The Central Meaning-Making Resource In Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 603-4):

We have located ourselves, throughout the book, in a certain region of metasemiotic space: that is, we adopted a particular perspective on what we are trying to explain. Our central concern has obviously been with 'meaning': our interpretation of meaning is immanent, so that meaning is inside language, not some separate, higher domain of human experience. … 

The central meaning-making resource in language — its "content plane" (within which the ideation base, which has been our focus of attention, is one part) — is stratified into two systems: that of lexicogrammar, and that of semantics. 

The semantic system is the 'outer' layer, the interface where experience is transformed into meaning. The 'inner' layer is the grammar, which masterminds the way this transformation takes place. 

This deconstrual of the content plane into two strata … is a unique feature of the post-infancy human semiotic, corresponding to Edelman's (1992) "higher-order consciousness" as the distinguishing characteristic of Homo sapiens.

It Is Language That Creates Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602):

Language is not a second-order code through which meanings created in some higher-order realm of existence are mysteriously made manifest and brought to light. To borrow the conceit that Firth was fond of caricaturing, there are no "naked ideas" lurking in the background waiting to be clothed. It is language that creates meaning, in the sense that meaning has for us as human beings (which is the only sense of it that we can know).

Blogger Comments:

It was Samuel Johnson who quipped Language is the dress of thought, though he also said Words are but the signs of ideas.

The Grammar As A Resource For Thinking With

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 516):

In construing experience in this way, the grammar is providing a resource for thinking with. A strict taxonomy of separate process types would impose too much discontinuity, while a bipolar continuum would precisely be too much polarised. What the grammar offers is, rather, a flexible semantic space, continuous and elastic, which can be contorted and expanded without losing its topological order. Since it evolved with the human species, it is full of anomalies, contradictions and compromises; precisely the properties which make it possible for a child to learn, because only a system of this kind could accommodate the disorder that is inherent in experience itself.

Blogger Comments:

Strictly speaking, on the 'immanence' view of SFL, the distinction between order and disorder is made by semiotic systems; it is not prior to semiosis. 

Grammar Construes Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512):

In all these metafunctions, the language does not take over and reproduce some readymade semantic space. There is no such space until the grammar comes along to construe it.

The Fundamental Problem With The View That Language Distorts

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 447-8):

In rejecting both these views of language as distortion, we are not propounding an alternative version according to which language is a perfect match. What is wrong with all such conceptions is that they misconstrue the nature of a semiotic system — the fundamental relation of realisation to which we are always having to return. A semiotic system is not some kind of outer garment which may either reveal or conceal what is beneath. Rather, it is a transformation of experience into meanings, and each stratum within the system is construed by, and construes, all the rest. A "language", in this sense, may be artificially constructed or engineered, like a scientific theory or a logic; but all such semiotics are ultimately related to natural language, and natural language is still an accomplice in their overall construction of reality.

But whether or not it is engineered in this way, natural language will continue to evolve. The artificial languages of the 17th century were never actually used; but this did not mean that the forms of natural language persisted without change. On the contrary, new registers were always evolving, some of them as part of the ongoing reconstruction of experience in the form of systematic knowledge and experimental science.

Blogger Comments:

It was Samuel Johnson who said 'Language is the dress of thought', but he also said 'Words are but the signs of ideas', that is: the realisations of meanings. 

The Transcendent Orientation Of Conceptual And Cognitive Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 426):

Jackendoff and a number of others now prefer the second position [semantic structures as subset of conceptual structures]. It is also shared by e.g. Langacker (1987), representing cognitive semantics from the other US coastline:

Meaning is a mental phenomenon that must eventually be described with reference to cognitive processing. I therefore side with Chafe (1970, p. 74-76) by adopting a "conceptual" or "ideational" view of meaning ... I assume it is possible at least in theory (if not yet in practice) to describe in a principled, coherent, and explicit manner the internal structure of such phenomena as thoughts, concepts, perceptions, images and mental experience in general. The term conceptual structure will be applied indiscriminately to any such entity, whether linguistic or nonlinguistic. A semantic structure is then defined as a conceptual structure that functions as the semantic pole of a linguistic expression. Hence semantic structures are regarded as conceptualisations shaped for symbolic purposes according to the dictates of linguistic convention, (pp. 97-8)

From our standpoint, this appears as a transcendent interpretation of meaning: we on the other hand prefer an immanent approach to meaning, where "conceptual organisation" is interpreted as meaning that is created by various semiotic systems, among which language is the primary one.

The Constructivist View Of Reality In SFL Theory

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 423-4):

We also have emphasised that reality is not something that is given to us; we have to construct an interpretation of it — or, as we prefer to put it, we have to construe our experience. Interpretation is a semiotic process, and our interpretation takes into account not only the concrete natural world but also the socio-cultural realm that is brought into existence as a semiotic construct (see Hasan, 1984a, for discussion, with reference to Whorf).

Blogger Comments:

Strictly speaking, in this view, 'reality' is the interpretation, not what is interpreted, and the 'concrete natural world' is also a semiotic construct: a construal of experience as meaning: perceptual and linguistic.

The Location Of Meaning In The Logico-Philosophical vs Rhetorical-Ethnographic Traditions

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 416):

The two orientations towards meaning thus differ externally in what disciplines they recognise as models. These external differences are associated with internal differences as well.

First, the orientations differ with respect to where they locate meaning in relation to the stratal interpretation of language:

(a) intra-stratal: meaning is seen as immanent — something that is constructed in, and so is part of, language itself. The immanent interpretation of meaning is characteristic of the rhetorical-ethnographic orientation, including our own approach.

(b) extra-stratal: meaning is seen as transcendent — something that lies outside the limits of language. The transcendent interpretation of meaning is characteristic of the logico-philosophical orientation.

The Location Of Meaning In Western Traditions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 416):

… the [two Western] orientations [towards meaning] differ with respect to where they locate meaning in relation to the stratal interpretation of language:

(i) intra-stratal: meaning is seen as immanent — something that is constructed in, and so is part of, language itself. The immanent interpretation of meaning is characteristic of the rhetorical–ethnographic orientation, including our approach. 

(ii) extra-stratal: meaning is seen as transcendent — something that lies outside the limits of language.  The transcendent interpretation of meaning is characteristic of the logico–philosophical orientation.