimal its importance, a sequence, since it is made up of a small number of nuclei (that is to say, in fact of 'dispatchers'), always involves moments of risk and it is this that justifies analysing it. It might seem futile to constitute into a sequence the logical succession of trifling acts which go to make up the offer of a cigarette (offering, accepting, smoking, lighting), but precisely at every one of these points, an alternative — and hence a freedom of meaning — is possible. … A sequence is thus, one can say, a threatened logical unit, this being its justification a minimo.

In terms of SFL theory, Barthes simply means that the speaker is always free to instantiate a different option during logogenesis. The "risk" is to the feature and it is the "risk" of not being selected(!).

Field, Tenor And Mode

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 33-4):

Thus any situation type can be characterised in terms of field, tenor and mode: 

⦁ field – what’s going on in the situation: 

(i) the nature of the social and semiotic activity; and 

(ii) the domain of experience this activity relates to (the ‘subject matter’ or ‘topic’) 

⦁ tenor – who is taking part in the situation: 

(i) the rôles played by those taking part in the socio-semiotic activity – 

(1) institutional rôles,

(2) status rôles (power, either equal or unequal),

(3) contact rôles (familiarity, ranging from strangers to intimates) and

(4) sociometric rôles (affect, either neutral or charged, positively or negatively); and

(ii) the values that the interactants imbue the domain with (either neutral or loaded, positively or negatively) 

⦁ mode – what role is being played by language and other semiotic systems in the situation: 

(i) the division of labour between semiotic activities and social ones (ranging from semiotic activities as constitutive of the situation to semiotic activities as facilitating); 

(ii) the division of labour between linguistic activities and other semiotic activities; 

(iii) rhetorical mode: the orientation of the text towards field (e.g. informative, didactic, explanatory, explicatory) or tenor (e.g. persuasive, exhortatory, hortatory, polemic); 

(iv) turn: dialogic or monologic; 

(v) medium: written or spoken; 

(vi) channel: phonic or graphic.

Context Of Culture: The Overall Contextual Potential Of A Community

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 32-3):

…context extends along the cline of instantiation from the overall contextual potential of a community to the contextual instances involving particular people interacting and exchanging meanings on particular occasions.  The contextual potential of a community is its culture – what we call the context of culture, following Malinowski. The context of culture is what the members of a community can mean in cultural terms; that is, we interpret culture as a system of higher-level meanings (see Halliday, 1978) – as an environment of meanings in which various semiotic systems operate, including language, paralanguage (gesture, facial expression, voice quality, timbre, tempo, and other systems of meaning accompanying language and expressed through the human body; cf. Thibault, 2004) and other human systems of meaning such as dance, drawing, painting and architecture…

Context: Instantiation & Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 32):

Like language, context is extended along the cline of instantiation from instance to potential; and like language, it is functionally diversified.

The Conceptualisation Of Context In SFL

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 32):

As we have noted above, language operates in context. In terms of linguistic theory, we recognise this important principle by developing an ‘ecological’ theory of language – one in which language is always theorised, described and analysed within an environment of meanings; a given language is thus interpreted by reference to its semiotic habitat. This way of approaching language was given a considerable theoretical and empirical boost by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in the 1920s and 1930s, based initially on his extensive fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands in the 1910s; and his insights were taken up and developed within linguistic theory by J.R. Firth, and then built into a general theory of language in context by systemic functional linguists (e.g. Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens, 1964; Halliday, 1978, 1992a; Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Ghadessy, 1999; Butt & Wegener, 2007). This is the conceptualisation of context that we use here.

The Global And Local Semiotic Dimensions Of Language In Context

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 31-2):

We have now introduced the major semiotic dimensions that define the ‘architecture’ of language in context. Some of these dimensions enable us to locate lexicogrammar in relation to the other sub-systems that make up the total system of language; these are known as global dimensions because they determine the overall organisation of language in context: the hierarchy of stratification, the cline of instantiation, and the spectrum of metafunctions. The other dimensions [axis, rank, delicacy] enable us to characterise the internal organisation of lexicogrammar and also of the other sub-systems of language, and of context; these are known as local dimensions because they operate locally within linguistic sub-systems.

Functionality Is Intrinsic To Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 31):

Why this rather unwieldy term ‘metafunction?’ We could have called them simply ‘functions’; however, there is a long tradition of talking about the functions of language in contexts where ‘function’ simply means purpose or way of using language, and has no significance for the analysis of language itself. But the systemic analysis shows that functionality is intrinsic to language: that is to say, the entire architecture of language is arranged along functional lines. Language is as it is because of the functions in which it has evolved in the human species. The term ‘metafunction’ was adopted to suggest that function was an integral component within the overall theory.

