The Congruent As A Common Coding Of Experience

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 recognise 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.

The More Congruent Form As Historically Prior

(i) in times of engine failure

(ii) whenever an engine failed

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 537):

From a purely descriptive point of view, each version is metaphorical from the standpoint of the other; there is no inherent priority accorded to either. Once we bring in considerations of history, however, a clear priority emerges; and it is the same priority whichever of the three diachronic dimensions we choose to invoke — the phylogenetic (history of the language), the ontogenetic (history of the individual) or the logogenetic (history of the text). In all these three histories, version (ii), the clausal comes first. 

This form of construal evolved first in the history of English; version (i) emerged only as the result of a long process of later evolution. It comes first in the life of a child; children master version (i) only after a long (in terms of their young lives) process of becoming literate and being educated And it comes first in the unfolding of a text; we are much more likely to be told first that engines fail and only then to hear about a phenomenon of engine failure. 

Once we take note of progression in time, then given a pair of such expressions we can identify one of the two as the more metaphorical. The process is one of movement away from what we referred to as a "congruent" form.

Grammatical Expressions In A Metaphoric Relation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 536-7):

To recapitulate with a very simple example: Given a pair of expressions such as in times of engine failure and whenever an engine failed the two are related to each other by grammatical metaphor. A particular phenomenon has been construed (i) as a prepositional phrase with a nominal group as its Complement, (ii) as a hypotactic clause introduced by a conjunction; moreover, the lexical content has been construed in two quite different ways:

If we take just the question of which elements function as Thing, the two are exactly complementary: in (i) the Thing nouns are time and failure, while in (ii) the only Thing noun is engine. This relationship is analogous to that of metaphor in its usual, lexical sense; only here the transfer is not between words but between grammatical classes.

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 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.

Deaf Sign Expression

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 533):

From one point of view, as we introduced it in the earlier discussion, Sign will appear as a realisational variant: that is to say, the meanings of language — its semantic system — may be construed either in sound or in gesture. There are, in fact, sign systems that are constructed along these lines: in principle this is what is meant by "signed English". But if we consider the nature of the two forms of expression, vocal on the one hand and gestural on the other, it is clear that they have very different properties. Gesture operates in a 3-dimensional "signing space" defined by reference to the signer's body and its parts, and movement within that space is entirely accessible to the receiver, thus in addition to succession in time (which is common to both), the gestural medium can exploit a number of parameters of spatial variation: the "articulatory organs" (fingers, hands, arms, other body parts), their location, orientation, thrust (direction and speed of movement) and so on.

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.

The Evolution Of The Clause

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 the 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 to construct.

The Enabling Role Of The Textual Metafunction

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 and as action. 

But in the course of serving this enabling role, 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 as reflection but as information. In the modern world, when we increasingly live by exchanging information, rather than by exchanging goods-&-services as hitherto, this aspect of meaning potential is coming more and more to be foregrounded But it has always been there; and this is not the first time in history that it has proved to be an indispensable resource.

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, where the speaker simply repeats the same word; synonymy/antonymy, where a word is chosen that is similar or opposed in meaning; hyponymy/meronymy, where a word is chosen that is related by 'kind of' or 'part of — either vertically, like melon ... fruit or car ... wheel, or horizontally, like melon ... plum, or wheel ... mudguard; and collocation, which does not necessarily imply any particular semantic relationship but means simply that a word is chosen which is regularly associated with a previous one, like aim coming shortly after target, such that a resonance is felt between the two.

Cohesive 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 following a full stop.

Ellipsis And Substitution

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 closed? — The northbound ones.

Referential Cohesion

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 the 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.

The 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.

Theme And Information As Prototypical?

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 530):

All languages display some form of textual organisation of the clause. How far this kind of speaker - listener complementarity, with a quantum of information being construed out of the tension between the two, is a general or prototypical feature of this aspect of the grammar is not at all clear. 

In Austronesian languages, for example, there is typically a much more complex pattern of interrelationship between the textual and the ideational structures of the clause (mapping of Theme on to different transitivity roles) than is found in Indo-European. Even with regard to English, where it is well established how the flow of information is engendered in the grammar, opinions differ as to how far this should be seen as one continuous movement and how far as the intersection of two different periodicities (as we are inclined to interpret it). 

It may be a general principle 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.

Given And New

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529-30):

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 reiterated. On the other hand, the entire message may consist of unknown information, for example the first clause of 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'. 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 a message — powerful because highly marked — is that in which the two are mapped on to one another, as in no wonder they were annoyed (where the focus is on the interpersonal theme no wonder).

Theme And Rheme

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 529):

From the 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 the 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. 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; for example But surely time is defined as that which you can't turn back?, where the Theme is but surely time. Here the speaker is construing a message around the theme of 'what I'm saying is contrary to what went before' (but); 'it's my opinion, and I'd like to challenge you with it' (surely); and 'the starting point is the topic of time'. The remainder of the clause constitutes the body of the message, labelled grammatically as the "Rheme".

