Friday 27 January 2017

Theory And Data: A Dialectical Complementarity

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 53):
We would argue for a dialectical complementarity between theory and data: complementarity because some phenomena show up best if illuminated by a general theory (i.e. from the ‘system’ end), others if treated as patterns within the data (i.e. from the ‘instance’ end; dialectical because each perspective interpenetrates with and constantly redefines the other.