Textual Metafunction: Enabling Discourse

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 30-1):

But the grammar also shows up a third component, another mode of meaning that relates to the construction of text. In a sense this can be regarded as an enabling or facilitating function, since both the others — construing experience and enacting interpersonal relations — depend on being able to build up sequences of discourse, organising the discursive flow, and creating cohesion and continuity as it moves along. This, too, appears as a clearly delineated motif within the grammar. We call it the textual metafunction.

The Ideational And Interpersonal Modes Of Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 30):

This distinction between two modes of meaning is not just made from outside; when the grammar is represented systemically, it shows up as two distinct networks of systems. What it signifies is that

• (1) every message is both about something and addressing someone, and 
• (2) these two motifs can be freely combined — by and large, they do not constrain each other.

Interpersonal Metafunction: Enacting Personal & Social Relationships

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 30):

At the same time, whenever we use language there is always something else going on. While construing, language is always also enacting: enacting our personal and social relationships with the other people around us. The clause of the grammar is not only a figure, representing some process — some doing or happening, saying or sensing, being or having — together with its various participants and circumstances; it is also a proposition, or a proposal, whereby we inform or question, give an order or make an offer, and express our appraisal of and attitude towards whoever we are addressing and what we are talking about.  This kind of meaning is more active: if the ideational function of the grammar is ‘language as reflection’, this is ‘language as action’. We call it the interpersonal metafunction, to suggest that it is both interactive and personal.

Ideational Metafunction: Language As A Theory Of Human Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 30):

In other words, language provides a theory of human experience, and certain of the resources of the lexicogrammar of every language are dedicated to that function. We call it the ideational metafunction, and distinguish it into two components, the experiential and the logical.

Ideational Metafunction: Construing Experience As Meaning

 Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 30):

It is clear that language does — as we put it — construe human experience. It names things, thus construing them into categories; and then, typically, goes further and construes the categories into taxonomies, often using more names for doing so. … and the fact that these differ from one language to another is a reminder that the categories are in fact construed in language … . More powerfully still, these elements are configured into complex grammatical patterns like marched out of the house; the figures can be built up into sequences related by time, cause and the like – there is no facet of human experience that cannot be transformed into meaning.

The Ideational And Interpersonal Metafunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 30):

… what are the basic functions of language, in relation to our ecological and social environment?  We suggested two: making sense of our experience, and acting out our social relationships.

Cline Of Instantiation As A Cline Of Theoretical Perspectives

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 29-30):

As grammarians we have to be able to shift our perspective, observing now from the system standpoint and now from that of the text; and we have to be aware at which point we are standing at any time. … Writing a description of a grammar entails constant shunting between the perspective of the system and the perspective of the instance.

Blogger Comment:

Note that speaking doesn't involve shunting up and down the cline of instantiation. Martin's notion of "distantiation" or "de-instantiaton" arises from this misunderstanding.

Material Setting Vs Semiotic Context

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 29):

If we now come back to the question of stratification, we can perhaps see more clearly what it means to say that the semantic stratum is language interfacing with the nonlinguistic (prototypically material) world. Most texts in adult life do not relate directly to the objects and events in their environment. … Interfacing with the eco-social environment is a property of language as system; it is also, crucially, a feature of those instances through which small children come to master the system; but it is not something that is re-enacted in every text. Experience is remembered, imagined, abstracted, metaphorised and mythologised — the text has the power to create its own environment; but it has this power because of the way the system has evolved, by making meaning out of the environment as it was given.

Use Of The Term 'Register' In Systemic Functional Linguistics

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 29n):

Here the term ‘register’ thus refers to a functional variety of language (see e.g. Halliday, 1978; Hasan, 1973; Matthiessen, 1993b; Ghadessy, 1993; Lukin et al., 2008). It has also been used in a related, but different way, to refer to the contextual values associated with such a functional variety (see Martin, 1992, and other contributions to the ‘genre model’ within systemic functional linguistics; cf. Matthiessen, 1993b).

Blogger Comment:

Here Halliday's reviser, Matthiessen, fails to warn the reader that:

A. Martin's use of 'register' is:

1. inconsistent with the notion of register,
2. inconsistent with the notion of context, and
3. inconsistent with Systemic Functional Linguistic theory;

Evidence here.

B.  Martin's use of 'genre' is:

1. inconsistent with the notion of genre,
2. inconsistent with the notion of context,
3. inconsistent with Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, and
4. not equivalent to Martin's use of 'register'.

Evidence here.

