Why Congruent And Metaphorical Expressions Are Not Synonymous: History

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 538):

It might be maintained that a pair of expressions such as in times of engine failure and whenever an engine failed are simply synonymous, and do not imply any reconstruction of experience. But there are two problems with this view, One is that of history, referred to above. If neither had preceded the other, they could simply be free alternatives (though language is seldom so extravagant with its resources as this would imply!). But since one form of wording came first, it inevitably acquired a rich semantic loading. Since nouns evolved as names of classes of things, anything which is represented as a noun inevitably acquires the status of a thing, with the implication of a concrete object as the prototype. Thus in engine failure, the grammar has construed a thing called failure; and the nominal group then accommodates classes of failure (with another noun as Classifier), such as crop failure, heart failure and engine failure. Thus engine failure and engines fail are precisely not synonymous, because in engine failure the happening fail has acquired an additional semantic feature as the name of a class of things.

Ideational Metaphor And Phylogenesis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 537-8):

Under certain historical conditions, such a [congruent] theory [of experience] may come to be modified or reconstructed. No doubt there have been various more or less catastrophic changes in earlier human history which have brought about relatively rapid changes in language — relatively, that is, to the gradual evolution of the system that has taken place all the time. We have no means of knowing about these. But it seems likely that what we are here calling grammatical metaphor represents one such partial reconstruction, in which, in the context of science and technology, a rather different kind of "reality" is being construed.

Ideational Congruence And Ontogenesis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 537):

"Congruent" is of course a contingent term. What it is saying is that, at the present moment in human history we can recognize forms of language which seem to represent a common coding of experience: this is the configuration that we referred to as "process + participant + circumstance" which is construed in grammars through some version of the trichotomy of verb, noun and the rest. If we relate this to English, it is the form of English that is learnt as a mother tongue, in which phenomena are interpreted clausally, in a kind of dynamic equilibrium of happenings and things. The prototypical thing is a concrete object which can be related by similarity to certain other objects, such that taken together they form a class, like engines. The prototypical happening is a change in the environment that is perceptible to the senses, or a change in the senser's own consciousness. A process is a happening involving one or two such objects, or one object and a conscious being. When children move from their own constructed protolanguage into the mother tongue, this provides a theory which they can use to give a plausible construction to their own individual experience.

Relative Metaphoricity: Semogenic Timescales

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 537):

Once we take note of progression in [phylogenetic, ontogenetic and logogenetic] time, then given a pair of such expressions we can identify one of the two as more metaphorical. The process is one of movement away from what we referred to as a “congruent” form.

Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 536):

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.

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.