We've often had this debate before, and presumably if music has no "grammar" it has no "semantics" either. I would agree, in the sense that those two terms are traditionally applied to language and so come with all sorts of associations and presuppositions. …
But as a semiotic system - by definition (IMFFHO) - must have the two mutually defining strata of what in general terms I like to call interpretation and expression: specifically for music, what I call "phonotactics" and "e/motion" - see my 2021 paper in Language, Context, Text, then it presumably has a "grammar" of sorts, in the sense of distinctive patterns with significant interpretations. In a separate step, In relation to music, I also depart from orthodoxy in characterising the expression stratum of phonotactics as purely textural (= textual), with the other metafunctions coming in only at the stratum of e/motion, whether interactional (= interpersonal) or figurative (= ideational) (I haven't found the need to distinguish between experiential and logical). …Halliday "privileging" language in this way for me invokes the spectre of what, following Horst Ruthrof, I call "linguistic imperialism"; and the fact that Social Semiotics (again IMFFHO) is shot through with linguistic imperialism for me explains why Ruqaiya for one didn't "believe in" multimodality, in the sense of a model of same that wasn't simply parasitic on the theory of language.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, here McDonald is commenting on Halliday's view (2002[1996]: 388-9) that language is the only semiotic system that has a grammar, in his sense of the term.
[2] This misunderstands Halliday. On Halliday's model, if music is a social semiotic system, then it has content and expression, but its content is not stratified into semantics and lexicogrammar. For Cléirigh, on the other hand, in terms of Halliday's linear taxonomy of complex systems, music is social, not semiotic. That is, it carries value, but not symbolic value. In terms of Edelman's neuroscientific theory, music selects perceptual categorisations of positive or negative value, and such value systems play an important rôle in the experience of emotions.
[3] Again, this misunderstands Halliday. For Halliday, the "two mutually defining strata" are the content and expression planes, following Hjelmslev. This is a prerequisite of semiotic systems, but it does not entail that content is stratified to include a grammar, in Halliday's sense, as 'an entirely abstract semiotic construct that emerges between the content and the expression levels of the original, sign-based primary semiotic system' (ibid.).
[4] To be clear, the problem with reconstruing 'content' as 'interpretation' is that the latter is the perspective of the listener only.
[5] This misunderstands the metafunctions. The metafunctions are types of meanings, and so are a dimension of the content plane only. For example, phonological systems are not metafunctional; they realise metafunctional meanings of the content plane.
[6] As demonstrated above, McDonald's accusation of "linguistic imperialism" is entirely unwarranted, since derives only from his own misunderstandings of Halliday's theorising.
