David Kellogg On Identifying Clauses

David Kellogg wrote to sys-func on 23 Dec 2023,  at 12:24:

I am not sure if "typical" structures are the object of interest here: after all we are talking about verbal art. But even in ordinary life, I'm quite wary of making statements about "canonical" order without any corpus evidence.

For example, what about questions? Consider:

a) "What is your name?"

b) "What, after all, are names?"

You can see that in a) the order is Token Value, but the Token doesn't map onto the Subject but rather onto the Complement.

In b), which is surely much less common in life if more typical of verbal art, the order is Value-Token and the Subject does map onto the Token…

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is not true. Token does map onto Subject, and Value onto Complement. Cf. What serves as your name? The information that the clause demands is the decoding of a Token by reference to a Value.

[2] To be clear, the sequence is Value^Token because the sequence is Complement^Subject. The information that the clause demands is the encoding of a Value by reference to a Token.

. 

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 180):

In other words, ‘identifying’ clauses select for voice; they have an ‘operative’ and a ‘receptive’ variant. The difference is entirely systematic, once we recognise the structure of Token and Value: the ‘operative’ voice is the one in which the Subject is also the Token (just as, in a ‘material’ clause, the ‘operative’ is the variant in which the Subject is also the Actor. The most important difference is that the typical verb of the ‘identifying’ clauses, namely be, has no ‘passive’ form; so clauses like the villain is me and I am the ugly one do not look like ‘receptive’ clauses. But they are. This appears clearly when we substitute a different verb, one which has a ‘passive’ form, as in the villain is played by me.

David Kellogg On "Bottom-Up" Realisation

After ChRIS CLÉiRIGh wrote to sys-func on 21 December 2023 at 10:56:

The reason why Halliday would not even have meant

'wording-realized-as-meanings' or

'sounding-realized-as-wording'

is that both are self-contradictions. These are agnate with:

meaning realises wording

wording realises sounding

which are identifying clauses: Token^Process^Value.

In the first clause, the higher level of symbolic abstraction (meaning) is misconstrued as the lower level of symbolic abstraction (Token), and the lower level of symbolic abstraction (wording) is misconstrued as the higher level of symbolic abstraction (Value).

Likewise, in the second clause, the higher level of symbolic abstraction (wording) is misconstrued as the lower level of symbolic abstraction (Token), and the lower level of symbolic abstraction (sounding) is misconstrued as the higher level of symbolic abstraction (Value).

This is 'theory turned back on itself'.

 

David Kellogg replied on sys-func on 22 December 2023 at 8:55:

Chris--yes, theory turned back on itself indeed! But theory turned back on itself often produces category errors, like when you drive by a field and instead of seeing two cows you say that there are a bull, a cow, and a bovine couple.

When you say that "wording-realises-meaning" is agnate with the clause "meaning realizes wording", you can ignore the hyphen and make the clause irreversible, so that wording realizes meaning but meaning does not realize wording.

That makes it impossible for me to pursue my argument on verbal art, because my argument does depend on the relationship being reversible, and the 'bottom up" realization being dominant in and typical of literature.

But ignoring the hyphen and introducing "Token-Relational Process-Value" also means that your model is no longer neutral between speaking and hearing, as Halliday's is (Halliday remarks on the difficulty and necessity of making it so in the intro to the IFG).

Worse, you seem to be confusing two dimensions of SFL (stratification and metafunction) which are typically (and rightly) distinct--at least as distinct as the dimensions of instantiation and stratification confused in the Martin model.

As I said, I was writing about the theory--not about the way it was worded. That's why I used my own words and said "Halliday pointed out that" instead of "Halliday said". And Halliday does indeed say, in many places, that realization works both ways. I think, actually, that he chose the word "realization" for precisely this reason--it can mean both "to make real" and "to become aware" in English, although of course neither of these folk meanings captures the distinction that Halliday is really making.

This is one of many places where Halliday's terminology differs from that of Hasan--Hasan prefers "actualization" [activation] to talk about bottom up realization. For me, "realization" will do nicely.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Kellogg presents no evidence that 'theory turned back on itself often produces category errors' or that there is a category error in this case. The example of a category error he presents is not a case of theory turned back on itself and does not relate to this post.

To explain, just as linguistic theory is 'language turned back on itself' is using language to model language, 'theory turned back on itself' is using linguistic theory to model linguistic theory. In this case, it was using identifying clauses to model interstratal realisation.

[2] This misunderstands Cléirigh's post. What Cléirigh said was that Kellogg's 'wordings-realised-as-meanings' is agnate with 'meaning realises wording'. Kellogg's 'wordings-realised-as-meanings' is also agnate with 'Gielgud-played-by-Prospero'. The difference here is only in the subtype of identifying: 'realise' is 'symbol', whereas 'play' is 'role' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 269).

