The Different Assigned Prominences Of Theme Identification vs Predication

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 400n):

Both these systems, THEME IDENTIFICATION and THEME PREDICATION, assign exclusive identity to the identified term of the equation. They differ, however, in the kind of prominence this identity carries with it: 

in THEME IDENTIFICATION, in which the original figure is restructured, the effect is one of second-order (semiotic) prominence, whereas  

in THEME PREDICATION, where the figure is not restructured, but one element within it is explicitly predicated, the effect is that of assigning first-order (natural or inter-subjective) prominence to the predicated element.

Theme Predication

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 400-1):

A related textual system is that of THEME PREDICATION (the so-called "cleft construction" of formal grammar), which similarly employs the identifying type of clause to achieve a particular balance of meaning in the discourse. …

A: It's the grammar where the fun is.

B: Yes it's the grammar which is interesting.

Here 'the thing which is interesting' is identified as grammar rather than lexis; the relationship between the grammar is interesting and it's the grammar which is interesting is shown in Figure 9-16.

Experiential Metaphor Creates A 'Carrier' Of Textual Meanings

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 399-400):

What is significant here [in theme predication] is that the textual organisation is realised by the second-order resource of grammatical metaphor. That is, the grammar is as it were turned back on itself: it reconstrues itself with a particular effect in the discourse, as diagrammed in Figure 9-15.

We can see, then that experiential grammatical metaphor is a strategy for creating a 'carrier' of textual meanings.

Theme Identification And The Textual Motivation Behind Grammatical Metaphor

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 399):

For instance, an identifying clause may be used to represent a non-identifying one, thereby providing an alternative construal of that other clause as a configuration of Identified + Process + Identifier. Thus, the clause you want this may be reconfigured as an identifying clause by nominalising 'the thing that you want', what you want, and identifying it with this, either as what you want is this or as this is what you want … The two versions of the clause are related in Figure 9-14.

The motivation behind the identifying metaphor is actually textual: the alternative configuration in the identifying clause constitutes a textual alternative for distributing information in the clause, in which the message is structured as an equation between two terms. This system is known as THEME IDENTIFICATION.

Grammatical Metaphor As A 'Second-Order' Use Of The Grammatical Resources

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398-9):

One manifestation of the second-order nature of the textual metafunction … is grammatical metaphor. Grammatical metaphor is a 'second-order' use of the grammatical resources: one grammatical feature or set of features is used as a metaphor for another feature or set of features; and, since features are realised by structures, one grammatical structure comes to stand for another — with the semantic effects discussed.

The Second-Order, Enabling Nature Of The Textual Metafunction: Context and Content Planes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398):

This second-order, enabling nature of the textual metafunction is seen both at the level of context, where mode (the functions assigned to language in the situation) is second-order in relation to field and tenor (the ongoing social processes and interactant roles), and at the levels of content — the semantics and the lexicogrammar, where the systems of THEME and INFORMATION, and the various types of cohesion, are second-order in relation to ideational and interpersonal systems of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, and the rest.

The Textual Metafunction As Enabling

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398):

The function of the textual metafunction is thus an enabling one with respect to the rest; it takes over the semiotic resources brought into being by the other two metafunctions and as it were operationalises them:

All the categories under this third heading [mode] are second-order categories, in that they are defined by reference to language and depend for their existence on the prior phenomenon of text. It is in this sense that the textual component in the semantic system was said to have an 'enabling' function vis-à-vis the other two: it is only through the encoding of semiotic interaction as text that the ideational and interpersonal components of meaning can become operational in an environment. (Halliday, 1978b: 145)

The Second-Order Nature Of The Textual Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398):

The textual metafunction differs from the ideational one in a number of fundamental respects — 

its mode of syntagmatic progression is wave-like, with periodic prominence; 

it is inherently dynamic in that it organises text as process; and 

it is a second-order mode of meaning. …

The textual metafunction is second-order in the sense that it is concerned with semiotic reality: that is, reality in the form of meaning. This dimension of reality is itself constructed by other two metafunctions: the ideational which construes a natural reality, and the interpersonal, which enacts an intersubjective reality.

Instantial System

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384-5):

If we look at logogenesis from the point of view of the system (rather than from the point of view of each instance), we can see that logogenesis builds up a version of the system that is particular to the text being generated: the speaker/writer uses this changing system as a resource in creating the text; and the listener/reader has to reconstruct something like that system in the process of interpreting the text — with the changing system as a resource for the process of interpretation. We can call this an instantial system (see Matthiessen, 1993c). 

For example, in the course of logogenesis, a recipe is built up as a series of ordered loops through the system of sequences, whereas an encyclopaedic entry may be built up as a systemic taxonomy, developed step by step in delicacy. 