Textual Cohesion And Structure

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528-9):

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

But they also contribute a critical dimension to the overall grammar of the clause. 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. 

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 present century. But it seems that one typical way of construing the clause as a message is as a combination of two perspectives, that of the speaker and that of the listener (the latter, of course, being also as modelled for the listener by the speaker).

The Textual Metafunction

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

Interpersonal Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 527):

Interpersonal meaning is mapped on to 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 in to 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 ideational ones, are brought into existence by the grammar.

Enacting Networks Of Social Relationships

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 527):

Some particular interpersonal colouring may inform the whole of an individual speaker's interaction with another person; 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 or written discourse.

The Distribution Of Interpersonal Meaning

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 some more extended passage of the discourse.

Other Interpersonal Resources

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 526-7):

Modality is a rich resource for speakers to intrude their own views into the discourse: their assessments of what is likely or typical, their judgments of the rights and wrongs of the situation and of where other people stand in this regard. But there are numerous other kinds of interpersonal meaning constructed by the resources of the grammar. 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

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 526):

The latter [derived from the polarity of proposals] occupy the dimensions of "obligation" and "readiness", readiness including both inclination and ability; for example,

They ought to clean this place up. People will leave it so untidy.

— They can't; they haven't got the equipment. They're not supposed to clean it anyway.

— You mean they won't. But someone must. Can we?

— I don't see whey we shouldn't. Will you help?

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 judgments of speaker or listener on the obligations or inclinations involved (he ought to help, she will help).

Modalisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 526):

The former [deriving from the polarity of propositions] are along the dimensions of "probability" and "usuality", the first being the more elaborated of the two (because more arguable); for example,

That was a snake.

— It wasn't. It can't possibly have been a snake.

— Couldn't it? Don't you think so? I think it might have been.

— It probably wasn't. But snakes can appear round here.

All of these represent probability except the final can which means 'sometimes' (usuality). Note that it is always the judgment of 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').

The Space Between Positive And Negative Polarity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 526):

Languages differ considerably in their construction of this space, and in the extent to which they interpret it grammatically. In English, there are four distinct grammatical traverses between 'yes' and 'no', two deriving from the polarity of propositions ('it is/ it isn't') and two from the polarity of proposals ('do! / don't!').

Polarity And Modality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525-6):

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). The system provides scope for argument by incorporating an opposition of 'on' or 'off': each clause assigns either positive or negative polarity. Every proposal or proposition selects one or the other: either that was a snake or that wasn't a snake, either catch it! or don't catch it! But at the same time the interpersonal grammar goes much further, it rejects a simple polarity of 'yes' and 'no', opening up a broad semantic space in between. This is the area of "modality", where the interactants present different aspects of their own judgments and opinions, exploring the validity of what is being said and typically locating it somewhere between the positive and negative poles.

The Basic Person Distinction Constructed By Language

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

Note in this connection that 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; there can be no "first person" unless there is a "second person" with whom these roles can be alternately acted out.

The Interpersonal As Language In Its "First And Second Person" Guise

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):

If the ideational metafunction is language in its "third person" guise, the interpersonal 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 then become a part of experience and can be referred to alongside the him, the her and the it; but note that (unlike their 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 Construction Of Speech-Functional Variation

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 dynamic exchange of speech roles 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 any dialogic form.

The Commodity Being Exchanged

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. In principle the listener need not say anything at all; but listeners usually do, typically by reversing the role, responding to an offer with a command and to a command with an offer

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.

The Primary Speech Functions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 524):

Grammatically, each time [a speaker] 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 — that is, demanding. And the commodity being given or demanded may be either "goods-&-services" or "information". Each of the four combinations defines one of the primary speech functions:

Speech Function: Enacting And Assigning Roles

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 524):

The most immediate way in which 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 of their innumerable combinations and subcategories. 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 role and the role he is assigning to the listener (i.e. he is specifying a network of interpretations for his own and the others' behaviour).

Enacting Interpersonal Relationships

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523-4):

When we say that the grammar enacts interpersonal relationships, we mean relationships of all kinds from the transient exchange of speech roles in temporary transactional encounters (How are you? — Good, thanks; and you? — Coming along. Now what can I do for you?) to the enduring familial and other networks that constitute the structure of society. 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 Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523):

Our concern in this book is primarily with what we have called the "ideation base", the systems of meaning into which, through language, human beings construe their collective and individual experience. Usually when we talk about the linguistic "construction of reality" this is the aspect of reality that comes to mind. But at the same time as construing experience — in the same breath, so to speak — they are also, through language, enacting their interpersonal relationships; and this interpersonal component of meaning is no less part of what is constituted for us as "reality". If the ideational component is language as a mode of reflection, the interpersonal component is language as a mode of action; and reality consists as much in what we do as in what we think.