Looking ‘Down’ The Cline Of Instantiation: Registers

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 29):

Looked at from the system pole of the cline of instantiation, they [text types] can be interpreted as registers. A register is a functional variety of language — the patterns of instantiation of the overall system associated with a given type of context (a situation type).  These patterns of instantiation show up quantitatively as adjustments in the systemic probabilities of language; a register can be represented as a particular setting of systemic probabilities.

Text Types Vary With The Contextual Features They Realise

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 29):

The criteria we use when we compare the texts in our sample could, in principle, come from any of the strata of language – as long as they are systematic and explicit. However, research has shown that texts vary systematically according to contextual values: texts vary according the nature of the contexts they are used in. Thus recipes, weather forecasts, stockmarket reports, rental agreements, e-mail messages, inaugural speeches, service encounters in the local deli, news bulletins, media interviews, tutorial sessions, walking tours in a guide book, gossip during a tea-break, advertisements, bedtime stories, and all the other innumerable text types we meet in life are all ways of using language in different contexts.

Looking ‘Up’ The Cline Of Instantiation: Text Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 29):

If we start at the instance pole, we can study a single text, and then look for other texts that are like it according to certain criteria. When we study this sample of texts, we can identify patterns that they all share, and describe these in terms of a text type. By identifying a text type, we are moving along the cline of instantiation away from the text pole towards the system pole.

The Cline Of Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 28-9):

System and text are thus related through instantiation. Like the relationship between climate and weather, the relationship between system and text is a cline – the cline of instantiation. System and text define the two poles of the cline – that of the overall potential and that of a particular instance. Between these two poles there are intermediate patterns. These patterns can be viewed either from the system pole as sub-systems or from the instance pole as instance types.

System Vs Set Of Instances: System As Theory

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 27-8):

Why then do we refer to them as different things? We can see why, if we consider some recent arguments about global warming, the question is asked: ‘Is this a long-term weather pattern, or is it a blip in the climate?’ What this means is, can we explain global warming in terms of some general theory (in this case, of climatic change), or is it just a set of similar events? An analogous question about language would be if we took a corpus of, say, writings by political scientists and asked, are these just a set of similar texts, or do they represent a sub-system of the language? The climate is the theory of the weather. As such, it does have its own separate existence – but (like all theoretical entities) it exists on the semiotic plane. It is a virtual thing. Likewise with the system of language: this is language as a virtual thing; it is not the sum of all possible texts but a theoretical entity to which we can assign certain properties and which we can invest with considerable explanatory power.

Language As System Vs Language As A Set Of Texts

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 27):

… there are not two separate objects, language as system and language as a set of texts. The relationship between the two is analogous to that between the weather and the climate (cf. Halliday, 1992a). Climate and weather are not two different phenomena; rather, they are the same phenomenon seen from different standpoints of the observer. What we call ‘climate’ is weather seen from a greater depth of time – it is what is instantiated in the form of weather.  The weather is the text: it is what goes on around us all the time, impacting on, and sometimes disturbing, our daily lives. The climate is the system, the potential that underlies these variable effects.

The System Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 27):

The system of language is ‘instantiated’ in the form of text. … The system is the underlying potential of a language: its potential as a meaning–making resource. … This use of ‘system’ is thus different from — although related to — its meaning as a technical term in the grammar. The system in this general sense is the totality of all the specific systems that would figure in a comprehensive network covering every stratum.

Stratal Realisation: Conventional vs Natural

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 27):

The realisational relationship between content and expression, more specifically between lexicogrammar and phonology is largely conventional, or ‘arbitrary’ (with certain interesting exceptions relating to prosody and to two areas of articulation, phonæsthesia and onomatopœia). However, the realisational relationship between the two sets of content strata (semantics and lexicogrammar) and the two sets of expression strata (phonology and phonetics) is natural rather than conventional. Patterns of wording reflect patterns of meaning. Part of the task of a functional theory of grammar is to bring out this natural relationship between wording and meaning. The natural relationship between semantics and lexicogrammar becomes more complex and less transparent with the development of lexicogrammatical metaphor … but the relationship is still fundamentally natural rather than arbitrary.

Stratification: From Protolanguage To Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 26-7):

This protolanguage is a child tongue rather than a mother tongue; it is not yet like the adult language spoken around young children. Children develop their protolanguages in interaction with their immediate caregivers, gradually expanding their protolinguistic meaning potentials. In doing so, they learn the principles of meaning. At some point, typically in the second year of life, they are ready to build on this experience and to begin to make the transition into the mother tongue spoken around them. This transition involves a number of fundamental changes in the linguistic system. A key change – one that makes possible other changes – is the splitting up of each of the two stratal planes into two content strata and two expression strata. Content gradually splits into semantics and lexicogrammar, and expression gradually splits into phonology and phonetics.

