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.