Each Language Construes Experience In Its Own Way

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 523):

We have outlined the picture from the point of view of English, but doing so as far as possible in a way that would enable the relevant questions to be raised for other languages. 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.

Construing Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 522):

In its ideational metafunction, language construes the 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 coexist with those that intersect with it.

Taxis And Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 521-2):

Similarly in a projecting relationship, the two elements in a verbal projection are typically equal in status, while those of a mental projection are unequal. This is not surprising: since you can hear what a person says, you give the wording the full status of a direct experience, as in Mary said, "I will wait here for you tomorrow"; whereas you cannot observe what a person thinks, so this is more likely to be construed as dependent on the process that projects it, as in Mary thought/ decided she would wait there for him the next day. 

In the first, the deictic standpoint is that of the sayer, namely Mary; what she said is quoted as "direct speech". In the second, the deictic standpoint is that of the person speaking; what Mary thought is reported as "indirect thought". Again, it is always possible to report speech — and even to quote thought, with the speaker acting as an omniscient narrator; but those combinations are less favoured in everyday English discourse.

Taxis And Expansion

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 521):

In principle, any particular type of expansion or projection can be interpreted in either way, either as "paratactic" or as "hypotactic"; but in fact there is some degree of partial association: certain combinations are favoured, and others correspondingly 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. (Note that these are overall quantitative tendencies; in any one instance the choice may go either way.)

Taxis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 521):

Probably some such system of logical relationships between processes will be found in all languages, though as always there is great variation in the formal resources that ace deployed, and also in the systematic semantic organisation of the relationships themselves. In English, and many other languages, the grammar makes a systematic distinction in the relative status that is accorded to the two processes entering into such a logical nexus. Either the two are construed as being equal in status, or one is construed as being dependent on the other. In principle, any particular type of expansion or projection can be interpreted in either way, either as "paratactic" or as "hypotactic";

The Two Levels Of 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 the mental processes: he says (that...), he told (her to ...), she thinks (that...), she wanted (him to ...). 

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.

The Three Types Of Expansion

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 520-1):

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, for example we're shut out; they won't let us in. But since this does not appear in writing, various purely written symbols are used instead, typically i.e., e.g. and viz.

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. 

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 (e.g. then 'at that time', then 'in that case', so, thus, yet ).

The Difference Between The Two Kinds Of Logical Relationship

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 520):

Two kinds of logical relationship are construed by the grammar in this way. One is that of "expansion", in which the two processes are of the same order of experience and the second one is interpreted as in some respect expanding on the first. The other is that of "projection", in which the second process is construed as belonging to a different order of experience: it is projected, by the first one, on to the semiotic plane. Each of these defines a complex region of semantic space.

The Structure Type Engendered By The Logical System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 520):

The changes that constitute our experience are not all independent of one another. On the contrary; our experience is that one thing leads to another, and there is in principle no limit to an experiential chain. But the exact nature of the relationship may vary from one transition to another; so the grammar construes the relationship between processes dyadically, in the form of a nexus between a pair of clauses. The first process may have a second process related to it, by a relationship such as sequence in time, or cause and effect; this in turn may have another one related to it, either by the same relationship or by a different one — in either case, the relationship is construed as holding between the members of a pair. So the logical system, within the ideational metafunction, engenders a different kind of linguistic structure from that of the experiential system. In the logical world, the parts are not constituents of an organic configuration, like the process, participants and circumstances of the clause. They are elements standing to each other in a potentially iterative relationship; and each element represents an entire process.

The Logical Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 519-20):

Turning now to the logical part of the grammar's ideational resources: this is the part that is concerned not with individual processes but with the relation between one process aid another. In calling this "logical" we are using the term in the sense of natural language logic: that is, grammatical logic, not formal logic — although, of course, this is the source from which formal logic is ultimately derived.

The Significance Of The Distinction Between Direct And Indirect Participants

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 518-9):

The line between direct and indirect participants is a fuzzy one, and sometimes what seems to be the same role in the process can be construed in either way, for example pairs like:

where the winner, Hamlet, her bicycle and the farmers appear first as direct and then as indirect participants. Here the grammar is in fact using the structural resource of plus or minus preposition to construe a different kind of contrast, having to do with status in the message. 

But the distinction is significant because, as we saw above, such "circumstantial" elements tend also to function as qualifications not of the process but of some entity that is itself a participant: as well as the ice lies thinly on the water, with thinly and on the water as circumstantial elements of the clause, we have the thin ice (lying) on the water, where these have now become modifiers of ice — and then the thin layer of ice on the water. 

