Enacting Interpersonal Relationships

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 610):

It has been found that, among the higher primates, those species that live in social groups have more complex brain structures, other things being equal, than those that live apart as individuals (Dunbar, 1992, quoted in New Scientist ). This, too, is something which resonates with our interpretation with language. In our account of the ideation base, we have stressed the interactive, dialogic nature of the construal of experience. But we have also stressed that the ideation base is only one component of the total semantic resource: as well as construing our experience in language, we also use it to enact our interpersonal relationships. Because we are social animals, there is an added dimension of meaning for language to cope with.

Blogger Comments:

Dunbar's claim is actually that primate group size is constrained by neocortex size. However, among the monkeys, geladas live in groups of 1200, despite having a similar sized neocortex to comparable monkeys living in much smaller groups, and contrariwise, among the apes, orangutans live largely solitary lives, despite having a larger neocortex than the more social gibbons, and a similar sized neocortex to the far more social chimpanzees and gorillas. Moreover, the group size of the same species can vary considerably depending on habitat, as demonstrated by the much larger group size of langurs living in urban environments compared to those living in forests.

Why Language Is Able To Create Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602):

Language is able to create meaning because it is related to our material being (ourselves, and our environment) in three distinct and complementary ways. 

In the first place, it is a part of the material world: the processes of language take place in physiological (including neural) and physical space and time. 

In the second place, it is a theory about the material world: language models the space-time environment, including itself, in a "rich" theoretical mode: that is, both construing it (our ideation base) and enacting it (our interaction base). 

In the third place, it is a metaphor for the material world: the way that language itself is organised, as a stratified, metafunctional system, recapitulates — acts out, so to speak both the make-up of this environment in natural (physical-biological), social and semiotic systems-&-processes (our metafunctions) and the internal contradictions, complementarities and fractal patterning by which all such systems-&-processes are characterised (our stratification). 

In other words, language has evolved as part of our own evolution.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this characterises the material world as a construal of experience as meaning, such that language itself is part of that semiotic construal, language is a theory about that semiotic construal, and language is a metaphor for that semiotic construal. That is, language creates meaning out of prior meaning: that created by perceptual systems.

The Value Of The Folk Model For Cognitive Science

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 601):

Both of these paths leading beyond the figures of sensing embodied in the folk model, beyond the ideational domain of sensing, are of fundamental importance to our conception of the individual mind and hence of the domain of cognitive science. By implication, cognitive science should not only be 'cognitive', it should also be semiotic, because it is the notion of meaning that enables us to see the connection between sensing and saying, and between theory and enactment of consciousness. 

The folk model — developed unconsciously and collectively out of shared experience over hundreds of generations — construes and enacts the complexity of being a person by bringing to it a multiplicity of perspectives. It extends the 'mind' by refracting it through language, the resource that makes the "cognitive operations" possible and by the same token ensures that they are not subjective but intersubjective.

Extensions Of Sensing In Scientific vs Folk Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600-1):

The two extensions of scientific and folk models are contrasted in Figure 14-11.

Insights From The Folk Model: Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600):

What is common to these two further sources of insight [saying as well as sensing, and enacting as well as construing] is that both depend on projection. 

(i) The potential for projecting is shared by sensing and saying; and when they are considered together, they reveal a very powerful principle that is embodied in the folk model: that through projection, we construe the experience of 'meaning' — as a layered, or stratified, phenomenon, with 'meanings' projected by sensing and 'wordings' projected by saying. 

(ii) Projection also brings the ideational and the interpersonal aspects of consciousness together. Ideationally, projection is an mode of construal — in figures of sensing and saying, sensers and sayers construe meanings and wordings. Interpersonally, projection is an mode of enactment — in moves in dialogue, interactants enact propositions and proposals. Interpersonal metaphors of mood and modality bring out the relationship between the two: here interactants simultaneously both enact propositions and proposals interpersonally and construe this enacting in such a way that the ideational construal comes to stand as a metaphor for aspects of the interpersonal enactment.

Absent From The Cognitive Science Modelling Of Mind

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600):

Both these perspectives — that of the construal of processes other than the mental (saying and symbolising), and that of meaning as enacting as well as meaning as construing — are absent from the cognitive science modelling of mind; and in our view they could with advantage be brought into the picture when we try to understand these complex and central areas of human experience. To do so would both enrich the cognitive model and steer it away from obsessions with information, with knowledge as a separate 'thing' divorced from meaning, and with mind as the exclusive property of an individual organism bounded by its skin.

Complementary Perspectives On Consciousness In the Grammar Of English

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 599-600):

At the same time the 'scientific' models of the mind fail to extend consciousness in the way it is extended by the grammar of English. There are, in fact, two complementary perspectives embodied in the semantic and grammatical systems of English; and together they point towards an alternative interpretation both of 'information' as constructed in cognitive science and of the individualised 'mind' that is its object of study. 

(i) Ideational: Sensers and Sayers. The ideational resources of language are primarily a theory of experience, so they are reflected fairly directly in consciously designed theories such as those of cognitive science. If we stay within the ideational metafunction, where mental processes are construed, we also find other processes that are complementary to these: those of saying (verbal processes) and those of symbolising (a type of relational process). 

(ii) Interpersonal: interactants. If we move outside the ideational metafunction to the interpersonal, the resource through which we interact with other people, we find that here we are acting out our conscious selves — "modelling" consciousness not by construing it but by enacting it. Since this kind of meaning is non-referential it is not taken account of in scientific theories at all.

