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.

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.

Meaning Is A Social, Intersubjective Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 2):

But at the same time our own approach, both in theory and in method, is in contradistinction to that of cognitive science: we treat "information" as meaning rather than as knowledge and interpret language as a semiotic system, and more specifically as a social semiotic, rather than as a system of the human mind. This perspective leads us to place less emphasis on the individual than would be typical of a cognitivist approach; unlike thinking and knowing, at least as these are traditionally conceived, meaning is a social, intersubjective process. If experience is interpreted as meaning, its construal becomes an act of collaboration, sometimes of conflict, and always of negotiation.

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.

Lakoff Compared To SFL

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 428):

… while our view that the ideational semantic system construes human experience is similar to what Lakoff calls the position of “experientialist cognition” (the position he has himself espoused, in contrast to what he calls “objectivist cognition”), it differs in that for us construing experience is an intersubjective process. It is both semiotic (the construction of meaning) and social (as in Peter Berger’s “social construction of reality”). It is the intersection of these two perspectives that characterises the social semiotic we are attempting to present in this book.

The Second–Order Nature Of The Textual Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398): 

The textual metafunction 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 [the] other two metafunctions: the ideational, which construes a natural reality, and the interpersonal, which enacts an intersubjective reality. … 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 …

The Interaction Base

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 11-2):

The interaction base provides the resources for speaker and listener to enact a social and intersubjective relationship, through the assignment of discursive rôles, the expression of evaluations and attitudes. The base includes both the semantic strategies speaker and listener deploy in dialogic exchanges and the social personæ of the interactants. This second component is a model of the interpersonal and ideational distance between speaker and listener.

The Interpersonal Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7):

The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with enacting interpersonal relations through language, with the adoption and assignment of speech rôles, with the negotiation of attitudes, and so on — it is language in the praxis of intersubjectivity, as a resource for interacting with others.