Construing Experience Differently According To Mode

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.

The Construal Of Experience As Semantic Space In Signed Languages

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 535):

From Sign, we 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 with continuous space-time, constituted as bodily experience for the signer and as part of shared visual experience for signer and addressee.

The Interdependency 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 Simultaneous Evolution Of The Metafunctions

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 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 construct.

A Plane Of “Reality” Made Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 532): 

… in the course of serving this enabling rôle, the textual component opens up a new dimension of meaning potential, in that it construes a further plane of “reality” that is as it were made of language — meaning not as action or reflection but as information.

The Textual Metafunction And The Clause: Embodying Two Sets Of Semantic Choices

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 532):

As far as the textual metafunction is concerned, therefore, any one clause will typically embody two sets of semantic choices. One will be its organisation as a message, a piece of information flowing from speaker to hearer, its limits defined by the speaker’s point of departure and the focus of attention projected by the speaker on to the listener. The other will be the cohesion it sets up with the preceding moments of the discourse, as well as with other discourses and with the total semiotic environment. These enable the clause to function effectively as reflection [ideationally] and as action [interpersonally].

Lexical Cohesion

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 531):

Lexical cohesion refers to cohesion that is brought about by lexical means: choosing a word that is related in a systematic way to one that has occurred before. The range of semantic relations that can create cohesion in this way is very wide; but there are five principal conditions under which it occurs. These are: repetition … synonymy/antonymy … hyponymy/meronymy … and collocation …

Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 531):

In conjunction, the various logical-semantic relations of expansion that construe clause complex structures (discussed above under the “logical” metafunction) are deployed instead as a source of cohesion.  There are a large number of such conjunctive expressions, ranging from single words like however, moreover, otherwise (many of them originally composite forms) to prepositional phrases like in that case, in other words, at the same time (often containing a reference word inside them).  They cover more or less the same range of meanings that we referred to as “elaborating”, “extending” and “enhancing”; but they do not establish any structural relationship in the grammar, and this is recognised in written English, where they regularly occur after a full stop.

Ellipsis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 531):

In ellipsis, some features which are present in the semantic construction of the clause (or other unit) are not realised explicitly in the wording, which cannot then be interpreted unless these features are retrieved from elsewhere.  Here it is not the meaning that is being referred to; it is the wording that is being retrieved, usually from the immediately preceding clause (whereas reference can span considerable distances in the text).  Ellipsis is particularly characteristic of dialogue, especially adjacency pairs such as question and answer.  Sometimes in English a substitute element is inserted as a placeholder; e.g. ones in Which lanes are those? — The northbound ones.

Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 530-1):

Reference is a way of referring to things that are already semiotically accessible: either actually, in the text, or potentially, in the context of situation.  The English reference systems are the personals, especially the third person pronouns and determiners he/him/his she/her/hers it/its they/them/their/theirs, and the demonstratives this/these that/those and the maverick the (which emerged as a weakened form of that).  Such systems evolved in a deictic function; when used anaphorically or cataphorically (that is, in deictic relation to text), they create cohesion.  There is also a third source of referential cohesion, through the use of comparison, with words such as same, other, different, less, smaller.

Resources For Creating Cohesion

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 530):

Over and above its contribution to the grammar of the clause, what we are calling the “textual” metafunctional component comprises a further set of resources, which construe clauses and clause complexes into longer stretches of discourse without the formality of further grammatical structure. These are the resources for creating “cohesion”. These are of four kinds: reference (sometimes called “phora”, to distinguish it from reference as defined in the philosophy of language), ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.

Clause As Message Vs Quantum Of Information

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 530):

It may be a general principle [across languages] that thematic status is more closely tied to the clause (as the locus of experiential and interpersonal choices) than is the listener-oriented pattern of given and new; in English the “quantum” of information that is defined by this latter construction is not, in fact, identical with the clause and may be smaller or larger. But all discourse is organised around these two motifs, which between them “add value” to the clause, enabling it to ‘mean’ effectively in the context in which it occurs.

Why 'New' Is Signalled By Tonic Prominence In English

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529-30):

This focal point usually comes at the end; but (unlike the Theme + Rheme) the Given + New structure is not signalled, in English, by word order — it is signalled by intonation, and specifically by pitch prominence, the point of maximum perturbation (falling, rising or complex) in the intonation contour. The principle behind this is clear: if the Theme always came first, and the New always came last, there would be no possibility of combining them; whereas one powerful form of message — powerful because highly marked — is that in which the two are mapped onto one another, as in no wonder they were annoyed (where the focus is on the interpersonal Theme no wonder.

