The Brain As Bio-Semiotic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 607):

The neural events that constitute the various interface systems are themselves in the broadest sense semiotic: terms such as "communication", "exchange of information", that are used to characterise the activities of the brain are less abstract variants of the concept of "semiotic systems & processes". 

At the same time, the neural networks can be thought of as "realising" the system of language, in the sense that it is in the brain that language materialises as a process of the bio-physical world. In this perspective the relationship between language and the brain is itself a semiotic one, analogous to that between the content plane and the expression plane within language itself; and by the same analogy, there is no necessary or "natural" relationship such that certain parts of the neural network (certain locations within the brain) are dedicated to language or to any particular subsystem within it. 

The analogy is relevant here because it is the fact that language and the perceptual systems share a common "realisation" in neural networks and neural processes that enables language to function as a dynamic open system, one that persists in time by constantly being modified through ongoing exchanges with its environment.

Bio-Semiotic Systems That Interface With The Expression Plane Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 607):

These are the physiological systems and processes of the production and reception of speech: motor systems of articulation (air stream mechanisms, constrictions and oscillations of the larynx and other organs, movements of tongue and lips, shaping of the buccal cavity) and receptor systems of auditory perception in the various regions of the ear. When language comes to be written, analogous systems come into play for the production and reception of visual expressions.

Bio-Semiotic Systems That Interface With The Content Plane Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 606-7):

These are the systems and processes of human perception, tactile, auditory, visual, and so on. They are themselves semiotic, in that what the organism "sees" is what is construed by the brain into meaning; this then becomes the "input" to the semantic system and is transformed into higher-order meaning of the linguistic kind.

Two Ways Socio-Semiotic Systems That Are Parasitic On Language Are Related To Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 606):

These systems enter into relation with language in two ways. 

On the one hand, they are metonymic to language: they are complementary, non-linguistic resources whereby higher-level systems may be realised (e.g. ideological formations realised through forms of art; theoretical constructs realised through figures and diagrams). 

On the other hand, they relate metaphorically to language: they are constructed, stratally and metafunctionally, in the image of language itself, and hence can be modelled on language as prototype, being described "as if" they had their own grammar and semantics …

Blogger Comments:

Importantly, in SFL terms, only language has a grammar; only linguistic texts can be read out loud (rather than merely described).

Socio-Semiotic Systems Both Realised Through Language And Parasitic On Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 606):

Many socio-semiotic systems are combinations of types (a) [i.e. realised through language] and (b) [i.e. parasitic on language]; for example, religious ceremonials and most types of dramatic performance.

Socio-Semiotic Systems That Are Parasitic On Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 606):

Socio-semiotic systems that are parasitic on language, in the sense that they depend on the fact that those who use them are articulate ('linguate') beings. These include the visual arts, music and dance; modes of dressing, cooking, organising living space and other forms of meaning-making behaviour; and also charts, maps, diagrams, figures and the like.

Blogger Comments:

 Halliday later used the term 'epiphytic' rather than 'parasitic', and I labelled such systems 'epilinguistic' in my model of body language.

Language As Part Of A More Complex Semiotic Construct

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602):

In other words, language has evolved as part of our own evolution. It is not arbitrary; on the contrary, it is the semiotic refraction of our own existence in the physical, biological, social and semiotic modes. It is not autonomous; it is itself part of a more complex semiotic construct — which, as we have tried to show, can be modelled in stratal terms such that language as a whole is related by realisation to a higher level of context (context of situation and of culture). This contextualisation of language, we suggested, was the critical factor which made it possible to relate language to other systems-&-processes, both other semiotic systems and systems of other kinds.

The Differentiation Of Inner And Outer Experience

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 584-5):

This 'world view' can be depicted using the conventions of comic strips: see Figure 14-7.

The conventions of comic strips clearly differentiate between figures of sensing and saying on the one hand and figures of being & having and doing & happening on the other: the latter are represented graphically, whereas the former are represented linguistically, in terms of their projected content Comic strips thus codify the higher-order nature of projections and their constitution in language.

The Ideational Semantics Of Sign

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 535):

… the semantic system that is construed in (say) Australian or British Sign is not the semantic system of English, despite its being constantly permeated by English in the ways referred to above. It is a system needing to be described in its own terms, based on detailed studies of its grammar and discourse such as now being carried out for Auslan by Trevor Johnston. Such a description is designed first and foremost for the needs of the deaf community; but it will have general significance as a source of further insight into the semantics of spoken languages, making it possible to view them comparatively in the light of an alternative construction of reality.

From Sign, we can get further insight into the construal of experience as ideational meaning because of its greater potential for iconicity in the expression. Semantic space can be construed iconically in signing within a continuous space-time, constituted as bodily experience for the signer and as part of shared visual experience for signer and addressee.

From a comparative standpoint, spoken languages and deaf sign languages stand to each other in a metaphoric relationship, as alternative construals of a (largely, though not totally) shared experience. What appear at first simply as different modes of expression turn out to have, associated with them, somewhat different constructions of meaning.

 

Influences Of Spoken On Sign Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 534-5):

Signers are also members of another language community, that of the (predominantly hearing) speakers of English, or whatever language is spoken around them; the two groups interact, and there is obviously no insulation between the two language systems. This gives rise to contact phenomena of two kinds: on the one hand, intermediate forms whereby English is realised in sign expressions (signed English, and finger-spelling), including a large number of new, "contrived" signs; and on the other hand, constant intrusion of English forms of expression, and therefore of English modes of meaning, into the sign language itself.