[3] This misunderstands identifying clauses. All identifying clauses are reversible. The reverse of wording realises meaning is meaning is realised by wording. In the first, the Token is Subject; in the second, Value is Subject. Moreover it is true that meaning does not realise wording, because this misconstrues Value (meaning) as Token and Token as Value (wording).

[4] To be clear, if an argument depends on 'bottom up' realisation, then the argument is invalidated by the self-contradiction that it construes. The notion of a higher stratum realising a lower stratum misconstrues the higher level of symbolic abstraction, meaning, as the lower level (Token), and the lower level of symbolic abstraction, wording, as the higher level (Value).

What is reversible is not the direction of realisation (swapping Token and Value) but the direction of coding (swapping Identified and Identifier). That is, the direction is encoding in the case of Token/Identifier and Value/Identified, and decoding in the case of Token/Identified and Value/Identifier. That is, 'wording realises meaning' can either encode meaning (Identified) by reference to wording (Identifier), or decode wording (Identified) by reference to meaning (Identifier).

[5] To be clear, this bare assertion — the logical fallacy ipse dixit — is misleading because it is untrue. Token-Process-Value simply analyses the interstatal relation 'wording realises meaning'. What could be said to differ for speaker and hearer is not the direction of realisation, but the direction of coding. For a speaker, meaning (Value) is encoded by reference to wording (Token), whereas for a hearer, wording (Token) is decoded by reference to meaning (Value). In both cases, wording is Token and meaning is Value.

[6] This is misleading because it is untrue. Cléirigh's post turned theory (identifying relations) back on itself (stratification). The former is a reconstrual of the latter. There is no confusion, because each construal is at a different level of abstraction.

[7] This is misleading. Cléirigh's post was not about Halliday's wording, but about his meaning:

The reason why Halliday would not even have meant…

Moreover, the advantage of quoting a source, instead of reporting it, is that the reader can judge whether or not the writer has understood the source.

[8] This is misleading because it misrepresents Halliday. For Halliday, realisation "works both ways" in the sense that the identifying process "works both ways". Wording realises meaning, and meaning is realised by wording; and in terms of coding, wording can serve to identify meaning, and meaning can serve to identify wording.

[9] To be clear, Halliday chose the word 'realisation' because 'realise' is an intensive identifying process of the type 'symbol' (Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 269), which is the relation between levels of symbolic abstraction, which is the relation between strata.

[10] This misleading because it is untrue. Hasan uses 'activation' for "top-down" realisation. Hasan (1995: 164):

But at the same time, the notion of realisation must include the relation of activation especially where the higher strata are concerned. Choices at the stratum of context activate choices at the stratum of semantics, which in their turn activate choices from the systems at the stratum of lexicogrammar.

Postscript: 

Unsurprisingly, Martin is one source of the self-contradiction of upside-down realisation. Martin (1992: 505):

The common ground between the two models lies in the correlation proposed between schematic structure and field, mode and tenor options; for both Martin and Hasan staging redounds with social context. Keeping in mind that realisation is not theoretically directional in systemic models, there is nothing substantive in the fact that whereas for Hasan, choices in field, mode and tenor are realised by schematic structure, for Martin schematic structure is realised through these same components of register.

David Kellogg On Viewers Of Cave Paintings Not Requiring Language

David Kellogg wrote to sys-func on 5 Dec 2023, at 00:17:

Implicit in Halliday's last two sentences is either:

a) Prelinguistic infants are not engaged in human semiosis, or.

b) Language exists from birth.

It seems to me that both of these are clearly false.

Instead of Mondrian, consider the attached cave painting. Imagine that the floor of the cave preserves the footprints of the artists who made this mural.

1. The involuntary meaning of the footprints of the artists who made the mural. This seems no different from the meaning that deer tracks convey to a non-human predator. 

2. The intentional meaning of the picture of the herdsmen (hunters?) recording their labor. This seems very different, as it invites (because its intention is to allow) the viewer to "reverse engineer" the story, for amusement or profit. 

3. The strategically placed hand print done in red ochre. This too seems different again: although it resembles 1) in form and 2) in intension, it probably signals authorship and in that sense has a textual as well as an interpersonal function.

None of these seem to me to require the Hallidayan assumption that the viewer possesses language. All of them merely require the Vygotskyan assumption that the object (or "objective") can be inferred from the remains of the object-oriented action.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the last two sentences in the quote (Halliday 2003: 4) were:

All that needs to be said in the present context is that other human semiotics are dependent on the premise that their users also have language. Language is a prerequisite; but there is no need to insist that language can mean it all.

[2] To be clear, neither of these propositions are implicit in the quote, since Halliday's 'present context' is a discussion of human 'post-infancy' semiotic systems.

[3] This is true, as demonstrated by Halliday's extensive work on human protolanguage.

[4] To be clear, the observation of deer tracks by a non-human predator is, according to Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, simply perceptual categorisation on value. No linguistic meaning is involved. The observation of footprints by humans is the construal of experience as the first-order meaning of language.