Given + New

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529):

But the Theme + Rheme configuration becomes a message only when paired with another one, that of Given + New.  This construes a piece of information from the complementary point of view, as something having news value — something the listener is being invited to attend to.  It may not contain anything the listener has not heard before; a great deal of ”news” is totally familiar, being simply contrasted or even re-iterated.  On the other hand, the entire message may consist of unknown information, for example the first clause in a piece of fiction.  But the message is construed along prototypical lines as an equilibrium of the given and the new, with a climax in the form of a focal point of information: ‘this is to be the focus of your attention’.

Theme + Rheme

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529):

One way of signalling what is thematic is by putting it first in the clause, as is done in English, where everything up to and including the first experiential element constitutes the speaker’s chosen point of departure. … The remainder of the clause constitutes the body of the message, labelled grammatically as the “Rheme”.

Theme: Point Of Departure

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529):

From a speaker’s point of view, a piece of information has a specific point of departure; the Prague scholars referred to this as the “Theme”. The Theme, in English, always includes one element that has an experiential function, typically a participant in a process; it may include other elements as well, for example an interpersonal expression of modality if the speaker is thematising his/her own point of view.

Textual Structures: Origins

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528-9):

These structures have been less fully described than those of the other metafunctions; they were brought to the notice of grammarians by Mathesius and his colleagues of the Prague school in the first half of the [20th] century.

Textual Metafunction: Clause

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528):

In this guise, the clause functions as a quantum of information; it is construed as a message, with a range of possible structures providing for different interpretations according to the discourse environment in which it occurs.

Textual Metafunction: Cohesion

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528):

Since these resources are oriented towards discourse, many of the “textual” systems in any language have a domain potentially higher than the clause and the clause complex; they set up relationships that create semantic cohesion, and these are not restricted by the limitations of grammatical structure.

Textual Metafunction: Enabling Rôle

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528):

Relative to the other metafunctions, therefore, the textual metafunction appears in an enabling rôle; without its resources, neither ideational nor interpersonal constructs would make sense.

Textual Metafunction: The Creation Of Discourse

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.

Textual Metafunction: Intrinsic To Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528):

… and if we observe children developing their mother tongue we can see how the ideational and interpersonal resources of the system gradually emerge from the earliest semiotic encounters, in a way which may plausibly mimic how the metafunctions originally evolved. The textual metafunction is different because it does not originate in an extrinsic context of this kind. Rather, it is intrinsic to language itself.

Why 'Meta' function?

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528): 

The concept of metafunction is “meta” in the sense that it refers not to functions of individual utterances — functions of the instance — but to functional components of the system of language. They are, of course, “functional” in origin — that is, they derive from the functions of language as manifested in instances of use;

Textual Metafunction: Language As Information

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528):

There is a third component in the linguistic construction of meaning; this is what we refer to as the “textual” metafunction. If we were trying to find a term to match the expressions “language as reflection” and “language as action” that we used to gloss the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions, we might come up with “language as information”; but this is itself not very informative. It is a difficult concept because unlike the other two, the textual metafunction has no obviously distinct function at the back of it. All uses of language involve the creation of text. But at the same time this is precisely the context in which the textual metafunction may be understood.

Interpersonal (& Ideational) Meanings Are Brought Into Existence By The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 527):

Interpersonal meaning is mapped onto ideational meaning at all points from the most micro to the most macro: from modality and speech function in the clause (or even features built into the morphology of the word, like the diminutives characteristic of many languages), to settings affecting the whole of a particular register, like the aura of power and distance that we associate with the language of bureaucracy. These are the various ways in which language functions as a mode of action; and these meanings, no less than the ideational ones, are brought into existence by the grammar.

Interpersonal Meaning Enacting Social Relationships

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 527):

… and because human societies are inherently hierarchical, the interpersonal component of the grammar in many languages enacts networks of social relationships with varying degrees of inequality and of distance. Thus there may be regular lexicogrammatical variants used to maintain different alignments of speaker and listener, and even of third parties, on vectors of power and familiarity; such forms may be located at one point in each grammatical structure (for example in the endings of the verb) or dispersed prosodically throughout the wording of the clause. But even in a language such as English, where there are no such systematic speech styles institutionalised in the grammar, there is always some functional variation along these lines: we have no difficulty in recognising what are the more formal and what are the more informal variants among different samples of spoken and written discourse.