Stratification: Protolanguage vs Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 26):

Language is thus organised into four strata – semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology, and phonetics. But these four strata are grouped into two stratal planes, the content plane and the expression plane. When children learn how to mean, they start with a very simple semiotic system, a protolanguage, usually sometime in the second half of their first year of life (see Halliday, 1973, 2003); and we hypothesise that language evolved in the same way (see Matthiessen, 2004a). This system is organised into two stratal planes, content and expression; but neither is internally stratified: content is mapped directly onto expression (vocal or gestural).

Linguistic Strata As A Series Of Redundancies

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 25):

When we say that language is stratified in this way, we mean that this is how we have to model language if we want to explain it. A language is a series of redundancies by which we link our ecosocial environment to nonrandom disturbances in the air (soundwaves). Each step is, of course, masterminded by the brain. The relationship among the strata — the process of linking one level of organisation with another – is called realisation.

The Stratification Of The Expression Plane

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 25):

It might be asked whether an analogous stratification took place within the expression plane; and the answer would appear to be ‘yes, it did’, and for analogous reasons, namely separating the organising function from the function of interfacing with the environment. Here, however, the environment is the human body, the biological resource with which sounding (or signing) is carried out. Taking sound (spoken language) as the base, the stratification is into phonetics, the interfacing with the body’s resources for speech and for hearing, and phonology, the organisation of speech sound into formal structures and systems.

The Stratification Of The Content Plane

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 25):

The stratification of the content plane had immense significance in the evolution of the human species — it is not an exaggeration to say that it turned Homo … into Homo sapiens. It opened up the power of language and in so doing created the modern human brain.

The Functions That Language Serves In Human Lives

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 25):

We use language to make sense of our experience, and to carry out our interactions with other people. This means that the grammar has to interface with what goes on outside language: with the happenings and conditions of the world, and with the social processes we engage in. But at the same time it has to organise the construal of experience, and the enactment of social processes, so that they can be transformed into wording. The way it does this is by splitting the task into two. In step one, the interfacing part, experience and interpersonal relationships are transformed into meaning; this is the stratum of semantics. In step two, the meaning is further transformed into wording; this is the stratum of lexicogrammar. This is, of course, expressing it from the point of view of a speaker, or writer; for a listener, or reader, the steps are the other way round.

The Stratification Of Content

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 24-5):

In infants’ protolanguage, which has as yet no grammar in it, the elements are simple signs; for example, a meaning ‘give me that!’ is expressed directly by a sound, like nananana, or maybe by a gesture of some kind. Here we have just two strata, a stratum of content and a stratum of expression (cf. Halliday, 1975, 2004). 

Adult languages are more complex. For one thing, they may have two alternative modes of expression, one of sounding (i.e. speech) and one of writing. More significantly, however, they have more strata in them. 

The ‘content’ expands into two, a lexicogrammar and a semantics (cf. Halliday, 1984a; Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999). This is what allows the meaning potential of a language to expand, more or less indefinitely.

Structural Operations

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 24):

Structural operations — inserting elements, ordering elements, and so on — are explained as realising systemic choices. … When we speak of structural features as ‘realising’ systemic choices, this is one manifestation of a general relationship that pervades every quarter of language. Realisation derives from the fact that a language is a stratified system.

Why 'Systemic' Theory?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 23):

Systemic theory gets its name from the fact that the grammar of a language is represented in the form of system networks, not as an inventory of structures. … structure … is interpreted as the outward form taken by systemic choices, not as the defining characteristic of language. A language is a resource for making meaning, and meaning resides in systemic patterns of choice.

Text As Product

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 23):

A text is the product of ongoing selection in a very large network of systems — a system network.

Delicacy (Elaboration) Vs Rank (Extension: Composition)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 23):

Delicacy in the system (‘is a kind of a kind of …’) is the analogue of rank in the structure (‘is a part of a part of …’).

System: Underlying Principle (Elaboration)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 23):

The relationship on which the system is based is ‘a kind of’: a clause having the feature ‘positive’ is a kind of clause.

Why System Is More Abstract Than Structure

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 22):

It will be clear that [system] is a more abstract representation than that of structure, since it does not depend on how the categories are expressed.

System [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 22):

Any set of alternatives, together with its condition of entry, constitutes a system in this technical sense.

Structure Vs System

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 22):

Structure is the syntagmatic ordering in language: patterns, or regularities, in what goes together with what. System, by contrast, is ordering on the other axis: patterns in what could go instead of what.

The Linguistic CPU

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 22):

Grammar is the central processing unit of language, the powerhouse where meanings are created …

Units Vs Complexes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 22):

… the structure of each unit is an organic configuration so that each part has a distinctive function with respect to the whole; … some units may form complexes, iterative sequences working together as a single part.