[5] To be clear, according to comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, cave paintings are expressions of mythic symbolism, and mythic symbolism is the use of (lexical) metaphor to adapt consciousness to its physical and social environments, which requires that the participants had language — as does the fact that the painting is, at most, only about 13,000 years old.

[6] To be clear, the cave painting is to be found in The Cave Of Hands, in Argentina, and since, according to comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, such sites were used for male initiation rites in hunter-gatherer societies, the great number of hand images in this cave might be taken to suggest that they identify the initiates in those rituals. Again, this demonstrates that the participants had language.

[7] As the above demonstrates, this is the exact opposite of what is true. All three require that the human participants had language, and the dating of the cave art provides corroborating evidence.

Ed McDonald On What SFL Should Be Working Towards

Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 27 Nov 2023, at 10:05:

So if I think we always need to look outside language in order to understand language … equally I think we need to look outside SFL in order to understand what we are doing within SFL. 

The days of the grand all-encompassing theory, the Theory of Everything which I note the physicists are still struggling towards, for me are well over, even if you put aside the historical accident that it was a man deeply UNinterested in language as she languages, i.e. Old Noam, who was responsible for the best known of such theories in our current academic ecology. 

How can one theory be social, cognitive, pure, applied, etc etc all at the same time? It seems to me that it would be far more helpful — not to mention more feasible — for (at least) two complementary theories that start out from completely different premises to somehow manage to meet in the middle, and that this is what those of us working within SFL should be working towards creating a space for, a space that needs to be both practical and intellectual, both ideational and interpersonal. …

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, on the assumption of 'immanence', which informs SFL, there can be no final theory, because there is no meaning beyond semiotic systems that theories can finally equal. Instead, theories are evolving semiotic systems, and the open-ended process of evolution entails that there is no final state of such a system.

[2] To be clear, a theory of everything in physics would unify the General Theory of Relativity (modelling gravity) with Quantum Theory (modelling the other three forces). See Quantum Gravity Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics.

[3] To be clear, these are not components of an 'all-encompassing' theory. 'Social' and 'cognitive' are different priorities in theorising, though not mutually exclusive, whereas 'pure' and 'applied' is the distinction between theorising and applying a theory to practical purposes.

[4] To be clear, after dismissing the pursuit of a theory of everything, as exemplified by physicists, here McDonald advocates that SFL should do precisely the sort of thing that physicists are trying to do: make two complementary theories, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, meet in the middle in a theory of quantum gravity.

Ed McDonald On The Interpersonal Motivation Of Model Selection

Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 27 Nov 2023, at 10:05:

In this regard, members of this and other lists may have noticed that I seem to talk about my own experience a lot. But I hope they will also have noticed that I do so not to stress the particularity of my experience but rather its representativeness. I don't think my own experiences are special: I just think we're all far more affected by our own experience in the process of developing our academic thinking than we often like to admit. For example, in observing and reflecting on how people take up and adapt ideas of all kinds, including theories of language, I have become convinced that, whatever may be the purposes for which such ideas end up being used, the reasons for which they're taken up are far more likely to be interpersonal than ideational: because people you admire hold them, or because they're held by a group you want to join, or because they're being used for a practical/political/ideological project with which you're aligned.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this is indeed a very serious problem within the SFL community, given that SFL theory, as created by Halliday, is a scientific theory; see What Lies Beneath.

See also, from The Evolution Of Models on The Life Of Meaning:

Controlling Variation: Institutions As Model Reproduction Nurseries

Acting On Each Other: Modulation And Modalisation

Metafunctional Consistency And Selection

Ideational Consistency As Overtly Influencing The Probability Of Selection

Interpersonal And Textual Consistency As Covertly Influencing The Probability Of Selection

Social Immunological Systems

Communities As Bodies Organised By Shared Construals, Values And Attentions

Semiosis As Social Immunological Process

Ed McDonald On Metafunction, Stratification And Expression Affordances

Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 27 Nov 2023, at 10:05:

Just to take up the issue of metafunctions again after some further thinking on this fundamental but slippery concept, I think that if this notion is to be empirically defensible, or rather if the theoretical category of metafunction when translated into descriptive categories as part of a framework for a specific modality is to be empirically defensible, we need first of all to look outside language, <<without assuming that the 3x3 stratification/metafunction model necessarily applies in the case of other semiotic systems>>.

My starting point here would be that every semiotic system depends on its affordances, which shape the kinds of meanings it most easily or typically expresses. … My recent paper for LC&T, The Signifying Voice: Materiality and sociality in language and music, maps out one way of doing this, by taking two systems — language and music — whose default expression plane is the human voice and seeing how they exploit this differently. 

