Mixed Channels And The Blurring Of Sharing Vs Exploring

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 42):

Technological advances have continued to enhance the potential of both phonic and graphic channels, and to enable mixed channels (cf. Halliday, 2008: 140–141). Importantly, mobile and web-based technologies (for hardware and software) have changed the possibilities of ‘sharing’ in rather dramatic ways, with a whole host of new options like e-mail messages, text messages, blogs, tweets and other formats associated with social media, as investigated and discussed by Macnamara (2010). As a result, the distinction between the private sphere of ‘sharing’ values and opinions and the ‘public’ sphere of exploring them has become blurred.

Mode: Channel

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 42):

Channel determines the ‘bandwidth’ of the flow of meanings in a situation. For most of human history, the channel was only phonic, but typically with visual contact (thus also allowing for accompanying gestures, facial expressions and other forms of visual ‘paralanguage’); but with the gradual emergence of writing, initially in certain city-based civilisations around five thousand years ago, graphic channels were added, and archival uses of language became possible.

Orientation Of Text Towards Both Field And Tenor: 'Enabling' Situations

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 42):

The goals of ‘enabling’ situations can also be said to relate to both field and tenor, but in a different way. They concern the addressee’s activities in some field, but tenor comes into the picture as well because these activities are ‘modulated’: the addressee is either capacitated to undertake them (instruction) or required to do so (regulation). In terms of their organisation, instructional texts tend to be more field-like, being organised as the sequence of steps that make up a procedure. In contrast, regulatory texts have a less clearly field-based organisation; and like ‘promoting’ texts, they may include motivations – although typically threats of forms of punishment rather than the irresistible features of a product or service!

Orientation Of Text Towards Both Field And Tenor: 'Recreating' Situations

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 41-2):

Orientation towards both field and tenor means that the goals of the situation, or intended outcomes, are concerned with field and/or tenor. Thus the goals of ‘recreating’ situations may be concerned with the construal of some imaginary world, ranging from a slight variant of our own world to a world of pure fantasy; but the goals may at the same time involve moral principles embodied in tenor. In this way, utopias and dystopias are concerned with both field and tenor. The orientation towards both field and tenor is reflected in the structure of traditional folk tales or nursery tales: field is reflected in the sequence of events (initiating, sequent and final), and tenor is reflected in evaluations, which may be strung out prosodically through the narrative and/or encapsulated in a separate ‘moral’ at the end of the tale (cf. Hasan, 1984).

Orientation Of Text To Tenor vs Field In Relation To Internal vs External Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 41):

The orientation towards tenor is thus likely to be reflected in the semantic organisation of texts operating in ‘recommending’ and ‘exploring’ contexts in the use of fairly global internal relations – called internal conjunctive relations (see Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Martin, 1992) or internal rhetorical relations (see Mann & Matthiessen, 1991). 

Both evidence and motivation can be interpreted as internal versions of cause –

• evidence: ‘I claim/you should believe that ... because ... ’; 
• motivation: ‘I want you/you are obliged to ... because ...’. 

In general, orientation towards tenor is characteristic of ‘sharing’, ‘recommending’ and ‘exploring’ contexts, and also in principle of ‘enabling’ contexts of the ‘regulatory’ subtype (but see immediately below). In contrast, texts operating in contexts with an orientation towards field are much less likely to involve internal relations; instead, they are organised both globally and locally in terms of external relations.

Blogger Comment:

Note that this new addition to IFG by Halliday's reviser, Matthiessen, fails to alert the reader to the fact that Martin (1992) misunderstands the distinction between internal and external conjunctive relations.  See, for example:

• Misinterpreting Internal And External Conjunctive Relations
• Misconstruing Internal And External Relations
• Misrepresenting Internal Vs External Relations
• Misconstruing Structural Vs Cohesive As External Vs Internal

Orientation Of Text Towards Tenor

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 41):

Orientation towards tenor means that the goals of the situation, or intended outcomes, are concerned with tenor, more specifically with the relationship between speaker and addressee – with maintaining or changing this relationship, as when speakers try to bring their addressees closer to their own positions.  When texts operate in such situations, they tend to be organised in terms of tenor, with a central proposition or proposal supported by text segments that provide evidence for the proposition, increasing the likelihood that the addressee will agree, or motivation for the proposal, increasing the likelihood that the addressee will comply (if the proposal is some form of command) or accept (if the proposal is some form of offer).

Orientation Of Text Towards Field

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 41):

Orientation towards field means that the goals of the situation, or intended outcomes, are concerned with field, more specifically with the development of field, as in an ‘expounding’ context where the speaker’s goal might be to construe a taxonomy for the addressee, a classification of some classes of phenomena. When texts operate in such situations, they tend to be organised in terms of field — in terms of the structure of the field, as when a text is organised according to the classes of a taxonomy. Orientation towards field is characteristic of ‘expounding’, ‘reporting’ and ‘doing’ contexts, and also in principle of ‘enabling’ contexts of the ‘instructing’ subtype.

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.