And since the prepositional phrase has a nominal group inside it, this opens up the possibility of further expansion, like the ice on the water in the pond by the oak trees in the corner of the wood. Thus incorporating the circumstantial element into the representation of a participant does not merely add one feature to the specification; it allows more or less indefinite scope, particularly in combination with the incorporation of an entire process. (We have already pointed out that the prepositional phrase is in fact a miniaturised clause; so the two really constitute a single resource, that of using a process to specify a particular class of entity.) This potential was crucial to the development of science and mathematics.

The Realisation Of Circumstances

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 518):

The third type of constituent of the clause, referred to above as "others" (that is, elements that are neither verbal nor nominal groups), evolved as the representation of a kind of "third party" to the process. This may be some qualification of the process in terms of its manner of occurrence (an adverbial group, in the case of English); or it may be an entity that is involved in the process but only indirectly (in English, a prepositional phrase, consisting of preposition plus nominal group).

Participants

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 518):

The participants, on the other hand, which represent the prototype of entities persisting in time and space, are usually not subject to this kind of modification; but they are organised in fairly elaborate taxonomies. These may be construed as systematic relations among different lexical items: thus eyes, nose, mouth, chin are all different parts of face, and lamb, pork , mutton, beef are all different kinds of meat. Something of the same sort happens with verbs, but to a much lesser extent. 

The other resource for constructing taxonomies of things is the expansion of the nominal group, and here the picture is very different from that with verbs. Nouns are expanded lexically as well as grammatically, so that, while entities (like processes) are located deictically relative to the 'here-&- now', they are also (unlike processes) extensively classified and described. 

An example such as those two nice colourful picture postcards of Honolulu that Sandy sent us shows these resources at work: cards are classified as postcards rather than, say, playing cards; postcards as picture postcards not plain postcards; picture postcards are described as colourful, and also (signalling the speaker's attitude to them) as nice; they are quantified, as two, and specified deictically as those. Further than that, both a circumstantial feature (of Honolulu) and even an entire process (that Sandy sent us) can be brought in as characteristics which specify more exactly the particular cards in question.

Thus the grammar has the potential for construing a complex arrangement of classes and subclasses for any entity which participates in a process; or, on the other hand, of naming it as an individual, by using a "proper" noun instead of a common one. Proper nouns are already fully specific, and hence seldom expanded experientially (they are often expanded interpersonally!); but common nouns are almost indefinitely expandable, and it is this resource which organises our universe into its elaborate taxonomies of things.

Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 517-8):

Processes take place in space-time, which the grammar may model in a variety of different ways: the happening is upstream or downstream, past or future, real or imaginary. Typically the point of reference is the speech situation: there is some deictic feature relating what is being said to the current "moment" in time and space. In English the deixis is achieved by locating the process on a linear time-scale with 'present' as a fulcrum between 'past' and 'future', or else by locating it on one or other of a cluster of scales whereby the speaker intrudes his or her own judgment on it. There may be a wide variety of other attachments to the verb — modalities, aspects, phases and the like, which the grammar construes as features of the process; consider English examples like wasn't going to start trying to help. On the other hand, the processes themselves are not, in general, construed into systematic taxonomies, and the verb is expanded by grammatical rather than lexical means.

Clause Constituents

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 517):

As for the elements that make up the process configuration, we have seen that the foundation of the grammar's theory of experience was laid down in the simplest terms in the evolution of word classes: verbs, nouns, and others. But the constituents of a clause are not, in fact, verbs and nouns; they are more complex expressions that have expanded from verbs and nouns, which we call "verbal groups" and "nominal groups". At this point, we find a considerable difference between the two, in the kind of expansion that they engender. The formal patterns vary, as always, among different languages; but the underlying principles seem to be fairly constant.

Participant Ambivalence In Mental Processes

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 517):

When it comes to mental processes (and here is one of the contradictions referred to above), the grammar is uncertain whether the participant other than the Senser is doing duty as agent or not; if I'm doubtful about something, for example, I may say your story doesn't convince me, which makes your story look like an agent, or I may say I don't believe your story, which makes the role of your story very different — not exactly a goal, but like an expression of scope. Many languages display some such ambivalence about mental processes, which do not match up neatly with material processes in our experience in any obvious way.

Inherent Participants

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 517):

At the same time, all processes are interpreted as having something in common, in that typically there is one participant that is inherently associated with the process — without which the process could not take place at all, like birds in birds are flying. That may be the only one, in which case that participant is held accountable (even if involuntarily!) and the process is said to stop there. Alternatively, another participant may be involved; either as an external agent, like children in children are flying kites, or as a goal, like a letter in I'm writing a letter.

Favourite Configurations Of Participants

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 516-7):

With each type of process, the grammar associates one or two favourite configurations of participants. These usually vary considerably from one process type to another, in English, there is a strong link between the role of "Senser" (the one who knows, thinks &c.) in a mental process and the personal pronouns he and she, such that putting it in this role (it didn't believe me, for example) creates an anomaly — we wonder what this "it" could be?

