David Rose On Hjelmslev's Connotative And Denotative Semiotics

David Rose wrote to sys-func on 21 March 2022 at 1:48 pm:

The beauty of Hjelmslev’s interpretation is that ‘context’ can be described as a connotative semiotic (i.e. as systems of meanings), using the theoretical tools developed in SFL for describing language. This has enabled the description of field, tenor and mode as semiotic systems, whose options are configured (more abstractly) by selections in genre systems, and are realised by semiotic systems of language and other modalities. In Hjelmslev’s model the latter are denotative semiotics, as their expression planes are not separate semiotics (e.g. phonology in language). In contrast, connotative semiotics (e.g. genre and register) have other semiotics as their expression plane (e.g. language, image etc).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, what Hjelmslev (1969 [1943]: 114) actually says is:

In the last section, despite a considerable broadening of the perspective, we have still acted as if the unique object of linguistic theory were the denotative semiotic, by which we mean a semiotic none of whose planes is a semiotic. It still remains, through a final broadening of our horizon, to indicate that there are also semiotics whose expression plane is a semiotic — and semiotics whose content plane is a semiotic. The former we shall call connotative semiotics, the latter metasemiotics.

[2] This is misleading, because it is not true. As the quote above makes plain, it is not just context that constitutes a connotative semiotic, but both context (content plane) and language (expression plane).

[3] To be clear, this is Martin's model of context, which mistakes varieties of a denotative semiotic (register and genre) for connotative semiotics (misunderstood as context only).

[4] This misunderstands Hjelmslev's notion of a denotative semiotic. As the quote above makes plain, a denotative semiotic is a semiotic where neither the content nor expression plane is itself a semiotic (i.e. stratified into content and expression).

[5] To be clear, this confuses variety with stratification. Genre and register are varieties of language, and as such, are at the same level of symbolic abstraction as language, not a higher level that is realised by language. Because both genre and register are at the same symbolic level as language, neither conforms to Hjelmslev's notion of the content plane of a connotative semiotic.

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Summary of Rose's misunderstandings of Hjelmslev: