I remember when I read that passage [Halliday (1985: xvii-xix) on the natural relation between meaning and wording] way back in the day I thought it made perfect sense, but more recently I’ve come to wonder what exactly “natural” implies. In a multilingual context, it must presumably mean “ ‘natural’ as defined within each language”, while in a multimodal context it would refer to the intersection of the range of different semiotic systems involved, or some common system lying behind all of them (this latter possibility I personally would be rather resistant to because I’m against semiotic universalism as I am all other kinds).
So “natural” presumably can’t mean “given by nature”, because in that case the semantics of all languages would be the same; but if this “naturalness” is “conventional”, to what degree? Or to put it another way, how do the many commonalities across the material and social worlds of human communities get “translated” or “semioticised” into individual human languages. And if all human communication is multimodal, and all semiotic systems are “natural” in their different ways, how do these different “natures” get to be coordinated or mutually-enforcing in communicative contexts?
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, by 'natural' Halliday means a non-arbitrary relation between lexicogrammatical form and the meaning it realises. Halliday (1985: xvii, xviii, xix):
The relation between the meaning and the wording is not, however, an arbitrary one: the form of the grammar relates naturally to the meanings that are being encoded. A functional grammar is designed to bring this out; it is a study of wording, but one that interprets the wording by reference to what it means. …
What this means is that both the general kinds of grammatical pattern that have evolved in language, and the specific manifestations of each kind, bear a natural relation to the meanings they have evolved to express. … the distinction into word classes of verb and noun reflects the analysis of experience into goings-on, expressed as verbs, and participants in the goings-on, expressed as nouns; and so on. …
Since the relation of grammar to semantics is in this sense natural, not arbitrary …
[2] To be clear, according to Halliday, the non-arbitrary relation between meaning and wording evolved naturally in language; 'natural' is thus not defined differently for different languages.
[3] To be clear, the natural relation between meaning and wording only concerns language, because language is the only semiotic system with a content plane stratified into meaning and wording. That is, language is the only semiotic system that affords the verbal projection of locutions (wordings).
[4] To be clear, according to Halliday, language — evolved and developed from protolanguage — is the social semiotic system that makes other such social semiotic systems possible; see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602-6).
[5] To be clear, the natural relation between semantics and lexicogrammatical form does not entail that the semantics of all languages would be the same, since it is the relation that is shared by languages, not (necessarily) the semantics.
[6] To be clear, in this context, 'natural' (non-arbitrary) is the opposite of 'conventional' (arbitrary).
[7] To be clear, on the one hand, this topic, the construal of experience as meaning, is a different issue from the foregoing discussion on the natural relation between meaning and wording. On the other hand, it assumes that experience is already categorised (as "commonalities across the material and social worlds of human communities") before being construed as meaning by language. SFL Theory assumes the opposite: that experience only becomes meaning when construed as such by semiotic systems. The former is known as the transcendent view of meaning, the latter is known as the immanent view of meaning. See Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 416, 426, 439, 441, 603, 605).
[8] To be clear, in this context, it is not semiotic systems that are "natural", but the relation between meaning and wording in the only semiotic system with wording: language.
[9] As can be seen from the foregoing, this question is distinct from what Halliday means by a natural relation between meaning and wording. For Halliday (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 602), it is context that makes the co-ordination of language with parallel social semiotic systems possible.