The Grammar As A Resource For Thinking With

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 516):

In construing experience in this way, the grammar is providing a resource for thinking with. A strict taxonomy of separate process types would impose too much discontinuity, while a bipolar continuum would precisely be too much polarised. What the grammar offers is, rather, a flexible semantic space, continuous and elastic, which can be contorted and expanded without losing its topological order. Since it evolved with the human species, it is full of anomalies, contradictions and compromises; precisely the properties which make it possible for a child to learn, because only a system of this kind could accommodate the disorder that is inherent in experience itself.

Blogger Comments:

Strictly speaking, on the 'immanence' view of SFL, the distinction between order and disorder is made by semiotic systems; it is not prior to semiosis. 

Process Topology

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514-6):

This part of the grammar, then — the grammar of clauses —, constitutes a theory about the types of process that make up human experience. In English (which is probably fairly typical), the three principal categories that we are calling the material, mental and relational are rather clearly distinct on a number of formal grounds; the other three appear as mixed or intermediate types lying on the borderlines. 

(In fact the category of verbal process is more clearly distinct than the other two; and in view of its central place in the semantic system, we have treated it throughout the present study as a primary category.) 

The total picture is of a continuum; but not between two poles — rather something that we would represent in the form of a circle. Figure 13-2 shows this in diagrammatic form.

Existential Processes: Between The Relational And The Material

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514):

Finally, there is the phenomenon of existing — still construed, grammatically, as a type of process. What is said to exist may be an entity, something that persists through time, like there's a letter for you; but it may also, in many languages, be a happening, as in there was a fight. Here we have something that could alternatively be construed as a material process (people were fighting ), which suggests that "existential" processes are another intermediate type, something between the relational and the material.

Relational Processes: The Two Basic Relationships That Characterise Semiotic Systems

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514):

And these [verbal processes] in turn shade into something else, which the grammar again construes as phenomenally distinct relations of identity (including symbolic identity, like red means stop) and attribution. Expressions of this kind, which in English often have the verb be, hardly seem to fit the label "process" at all; but the grammar firmly represents them as such, so we call them "relational processes". They are modelled, in fact, on the two basic relationships that characterise semiotic systems: realisation (identifying processes such as this is ('realises') my sister), and instantiation (attributive processes such as she is ('instantiates') a student of law).

Behavioural Vs Verbal Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514):

Language itself, of course, is a form of human behaviour, but "languaging" constitutes, for the grammar, another distinct type of process, that of "verbal" (or, better, "symbolic") processes. An act of saying is not simply externalising inner events; it is actively transforming them, into an event of a different kind. It then resembles other semiotic events, many of which do not require a conscious information source (your diary says you have a denial appointment, the light says stop).

Construing Outer And Inner Experience As Material And Mental Processes (And 'Externalised Inner' As Behavioural)

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 513-4):

At the same time, while recognising a general category of "process" to construe our experience of change, the grammar also recognises that not all processes are alike. As human beings we become aware (and again we can see this in the actions of tiny infants) that phenomena fall into two distinct types: those happening outside ourselves, which we can see and hear, and those happening within our own consciousness — thoughts and feelings, and also the sensations of seeing and hearing, as distinct from whatever is seen and heard. The grammar construes this as a distinction between "material processes" and "mental processes". Mental processes are specifically attributed to conscious beings: humans, and some of our more intimate animal consorts. 

Languages construe this pattern in many different ways, and draw the line at different points; as always we are relating our account to the particulars of English. Here the grammar postulates a third type of process intermediate between these two: "behavioural" processes, in which inner events are externalised as bodily behaviour, like staring, thinking (in the sense of pondering) or crying.

The Ideational Function Of English Prepositional Phrases

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 513):

The classes of word may be distinguished by their internal form, or by the way they are able to enter into larger constructions (or both). Typically the most complex is the class of circumstantial elements, because these are themselves often formed as complex constructions; there may be simple words (a class of adverbs), but there may also be constructs like English prepositional phrases, the function of which is to bring in other potential participants but to bring them in indirectly, like the sea in across the sea. The theory behind this is that there are two ways in which an entity can be involved: either directly as a participant in the process, or indirectly in a circumstantial role, such as the place where the process happens. This indirect participant is often construed as participating in a kind of secondary process tangential to the main one (grammatically, a prepositional phrase is a reduced variant of a clause).

Construing Classes Of Phenomena Through Classes Of Word

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 513, 515):

The significant step that took place in human grammars in this context was, obviously, the evolution of common nouns — or rather, of common words, since verbs are also "common" in this sense: that is, words denoting classes rather than individuals. It is usually assumed that these evolved out of "proper" words, prototypically the names of individual persons; the ontogenetic evidence suggests that this is one source but not the only one, another source being rather in the interpersonal function. Be that as it may, construing processes in this way clearly depends on generalising whole classes of phenomena; the grammar sets up classes of process, of participant and of circumstance. There are various ways of doing this; one that is familiar in many languages is by means of a taxonomy of different kinds of word, as in Figure 13-1. The classes of word may be distinguished by their internal form, or by the way they are able to enter into larger constructions (or both). 