I have been hugely influenced in my thinking on these two systems by a little book now out of print which has almost the same name as Theo's 1999 book on music, i.e. David Burrows' 1990 Sound, Speech, Music, which sets out from a basic phenomenological starting point to characterise the differing affordances and meanings of the two systems. I have also been deeply influenced by my own personal and professional experience as a language learner and language teacher, and likewise by my personal experience as a music learner (piano and voice) and my professional experience as a vocal accompanist/repetiteur. So when I think and particularly when I write about these issues, always in the back of my mind is the nagging thought "How is this going to be useful to performers", by which term I include learners and teachers and users of language and music.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the metafunctions are not slippery; they are very clearly defined. For example, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7-8):

The ideational metafunction is concerned with construing experience — it is language as a theory of reality, as a resource for reflecting on the world. … The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with enacting interpersonal relations through language, with the adoption and assignment of speech roles, with the negotiation of attitudes, and so on — it is language in the praxis of intersubjectivity, as a resource for interacting with others. The textual metafunction is an enabling one; it is concerned with organising ideational and interpersonal meaning as discourse — as meaning that is contextualised and shared.

For more detailed discussion, see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511-32).

[2] To be clear, this 3x3 model does not apply to semiotic systems other than language because language is unique in having a content plane that is stratified into semantics and grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: xi). This is demonstrated by the fact that it is not possible to read aloud the texts of such systems. As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600) point out:

… through projection, we construe the experience of 'meaning' — as a layered, or stratified, phenomenon, with 'meanings' projected by sensing and 'wordings' projected by saying …

[3] To be clear, this is the opposite of SFL methodology, in as much as it gives priority to view 'from below', expression, rather than the view 'from above', the meaning that is expressed.

[4] To be clear, the human voice is not the default expression of music. Rather, it is the default expression of song, that is, of language that is organised on the basis of music variables.

[5] To be clear, as supporting argument for McDonald's model, this is another instance of the logical fallacy known as the Appeal to accomplishment – an assertion is deemed true or false based on the accomplishments of the proposer. 

Ed McDonald On Musical Meanings As Concrete And General

Edward McDonald wrote to: sys-func on 20 Nov 2023, at 09:59:

… This reflects my understanding of the nature of musical meaning as concrete but general. Musical meanings are concrete, again in my opinion but informed by a wide range of research across a number of disciplines, because they express our human embodiment: music represents a kind of semiotic transformation of our experience of our own and other people’s bodies moving through space and time. 

At the same time, musical meanings are general, because, to borrow the insight of one philosopher of music, music is like body language: when we observe someone’s body language, including their gait, posture, facial expression, and gaze, we can “read off” its meaning, but only in general terms. We can tell that someone is sad, but not why; we can pick up that someone is highly agitated, but we don’t know the circumstances that gave rise to that agitation – unless we use language to ask them about it. 

So language, in contrast to music, is more abstract, more detached from our embodied experience, but at the same time because it supplies us with a system of categories we can apply to that experience, linguistic meanings are more specific. 

So from this point of view, we can see that soundtrack / expression music – “songs with words” – and score / mood music – “songs without words” – take on, as you might expect, the general semiotic characteristics of the systems of language and music with which they are mostly closely identified in each case.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this reason for musical meanings being 'concrete' is based on a misunderstanding, since it has the (Token–Value) relation backwards. It is the movement of bodies — in playing instruments — that expresses music, not the other way around. That is, McDonald claims that musical meanings are concrete because he misconstrues them as the more concrete Token instead of the more abstract Value.

[2] To be clear, this is another instance of the logical fallacy known as Appeal to accomplishment – an assertion is deemed true or false based on the accomplishments of the proposer.

[3] To be clear, one way to understand the difference between music and body language is through the theory of experience that has naturally evolved in English. Music is the Scope of the material Process of playing, whereas body language is a behavioural Process that 'manifests states of consciousness' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 302).

[4] To be clear, this reason for musical meanings being 'general' is based on a misunderstanding, since it confuses elaboration (generality) with enhancement (cause: reason).

[5] To be clear, this is another instance of the logical fallacy known as ipse dixit, a bare assertion, since no supporting argument has been made, and the claim that the meanings of music are concrete is based on a misunderstanding; see [1].

[6] To be clear, this point has not been demonstrated; see [1] to [5] above.

Ed McDonald On Musical Meanings And Their "Re-expression"

Edward McDonald wrote to: sys-func on 20 Nov 2023, at 09:59:

As for language being able to "re-express" musical meanings, my reading of many reviews of performances, as well as screeds of scholarly expositions of musical styles and meanings, has left me deeply sceptical of any such possibility. Certainly aspects of a particular semiotic system can be "re-realised" (?) in another semiotic — as the custom of setting words to music clearly shows — but even in such cases, the musical tends to express meanings that language doesn't, or at least doesn't do so easily, and vice versa.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the fact that music does not express socially agreed meanings would suggest that music is not a social semiotic system, and the fact that the meanings of music cannot be identified — e.g. what are the meanings of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and how are those meanings realised? — suggests that music is not a semiotic system at all.

