The Tradition Of Systemic Theory

 Halliday (1994: xxvi):

The Polysystemic Nature Of Ideational Meaning Potential

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 562, 563):

The ideational meaning potential embodies not one single semantic system but rather several such systems coexisting; in Firth's terms, it is a "system of systems" — in two distinct but related ways [internal complementarities and registerial variation]. …

[Internal] complementarities constitute one form of indeterminacy of the system — one that allows it to be "polysystemic" in the particular sense of embodying more than one way of construing experience.

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.

SFL Takes A Constructivist View Of Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 17):

In what we have said so far we could seem to be taking an 'essentialist' or 'correspondence' approach to grammar and meaning, according to which 'meaning' preexists the forms in which it is 'encoded' (cf. Lakoff's, 1988, argument against the 'objectifying' view of meaning). In such a view, the grammar is said to be natural because it evolves to serve an already developed model of experience, a "real world" that has previously been construed. 

In fact we are not taking an 'essentialist' or 'correspondence' approach, and there will be many places throughout our discussion where such an interpretation is clearly ruled out, as being incompatible with our own conception of semantics. 

The view we are adopting is a constructivist one, familiar from European linguistics in the work of Hjelmslev and Firth. According to this view, it is the grammar itself that construes experience, that constructs for us our world of events and objects. As Hjelmslev (1943) said, reality is unknowable; the only things that are known are our construals of it — that is, meanings. Meanings do not 'exist' before the wordings that realise them. They are formed out of the impact between our consciousness and its environment.

The Conceptualisation Of Context In SFL

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 32):

As we have noted above, language operates in context. In terms of linguistic theory, we recognise this important principle by developing an ‘ecological’ theory of language – one in which language is always theorised, described and analysed within an environment of meanings; a given language is thus interpreted by reference to its semiotic habitat. This way of approaching language was given a considerable theoretical and empirical boost by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in the 1920s and 1930s, based initially on his extensive fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands in the 1910s; and his insights were taken up and developed within linguistic theory by J.R. Firth, and then built into a general theory of language in context by systemic functional linguists (e.g. Halliday, McIntosh & Strevens, 1964; Halliday, 1978, 1992a; Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Ghadessy, 1999; Butt & Wegener, 2007). This is the conceptualisation of context that we use here.

Polysystemicity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 562):

The ideational meaning potential embodies not one single semantic system but rather several such systems coexisting; in Firth’s terms, it is a “system of systems” — in two distinct but related ways [internal complementarities and registerial variation].

The Belief That Language Is A “Clothing” For “Naked Ideas"

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 445-6):

The same attitude continues to prevail in ways people talk about language in our own time. It dominated much of the early work on machine translation in the 1950s and 1960s; the task of the analysis was seen to be that of stripping the underlying ideas of their linguistic disguise (Firth, 1956, referred scathingly to current formulations according to which language was a “clothing” for “naked ideas”). When the “interlingua” model was proposed, many of those working in the field regarded it not as a construction of meaning that would be a compromise among different linguistic systems but as a language-free representation of concepts and conceptual structures (cf. Schank’s conceptual dependency), very much in the 17th century tradition.

Blogger Comment:

It was Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who said:

Language is the dress of thought, 

though he also said:

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Origins Of The Concept Of Register

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 321):

… the notion of functional dialect was worked out by the Prague School in the 1930s … and systemic register theory has its roots in Firth’s work on restricted languages. The concept of register is also recognised in computational linguistics under the heading of sublanguage, particularly in work on machine translation.

Metalanguage: Language Turned Back On Itself

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 30):

We have noted above that the semantics/lexicogrammar of natural language is itself a ‘realisation’ (an abstract construction) of daily experience. Likewise, the system we use to explore the semantics/lexicogrammar — our theory of semantics and our grammatics — is a ‘realisation’ of that part of daily experience that is constituted by semantics and lexicogrammar; that is, it is an abstract construction of language. This system is itself a semiotic one — a metalanguage; in Firth’s more everyday terms, it is language turned back on itself.  So whereas a language is (from an ideational point of view) a resource for construing our experience of the world, a metalanguage is a resource for construing our experience of language.

The Ideational Grammar Construes Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 17):

The view we are adopting is a constructivist one, familiar from European linguistics in the work of Hjelmslev and Firth.  According to this view, it is the grammar itself that construes experience, that constructs for us our world of events and objects.  As Hjelmslev (1943) said, reality is unknowable; the only things that are known are our construals of it — that is, meanings.  Meanings do not ‘exist’ before the wordings that realise them.  They are formed out of the impact between our consciousness and its environment.