Construing Perceptual Meaning As Linguistic Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512-3):

Suppose we are standing on the shore, and there is a rapid movement across our line of vision. We construe this grammatically as

birds + are flying + across the sea

This is obviously not the only way such an experience could be "semanticised": it might be construed as a single unanalysed phenomenon, e.g. it's winging. Some processes are in fact construed in this way: in English, for example, meteorological processes such as it's raining. But in most instances the theory propounded by the grammar is that this is a composite phenomenon, an organic construction of functionally distinct parts: here, a process are flying, something participating in this process, namely birds, and a relevant circumstance across the sea. This allows for other things to fly across the sea, such as insects and aeroplanes; for birds to fly in other locations, such as over the trees, and to do other things than flying, such as singing or quarrelling. The meaning potential here is clearly far greater than if a different lexical item was used to construe every possible configuration.

Ideational Metafunction: Experiential

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512):

The basic component of all experience is change: when something changes from one state to another, it projects itself on to our consciousness. This may be something in the external environment; we can see this happening with small babies, who are first jerked into semiosis by dramatic perturbations such as a loud noise or a flashing light. The grammar construes this experience of change in the form of a process configuration: the fundamental element of grammar is a clause, and the clause presents the parameters within which processes may unfold.

The grammar does this by deconstructing the process into component parts. Typically, as in English and many, perhaps all, other languages, these are of three kinds: first the process itself, secondly certain phenomena construed as participants in the process, and thirdly, other phenomena that are associated with the process circumstantially.

Grammar Construes Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512):

In all these metafunctions, the language does not take over and reproduce some readymade semantic space. There is no such space until the grammar comes along to construe it.

The Textual Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512):

Textually, the grammar is the creating of information; it engenders discourse, the patterned forms of wording that constitute meaningful semiotic contexts. From one point of view, therefore, this "textual" metafunction has an enabling force, since it is this that allows the other two to operate at all. But at the same time it brings into being a world of its own, a world that is constituted semiotically. With the textual metafunction language not only construes and enacts our reality but also becomes part of the reality that it is construing and enacting.

The Interpersonal Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

Interpersonally, the grammar is not a theory but a way of doing; it is our construction of social relationships, both those that define society and our own place in it, and those that pertain to the immediate dialogic situation. This constitutes the "interpersonal" metafunction, whereby language constructs our social collective and, thereby, our personal being. The word "construct" is used to suggest a form of enactment — though something on which we inevitably build a theory, of ourself and the various "others" to whom we relate.

The Ideational Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

Ideationally, the grammar is a theory of human experience; it is our interpretation of all that goes on around us, and also inside ourselves. There are two parts to this: one the representation of the processes themselves, which we refer to as the "experiential"; the other the representation of the relations between one process and another, and it is this that we refer to as the "logical". The two together constitute the "ideational" metafunction, whereby language construes our experiential world. The word "construe" is used to suggest an intellectual construction — though one that, of course, we then use as a guide to action.

The Metafunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

We have stressed all along that a language is a system for creating meaning; and that its meaning potential has evolved around three motifs — what we refer to as the "metafunctions" of ideational, interpersonal and textual, with the ideational in turn comprising an experiential component and a logical component. These are the multiple aspects of the content plane — the grammar (in its usual sense of lexicogrammar) and the semantics. Since the powerhouse of language lies in the grammar, we shall refer to them here as aspects of the grammar; but it is important to insist that they could not be "in" the one without also being "in" the other. It makes no sense to ask whether the metafunctions are grammatical or semantic; the only possible answer would be "yes".

Physical, Biological, Social And Semiotic Systems As Different Stances Taken By The Observer

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 510):

Meanwhile what has become clear is that there is the (by now) familiar interplay between phenomenon and observer. We have talked of physical, biological, social and semiotic systems as being categories of phenomena — which in an important sense they are. But they may also be thought of as different stances taken by the observer; thus we find physical and biological systems being interpreted as semiotic systems, in a kind of intellectual game which turns out to reveal new aspects of physical and biological processes. It is obviously beyond our scope — and indeed beyond our capabilities — to pursue these matters here. But they add a whole new dimension to our grammatics, to the concept of a theory of grammar as a metatheory of human experience.

Blogger Comments:

See, for example, Towards A Linguistic Science Of Sciences.

The Problem With Thinking Of Language As Physical, Biological, Social And Semiotic

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 510):

But there is one problem with this intellectual strategy: that the code for systems of this fourth type has not yet been cracked. There are two aspects to this problem. One is that we do not yet fully understand the nature of a linguistic fact: this is the problem of instantiation. The other is that we do not yet fully understand the nature of the relationship that is the semiotic analogue of the "cause : effect" of classical physics: this is the problem of realisation. 

