David Rose On Theory Mirroring And Representing A Phenomenon

David Rose replied to Ed McDonald on Sysfling on 27/8/23 at 14:38:

My interest in axis doesn't in any way diminish all you say here. There’s no value judgement as to what part of the theory is more important or primal than any other. MAKH developed it initially as a research tool to map functions and structures, discovering metafunctions along the way, and an empirical model of ranks in grammar and phonology. But the theoretical formalism is not just a tool, it mirrors the organisation of the phenomenon it represents.

My interest is particularly in how it works as a configuration of abstraction and generalisation to make semiosis possible. There is actually no such thing as systems and structures. They are merely generalisations from recurrent instances of sounds and other perceptible phenomena. Yet they turn matter into meaning.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Rose had written on 23 August 2023 at 13:55:

Can I suggest when reading the various philosophers of language cited in this thread, to remember the one missing puzzle piece that lies at the heart of systemic functional semiotics...axis.

 on 24 August 2023 at 00:01:

Axis is the systemic in systemic functional. In this theory, the coupling of generalisation with abstraction in the axial relation is the basis of semiosis.

and on 25 August 2023 at 8:40:

My original point was that axis is the basis of semiosis and that these are all dimensions in which axis proliferates in lg.

[2] To be clear, on the SFL model, a theory neither mirrors nor represents a phenomenon. If a theory mirrored its phenomenon, then there would be only one possible theory. If a theory (Token) represented a phenomenon (Value), then the phenomenon would be more abstract than the theory.

Instead, a phenomenon is a construal of first-order experience as meaning, and a theory is a metaphenomenon: a reconstrual of that first-order meaning as second-order meaning. The complication with language is that it is itself a theory of experience, a metaphenomenon, so that a theory of language is a reconstrual of that theory of experience as a theory of a theory of experience, that is: a metatheory of experience. It is because linguistic theory is 'meta' to language in this way that it is termed a 'metalanguage'.

[3] As previously explained, systems and structures are abstract things in the metalanguages that theorise languages.