Three Levels Of Human Individuality: Biological Organism, Social Person, Socio-Semiotic Meaner

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, bom into a social group as a member of society. "Person" is a complex construct; it can be characterised as a constellation of social roles or personae 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. For the socio-semiotic construction of the individual subject, see Thibault (1993) … .

These different levels of individuality map onto one another: 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.

'Mind' As An Unnecessary Construct

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 603):

Others have also been critical of the established academic view of mind; and some recent book titles suggest the kinds of alternatives that have been offered: "embodied mind", "social mind", "discursive mind". These suggest that the concept of 'mind' should be brought into close relation with other phenomena — biological, social, or semiotic. … But once this has been done, the mind itself tends to disappear, it is no longer necessary as a construct sui generis. 

Instead of experience being construed by the mind, in the form of knowledge, we can say that experience is construed by the grammar; to 'know' something is to have transformed some portion of experience into meaning. To adopt this perspective is to theorise "cognitive processes" in terms of semiotic, social and biological systems; and thus to see them as a natural concomitant of the processes of evolution.

Language As Part Of A More Complex Semiotic Construct

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602):

In other words, language has evolved as part of our own evolution. It is not arbitrary; on the contrary, it is the semiotic refraction of our own existence in the physical, biological, social and semiotic modes. It is not autonomous; it is itself part of a more complex semiotic construct — which, as we have tried to show, can be modelled in stratal terms such that language as a whole is related by realisation to a higher level of context (context of situation and of culture). This contextualisation of language, we suggested, was the critical factor which made it possible to relate language to other systems-&-processes, both other semiotic systems and systems of other kinds.

Studying Language As Different System–&–Process Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

It can be studied as a physical system, in acoustics and in the physical aspect of articulation (air pressure measurements and so on). It can be studied as a biological system, in the physiological aspects of articulation and in the neurophysiology of the brain. It can be studied as a social system, as the primary mode of human interaction. And of course it can be studied as a semiotic system, in the core areas of lexicogrammar, phonology and semantics.

Relating System–&–Process Types By Adding Components

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

A biological system is a physical system with the added component of “life”; it is a living physical system. In comparable terms, a social system is a biological system with the added component of “value” (which explains the need for a synoptic approach, since value is something that is manifested in forms of structure). A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of “meaning”. […] Semiotic systems are social systems where value has been further transformed into meaning.

Blogger Comment:

Semiotic systems are the means by which social (and other) systems form.  No semiosis, no social system. In the unfolding of the universe, physical systems preceded biological systems, and biological systems preceded social systems; but social systems didn't precede semiotic systems.

Different System–&–Process Types Require Different Perspectives

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

For understanding physical systems, the critical approach was that of measurement; the dominant theme was mathematics, and the perspective essentially a synoptic one. But this did not serve well for interpreting biological systems; these are better understood in terms of change, so the perspective had to be altered, to become dynamic, with evolution as the dominant theme. For social systems, however, the dynamic perspective lacked explanatory power, and in the [20th] century it was overtaken by another synoptic approach, the theme of structuralism. Our conception of the nature of social systems has been largely moulded in structuralist terms.

The Problem Of System–Instance Relations Across Different System–&–Process Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

What is problematic is the relationship between the system and the instance; or, to put it another way, what is the nature of a “fact” in these different realms of experience? A biological fact is different from a physical fact, and a social fact is different again; the relationship between that which can be observed, and the system–&–process lying behind what is observed, is significantly harder to establish when the system is a social system, because the phenomena involved are simultaneously all three kinds.

An Ordering In The Make Up Of System–&–Process Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

Physical systems are just physical systems. Biological systems, however, are not just biological systems; they are at once both biological and physical. Social systems are all three: social, biological and social. This makes them increasingly difficult for us to comprehend. This is not the same as saying that social systems are more complex than biological ones, or biological than physical; there are too many ways in which things can be complex, for any such observation to make sense. But they are increasingly complex in this particular respect; and this means that it is increasingly difficult to recognise the essential nature of the phenomena concerned.

Why A ‘Linear’ Taxonomy Of System–&–Process Types?

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 507):

There is an ordering among these four types of system, which we can appreciate most readily, perhaps, at the “meta” level: this is the order in which they have come to be studied and interpreted, in the past five hundred years of human scholarship. […] In other words, there was a certain intellectual distance to be covered in bringing a comparable kind of insight into these different types of system–&–process.