It would be good to have a conversation about approaches to verticality as SFL develops as a discipline. … Another question is the nature of verticality in SFL. Is it one of Basil’s hierarchical knowledge structures, expanding in generality and abstraction to integrate new knowledge, or is it among Peter Wignell’s ‘warring triangles’ of the social sciences?BB’s essay Vertical and horizontal discourse remains stunningly prescient...‘Opposition between theories in hierarchical knowledge structures is played out in attempts to refute positions where possible, or to incorporate them in more general propositions. At some point, sometimes later than sooner, because of special investments, a choice is possible provided the issue can be settled by empirical procedures....in the case of a horizontal knowledge structure... A new language offers the possibility of a fresh perspective, a new set of questions, a new set of connections, and an apparently new problematic, and most importantly, a new set of speakers... This new language can then be used to challenge the hegemony and legitimacy of more senior speakers.’
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To be clear, SFL Theory is not a social science; it is a science of social semiotic systems. It is a science in the sense of being wholly systematically organised, with relations within the theory unambiguously specified.
Because of this, valid theorising in SFL is not a matter of gang warfare ('warring triangles'). The architecture of SFL theory provides the means of assessing the validity of any hypothesis proposed about the structure of the theory.
