David Rose Misunderstanding Halliday's Distinction Between Value And Meaning

David Rose wrote to Kieran McGillicuddy on sys-func on 30 May 2022 at 17:34:

I too have wondered about this for 30 odd years since MAKH proposed this thumbnail phylogenesis of complexity.

But chatting with a colleague recently about MAKH’s Marxism it hit me that his social value/semiotic meaning contrast is just good traditional Marxist theory, contrasting material base and superstructure. It also helps to explain why ‘situation’ is contrasted with ‘text’ in his model from 1961 onwards.

Perhaps ironically, Marx’s whole theory of value is (I reckon) a semiotic theory of social relations, that demolishes the exploiters’ biological one.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here Rose is referring to Halliday's linear taxonomy of systems. 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"…

[2] To be clear, Halliday's "social value/semiotic meaning contrast" is not the Marxian contrast between material base and superstructure. Halliday's distinction is between value (social systems) and symbolic value (semiotic systems). Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

… a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value"… . A [social] semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of "meaning". 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.

Halliday's example of a social system organised by the exchange of value, but not symbolic value, is a eusocial insect colony.

In stark contrast, in Marxian theory, material base refers to the production forces, or the materials and resources, that generate the goods (human) society needs, and superstructure describes all other aspects of (human) society.

[4] To be clear, in Halliday (1961), 'text' means observed language events, whereas 'situation' means the nonlinguistic context in which language operates. Halliday (2002 [1961]: 38-9):

The data to be accounted for are observed language events, observed as spoken or as codified in writing, any corpus of which, when used as material for linguistic description, is a “text”.

…non-linguistic features of the situations in which language operates…

Importantly, Halliday's distinction between text and situation is not explained by the Marxian distinction between material base and superstructure. It is merely the distinction between the linguistic and the non-linguistic: between an instance of language (text) and an instance of culture (situation).

[5] To be clear, semiotic and biological explanations of (human) social relations are complementary perspectives, neither of which, therefore, can "demolish" the other. On the other hand, the unique identification of a biological approach with "exploiters" requires clarification, evidence and supporting argument.