… SFL’s position is that a notion of ‘mind’ outside of meaning is misleading.Solving the linguistic puzzle is not much helped by the short-hand formula ‘sounding realizes wording realizes meaning’, which foregrounds metaredundancy but elides the axial dimension of each stratum, that is central to SFL theory, along with rank. In fact, features in systems at each stratum are meaningful in relation to each other, realized axially by structures. So within lexicogrammar, structures of wordings already realize meanings of wordings (i.e. features in LG systems). Within discourse semantics, features in DS systems are realized by DS structures. The same holds for structures of soundings at the rank of tone group, but less obviously at ranks of foot and syllable.
Lemke’s point about metaredundancy was that these axial relations at each stratum are not isolated from each other, but constitute ‘patterns of patterns of patterns’ that conspire to realize unfolding meanings as text.
Hjelmslev then allows us then to treat ‘context’ as connotative semiotic systems realized by denotative systems of language and other modalities. Not only is there no need for ‘mind’, but neither for ‘context’ outside of meaning.
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[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, the notion of 'mind' becomes unnecessary when biological, social and semiotic systems are brought into close relation. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 603):These suggest that the concept of 'mind' should be brought into close relation with other phenomena — biological, social, or semiotic. … But once this has been done, the mind itself tends to disappear, it is no longer necessary as a construct sui generis. Instead of experience being construed by the mind, in the form of knowledge, we can say that experience is construed by the grammar; to 'know' something is to have transformed some portion of experience into meaning. To adopt this perspective is to theorise "cognitive processes" in terms of semiotic, social and biological systems; and thus to see them as a natural concomitant of the processes of evolution.
[2] To be clear, the short-hand formula 'sounding realises wording realises meaning' — which Kellogg did not use — does not foreground metaredundancy, because it ignores metaredundancy. As Halliday explains, metaredundancy is a 'redundancy of redundancies', which can be represented by bracketing: sounding realises (the realisation of meaning in wording).
[3] To be clear, Kellogg's "linguistic puzzle" is that posed by Halliday's application of metaredundancy to the realisation relation between strata. That is why metaredundancy is rightly foregrounded by Kellogg, and why Rose's inclusion of axis and rank is irrelevant.
[4] This is a serious misunderstanding of SFL theory. The relations of features to each other in systems are paradigmatic, and paradigmatic relations are not realised axially by syntagmatic structures. For example, within lexicogrammar, the disjunctive relation of the features [mental] and [existential] in the system of PROCESS TYPE is not realised by the structure of a clause.
[5] For some of the theoretical inconsistencies in the modelling of discourse semantic structures, see:
[6] To be clear, the claim here is that the structures of soundings realise the meanings of soundings. This is a serious misunderstanding on two counts. Firstly, phonological structures (e.g. Pretonic^Tonic) do not realise relations between features in phonological systems (e.g. between [tone2] and [tone4]); see [4] above.
Secondly, the meanings of soundings are located on the content plane, not on the expression plane, where phonological systems are located. This relates to Martin's misunderstanding of stratification, in which, from a statement of semogenesis 'all strata make meaning' he falsely concludes that all strata are meaning — including phonology!
[7] To be clear, the discussion was not concerned with "Lemke's point about metaredundancy" but with Halliday's application of Lemke's metaredundancy to the realisation relation between strata, to which the relation between axes is irrelevant.
More importantly, the view that Rose falsely attributes to Lemke is theoretical nonsense. For example, Rose claims that the relation between system and structure, on all strata, together "conspire to realise" text during logogenesis.
To translate this into coherent SFL Theory: the instantiation of the system during logogenesis involves the selection of features and the activation of realisation statements that specify structures. The different strata on which this occurs are different levels of symbolic abstraction; different angles on the process of instantiation.
Most importantly, Rose follows Martin in confusing metaredundancy with the cline of instantiation. In SFL Theory, 'pattern' refers to a pattern of instantiation in the logogenesis of a text; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 593ff). A pattern of such patterns is what some texts may have in common, so it represents a move up the cline of instantiation from text to text type.
Metaredundancy, on the other hand, is not a patterns of patterns. It is, for example, the realisation of a semantic pattern by the realisation of lexicogrammatical pattern in a phonological pattern.
[8] To be clear, here Rose again repeats Martin's misunderstanding of Hjelmslev's notion of a connotative semiotic system. For Hjelmslev, a connotative semiotic is one that has a denotative semiotic system as its expression plane. Applied to the stratificational hierarchy of SFL Theory, a connotative semiotic consists of context with language as its expression plane. Martin misconstrues a connotative semiotic as just its content plane, his context, and compounds the error by locating varieties of a denotative semiotic, register and genre, in his connotative semiotic.
[9] To be clear, these are non-sequiturs, since neither claim has been supported by argument in the preceding text. Moreover, since 'context' is meaning construed of experience, the notion of context being outside meaning is, in any case, nonsensical.
However, it is likely that Rose meant that there is no need for a material order context, given that he follows Martin in miscontruing context as varieties of language, genre and register, which they model as semiotic but not language. The problem here, though, is that it removes the possibility of exophoric reference to the material order in both cohesive REFERENCE (Halliday & Hasan 1976) and Martin's rebranding of it as discourse semantic IDENTIFICATION. For example, the exophoric reference of this laptop computer is not to either register or genre, but to the material order in which this post is being typed.
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It can be seen from the above that it takes an enormous amount of work to demonstrate that Rose does not understand SFL Theory. His ability to pack so many misunderstandings into so few words still astonishes me.