The Ideational And Interpersonal Modes Of Constructing The Self

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 583-4):

A projection mental clause such as I (don't) think, since ideationally it realises a figure of sensing, construes the speaker as 'Senser at the time of speaking' (it occurs metaphorically only in simple present tense); at the same time, it enacts the speaker's own 'intrusion' into the dialogue — his or her judgment about how much validity can be attached to the proposition contained in the projected clause. 

Interpersonal metaphor is thus the hinge between the ideational and the interpersonal modes of constructing the self. In the ideational mode we construe ourselves as conscious Sensers, while in the interpersonal mode we enact ourselves as speakers interacting with addressees; the metaphor brings the two together in such a way that the ideational construal stands for the interpersonal enactment (see Figure 14-6).

The grammar of everyday discourse thus clearly points to the significance of interpersonal meaning in the way that we construct ourselves — the self is not only construed but it is also enacted. Cognitive scientists, however, have derived their object of study, and their model of this object from the ideational perspective alone, failing to take the interpersonal perspective — that of enacting — into account.

Enacting Networks Of Social Relationships

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 527):

Some particular interpersonal colouring may inform the whole of an individual speaker's interaction with another person; and because human societies are inherently hierarchical, the interpersonal component of the grammar in many languages enacts networks of social relationships with varying degrees of inequality and of distance. Thus there may be regular lexicogrammatical variants used to maintain different alignments of speaker and listener, and even of third parties, on vectors of power and familiarity; such forms may be located at one point in each grammatical structure (for example in the endings of the verb) or dispersed prosodically throughout the wording of the clause. 

But even in a language such as English, where there are no such systematic speech styles institutionalised in the grammar, there is always some functional variation along these lines: we have no difficulty in recognising what are the more formal and what are the more informal variants among different samples of spoken or written discourse.

Speech Function: Enacting And Assigning Roles

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 524):

The most immediate way in which we act, grammatically, is through our choice of speech function. One kind of speech function is a command; this is obviously a way of getting someone to do something, but we tend to think of it as being in this respect untypical. However all speech functions are modes of action, whether command or offer, question or statement, or any of their innumerable combinations and subcategories. All dialogue is a process of exchanging meaning, in which the speaker is enacting, at any one time, a particular interpersonal relationship, including his own role and the role he is assigning to the listener (i.e. he is specifying a network of interpretations for his own and the others' behaviour).

Enacting Interpersonal Relationships

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523-4):

When we say that the grammar enacts interpersonal relationships, we mean relationships of all kinds from the transient exchange of speech roles in temporary transactional encounters (How are you? — Good, thanks; and you? — Coming along. Now what can I do for you?) to the enduring familial and other networks that constitute the structure of society. We tend to be less aware of this metafunction of language, at least in more learned contexts; partly because, as adults in a literate culture, we are conditioned to thinking of meaning purely in ideational terms (language as a means of "expressing thought"), and partly because it is less obvious that talking is a way of doing — of acting on others (and through them, on our shared environment) and in the process, constructing society. But the interpersonal and the ideational are the two facets of our everchanging social semiotic.

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.

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.

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.

The Model Of Consciousness In Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 601):

The folk model — developed unconsciously and collectively out of shared experience over hundreds of generations — construes and enacts the complexity of being a person by bringing to it a multiplicity of perspectives. It extends the ‘mind’ by refracting it through language, the resource that makes the “cognitive operations” possible and by the same token ensures that they are not subjective but intersubjective.

How To Enrich & Re-Orient Cognitive Science

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 601): 

… cognitive science should not only be ‘cognitive’, it should also be semiotic, because it is the notion of meaning that enables us to see the connection between sensing and saying, and between theory and enactment of consciousness.

Ideational & Interpersonal Perspectives On Consciousness Depend On ‘Projection’

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600):

The potential for projecting is shared by sensing and saying; and when they are construed together, they reveal a very powerful principle that is embodied in the folk model: that through projection, we construe the experience of ‘meaning’ — as a layered, or stratified phenomenon, with ‘meanings’ projected by sensing and ‘wordings’ projected by saying. … Interpersonally, projection is a mode of enactment — in moves in dialogue, interactants enact propositions and proposals. Interpersonal metaphors of mood and modality bring out the relationship between the two: here interactants simultaneously both enact propositions and proposals interpersonally and construe this enacting in such a way that the ideational construal comes to stand as a metaphor for aspects of the interpersonal enactment.

How To Enrich & Re-Orient Cognitive Science

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600):

Both these perspectives — that of the construal of processes other than the mental (saying and symbolising), and that of meaning as enacting as well as meaning as construing — are absent from the cognitive science modelling of mind; and in our view they could with advantage be brought into the picture when we try to understand these complex and central areas of human experience. To do so would both enrich the cognitive model and steer it away from obsessions with information, with knowledge as a separate ‘thing’ divorced from meaning, and with mind as the exclusive property of an individual organism bounded by skin.

Interpersonal Perspective On Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600):

If we move outside the ideational metafunction to the interpersonal, the resource through which we interact with other people, we find that here we are acting out our conscious selves — “modelling” consciousness not by construing it but by enacting it. Since this type of meaning is non–referential it is not taken account of in scientific theories at all.

How To Enrich & Re-Orient Cognitive Science

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 599, 600): 

At the same time the ‘scientific’ models of the mind fail to extend consciousness in the way it is extended by the grammar of English.  There are, in fact, two complementary perspectives embodied in the semantic and grammatical systems of English; and together they point towards an alternative interpretation both of ‘information’ as constructed in cognitive science and of the individualised ‘mind’ that is its object of study. … [These are] the construal of processes other than the mental (saying and symbolising), and that of meaning as enacting as well as meaning as construing.