Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 106):
Instead of referring to formal logic, let us ask what kind of construal of experience is embodied in semantic sequences.
Throughout the semantic construal of human experience, there is a differentiation between two orders of reality: between the everyday reality of our material existence on the one hand and on the other hand the second-order reality that is brought into existence only by the system of language. This is a contrast between semiotic phenomena, those of meanings and wordings, and the first-order phenomena that constitute our material environment. (Note that the linguistic processes themselves, as apprehended by our senses, are part of the first-order reality; second-order reality is formed of the meanings and the wordings that these processes bring into being.)
Blogger Comments:
To be clear, if meaning is immanent, then both first-order phenomena/reality and second-order phenomena/reality are construals of experience as meaning.