The Guiding Principle Of Compositional Hierarchies: Exhaustiveness

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 21-2):

The guiding principle is that of exhaustiveness: thus, in the writing system, a word consists of a whole number of letters, a sub-sentence of a whole number of words, a sentence of a whole number of sub-sentences; the number may be more than one, or just one. At the same time, as always in language, there is much indeterminacy, or room for manoeuvre …

Structure: Syntagmatic Order

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 21):

This is the compositional aspect of language, referred to in linguistic terminology as ‘constituency’. The ordering principle, as defined in systemic theory, is that of rank: compositional layers, rather few in number, organised by the relationship of ‘is a part of’.

Reasons For Adopting A Systemic Perspective

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 20):

… one is that languages evolve — they are not designed, and evolved systems cannot be explained simply as the sum of their parts. Our traditional compositional thinking about language needs to be, if not replaced by, at least complemented by a ‘systems’ thinking whereby we seek to understand the nature and the dynamic of a semiotic system as a whole.

Grammar In Functional Terms

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 20):

… from the standpoint of how it creates and expresses meaning.

The Perspective Of Grammar As System

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 10):

The perspective moves away from structure to consideration of grammar as system, enabling us to show the grammar as a meaning-making resource and to describe grammatical categories by reference to what they mean. This perspective is essential if the analysis of grammar is to be an insightful mode of entry to the study of discourse.

The Grammatical CPU

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 10):

The clause is the central processing unit in the lexicogrammar — in the specific sense that it is in the clause that meanings of different kinds are mapped into an integrated grammatical structure.

The Five Principles Of Constituency In Lexicogrammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 9-10):

Let us summarise here the five principles of constituency in lexicogrammar.

(1) There is a scale of rank in the grammar of every language. That of English (which is typical of many) can be represented as:

clause
phrase/group
word
morpheme.

(2) Each consists of one or more units of the rank next below. For example, Come! is a clause consisting of one group consisting of one word consisting of one morpheme.

(3) Units of every rank may form complexes: not only clause complexes but also phrase complexes, group complexes, word complexes and even morpheme complexes may be generated by the same grammatical resources. 

(4) There is the potential for rank shift, whereby a unit of one rank may be downranked (downgraded) to function in the structure of a unit of its own rank or of a rank below. Most commonly, though not uniquely, a clause may be down-ranked to function in the structure of a group. 

(5) Under certain circumstances it is possible for one unit to be enclosed within another; not as a constituent of it, but simply in such a way as to split the other one into two discrete parts.

The Limits Of Compositional Structure

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 9):

Grammarians used to worry a lot about whether to analyse sat, came as consisting of two morphemes (sit/come plus an abstract morpheme ‘past’ realised as a vowel change); but this is a problem created by the theory. Composition is an important semogenic (meaning–creating) resource; but it should not be allowed to dominate our thinking about grammar.

Clause Nexus [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 8):

When a number of clauses are linked together grammatically we talk of a clause complex (each single linkage within a clause complex can be referred to as one clause nexus).

Graphological Vs Grammatical Units

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 8):

We will use sentence and sub-sentence to refer only to units of orthography. In referring to grammar we will use the term clause.

The Functional Complementarity Between Speech And Writing

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 7):

Since language evolved as speech, in the life of the human species, all writing systems are in origin parasitic on spoken language (cf. Halliday, 1985a; Matthiessen, 2006b); and since language develops as speech, in the life of every hearing individual, this dependency is constantly being re-enacted. Even with the deaf, whose first language uses the visual channel, this is not writing; Sign is more closely analogous to spoken than to written language, signs being in a sense visible forms of articulation and facial expressions visible prosodies. But as writing systems evolve, and as they are mastered and put into practice by the growing child, they take on a life of their own, reaching directly into the wording of the language rather than accessing the wording via the sound; and this effect is reinforced by the functional complementarity between speech and writing. Writing evolved in its own distinct functional contexts of book keeping and administration as ‘civilisations’ first evolved – it never was just ‘speech written down’; and (at least until very recent advances in technology) the two have continued to occupy complementary domains.

Grammar And Vocabulary: Two Ends Of A Single Continuum

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 7): 

… it is important to clarify from the start that grammar and vocabulary are not two separate components of a language — they are just the two ends of a single continuum (see Halliday, 1961; Hasan, 1987; Matthiessen, 1991b; Tucker, 1998, 2007).

Writing, Sounding And Wording

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 7): 

… writing is not the representation of speech sound. While every writing system is related to the sound system of its language in systematic and nonrandom ways (exactly how the two are related varies from one language to another), the relationship is not a direct one. There is another level of organisation in language to which both the sound system and the writing system are related, namely the level of wording, or ‘lexicogrammar’. … The sound system and the writing system are the two modes of expression by which the lexicogrammar of a language is represented, or realised (to use the technical term).