An instantial system may fall entirely within the registerial system it instantiates; in other words, the meanings created within it may all have been created before. However, it may also create new meanings — new to the speaker and/or listener. In either case, the instantial system is built up successively by the generation process; but as it is developed, it in turn becomes a resource for further instantiation.

Logogenesis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384, 385):

A text is generated within the logogenetic time-frame. In fact, generation is a logogenetic process: it creates meaning in the course of instantiation as the text unfolds — see Figure 9-5.

Stratification x Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 381, 384):

Table 9(2) represents the intersection of instantiation and stratification, providing a schematic map of the overall semiotic space (the table has been adapted from a fuller version presented in Halliday, 1995). We have shown the ideational 'slice' of the overall picture in bold italics. (We have left the phonological cells unspecified … but the cline of instantiation is equally important at this lowest stratum of language.)

Stratification, Metafunction And The Cline Of Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 381, 383):

Figure 9-4 represents the stratal organisation of the resources, diversified into field, tenor and mode (within context) and into ideational, interpersonal and textual (within the content strata of language). As we have noted, these resources are extended along the cline of instantiation from potential (language in context of culture) via subpotentials (registers in situation types) to instances (texts in contexts of situation). Figure 9-4 shows the stratified resources as being extendable along the cline of instantiation.

Syntax And Morphology

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 380n):

Grammar comprises syntax and morphology; there is no strata! boundary between the two, but merely a move down the rank scale: "syntax" is simply the grammar of clauses and groups/phrases and morphology is the grammar of words and morphemes.

Textual Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 378):

The text base is oriented towards the ideation base and the interaction base. It provides the resources for constructing meanings from these two bases as information of a kind that can be shared as text. An ideational figure and an interpersonal move are constructed as information in the form of a message. Such a message is related to the preceding discourse and differentiates informational statuses in terms of thematicity and newsworthiness. From the speaker's point of view, the text base is a resource for developing a text, message by message, and for guiding the listener in his/her interpretation of the text; and from the listener's point of view, it is a resource for constructing such an interpretation.

The Ideational And Interpersonal Aspects Of A Register

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 378):

A particular domain model within the ideation base correlates with a particular exchange relationship within the interaction base and together they form the ideational and interpersonal aspects of a register. 

An exchange relationship thus has ideational implications: it involves the exchange of some ideational meanings rather than others and it embodies a division of labour between the interactants in the exchange relationship. 

For example, in a service encounter in a local shop (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Ventola, 1987), the customer may demand goods and information about goods within the relevant domain and the server supplies these on demand and demands goods (payment) in return; and this involves the general domain of business transaction and the particular domain of the business (e.g. hardware). 

An exchange relationship thus gives interpersonal values to meanings within the domain model it is associated with. 

For example, as we have seen, the ideation base embodies both congruent and metaphorical construals of experience; and these variants will be selected partly according to differences in interpersonal distance along dimensions such as age and expertise.

Interpersonal Semantics: Exchange Relationship

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 377-8):

Midway between potential and instance, sets of such strategies cluster within ranges of tenor values. Such a cluster is the interpersonal analogue of a domain in the ideation base: it is a region within the overall interpersonal space of meaning, selected according to tenor, just as a domain is a region within the overall ideational space of meaning, selected according to field. 

The options in interpersonal meaning that make up the cluster together enact a tenor relationship, 

such as that between a client and a server (unequal in power, low in familiarity, neutral in affect) where the client initiates demands for goods-&-services and information about them and the server responds, 

such as that between two friends (equal in power, high in familiarity, positive in affect) where the interpersonal options are wide-ranging, or 

such as that between the writer of a weather report and the readers (unequal in expertise, no familiarity, neutral in affect) where the writer gives information and the readers accept. 

We might call such a cluster an exchange relationship to foreground that it is semantic (i.e. constituted in meaning through exchanges of meaning) and that it is interpersonal (rather than one-sidedly personal). 

To indicate that it is analogous to a domain model, we might have called it an exchange or interaction "model"; but we have avoided that term because it suggests a construal of something and construal is the ideational mode of meaning — it is more like a protocol than like a model.

Interpersonal Semantics: System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 377):

The interaction base extends along the cline of instantiation. At the potential end of the cline of instantiation, the interpersonal strategies that have the move as their domain are defined by all the options persons have in exchanging meanings with one another, adopting speech roles of giving/demanding information or goods-&-services and assigning complementary roles of accepting or giving on demand to the addressee. These constitute all the patterns of interaction within a culture.

Interpersonal Semantics: Move

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 376-7):

The interaction base provides the resources for enacting social roles and relations as meaning, (prototypically) in dialogue. The interaction base includes the strategies for adopting and assigning speech roles, for giving and demanding assessments, and the like. The locus of these strategies is a unit of interaction or move. A move is typically mapped onto a figure from the ideation base: a speaker construes a quantum of experience as a figure and enacts this figure as a move in dialogue, either as a proposition or as a proposal. This mapping between figure and move is a central feature of the way we jointly construct and negotiate experience.