Instead, if music is viewed in terms of Halliday's linear taxonomy, it is a system of social value that is not construed symbolically. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 507, 509):

As we conceive of it, the term "semiotic" is framed within a linear taxonomy of "physical — biological — social — semiotic"; … A biological system is a physical system with the added component of "life"; it is a living physical system. In comparable terms, a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value" … . A 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. … Semiotic systems are social systems where value has been further transformed into meaning.

But music differs from the systems of value in other social species — e.g. whalesong, birdsong — in that it is made by linguate beings, who can complement music with the social semiotic that is language (lyrics), represent music socio-semiotically (notation), and evolve its value potential through the social semiotic that is language (realising music theory).

It is because music cannot be modelled as a social semiotic system that McDonald feels the need to redefine what constitutes a semiotic system.

[2] To be clear, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509) claim that language is the only semiotic system into which all other semiotic systems can be "translated". McDonald could not be making these meanings with any social semiotic other than language.

[3] To be clear, this is not the re-expression of the meanings of one semiotic system in another semiotic system. It is simply the complementation of language and music.

[4] To be clear, if music really did express meanings, McDonald would be able to draw a system network of musical meanings that specified how such meanings are expressed in musical sounds.

Ed McDonald On Language Not Being Prototypical In The Historical Sense

Edward McDonald wrote to: sys-func on 20 Nov 2023, at 09:59:

I think I'd agree with David on this one:

language is "prototypical" but only in the Eleanor Rosch sense and not in the historical sense. That is, language is central and dominant among socio-semiotic systems but not originary or primeval.

I've read the Halliday / & Matthiessen claims before, and to me they read like just what you'd expect linguists to say: to me they come across as axiomatic claims and not conclusions based on empirical evidence.

For me, it's the experience of being a practising — and trained — musician that makes me doubtful about awarding any such primacy to language. When I was learning piano, which I did from ages 8-21 with a number of different teachers, I learned in the appropriate "classical" style which was based on two things: 1. interpreting the notation - i.e. the process of turning the notated score into actual musical performance, and 2. explaining the technique - i.e. the process of what you do with your fingers, hands, arms, (torso, legs etc etc) in order to achieve certain sounds and musical effects. Now the presence of notation in the Western classical tradition means that 1. inevitably involves language — the musical notation is clearly dependent on the prior existence of a writing system for language — the very earliest examples of notation in Europe, devised for the vocal music we now call "Gregorian chant", consisted of "intonation-style graphics" written over the top of the verbal text — and every feature of the notation has its appropriate linguistic label. But not all styles even of Western music depend on notation — perhaps most folk and pop musicians can't "read" — and in the absence of 1., 2. can be carried out largely by demonstration, although the presence of a labelling system, i.e. a technical vocabulary, is very useful for transmission, although not for performance, which in such traditions is largely equivalent to improvising on the basis of fixed "formulae".

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. To be clear, observations of child development provide empirical evidence that language is ontogenetically prior to other social semiotic systems, and the fact that the earliest known cave paintings are only about 40,000 years old, suggests that language is also phylogenetically prior to other social semiotic systems.

[2] This is an instance of the logical fallacy known as Circumstantial ad hominem – stating that the arguer's personal situation means that their conclusion is wrong.

[3] To be clear, this is an instance of the logical fallacy known as ipse dixit: a bare assertion, unsupported by evidence. Moreover, McDonald ignores the reasons that Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509-10) provide for regarding language as the prototypical social semiotic system:

Language is set apart, however, as the prototypical semiotic system, on a variety of different grounds: it is the only one that evolved specifically as a semiotic system; it is the one semiotic into which all others can be "translated"; and (the least questionable, in our view) it is the one whereby the human species as a whole, and each individual member of that species, construes experience and constructs a social order. In this last respect, all other semiotic systems are derivative: they have meaning potential only by reference to models of experience, and forms of social relationship, that have already been established in language. It is this that justifies us in taking language as the prototype of systems of meaning. …

[4] This is an instance of the logical fallacy known as Appeal to accomplishment – an assertion is deemed true or false based on the accomplishments of the proposer.

[5] To be clear, both 'interpreting the notation' and 'explaining the technique' require the prior ontogenesis of language in both teacher and learner. And teaching and learning by demonstration only happens after the prior ontogenesis of language in both teacher and learner.

Ed McDonald On The Nature Of Semiosis

 Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 19 Nov 2023, at 14:02:

(3) … Can language be taken as the model / interpretant of all other semiotic systems …  

(McDonald 2013):

If social semiotic approaches are to free themselves from their current reliance on linguistic models, they will need to understand the nature of semiosis, in other words, to explicitly theorise the iconic and/or indexical and/or symbolic referential processes involved in recognising the links between expression and interpretation in the case of each modality, before they will be able to understand how modalities combine in ‘‘performance’’. Until we have, not a Semantics and the Body, to use the title of Ruthrof’s 1997 work, but a semantics of the body, the challenge of accounting for a multimodal text like opera in a semiotically democratic way will remain a question in search of an answer.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the 'nature of semiosis' depends on the theory used to model it, which in turn, depends on the assumptions on which the theory is founded. The notion of a 'nature of a phenomenon' takes a transcendent view of meaning, which contradicts the the immanent view of meaning taken in SFL Theory. 