Semiosis [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 5):

… the making and understanding of meaning …

Grammatics [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 5):

… the model of grammar …

Two Complementary Perspectives On The Text

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 3,4):

… (1) focus on the text as an object in its own right; (2) focus on the text as an instrument for finding out about something else. Focusing on text as an object, a grammarian will be asking questions such as: Why does the text mean what it does (to me, or to anyone else)? Why is it valued as it is? Focusing on the text as instrument, the grammarian will be asking what the text reveals about the system of the language in which it is spoken or written. … But the text has a different status in each case: either viewed as artefact, or else viewed as specimen. … specimen here might mean specimen of a particular functional variety, or register …

‘Text’ As Instance Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 3):

When people speak or write, they produce text; and text is what listeners and readers engage with and interpret. The term ‘text’ refers to any instance of language, in any medium, that makes sense to someone who knows the language; we can characterise text as language functioning in context (cf.  Halliday & Hasan, 1976: Ch. 1; Halliday, 2010). Language is, in the first instance, a resource for making meaning; so text is a process of making meaning in context.

Phylogenesis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 618):

There is no point asking whether the ideation base of our technologised natural languages necessarily had to evolve the way it did. But it is extreme pertinent to ask, given the enormous demands now being made on both the material and semiotic resources of the human species, what the options are for the way it may evolve in future.

The Ongoing Reconstrual Of Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 618):

… the ontogenetic perspective shows that in fact our experience is being ongoingly reconstrued and recategorised as we grow from infancy to maturity. This is the outcome of processes taking place in human history — evolutionary events that are at once both material and semiotic, and that cannot be reduced to either purely physical processes driven by technology or purely discursive processes driven by ideology.

Developmental Dynamic

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 618):

… it is a steady progression, marked by three periods of more rapid development at the transitions: from protolanguage to language (generalisation, associated with bipedal motion), from commonsense (spoken) language to written language (abstractness: the move into primary school), and from non-specialised written language to technical language (metaphor: the move into secondary school).

Developmental Dynamic

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 618):

The developmental dynamic of “generalisation — abstractness — metaphor” provides the semiotic energy for the grammar, enabling it to serve as the powerhouse for construing experience in the form of scientific knowledge.

The Reconstrual Of Experience As Technical Knowledge

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 617):

Semiotically, the critical factor is that of metaphor; the semiotic bonds that had enabled the child to learn the mother tongue in the first place, bonds between figures and their elements on the one hand and clauses and their transitivity functions on the other, are systematically … untied. The categories of experience are deconstrued, to be recategorised … in the “objectifying” framework of grammatical metaphor.

Abstractness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 615, 616):

General terms are not necessarily abstract; a bird is no more abstract than a pigeon. But some words have referents that are purely abstract — words like cost and clue and habit and tend and strange; they are construing some aspect of our experience, but there is no concrete thing or process with which they can be identified. … experience is being reconstrued in order to build up a form of knowledge that is systematically organised and explicit.

The Ontogenesis Of Ideation: Abstractness & Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 615):

… there are two further developments [besides generalisation] to come before the ideation base can take the form it has to take if it is to produce discourse … and there is some elapse of time before children take these further steps … abstractness [and] (grammatical) metaphor.

The Ontogenesis Of Ideation: Generalisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 615):

This principle of generalisation — that is, naming general classes rather than specific individuals — is what makes it possible to construct an ideation base. When they have reached this stage, children can make the transition from protolanguage to mother tongue, building up figures and sequences of figures, and simultaneously structuring these as moves in dialogic exchanges (… the interaction base) and as messages or quanta of information (the text base). In other words, they “learn how to mean” according to the metafunctional principle of adult semiosis.

Generalisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 615):

A prerequisite for the semiotic construal of experience is generalisation: the move from “proper” to “common” as the basic principle of referring. … this opens the way (i) to constructing hierarchies of classes … and (ii) to naming other kinds of element, process and qualities, which can be construed only in “common” terms. Since these other elements have distinct and complementary functions it becomes possible to combine them into organic structures, as complex elements or as figures.

The Shared Experience Of The Group

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 614):

When we talk of “construing experience” as the metafunctional realm of the ideation base, we are referring to the shared experience of the group, the culture and the species; it is by means of dialogue that children gain access to this shared experience and are enabled to construe their own experience with reference to it. And the dialogic nature of discourse serves the child also as a metaphor, as the semiotic manifestation of the social conditions of human existence.

