in thinking about the semiosis/semiotics of music, it has always seemed to me that the same problem occurs as in intonation study: our scope for what we consider to be 'meaning'. In intonation study, much that I consider 'meaning' has been dismissed as emotional reflexes or some such, as though those reflexes aren't grounded in some communication of meaning! So, the same with music: what meanings are there in music, beyond those found in other semiotic modes? From there, in terms of metafunction, the next question I would ask is, can we see prosodies or periodicities in music, and how are they realised? I happen to have a fundamental faith in the theory of metafunction, distinguished via prosodic and periodic expression, I have found it essential to understanding how tone group and clause interact, together and with body language, for example, as in the recent Paralanguage book.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, to date, no-one has been able to devise system networks for the content plane of music, together with realisation statements specifying how the systems are realised structurally; nor has anyone been able to identify how content plane systems are realised by expression plane systems and their structures.
For the view that music is not a socio-semiotic system, but a social system expanded by socio-semiotic systems such as theory, notation and lyrics, see Making Sense Of Music.
[2] To be clear, prosodies and periodicities are the types of structure favoured by the interpersonal and textual metafunctions, so Smith's question is 'how are structures realised?'. In SFL Theory, function structures (e.g. Senser ^ Process) are realised by syntagms of classes of units at the lower rank (e.g. nominal group ^ verbal group). That is, the question presumes that music has not only a grammar, but a grammar with a rank scale of grammatical forms. For Halliday, on the other hand, language is the only semiotic system that has a stratified content plane with a grammar; see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602ff).
[4] See
