Field, Tenor And Mode [Defined]

Halliday (1994: 390):

Manifestations Of Rhetorical Functions

Halliday (1994: 363-5):

Mode And Speech Function

Halliday (1994: 363):

Choreographic vs Crystalline Complexity

Halliday (1994: 352):

Written Mode Lexical Density vs Spoken Mode Grammatical Intricacy

Halliday (1994: 350):

Mode-Metaphor Resonance

Halliday (1994: 349):

The Choice Of Focus In Speech And Writing

Halliday (1994: 336):

Quoting In Narrative Registers, Reporting And Speech Function

Halliday (1994: 256):

Phonological Constituency

Halliday (1994: 6, 7):

Accommodating Spoken Language

Halliday (1994: xxvii):

…

The Unconscious Nature Of Spontaneous Speech

Halliday (1994: xxv):

The False Notion That Speech Is Less Organised Than Writing

  Halliday (1994: xxiv-xxv):

The Second Reason Why Speech Is Important

 Halliday (1994: xxiv):

The First Reason Why Speech Is Important

Halliday (1994: xxiii-xxiv):

Socio-Semiotic Systems That Are Realised Through Language (2)

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 605-6):

From a semantic point of view, such systems constitute contexts for language; they can thus be modelled as part of a general linguistic theory, being interpreted as a higher stratum of language itself. That is to say, we can extend the series:

the system of phonology realises that of lexicogrammar;

the system of [lexicogrammar realised in phonology] realises that of semantics;

the system of [semantics realised in [lexicogrammar realised in phonology]] — which is what we call "language" — realises the system of context (i.e. the "culture", considered as a semiotic potential).

Such higher-level systems (theories, institutions, genres), since they are realised in language, are realised as subsystems within the semantics and the grammar. These subsystems are what we have referred to as registers;

Blogger Comments:

Halliday also uses the term 'institution' as the general term for variant subsystems of context:

To be clear, this is 'genre' in Hasan's sense of rhetorical mode, not in Martin's sense of a stratum above a register stratum, which confuses text type, rhetorical mode and the different semantic structures that realise different rhetorical modes.

Scientific Models Of Experience: Context

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 567):

We can characterise them in terms of field, tenor and mode as follows (from Halliday & Martin, 1993: 54):

field: (i) extending, transmitting or exploring knowledge (ii) in the physical, biological or social sciences;

tenor: addressed to specialists, to learners or to laymen, from within the same group (e.g. specialist to specialist) or across groups (e.g. lecturer to students);

and

mode: phonic or graphic channel, most congruent (e.g., formal 'written language' with graphic channel) or less so (e.g., formal with phonic channel), and with variation in rhetorical function — expository, hortatory, polemic, imaginative and so on.

These ranges of field, tenor and mode values define a great variety of situation types within institutions of higher education, of research and of technological development. However, these situation types are quite constrained relative to the context of culture as a whole: only certain members of the culture participate in these situation types and engage with the scientific models that are developed, maintained, changed and transmitted within them. In this respect, scientific models are clearly subcultural models: contextually they are located somewhere between the potential and the instance. If we focus on particular scientific models, such as those of the mind in cognitive science, we will find that they are even more contextually constrained.

Mode And Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 536):

Many "spoken" languages may be realised in two different media: in speech, and in writing. At first this presents itself just as two modes of expression; but when we look more closely at discourse in spoken and written language we find regularly associated differences in grammatical construction. We find written language constructed in nominal groups, whereas spoken language is typically constructed in clauses. And since it is in the grammar that our experience is construed into meaning, what we are seeing are different forms of the construction of experience, one couched primarily in terms of figures, the other in terms of elements that make up such figures, mainly those that function as participating entities.

Our basic approach to this is embodied in the term "metaphor", as used in the context of metaphor in the grammar. We used the expression "grammatical metaphor" to refer to a complex set of interrelated effects whereby, in English and many other languages, there have evolved what seem to be alternative representations of processes and properties, in terms of word classes, meanings prototypically construed as verbs or adjectives come to be construed as nouns instead. But, as we saw, this is simply the superficial manifestation of a wider and deeper phenomenon affecting the entire construal of experiential meanings in the grammar.

The Second-Order, Enabling Nature Of The Textual Metafunction: Context and Content Planes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398):

This second-order, enabling nature of the textual metafunction is seen both at the level of context, where mode (the functions assigned to language in the situation) is second-order in relation to field and tenor (the ongoing social processes and interactant roles), and at the levels of content — the semantics and the lexicogrammar, where the systems of THEME and INFORMATION, and the various types of cohesion, are second-order in relation to ideational and interpersonal systems of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, and the rest.

Stratification, Metafunction And The Cline Of Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 381, 383):

Figure 9-4 represents the stratal organisation of the resources, diversified into field, tenor and mode (within context) and into ideational, interpersonal and textual (within the content strata of language). As we have noted, these resources are extended along the cline of instantiation from potential (language in context of culture) via subpotentials (registers in situation types) to instances (texts in contexts of situation). Figure 9-4 shows the stratified resources as being extendable along the cline of instantiation.

The Realisation Of Context In Registers Of The Semantic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 376):

Such contextual regions evolve together with special functional varieties of the language or "registers". These are, in the first instance, registerial subsystems of the semantic system. A register is a semantic region within the overall semantic space. It is made up of contributions from all three metafunctions: a domain within the ideation base and similar regions within the interpersonal and textual parts of the overall semantic space. Our specifications of the meteorological and culinary domains constitute the ideational aspects of the registers of weather forecasting and recipes.

A given contextual specification of field, tenor and mode is thus realised by "preselecting" a register within the semantic system … . This contextual preselection within the semantics narrows down the overall potential to a registerial subpotential;

Blogger Comments:

Be aware that Martin and his students mistake register for context. That is, they mistake a functional variety of language — a subpotential of the semantic system — for the semiotic environment of language.