The Realisation Of Interpersonal Meaning In Grammatical Structure

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 527):

Unlike ideational meanings, which tend to be located at definable locations in the grammatical structure, interpersonal meanings tend to be strung throughout the discourse, by an accumulation of grammatical and lexical features or by other devices such as voice quality and intonation contours. This signals the fact that interpersonal meanings are more diffuse: they relate to the figure as a whole, rather than to one of its elements; or to a whole turn in the dialogue, or even to more extended passage of the discourse. Some particular interpersonal colouring may inform the whole of an individual speaker’s interaction with another person;

Other Kinds Of Interpersonal Meaning Constructed By The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 527):

These include comments about how desirable or plausible or self-evident something is, expressions of attitude in referring to persons and objects, sets of words with similar experiential meaning but distinguished interpersonally by connotation (sometimes called “purr words” and “snarl words”) and numerous forms of personal address and reference (kinship terms, personal names, honorifics, endearments, insults and the like).

Modulation: Obligation & Readiness (Inclination & Ability)

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 526):

Although these are derived from the sense of proposals (‘you are required / supposed / allowed; I am able / willing’), they are not restricted to clauses having these speech functions; obligation and readiness are construed by the grammar propositionally and hence are used freely with third persons. But they still represent the judgements of speaker or listener on the obligations or inclinations involved (he ought to help, she will help).

Modality & Person

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 526):

… it is always the judgement of the speaker or listener that is represented as a choice of modality, not that of any third party (this is one of the boundaries drawn between ‘me–&–you’ and ‘the rest’).

Modalisation & Modulation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 526):

In English, there are four distinct grammatical traverses between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, two [probability & usuality] deriving from the polarity of propositions (‘it is/it isn’t’) and two [obligation & readiness (inclination & ability)] from the polarity of proposals (‘do/don’t’).

Modality: Between Yes & No

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525-6):

This is the area of “modality”, where the interactants present different aspects of their own judgements and opinions, exploring the validity of what is being said and typically locating it somewhere between the positive and negative poles.

Scope For Argument

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

The system provides scope for argument by incorporating an opposition of ‘on’ or ‘off’; each clause assigns either positive or negative polarity.

Argument Moves

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

The mood system constructs the clause as a move in an argument: either as a “proposition” (statement or question) or as a “proposal” (offer or command).

1st & 2nd Person

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

… there can be no “first person” unless there is a “second person” with whom these rôles can be alternately acted out.

Person: 1st-&-2nd Vs 3rd

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

… the basic distinction constructed by language is not, as sometimes claimed, that between ‘me’ and ‘the rest’; it is that between ‘me–&–you’, on the one hand, and the rest — the ‘third party’ — on the other. This distinction is coded in the grammar at many places, for example in the system of modality …

Person: Interpersonal vs Ideational Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

… the interpersonal [metafunction] 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 become a part of experience and can be referred to alongside the him, the her and the it; but note that (unlike the 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).

The Mood System Creates The Potential For Arguing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

Choosing a particular speech function is, obviously, only one step in a dialogue; what the grammar creates, through the system of “mood”, is the potential for arguing, for an ongoing exchange of speech rôles among the interactants in a conversation. The mood system, together with other systems associated with it, constructs a great range of speech functional variation; and since in principle any ideational meaning can be mapped on to any interpersonal meaning, this makes it possible to construe any aspect of experience in dialogic form.

Commodities & Action

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 524-5):

If the commodity being exchanged is goods–&–services, then the action that is given or demanded is typically a non-verbal one: what is being exchanged is something other than a construction of meanings, and the meanings serve to bring the exchange about. … If on the other hand the commodity being exchanged is information, then this is in fact made of meaning; the speaker’s action, and that of the listener if responding to a question, is bound to be a verbal one, because here language is not only the means of carrying out the exchange, it is also the nature of the exchange itself.

Speech Function Choices

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 524):

Grammatically, each time he says a clause, he is not only construing a process but also, unless he makes it logically dependent on another clause, acting out a speech function; and this embodies two simultaneous choices. The speaker is either giving or else requiring the other person to give — i.e. demanding. And the commodity being given or demanded may be either “goods–&–services” or “information”.