The Semantic System Or "Meaning Base"

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 376, 377):

The semantic system, or "meaning base", thus consists of the three familiar metafunctional contributions: the ideation base, the part of the meaning base that we have focussed on, but also the other two bases, the interaction base and the text base. All three bases are extended along the cline of instantiation from potential to instance. … Table 9(1) summarises those aspects of the three bases to be discussed.

The Realisation Of Context In Registers Of The Semantic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 376):

Such contextual regions evolve together with special functional varieties of the language or "registers". These are, in the first instance, registerial subsystems of the semantic system. A register is a semantic region within the overall semantic space. It is made up of contributions from all three metafunctions: a domain within the ideation base and similar regions within the interpersonal and textual parts of the overall semantic space. Our specifications of the meteorological and culinary domains constitute the ideational aspects of the registers of weather forecasting and recipes.

A given contextual specification of field, tenor and mode is thus realised by "preselecting" a register within the semantic system … . This contextual preselection within the semantics narrows down the overall potential to a registerial subpotential;

Blogger Comments:

Be aware that Martin and his students mistake register for context. That is, they mistake a functional variety of language — a subpotential of the semantic system — for the semiotic environment of language.

Context: The 'Semiotic Environment' Of Sociosemiotic Systems

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 375):

Context is the 'semiotic environment' of language (and other sociosemiotic systems such as image systems [maps, diagrams, etc.]); its systems specify what demands may be placed on language and what role it may play in responding to those demands. There are three sets of contextual systems — field, tenor and mode; … Recurrent combinations of (ranges of) field, tenor and mode values define regions within the overall system of the context of culture.

Inter-Stratal Realisation: Preselection From Above

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 375):

… stratal organisation means that it is crucial to specify the realisational relations between strata — inter-stratal realisation. In systemic theory, this relationship is stated in terms of the organisation of the higher stratum — for a simple reason: a higher stratum provides a more comprehensive environment than a lower one (as our strata! figures with concentric [co-tangential] circles suggest). For instance, a certain semantic feature such as 'probability' may be dispersed in realisation throughout various regions of the grammar (I think; in my opinion; probably; will). 

More specifically, inter-stratal realisation is specified by means of inter-stratal preselection: contextual features are realised by preselection within the semantic system, semantic features are realised by preselection within the lexicogrammatical system, and lexicogrammatical features are realised by preselection within the phonological/graphological system. This type of preselection may take different forms between different stratal boundaries, but the principle is quite general.

An Example Of Characterising Registerial Variation In Terms Of Domains Of Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 355, 356):

Characterised in terms of the general domains of experience construed by figures, weather forecasts fall within being & having. This does not mean that they are completely static — there are phases of being (coming to be, etc.); nor that there is no sense of causation — fronts, weather systems, and pressures can serve as Agent. However, the basic motif is one of states of being without any external causes; put in terms of scale, a weather forecast construes a macro-being — the meteorological state of the environment — consisting of a number of atomic micro-beings which move in and out of existence of their own accord. 

The domain construed in recipes is at another pole of figures — one of doing, where a human acts to impact on the world (within the confines of the kitchen). … A recipe is a kind of procedural text — a sequence of operations for arriving at some well-defined end result …; it is a macro-operation, consisting of a number of atomic micro-operations. It is dominated by procedures (algorithms, figures of doing) that lead to some specific goal: the dominant cause is purposive. An agent or agents try to produce, assemble, repair, etc..

From the interpersonal point of view, the notion of procedure can also be taken as a gloss on the interaction between the writer and the reader, it is a macro-proposal, consisting of a number of instructions or directions to the reader.

Text And Context Are Construed Together Variably

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 354):

…text and context are construed together. There is an important variable here, of course, that we have already referred to as the cline from 'language in reflection' to 'language in action'. In situations of the 'language in action' kind, where the discourse is a relatively minor component of the total activity, the grammar and semantics are obviously less constructive of the whole than in a 'reflection' context such as the present one.

Climate And Weather As System And Instance

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 328):

The terms climate and weather are related to each other as langue to parole: as the system of language is to its instantiation in text. Weather is the instantiation of climate; climate is the system 'behind' the weather. As with language, there is, of course, only one set of phenomena here not two; when we refer to climate we are construing general principles and tendencies that 'explain' the multidimensional microvariation that is what we actually have to live with …

Realisation vs Instantiation vs Delicacy

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 327):

It is important perhaps to make quite explicit the distinction among the three concepts of realisation, instantiation, and delicacy, since each of these is a distinct scale of abstraction. It is easiest to describe them in terms of metalanguage dynamics: what we are doing when we move along these different scales. 