[2] To be clear, this confuses data with theory. Iconic and/or indexical and/or symbolic referential processes are not data to be theorised, but one way of theorising the data — that of Peirce. Moreover, Peirce's semiotics is inconsistent with SFL Theory in terms of the triadic sign relation, and in terms of icons, indexes and symbols referencing their objects (see here).

[3] To be clear, as previously demonstrated, McDonald first construed perceptible expression and interpretable behaviour as two poles of the context of a semiotic system, and then reconstrued these as the two poles of the semiotic system itself.

[4] To be clear, McDonald's notions of perceptible expression and interpretable behaviour construe the perspective of the listener only. The speaker and the musician — the performers — are excluded from this model of 'performance'.

[5] To be clear, the use of the word 'democratic' implies that other approaches are socially unjust, and that the approach McDonald advocates will right a wrong. As a logical fallacy, this might be termed an appeal to emotion.

Ed McDonald On The Largely Symbolic Nature Of Linguistic Signs

Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 19 Nov 2023, at 14:02:

(3) … Can language be taken as the model / interpretant of all other semiotic systems …

 (McDonald 2013):

[F]rom the point of view of a general semiology, it is the very difficulty of accounting for the largely symbolic, unmotivated nature of linguistic signs that makes a clear understanding of linguistic meaning very hard to attain. At the same time, whether or not we regard language as functioning as the (potential) interpreter of all other semiotic systems, it is undeniable that it tends to be used that way by many semioticians, especially Social Semioticians, very often in the same breath as denying that language has any special status. A refocusing on communication as multimodal may well be being forced on us by developments in communicative technologies, as Machin suggests, but it also represents a long overdue recognition of the importance of embodied semiotics in much human interaction, as Ruthrof shows.… Much multimodal work in the Social Semiotic tradition seems curiously visually-biased, and at the same time largely unproblematically ‘analogising’ concepts from linguistics for the analysis of other semiotic systems, without seemingly feel much need, as Machin notes, to engage with existing scholarship in those areas.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is a pair of bare assertions (ipse dixit), each without supporting argument. They are:

[A]: the largely symbolic nature of linguistic signs is difficult to account for.

[B]: [A] makes a clear understanding of linguistic meaning very hard to attain.

With regard to [A], the largely symbolic nature of linguistic signs is accounted for by the fact that it evolved in the species from symbolic protolinguistic signs (phylogenesis) and develops in the individual from symbolic protolinguistic signs (ontogenesis). So the question is, rather, why should protolinguistic signs be largely symbolic? On Halliday's model, the symbolic nature of protolinguistic signs can be understood as motivated by the general functions that protolanguage serves: the personal, interactional, instrumental and regulatory microfunctions.

With regard to [B], this is clearly false, since a clear understanding of linguistic meaning is demonstrated whenever the users of language understand each other's meaning, and a clear theoretical understanding of linguistic meaning is proposed by linguistic theories such as SFL.

[2] To be clear, McDonald provides no evidence in support of his ad hominem attack.

[3] To be clear, SFL Theory explicitly models language as "embodied" semiotics in human interaction. Halliday (2003: 13):

[4] To be clear, written language is also "visually-based".

[5] To be clear, scholarship framed in terms of other theories needs to be reframed in terms of the theory being used. In the immanent view of meaning that SFL Theory takes, there is no ultimate theory of phenomena that can be reached by cherry-picking from different theories. Instead, there are applications of each theory that are either valid or invalid in terms of that theory.

Ed McDonald On The Two Poles Of A Semiotic System

Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 19 Nov 2023, at 14:02:

… a system like language or music acts as a semiotic mediation between two kinds of contexts:

1. the material context of sound or gesture as perceptible expression

2. the social context of language or music …as interpretable behaviour

A semiotic system like language or music hence has two poles

1. expression (vis-à-vis material context)

2. interpretation (vis-à-vis social context) …

(McDonald 2013, Embodiment and meaning: moving beyond linguistic imperialism in social semiotics)

The need to understand the relation of interpretation(s) to expression(s) independently for each semiotic system is one that for me follows naturally from Saussure’s understanding of meaning in language, whose implications have been usefully explored by a number of scholars like media and communication studies scholar David Machin already mentioned above, and literature and philosophy of language scholar Horst Ruthrof

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] Having previously advocated an approach to non-linguistic semiotic systems that does not assume that linguistic models are appropriate (see previous post), McDonald begins his approach to non-linguistic semiotic systems with Halliday's model of linguistic systems. Halliday (2003: 13):

[2] To be clear, gestures are behaviours, and sounds are the products of behaviours. Each can be viewed materially and/or in terms of some social function. 

[3] To be clear, the perspective presented by 'perceptible' and 'interpretable' is that of the listener only. Importantly, the speaker and the musician are excluded from this model.

