Metaphor Viewed From Above: Variation In The Expression Of Meaning

Halliday (1994: 341-2):

Tone Group In Relation To Grammar

Halliday (1994: 295):

The Foot In Relation To Grammar

Halliday (1994: 295):

Wording As Two Removes From Experience

Halliday (1994: 252-3):

Group, Word And Morpheme

Halliday (1994: 18-9):

Word And Morpheme

Halliday (1994: 18):

Lexicogrammar As Wording

Halliday (1994: 17-8):

Blogger Comments:

The term 'discourse semantics' was added to this 1994 edition to accommodate the work of Halliday's student, Martin (1992). It does not appear in the first edition (Halliday 1985).

The Stratification Of Language

Halliday (1994: 15):

Grammar As The CPU Of Language

Halliday (1994: xxxiv):

The Line Between Semantics And Lexicogrammar

Halliday (1994: xix):

The Distinction Between Congruent And Metaphorical Expressions Of Meaning

Halliday (1994: xviii-xix):

The Natural (Non-Arbitrary) Relation Between Word Classes And The Meanings They Realise

Halliday (1994: xviii):

The Natural (Non-Arbitrary) Relation Between Semantics And Lexicogrammar

Halliday (1994: xvii-xviii):

The Largely Non-Natural (Arbitrary) Relation Between Lexicorammar And Expression

Halliday (1994: xvii):

A Functional Grammar Interprets Wording By Reference To What It Means

Halliday (1994: xvii):

Why 'Grammar' Rather Than 'Syntax'

Halliday (1994: xiv):

The Move Into Language: Why And How

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 613-4):

How, and why, do children discard their functioning protolanguage and move on to "language" in its adult form? To take up the "why?" first: because the protolanguage sets limits on both dimensions of meaning. 

You can converse in it, but you cannot build up a dialogue: that is, it allows exchange of meaning, but it precludes any form of an interpersonal dynamic, in which meanings expand on the basis of what went before. 

You can point with it, but you cannot refer: that is, it allows focus on an object, but it precludes any form of ideational systematic, in which phenomena are construed as configurations and in taxonomies. 

For these to be possible you need a semiotic of a different kind, one that allows for a purely abstract level of representation "in between" the two faces of the sign, To put this another way (as we did at the beginning of the book), the sign has to be deconstructed so that, instead of content interfacing directly with expression, the relationship is mediated by a systematic organisation of form (a lexicogrammar). In other words, the semiotic has to become stratified.

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.

Socio-Semiotic Systems That Are Realised Through Language (1)

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 605):

This category corresponds to Hjelmslev's (1943) concept of a "connotative semiotic": a higher-level system that has language as its plane of expression. These include theories: every theoretical construction, scientific, philosophical, aesthetic, and so on, is a higher-level semiotic realised in language. They also include the codified aspects of social institutions such as the law, the financial system, constitutions and codes of practice. 

Martin interprets both genre and ideology in this light, as social activity structures and ideological formations that are realised in language (e.g. 1985, 1992; for a critique of Martin's view, see Hasan, 1995).

From a semantic point of view, such systems constitute contexts for language;

 

Blogger Comments:

Importantly, Hjelmslev's (1943) concept of a "connotative semiotic" includes both a content plane and an expression plane, not just a content plane. That is, in SFL terms, the connotative semiotic is both context and language, not just context.

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.