Meaning Arises In Shared Social Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 614): 

Semiotic systems are social systems, and meaning arises in shared social consciousness; this is evident already in the protolanguage, when infants depend on being treated as communicating beings, and those within their “meaning group” are tracking them — unconsciously creating the language along with them. We find this manifested also in the forms of discourse, in the way children participate in constructing narratives of shared experience.

The Transition From Protolanguage To Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 614):

Children make the transition from protolanguage to language typically in the second half of the second year of life. […]; we may assume that in general terms they are recapitulating the phylogenetic evolution of language, although of course we can only speculate about the way that evolution took place (it is important to say explicitly that all human languages known today are equally far removed from that phase in our semiotic history). During that stage they learn to construe elements and figures, and in this way "semanticise" both the construction of experience and the enactment of interpersonal relations. In terms of the grammar, they learn to form groups and clauses, and to select systemic options simultaneously in transitivity and in mood.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Since the 'phylogenetic evolution of language' includes the evolution of Modern English from Anglo-Saxon, this is obviously not true in the terms that it is stated.  (The ontogenesis of Modern English does not recapitulate the evolution of Modern English from Anglo-Saxon.)  The notion that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis derives from the 'Biogenetic Law' of Ernst Hæckel, in the field of biology; Thain & Hickman (1994: 67):

Notorious view propounded by Ernst Hæckel in about 1860 (a more explicit formulation of his mentor Muller's view) that during an animal's development it passes through ancestral adult stages ('ontogenesis is a brief and rapid recapitulation of phylogenesis').  Much of the evidence for this derived from the work of embryologist Karl von Bær.  It is now accepted that embryos often pass through stages resembling related embryonic, rather than adult, forms.

[2] If different languages have evolved at different rates, then this is not strictly true; though it is true enough to undermine racist claims that speakers of the most conservative languages are somehow inferior, which is presumably the reason for including the parenthetical disclaimer.

How To Transcend The Limits Of Protolanguage

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 613-4):

… you need a semiotic of a different kind, one that allows for a purely abstract level of representation “in between” the two faces of the sign. To put this another way, the sign has to be deconstructed so that, instead of content interfacing directly with expression, the relationship is mediated by a systematic organisation of form (a lexicogrammar). In other words, the semiotic has to become stratified.

Why Children Move From Protolanguage To Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 613):

… because the protolanguage sets limits on both dimensions of meaning. You can converse in it, but you cannot build up a dialogue: that is, it allows exchange of meaning, but it precludes any form of interpersonal dynamic, in which meanings expand on the basis of what went before. You can point with it, but you cannot refer: that is, it allows focus on an object, but it precludes any form of ideational systematic, in which phenomena are construed as configurations and in taxonomies.

Human Vs Nonhuman Protolanguage

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 613):

The elements of protolanguage are “signs” (that is, content/expression pairs); they are thus formally identical with the semiotic resources of higher mammals (primates and cetaceans) — but with one important difference: the signs of other species become codified as the form of communication among adults, whereas those of children are transitional to a system of a different kind, and hence do not stabilise into a settled pattern but are constantly shifting on both semiotic planes.

The Immediate Significance Of The Protolanguage

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 612-3):

But the immediate significance of the protolanguage is that by acting semiotically in these particular contexts children construe the fundamental distinction between "self" and "other", and the further distinction of "other" into persons and objects (cf. the discussion and figure in Halliday, 1978b). The consciousness of the self arises at the intersection of the various semiotic roles defined by each of these systems* — as well as, of course, from awareness of being one interactant in the general dialogic process (Halliday, 1991).

*Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 613n):

There is a sense in which these rôles anticipate the functions in the transitivity structure of the clause: proto-Beneficiary (instrumental), proto-Agent (regulatory), proto-Carrier (interactional), and proto-Senser (personal).

The Microfunctions Foreshadow The Metafunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 612):

These already foreshadow the semantic motifs of the adult language, the experiential and interpersonal metafunctions, although they are not in any direct correspondence with them; thus the "personal" signs expressing curiosity, or pleasure/ displeasure, constitute the beginning of the semiotic exploration of experience and open the way to naming and classifying phenomena, while the interactional signs are the ones whereby a child enacts social relationships with caregivers and others who are close (Halliday, 1975; 1984b). Here we see the earliest context for the later emergence of types of process within the grammar (Halliday, 1991).

From Proto-Sign Inventory To Proto-Semantic Systems: Microfunctional Domains

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 612):

Children gradually build up an inventory of such proto-signs, and towards the end of the first year the signs begin to form systems, sets of contrasting terms in particular proto-semantic domains or micro-functions: typically, the instrumental (e.g. 'I want/1 don't want'), regulatory (e.g. Do that!/ Do that!!'), interactional (e.g. I’m here/ where are you?'), and personal domains (e.g. 'I like that/ I'm curious about that').

