Language As Particle, Wave And Field

Halliday (1994: 190):

Group Structure

Halliday (1994: 179):

Metafunctions And Their Reflexes In The Grammar

Halliday (1994: 36):

Metafunctions: Kinds Of Meaning

Halliday (1994: 35):

Grammar As The CPU Of Language

Halliday (1994: xxxiv):

The Three Distinct Senses In Which SFG Is A Functional Grammar

Halliday (1994: xiii-xiv):

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.

Unequal Awareness Of The Metafunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569):

In addition to the different degrees of their awareness of different grammatical units, such as words and clauses, people are also not equally aware of the different kinds of functions in which the resources of language are organised. In particular, in constructing and reasoning about more conscious models, people are readily aware of those linguistic resources whose function it is to interpret and represent experience, those of the ideational metafunction; but they are much less aware of those of the other two metafunctions, the interpersonal and the textual — no doubt because these do not embody representations of experience but reflect our engagement with the world in different ways. However, although they tend to be overlooked when one comes to build a 'scientific' model of language and the mind, these other metafunctions are no less important than the ideational.

Internal Complementarities: Metafunctional Complementarity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 562):

in the congruent mode of construing experience, there is a metafunctional complementarity: the ideational potential offers two complementary modes for construing experience — the highly generalised logical mode, with projection & expansion as the dominant semantic motifs, and the more particularised experiential mode, with its typologies of processes, things, qualities, and circumstances;

The Interdependence Of The Metafunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 532-3):

These three "metafunctions" are interdependent; no one could be developed except in the context of the other two. When we talk of the clause as a mapping of these three dimensions of meaning into a single complex grammatical structure, we seem to imply that each somehow "exists" independently; but they do not. There are — or could be — semiotics that are monofunctional in this way; but only very partial ones, dedicated to specific tasks. A general, all-purpose semiotic system could not evolve except in the interplay of action and reflection, a mode of understanding and a mode of doing — with itself included within its operational domain. Such a semiotic system is called a language.

The Evolution Of The Clause

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 532):

For a fuller understanding of the clause, we have to recognise that it evolved simultaneously as reflection, as action and as information: that is, not only as a representation of the phenomena of our experience but also as a means of social action, of moving around in interpersonal space (and so defining that space and those who occupy it); and as a semiotic construct, whereby language itself becomes a part of, and a metaphor for, the reality it has evolved to construe and to construct.

The Textual Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528):

The "textual" metafunction is the name we give to the systematic resources a language must have for creating discourse: for ensuring that each instance of text makes contact with its environment. The "environment" includes both the context of situation and other instances of text. Relative to the other metafunctions, therefore, the textual metafunction appears in an enabling role; without its resources, neither ideational nor interpersonal constructs would make sense.

The Interpersonal As Language In Its "First And Second Person" Guise

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

If the ideational metafunction is language in its "third person" guise, the interpersonal is language in its "first and second person" guise; the interaction of a 'me' and a 'you'. The 'me' and the 'you' are of course constructed in language; they have no existence outside the social semiotic. Once constructed, me and you then become a part of experience and can be referred to alongside the him, the her and the it; but note that (unlike their interpersonal meaning, which does not change) their ideational meaning changes every time there is a change of speaker (this is what makes me and you so difficult for children to learn).

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.

Interpersonal Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523):

Our concern in this book is primarily with what we have called the "ideation base", the systems of meaning into which, through language, human beings construe their collective and individual experience. Usually when we talk about the linguistic "construction of reality" this is the aspect of reality that comes to mind. But at the same time as construing experience — in the same breath, so to speak — they are also, through language, enacting their interpersonal relationships; and this interpersonal component of meaning is no less part of what is constituted for us as "reality". If the ideational component is language as a mode of reflection, the interpersonal component is language as a mode of action; and reality consists as much in what we do as in what we think.

The Logical Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 519-20):

Turning now to the logical part of the grammar's ideational resources: this is the part that is concerned not with individual processes but with the relation between one process aid another. In calling this "logical" we are using the term in the sense of natural language logic: that is, grammatical logic, not formal logic — although, of course, this is the source from which formal logic is ultimately derived.

Ideational Metafunction: Experiential

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512):

The basic component of all experience is change: when something changes from one state to another, it projects itself on to our consciousness. This may be something in the external environment; we can see this happening with small babies, who are first jerked into semiosis by dramatic perturbations such as a loud noise or a flashing light. The grammar construes this experience of change in the form of a process configuration: the fundamental element of grammar is a clause, and the clause presents the parameters within which processes may unfold.

The grammar does this by deconstructing the process into component parts. Typically, as in English and many, perhaps all, other languages, these are of three kinds: first the process itself, secondly certain phenomena construed as participants in the process, and thirdly, other phenomena that are associated with the process circumstantially.

The Textual Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512):

Textually, the grammar is the creating of information; it engenders discourse, the patterned forms of wording that constitute meaningful semiotic contexts. From one point of view, therefore, this "textual" metafunction has an enabling force, since it is this that allows the other two to operate at all. But at the same time it brings into being a world of its own, a world that is constituted semiotically. With the textual metafunction language not only construes and enacts our reality but also becomes part of the reality that it is construing and enacting.

The Interpersonal Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

Interpersonally, the grammar is not a theory but a way of doing; it is our construction of social relationships, both those that define society and our own place in it, and those that pertain to the immediate dialogic situation. This constitutes the "interpersonal" metafunction, whereby language constructs our social collective and, thereby, our personal being. The word "construct" is used to suggest a form of enactment — though something on which we inevitably build a theory, of ourself and the various "others" to whom we relate.

The Ideational Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

Ideationally, the grammar is a theory of human experience; it is our interpretation of all that goes on around us, and also inside ourselves. There are two parts to this: one the representation of the processes themselves, which we refer to as the "experiential"; the other the representation of the relations between one process and another, and it is this that we refer to as the "logical". The two together constitute the "ideational" metafunction, whereby language construes our experiential world. The word "construe" is used to suggest an intellectual construction — though one that, of course, we then use as a guide to action.