The Greater Potential Of Gestural Resources For Iconicity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 534):

Gestural systems, by contrast, have a far greater potential for construing experience iconically. Thus in Johnston (1989: 16) "signs are roughly graded into four classes of transparent, translucent, obscure and opaque signs, depending on how iconic a sign is"; and while most signs fall in between the two extremes — Johnston grades them as obscure or translucent, rather than opaque or transparent — many of those he labels "obscure" have a popular explanation in iconic terms (e.g. 2388: n. CAMERA, v. TAKE A PICTURE, PHOTOGRAPH. Obscure action. Popular explanation: 'holding a camera and depressing the shutter button' [p. 301]). This suggests that even if particular explanations are "nothing more than deaf folklore" (p. 16), the system as a whole is perceived as prototypically iconic; and this feature is borne out in two important respects. 

One is that many of the signs construing basic categories of experience that would be learnt very early in childhood, in the transition from protolanguage to mother tongue — examples are 1291 GET; 1479 HOLD; 1824 RUN; 2473 BIRD; 2759 DRINK, CUP; 36 BED; 163 UP — are clearly iconic, and so would tend to establish iconicity as the norm. 

The other is that individual signs may be modified in a distinctively iconic fashion; e.g. 1471 "v LARGE, BIG, (with amplification) great, (with amplification and stress) enormous, huge, immense"; see in particular the section on "sign modification" in Johnston (1989: 494-9). As Johnston comments (p. 513), "A language which is itself visual and spatial has far more opportunities than an auditory one to map onto itself those very visual and spatial qualities of the world it wishes to represent".

The Limited Potential Of Vocal Resources For Iconicity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 533-4):

We have referred all along to the primarily visual nature of human experience: how much of it is constituted as location, and especially movement, in space. Now, both gestural and vocal resources involve positioning and moving the organs of articulation in space; but the position and movement of the vocal organs, besides being largely out of sight of the listener, is very much mote constrained; and while this permits a limited degree of iconicity (association of close vowels with 'small', open with 'large', for example) this can never be more than a marginal feature of the system as a whole. Thus even allowing for the additional iconic potential of loudness and length, the expression systems of spoken languages must remain prototypically conventional. This is the familiar principle of the "arbitrariness" (i.e. conventionality) of the linguistic sign.

The Potential Of Vocal And Gestural Expressions For Construing Wording

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 533):

In the most immediate sense, as regards their potential for construing signifiers — elements of wording and their arrangement in combination — both these forms of expression, vocal and gestural, are open-ended. Neither of them imposes a limit on the inventory of morphemes or their configuration in grammatical structures. Nevertheless they are significantly different in the kinds of resource they offer for making meaning. Perhaps the major difference between the two is their potential for iconicity.

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.

Why Language Is The Prototypical Social Semiotic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509-10):

Language is set apart, however, as the prototypical semiotic system, on a variety of different grounds: it is the only one that evolved specifically as a semiotic system; it is the one semiotic into which all others can be "translated"; and (the least questionable, in our view) it is the one whereby the human species as a whole, and each individual member of that species, construes experience and constructs a social order. In this last respect, all other semiotic systems are derivative: they have meaning potential only by reference to models of experience, and forms of social relationship, that have already been established in language. It is this that justifies us in taking language as the prototype of systems of meaning.

Language As The Primary Semiotic System For Transforming Experience Into Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 444):

Here let us just reiterate our view that all of experience is construed as meaning. Language is the primary semiotic system for transforming experience into meaning; and it is the only semiotic system whose meaning base can serve to transform meanings construed in other systems (including perceptual ones) and thus integrate our experience from all its various sources. 

It might be objected that this view leaves no room for scientific or metaphysical models — for example, that we do not allow for the possibility that science has advanced our understanding of the world. This objection would be misplaced: such models are construed in the ideation base as domain models within the overall meaning potential.

Metaphors Of Abstract Space Enable Diagrams Of Symbolic Space

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 278):

We have relied in our own discussion on metaphors of abstract space for construing meaning — most centrally, metaphors of semantic networks and semantic space. These metaphors allow us to cross over to diagrams of symbolic space, viz. system networks (as a kind of acyclic directed graph) and topological representations.

Other Semiotic Systems And The Cline Of Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 48):

Another interesting issue is to what extent different semiotic systems extend all the way along the cline of instantiation from the instance pole to the potential pole.  We can ask of any one given semiotic system how systemic it is — which clearly relates to the question of how much individual variation there is across a speech fellowship (or speech community). … it is theoretically quite possible that certain other semiotic systems are more usefully interpreted as operating with systems located somewhere midway along the cline of instantiation; in other words, they are most usefully described in register-specific terms. For example, if we consider semiotic systems that have been included under the heading of ‘visual semiotics’, we can note how highly contextually adapted and specialised systems such as technical drawing, mass transport route cartography and press photography are; it is not immediately clear that they can all be regarded as registerial subsystems of a general visual semiotic system.

Cline Of Integration Of Semiotic Systems

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 48):

One interesting issue that relates to both questions posed above is to what extent the different semiotic systems operating in context are integrated with one another and to what extent they operate independently of one another. To explore this issue, we can posit a cline of integration, extending from completely integrated systems to completely independent ones (cf. Matthiessen, 2009a).

Relations Between Instantiations Of Language And Other Semiotic Systems

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 47):

If we take ‘text’ to mean an instance of the system of a language operating in a context of situation, then we can ask: (1) how it relates to instances of other semiotic systems operating in the same context of situation, and (2) how semiotic labour is divided among these different semiotic systems – how they complement one another.

Blogger Comment:

Theoretical caveat: Here text (Token) is construed metaphorically as a material Actor, and the cultural situation (Value) it realises is metaphorically construed as its Location.