The Emergence Of Symbolic Acts: Proto-Signs

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 612):

Then, as they become aware of themselves and their environment, children feel a tension building up between two facets of their experience: between what they perceive as happening "out there" and what is happening "in here", within their own borders so to speak. We can watch babies of around 3-4 months struggling to reconcile these complex sensations: they can see a coloured object, reach out, and grasp it and pull it towards them. The inner and the outer forms of this experience have to be brought into line; in order to achieve this, children begin to act in a new, distinctively symbolic mode. A typical example of such an "act of meaning" is the high-pitched squeak a child of around 5 months may produce when some commotion takes place that has to be assimilated. Adults interpret these proto-signs as a demand for explanation: "Yes, that's a bus starting up. Isn't it noisy!" Thus meaning arises out of the impact between the material and the conscious as the two facets of a child's ongoing experience.

Pre-Language: No Distinction Between Symbolic And Non-Symbolic Acts

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 611-2):

Newborn children can exchange attention with their mothers, addressing them and recognising that they are being addressed by them; the infant’s whole body is actively involved in the exchange. This is “pre-language” (“pre-meaning”, even “pre-text”): but it is not language — no distinction is yet being made between symbolic and non-symbolic acts.

Levels Of Human Individuality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 610-1): 

The human individual is at once a biological “individual”, a social “individual”, and a socio–semiotic “individual”:

as a biological “individual”, s/he is an organism, born into a biological population as a member of the human species.

as a social “individual”, s/he is a person, born into a social group as a member of society. “Person” is a complex construct; it can be characterised as a constellation of social rôles or personæ entering into social networks … 

as a socio–semiotic “individual”, s/he is a meaner, born into a meaning group as a member of a speech community. Meaner is also a complex construct. … 

These different levels of individuality map onto one other: a meaner is a person, and a person is a biological organism. But the mappings are complex; and at each level an individual lives in different environments — in different networks of relations.

Collective Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609): 

Edelman’s interpretation of higher–order consciousness … suggests that this form of consciousness (unlike primary consciousness) is constituted in language. Language is a socio–semiotic system, so it follows that higher–order consciousness is constituted socio–semiotically; and since socio–semiotic systems are collective, it follows that higher–order consciousness must also be collective. …

But it is the rôle of language in the construction of experience as meaning — as shared activity and collaboratively constructed resource — that gives substance to the concept of collective consciousness as an attribute of the human condition.

Cf Edelman (1992: 133): 

higher–order consciousness adds socially constructed selfhood to this picture of biological individuality … but it is highly individual (indeed it is personal).

Cf Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 193): 

Human collectives: intermediate between conscious beings and institutions… if singular pronominalise with it.

Why ‘Construing Experience’ Rather Than ‘Reality Construction’

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

… the concept of experience is, or can be, a collective one: experience is something that is shared by the members of a species — construed as a “collective consciousness”, in Durkheim’s classic formulation.

Why ‘Construing Experience’ Rather Than ‘Reality Construction’

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609): 

… we want to emphasise the evolutionary perspective, since this allows us to start from what human beings have in common with other species rather than always insisting on our own uniqueness: when we talk of “construction of reality” it is almost impossible to avoid taking our own construction as the norm, whereas parakeets, pythons, and porpoises have very different experiences to construe — different both from each other’s and from those of people.

What Is Construed By The Brain

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

… what is being construed by the brain is not the environment as such, but the impact of that environment on the organism and the ongoing material and semiotic exchange between the two.

Materialism

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 608-9): 

… the human brain has evolved in the construction of a functioning model of “reality”. We prefer to conceptualise “reality construction” in terms of construing experience. This is not so much because it avoids metaphysical issues about the ultimate nature of reality — we are prepared to acknowledge a broadly materialist position …

The Commonality Of Biosemiosis And Sociosemiosis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 607):

… it is the fact that language and the perceptual systems share a common “realisation” in neural networks and neural processes that enables language to function as a dynamic open system, one that persists in time by constantly being modified through ongoing exchanges with its environment.

The Brain As “Realising” The System Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 607):

At the same time, the neural networks can be thought of as “realising” the system of language, in the sense that it is in the brain that language materialises as a process of the bio-physical world. In this perspective, the relationship between language and the brain is itself a semiotic one, analogous to that between the content plane and the expression plane within language itself …

The Brain As Bio–Semiotic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 607):

The neural events that constitute the various interface systems are themselves in the broadest sense semiotic: terms such as “communication”, “exchange of information”, that are used to characterise the activities of the brain are less abstract variants of the concept of “semiotic systems & processes”.