It is true that Saussure, and even more Hjelmslev, took important strides towards an understanding; but we are still arguing about what Saussure really meant (to us it seems that he had not clearly separated the two concepts of instantiation and realisation), and Hjelmslev has largely been ignored — Sydney Lamb (e.g., 1966a,b) is almost the only person who has tried to follow through his achievements. Probably it will be well into the next century before the picture comes to be clear.

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 Physical, Biological, Social And Semiotic Systems

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

It can be studied as a physical system, in acoustics and in the physical aspect of articulation (air pressure measurements and so on). It can be studied as a biological system, in the physiological aspect of articulation and in the neurophysiology of the brain. It can be studied as a social system, as the primary mode of human interaction. And of course it can be studied as a semiotic system, in the core areas of lexicogrammar, phonology and semantics. If linguistics is conceived of as a discipline — that is, as defined by its object of study (in this case, language) — then it must encompass within itself theories and methods of all four different kinds.

Meaning: Value That Is Construed Symbolically

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

Meaning can be thought of (and was thought of by Saussure) as just a kind of social value; but it is value in a significantly different sense — value that is construed symbolically. Meaning can only be construed symbolically, because it is intrinsically paradigmatic, as Saussure understood and built in to his own definition of valeur. Semiotic systems are social systems where value has been further transformed into meaning.

Semiotic Systems In The Linear Taxonomy Of Systems

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

A biological system is a physical system with the added component of "life"; it is a living physical system. In comparable terms, a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value" (which explains the need for a synoptic approach, since value is something that is manifested in forms of structure). A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of "meaning".

Blogger Comments:

Note that 'semiotic' here means 'social semiotic'. On this model, the somatic semiotic system of perception is a biological system 'with the added component of meaning'.

Shifting Perspectives For Understanding Different Systems

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

For understanding physical systems, the critical approach was that of measurement; the dominant theme was mathematics, and the perspective essentially a synoptic one. But this did not serve well for interpreting biological systems; these are better understood in terms of change, so the perspective had to be altered, to become dynamic, with evolution as the dominant theme. For social systems, however, the dynamic perspective by itself lacked explanatory power, and in the present century it was overtaken by another synoptic approach, the theme of structuralism. Our conception of the nature of social systems has been largely moulded in structuralist terms.

The Problematic Relationship Between System And Instance

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

What is problematic is the relationship between the system and the instance; or, to put it another way, what is the nature of a "fact" in these different realms of experience? A biological fact is different from a physical fact, and a social fact is different again; the relationship between that which can be observed, and the system-&-process lying behind what is observed, is significantly harder to establish when the system is a social system, because the phenomena involved are simultaneously of all three kinds.

System Complexity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

Physical systems are just physical systems. Biological systems, however, are not just biological systems; they are at once both biological and physical. Social systems are all three: social, biological and physical. This makes them increasingly difficult for us to comprehend. This is not the same as saying that social systems are more complex than biological ones, or biological than physical; there are too many different ways in which things can be complex, for any such observation to make much sense. But they are increasingly complex in this particular respect; and this means that it is increasingly difficult to recognise the essential nature of the phenomena concerned.

A Linear Taxonomy Of Types Of System-&-Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 507):

We are treating language as a semiotic system, and it may be helpful to locate this concept within the context of the history of ideas, albeit in a very sketchy fashion. As we conceive of it, the term "semiotic" is framed within a linear taxonomy of "physical — biological — social — semiotic"; and the term "system" is a shortened form of "system-&-process", there being no single word that encapsulates both the synoptic and the dynamic perspectives (we have referred to the term "climatic system" with the same observation on how it is to be understood).

The Semantic System: Polysystemicity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 506):

The system is polysystemic from the point of view of contextual diversification: given a particular context type or a set of related types, some parts of the overall semantic system will be deployed in a systematic way whereas others will remain inactive. 

For instance, if contexts where the goal is to instruct somebody in a procedure were the only source of evidence for the semantic system, we could safely ignore figures of sensing and saying and the logical relationship of projection. 

And yet in the general system, which is the overall meaning-making resource deployed across all the different types of context, these figures and sequences turn out to be essential both to the functioning of the semantic system and to our own understanding of its fundamental principles.

The Semantic System: Complementarities

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 505-6):

The system often embodies complementarities providing more than one way of construing similar types of experience — for example, construing perception either as inert sensing or as active behaviour, or construing phenomena of all kinds either congruently or metaphorically. 

If one is concerned with a restricted, designed semiotic system, then the appropriate strategy, when one is faced with more than one option in natural language, may be to select one canonical form; but if one's concern is with language as a whole, the only response that will hold up in the long term is to acknowledge the variation and explore its function.