Specifying A Network Of Interpretations

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 524):

All dialogue is a process of exchanging meaning, in which the speaker is enacting, at any one time, a particular interpersonal relationship, including his own rôle and the rôle he is assigning to the listener (i.e. he is specifying a network of interpretations for his own and others’ behaviour).

Speech Functions: Modes Of Action

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 524):

The most immediate way we act, grammatically, is through our choice of speech function. One kind of speech function is a command; this is obviously a way of getting someone to do something, but we tend to think of it as being in this respect untypical. However, all speech functions are modes of action, whether command or offer, question or statement, or any other innumerable combinations or subcategories.

Why We Are Less Aware Of The Interpersonal Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523-4): 

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 Relationships

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523): 

When we say that the grammar enacts interpersonal relationships, we mean relationships of all kinds from the transient exchange of speech rôles in temporary transactional encounters … to the enduring familial and other networks that constitute the structure of society.

Metafunctions Related To Microfunctional Dimensions Of Protolanguage

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523, 525):

If the ideational component is language as a mode of reflection, the interpersonal component is language as a mode of action…If the ideational metafunction is language in its “third person” guise, the interpersonal is language in its “first and second person” guise.

A Language & Its Construction Of Reality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523):

In the last resort each language construes experience in its own way — has its own “characterology”, as the Prague linguists expressed it. But every language embodies a working, and workable, schedule of compromises, that taken all together constitute its speakers’ construction of reality.

Why A Grammar Is A Bundle Of Uneasy Compromises

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 522): 

In its ideational metafunction, language construes human experience — the human capacity for experiencing — into a massive powerhouse of meaning. It does so by creating a multidimensional semantic space, highly elastic, in which each vector forms a line of tension (the vectors are what are represented in our system networks as “systems”). Movement within this space sets up complementarities of various kinds: alternative, sometimes contradictory, constructions of experience, indeterminacies, ambiguities and blends, so that a grammar, as a general theory of experience, is a bundle of uneasy compromises. No one dimension of experience is represented in an ideal form, because this would conflict destructively with all the others; instead, each dimension is fudged so that it can co-exist with those that intersect with it.

Reasons For Associated Features: Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 521):

… in a projecting relationship, the two elements in a verbal projection are typically equal in status, while those in a mental projection are typically unequal. This is not surprising: since you can hear what a person says, you give the wording the full status of a direct experience … whereas you cannot observe what a person thinks, so this is more likely to be construed as dependent on the process that projects it …

Reasons For Associated Features: Expansion

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 521):

In principle, any particular type of expansion or projection can be interpreted in either way, either as “paratactic” or “hypotactic”; but in fact there is some degree of partial association: certain combinations are favoured, and others corresondingly disfavoured. For example, in English, when one process is construed as a simple restatement of, or addition to, another, the two are likely to have equal status; whereas where one is seen as enhancing the other they are usually unequal — a means is secondary to what has been achieved by it, a cause is secondary to its effect.

Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 521):

In projection, one process is used to construe another one, such that the latter becomes a representation of what someone says or thinks. The types of process that have this power of projection are the verbal and mental processes … Thus the projection operates at either of the two strata of the content plane: either that of the wording, where the projection is by a verbal process, or at that of the meaning, where it is by a mental process. Because the grammar can project in this way, semiotic events, both those which are externalised as sayings and those which are internalised as thoughts, are brought within the overall domain of the phenomena of experience.

Enhancement

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 520-1):

The third type of expansion is one of enhancing the first process by another one setting up a specific semantic relationship, of which the principal ones are time, cause, condition, concession and means. Here again the grammar deploys a range of different conjunctions, which mark either the enhancing clause (when, because, by, though, if and so on) or the one that is being enhanced (eg then ‘at that time’, then ‘in that case’, so, thus, yet).

Extension

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 520):

The second type of expansion consists in extending one process by construing another one as an addition to it (with ‘and’ as the limiting case); or as an alternative to it, a replacement for it, or as some form of reservation or contrast. Here the grammar typically employs conjunctions, like and, or, but, instead, besides.

Elaboration

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 520):

Conceptually, perhaps the simplest way of expanding a process is by elaborating on it: saying it over again (or something very like it, with repetition as the limiting case), or else exemplifying it, or clarifying it in some other way. The grammar represents this relationship symbolically in English by prosodic means: the same intonation pattern is repeated … But since this does not appear in writing, various purely written symbols are used instead, typically ie, eg and viz.