[4] To be clear, this misrepresents McDonald's model. As he has explained, perceptible expression and interpretable behaviour are two poles of the context of a semiotic system, not the two poles of the semiotic system itself.

[5] To be clear, the use of the word 'imperialism' evokes a sense of social injustice. As a logical fallacy, this might be termed an appeal to emotion.

[6] To be clear, this is an instance of the logical fallacy known as ipse dixit: a bare assertion without supporting argument. Moreover, it cannot be true, since Saussure was concerned with the sign — content and expression form in Hjelmslev's terms — whereas McDonald's interpretable behaviour and perceptible expression are his model of context — content and expression substance in Hjelmslev's terms — misunderstood as a semiotic system.

Ed McDonald's Argument For An Obligatory Multi-Semiotic Theoretical Approach

Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 19 Nov 2023, at 14:02:

Secondly, a recommendation for an obligatory multi-semiotic theoretical approach whichever semiotic system we're examining.

(2) What can they know of [metafunctions] who only [language] know

Given that those of us working in SFL, whatever else we are, are almost inevitably linguists, we can take it that we will always be "aware of" language - but at the same time we need, I believe, to acknowledge that other semiotic systems may not necessarily show the same configuration of stratification and metafunction as we take to be characteristic of language.…

McDonald (Understanding BL dramas / discourse analysis... in draft):

Although I said that a social semiotic perspective is a useful one here, in practice I find much of the actual analysis carried out within social semiotic frameworks inadequate for the purpose [of accounting for the text as a whole, in all its complexity but at the same time coherence], largely because scholars have struggled to free themselves from the theoretical influence of linguistics, and from the analytical practice of continually invoking the meanings of language in order to explain those of other semiotic systems.... 

My general criticism would be that while the social semiotic frameworks currently in use are very good at dealing with the “combination”, of delineating the whats and hows of the multimodal text as a whole, they are less good at accounting for the “contribution”, at capturing the basic duality of each semiotic system, what I like to call interpretation and expression, without constant resource to language as the ground of explanation.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, for those working in SFL, according to SFL Theory, following Hjelmslev, all semiotic systems are stratified into content and expression planes and, following Halliday, only the content plane of language is stratified into semantics and lexicogrammar. The fact that other semiotic systems do not include a lexicogrammatical stratum is demonstrated by the fact that they cannot be read aloud as language can. (It is the stratum of wording that is projected by the process of saying.)

With regard to the metafunctions, in SFL Theory, these are very general functions that lie behind all meaning making. Although different social semiotic systems can be expected to vary in the systems of each metafunction, the metafunctions themselves can be expected to be recognisable in virtually all adult social semiotic systems. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 532-3) write:

These three "metafunctions" are interdependent; no one could be developed except in the context of the other two. When we talk of the clause as a mapping of these three dimensions of meaning into a single complex grammatical structure, we seem to imply that each somehow "exists" independently; but they do not. There are — or could be — semiotics that are monofunctional in this way; but only very partial ones, dedicated to specific tasks. A general, all-purpose semiotic system could not evolve except in the interplay of action and reflection, a mode of understanding and a mode of doing — with itself included within its operational domain. Such a semiotic system is called a language.

[2] To be clear, the use of 'largely because' here presents a bare assertion (the logical fallacy known as ipse dixit) as if it were a reasoned argument. McDonald's unsupported claim is that social semiotic analyses of non-linguistic social semiotic systems are inadequate because they apply models theorised on the basis of linguistic social semiotic systems.

[3] To be clear, this is another bare assertion (ipse dixit). Here the previous bare assertion about the inadequacy of social semiotic analyses of non-linguistic social semiotic systems is elaborated by an unsupported claim of what they are 'less good at'.

Ed McDonald On The Need For A Triangulation Of Textual, Social And Theoretical

Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 19 Nov 2023, at 14:02:

Firstly, a recommendation for a different kind of "trinocular" analysis of "texts" of all kinds from my paper in the Semiotic Margins collection: (1) The need for triangulation: textual, social, theoretical. McDonald (2011):

[I]t seems to me that what is needed for a social-semiotic treatment of any particular modality is a kind of triangulation between the analysis of its texts, the theoretical frameworks that have been applied to it, and the social meanings it has for its communities of users. It is not enough to have just one or two of these: 

the theoretical and social without the textual leaves the analysis ungrounded, with no way of understanding in detail how analysts have come up with their interpretations; 

the social and the textual without the theoretical traps analysts in the (unexamined) presuppositions of their commonsense (or ‘intuitive’) viewpoints; 

the textual and theoretical without the social makes analyses ultimately only personal ones – insightful, perhaps, but in the end only one individual interpretation.

Blogger Comments:

To clear, this is a non-issue in SFL Theory. A text is an instance of meaning, and the meaning of a social semiotic system is social in the sense that it is interpersonally exchanged in a community of users. Clearly, how a text is analysed depends fundamentally on the theory used to do so. Importantly, in the immanent view of meaning that SFL Theory takes, there is no ultimate theory of phenomena that can be reached by cherry-picking from different theories. Instead, there are applications of each theory that are either valid or invalid in terms of that theory.