Fawcett's Alternative Model

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 505):

Fawcett's alternative model for relational processes, with its particular features such as treating 'giving' and 'placing' as agentive possessives and locatives ('make ... have', 'make ... be at') rather than as material dispositives, has to be understood in its total explanatory context:  

(i) in relation to its repercussions within the transitivity system, both the trinocular perspective on transitivity itself 

(from above, as generalisations about meaning; 

from roundabout, its consequences for agnateness, delicacy and the move towards lexis; 

from below, as regularities in the realisation) 

and the overall topology of the content — transitivity in relation to the semantic construal of causality, agency, disposal, and so on;

(ii) in relation to Fawcett's architectural design, which differs from ours in having a single system-structure cycle for the two strata of semantics and lexicogrammar (his "syntax") and then adding a further level of description that is expressed in cognitive terms.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the punches that Halliday & Matthiessen are pulling here are that Fawcett's alternative model has theoretical consequences that reduce its explanatory value. For a 'gloves off' examination of Fawcett's alternative model, see The Cardiff Grammar.

Choosing Between Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504-5):

The point to be brought out here is that there is no unique 'correct description' of a semiotic system, or of any phenomena that have to do with meaning. Stratal relations are not relations of cause & effect, and a stratified system cannot be reduced to constructions of content-expression pairs.

This is not to say, of course, when a choice is made among a set of alternative descriptions for representing features in grammar that are inherently indeterminate, like the types of process in a transitivity system, that the choice is insignificant, or merely random. On the contrary: it resonates throughout the grammatics as a whole (or should do, if the description has any claim to be comprehensive). Again there is the analogy between the grammatics and the grammar: just as no region of the grammar is isolated from the rest, so every descriptive statement has consequences throughout the description.

Fawcett's Model Of Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

And even within our own configurational model of English there is often considerable 'play'. A good example of this is Fawcett (1987). … 

Fawcett incorporates into the "relational: possessive" category, processes of giving and acquiring; reduces the circumstantial to locational processes only; and includes within these, processes of going and sending (for discussion of this area, see Davidse, 1996b). As is to be expected, this alternative analysis embodies certain generalisations that are not made in our account of figures, and ignores certain others which are. 

(His abandonment of the distinction between attributive and identifying seems harder to motivate, since this cannot in fact be explained as a textual (thematic) system in the way that Fawcett proposes; cf. Davidse, 1996a.)

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this is a tactful identification of some of the inconsistencies in Fawcett' model.

Martin's Interpretation Of Nuclear Transitivity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

However, even if we adopt this approach, this still does not impose a single determinate form on the description. As we have already noted, Martin, in his systemic treatment of processes in Tagalog (1996a), offers a different interpretation of nuclear transitivity: he defines it in terms of orientation, rather than configuration, and hence operates with a significantly different concept of participant function.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this is a tactful identification of the nature of Martin's misunderstanding of SFL transitivity.

The Trinocular Perspective On Process Topology

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503-4):

In our treatment of figures in the ideation base, we stressed the fluidity of the boundaries among the various types of figure: doing-&-happening, sensing, saying, being-&-having. We construe these in the grammar as a system of process types: at primary delicacy, material, mental, verbal, relational. These are sections on a continuum — or, better, regions in an n-dimensional semantic space; but they are not demarcated by any uniquely self-selecting set of criteria. 

A stratified semiotic defines three perspectives, which (following the most familiar metaphor) we refer to as 'from above', 'from roundabout', and 'from below': 

looking at a given stratum from above means treating it as the expression of some content, 

looking at it from below means treating it as the content of some expression, while

looking at it from roundabout means treating it in the context of (i.e. in relation to other features of) its own stratum.

Adopting this trinocular perspective we have identified the various process types in terms of their nuclear transitivity; this seems to us the most operationally useful approach, since it takes account of 

what they mean, 

how they are expressed, and

what their systemic potential is

— without privileging any one perspective at the expense of the other two.

The Functionality Of The Indeterminacy Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503):

We have drawn attention at various points to the overall indeterminacy of language, something that we see as a necessary condition of its ability to function in the construal of experience. Our experience of the 'goings-on' in and around ourselves is so rich and many-faceted that no semiotic system that attempted to impose on it a rule-bound, determinate frame of reference would be 'functional' as a resource for survival.

We have tried to show such indeterminacy as a positive feature, and build it into our suggested meta-construal — not as some wayward or exceptional extravagance but as an unmarked state of affairs that is recognised to be the norm. To this extent, our grammatics becomes itself a metaphor for the grammar — that is, to the extent that we are able to enact this indeterminacy in our own representations.

A Two-Stratal Approach To Transitivity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503):

… we treat transitivity both within semantics (the paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation of figures) and within lexicogrammar (the grammar of transitivity): it is a system construed within the content plane of language — both in the ideational component in the lexicogrammar and in the ideation base. This two-stratal approach to transitivity makes it possible to model the resource of grammatical metaphor and is fundamental to work on multilingual systems for generating text.