David Rose Misrepresenting 'Meaning, Wording, Sounding' As An "Iconising Tricolon"

David Rose wrote to sys-func and sysfling on 6/8/22 at 13:56:

Re the tricolon ‘meaning, wording, sounding’

In the immortal words of Sesame St...

One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn't belong,

Can you tell which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?

‘Commonsensical’ because it replaces the technicality of semantics/lexicogrammar/phonology, with a rhetorical device designed to appeal to those not (yet) trained in SFL (which is fine).

The logical connexion between units of a tricolon is internal similarity, intensified by the repetition. Its rhetorical function is to iconise the class of items construed by the tricolon, ‘charging’ it interpersonally, while ‘discharging’ it ideationally. In this instance it iconises the stratal hierarchy, while eliding the categorical difference between wording/sounding as ‘strata of linguistic form’ and semantics as a stratum of ‘meaning’.

That is why I was struck by MAKH’s 1972 explanation that the latter simply followed linguistic tradition, rather than his own theoretical position of ‘language as a whole’ (which he adds here in brackets)...

The term «meaning» has traditionally been restricted to the input end of the language system: the «content plane», in Hjelmslev's terms, and more specifically to the relations of the semantic interface, Hjelmslev's «content substance». We will therefore use «meaning potential» just to refer to the semantic options (although we would regard it as an adequate designation for language as a whole).

More technically, it conflates the metaredundant lexicogrammar/phonology relation of patterns-of-patterns of axial system/structure cycles, with the direct realisation between features proposed in the message/clause semantic model (if that makes sense:).

Blogger Comments:

[1] The term for a division into three categories is a 'trichotomy'. Rose has chosen the inappropriate word 'tricolon' as a rhetorical device; see further below.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The use of 'meaning, wording, sounding' for 'semantics lexicogrammar phonology' is not rhetorical. These three are used to clarify technical theoretical terms, not to persuade or appeal to readers.

[3] This misrepresents both what constitutes a tricolon and its rhetorical function. To be clear:

Tricolon is a rhetorical term that consists of three parallel clauses, phrases, or words, which happen to come in quick succession without any interruption. The origin of this rhetorical device is traced to the Greek word tricolon, meaning “section of a sentence.” These three parallel words, phrases, or clauses have almost the same length, though this condition is not strictly followed.

It also refers to a collection of three lines, paragraphs, chapters, or stanzas. For instance, William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar uses it in his famous speech in ascending order as, “Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, [and] I conquered.“) The purpose of tricolon is to give a greater sense of roundness, completeness, and wholeness, whereas the third part brings in a surprising effect in the sentence.

[4] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The terms 'meaning, wording, sounding' merely relabel 'semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology' in less technical language. There is no "iconisation".

[5] This is misleading, because it is untrue. On the one hand, these less technical terms make the exact same categorical distinctions as their more technical counterparts. On the other hand, in SFL Theory, wording/lexicogrammar is form interpreted in terms of the meaning it realises. To be clear, Rose himself follows Martin in misconstruing all strata as linguistic meaning, even those of phonology and context.

[6] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The quote from Halliday (1972) merely specifies how the term 'meaning potential' will be used in the paper, relative to traditional usages of 'meaning' (interpreted in terms of Hjelmslev's model).

[7] To be clear, to the extent that this makes any sense, it is nonsense. Firstly, it misunderstands 'metaredundancy'. As the term implies, 'metaredundancy' is a redundancy on a redundancy. Applied to the stratification hierarchy, it means that semantics is redundant on the redundancy of lexicogrammar and phonology, or alternatively, that the redundancy of semantics and lexicogrammar is redundant on phonology. Applying the term to just two strata, lexicogrammar and phonology, as Rose does, is therefore nonsensical.

Secondly, the 'direct realisation between features proposed in the message/clause semantic model' is the specification of how semantic features in Hasan (1983) are realised in lexicogrammar, both systemically and structurally: 

Rose's claim, then, is the terms 'meaning, wording, sounding' conflate a lexicogrammar-phonology relation, misunderstood as metaredundant, with a semantics-lexicogrammar relation. This again, therefore, is nonsensical.