ChRIS CLÉiRIGh On The Expression Plane Of Languaging Bonobos

ChRIS CLÉiRIGh replied to David Kellog on sysfunc at 9:07 on 12/11/23:

It is unlikely that Bill Greaves went on about Bonobo phonology, since the bonobos that were on the project express linguistic meaning by pointing to lexigrams, not by controlling the vocal tract.

Blogger Comments:

My false assumption when I wrote the above was that, although it is possible to study the phonetics of the languaging bonobos, they did not have a phonological system because they cannot realise the lexicogrammar phonologically.

The truth is almost the opposite. The languaging bonobos obviously do have a phonological system, since it is this that enables them to identify the words spoken by humans; and phonetic analysis provides an understanding of the physical limitations on realising their phonological system phonetically.

Mick O'Donnell On 'That Means'

Mick Donnell replied to Emma Vale on asflanet on 16 October at 22:50:

Be careful when saying:

you could take out the 'that means' and experientially the clause means the same thing, hence my suggestion that 'that means' is redundant

Just because it does not serve an experiential function does not mean it it redundant. It serves a logical function, and removing it loses the logical connectivity of ideas.

Shooshi says that "that means" is not conjunction but rather reference, and that is true if looked at in terms of grammar. But discoursally, "that means" is one discoursal strategy to link one clause to another as a consequence. For instance, would you take the following two clauses as saying the same thing:

The northern hemisphere is tilting towards the sun,

that means that the Southern hemisphere is tilting away.

The northern hemisphere is tilting towards the sun.

Consequently, the Southern hemisphere is tilting away

For me, this is a case where a semantic relation between two processes can be mapped onto lexicogrammar in distinct ways.

And getting back to your example, the fact that "consequently" can be dropped without affecting the experiential meaning of the second clause does not mean "consequently" is redundant, just that it serves a logical not experiential function.

Blogger Comments:

 To be clear, the two clause complexes under discussion are:

When the Northern hemisphere is tilting towards the sun that means that it is summer in the Northern hemisphere.

And because the northern hemisphere is tilting towards the sun that means that the Southern hemisphere is tilting away.

[1] Importantly, the inclusion of that means that is the student's step towards mastering grammatical metaphor. See Tilting Towards Grammatical Metaphor. Removing this wording makes the clause complexes more congruent:

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The wording that means serves the experiential functions Token and Process: relational: identifying: intensive: sign. The logical relation between the clauses in each complex is marked by the conjunction of the dependent clause: when (temporal) and because (cause: reason).

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The reference is made by that, not that means.

[4] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The two wordings are not saying the same thing. The first pair of clauses (not a complex) are related by cohesive reference (that) and do not express the meaning 'consequence', whereas the second pair of clauses are related by cohesive conjunction and do express the meaning 'consequence'.

Agnate wordings of the first pairing include:

• The northern hemisphere is tilting towards the sun; that indicates that the Southern hemisphere is tilting away.
• The northern hemisphere is tilting towards the sun; that suggests that the Southern hemisphere is tilting away.
• The northern hemisphere is tilting towards the sun; that implies that the Southern hemisphere is tilting away.

See Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 269).

[5] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The conjunctive Adjunct consequently, which does not feature in the original example under discussion, functions textually, not logically, since it marks a relation of cohesive conjunction.

∞

See also:

The Promotion Of Anti-Intellectualism In The SFL Community
Mick O'Donnell Falsely Accusing The Sys-Func Moderator Of Misogyny.

David Rose Confusing Determination With Reference

David Rose replied to Kieran McGillicuddy on Sysfling on 18/9/23 at 22:08:

You could start solving this problem by distinguishing lexicogrammatical from discourse semantic functions. The term Deictic denotes a function in a function structure at group rank... +Thing;+Deictic. It is realised at word rank by various classes of items.

Halliday starts his definition of Deictic functions of ‘the’ below on LG criteria, as specific, determinative

But then he switches to DS criteria to distinguish its function more delicately, from the functions of demonstrative and possessive determiners (as discussed with Bea on sysfling 9-10 September).

It’s not wrong, but doesn't make the switch explicit. In fact these delicate distinctions couple features from DS identification and LG deixis systems. Here’s parts of both... 

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, this is misleading, because it is untrue. See:

David Rose Misconstruing Discourse Semantic Systems As More Delicate Grammatical Systems

David Rose Misunderstanding Delicacy And Instantiation

[2] To be clear, as demonstrated here, Martin's (1992) discourse semantic system of identification is a rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) lexicogrammatical system of reference, which, among other things, confuses cohesive reference with nominal group determination. Rose here repeats that confusion in juxtaposing a reference system with a nominal group determination system as if reference and nominal group determination were the same function.