(1) Realisation is the relation of one stratum to other strata (in any stratified system, with language as prototypical); when we shift attention from semantics 'upwards' into context or 'downwards' to lexicogrammar and phonology/ graphology, we are moving in realisation. We can do this at any degree of delicacy, from most general to most specific; and we can do it at any point along the instantiation scale, from system to text.  

(2) Instantiation is the relation between the system and the instance. When we shift attention along this scale, we are moving between the potential that is embodied in any stratum and the deployment of that potential in instances on the same stratum. Again, this move can be made at any degree of delicacy.  

(3) Delicacy is the relation between the most general features and the most specific. When we shift attention from, say, 'recreation' to 'hockey' at the level (stratum) of context, or from 'syllable' to long open nasal syllable' to /pã:/ in phonology, we are moving in delicacy. Again, we can do this at any point along the instantiation scale.

Register As Systematic Variation In Patterns Of Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 324):

… a semantic space in which meanings are constantly being realigned and new meanings created. In other words, we are describing a register; or, more accurately, a region of registerial variation (sometimes called 'diatypic' variation to suggest the analogy with dialectal variation). Register is systematic variation within the overall meaning potential …

The overall semantic potential is diversified into registerial varieties that emerge as patterns of instantiation.

The Cline Of Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 323, 324):

Instantiation relates the system to the instance, at any given stratum; thus, at the semantic stratum, instantiation is as shown in Figure 8-2.

First And Second Order Field

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 321, 322):

In most contexts, there is both a first order field and a second order field — the first order field is the social activity being pursued (e.g., instructing somebody in how to prepare a dish, predicting tomorrow's weather, informing somebody about yellow-pages information over the phone) and the second order field is the 'subject matter' the activity is concerned with (e.g., the ingredients and methods of cooking, meteorology, construction businesses, international travel). So for instance, in a context where a telephone operator provides a caller with information there is (i) the social activity of exchanging information as a service and (ii) the area of information, e.g. copying & printing services.

…a full account of field would include a typology of the possible first and second order values that occur in a culture. Such a typology would show how closely various fields are related — how they form families.

Context vs Register

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 321):

Together, field, tenor and mode define the 'ecological matrix' in which particular types of text are processed: there is a systematic relationship between such matrices (particular combinations of field, tenor and mode values) and particular types of text. We can see this clearly with actual instances of text — for example, an individual recipe or weather forecast; but these are instances of general classes, to be characterised in terms of the systemic potential that is instantiated in them. 

That is, there is a correlation not only between a contextual matrix and a given instance of a recipe but also between that matrix and the linguistic potential that is deployed in recipes in general. This latter correlation is known as a functional variety or register of the general systemic potential. 

This much has been known for a long time — the notion of functional dialect was worked out by the Prague School in the 1930s (see e.g. Havranek, 1932, and Vachek, 1964), and systemic register theory has its roots in Firth's (e.g., 1957) work on restricted languages. …

However, we can take one further step, as systemic theory did in the 1970s (see Halliday, 1978a), and recognise that the co-variation between context and language is not undifferentiated — it is differentiated according to the functional diversification of each of the two strata: the variables of context correlate respectively with the metafunctions of the language, field with ideational, tenor with interpersonal, and mode with textual. These pairs are mutually predictive.

Blogger Comments:

This is potentially misleading. A register is the linguistic potential that is correlated with the contextual matrix. That is, a register is not the correlation.

Field, Tenor & Mode

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 320-1):

Just as the semantic system is functionally diversified (into the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions), so the context in which language is 'embedded' is also diversified. The context encompasses both the field of activity and subject matter with which the text is concerned ('what's going on, and what is it about?') and the tenor of the relationship between the interactants, between speaker and listener, in terms of social roles in general and those created through language in particular ('who are taking pan?'). The field is thus the culturally recognised repertoires of social practices and concerns, and the tenor the culturally recognised repertoires of role relationships and interactive patterns.

Now, both these contextual variables are, in some sense, independent of language, even though they are constituted in language and the other semiotic systems of a culture. That is, they concern realities that exist alongside the reality created by language itself, semiotic reality. 

However, there is a third contextual variable that is specifically concerned with the part language is playing in any given context — the symbolic mode, how the linguistic resources are deployed. This covers both the medium (spoken, written, and various subtypes such as written in order to be spoken) and the rhetorical function — persuasive, didactic, informative, etc..

Blogger Comments:

Note that Martin misunderstands field, tenor and mode as dimensions of register, and misunderstands one dimension of mode, rhetorical function, as a dimension of genre. In SFL Theory, varieties of language, whether viewed as register or text type (genre), are modelled as language, not context.