Ed McDonald On Halliday's Grammar-Centrism

Edward McDonald continued sys-func on 8 Jul 2024, at 14:44:

Ok, so this is not "linguistic imperialism" but it does seem like "grammar-centrism". It strikes me that, though I'm not aware if anyone has ever made this argument, that both (adult) language and music could equally be seen as "outgrowths" of protolanguage, particularly if we look at spoken language and singing. Given that music lacks the line of arbitrariness, i.e. that musical meanings are in the first instance indexical, not symbolic, the argument for the priority of grammar seems less convincing in this instance.

Any multimodalists like to weigh in here about other semiotic systems? Do they all depend on the prior existence of grammar? It would seem to me that systems depending on iconicity don't necessarily.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday's view that language is the only semiotic system with a grammar is merely the view that is consistent with his Systemic Functional Theory and the assumptions on which is based.

[2] To be clear, song lyrics are language, as are musical notation and theory. The question of whether music itself requires its makers to have language, depends on how music is defined. If music is narrowly defined as restricted to humans, then music is defined as requiring its makers to have language. However, if music is more broadly defined to include the structured use of rhythm and pitch variation in other species, most notably birdsong and whalesong, then music is not defined as requiring its makers to have language. This still leaves open the question of whether music is social (value) or semiotic (symbolic value), in terms of Halliday's linear taxonomy of complex systems.

[3] Given that no evidence is given for musical meanings, or a natural indexical relation between such meanings and their expression, this is an instance of the bare assertion (ipse dixit) fallacy.

[4] Lest this be misunderstood, the question is whether the users of non-linguistic semiotic systems have a grammar. Halliday (2002[1996]: 389): 

On the other hand, human adults also develop numerous non-linguistic semiotic systems: forms of ritual, art forms, and the like; these have no grammar of their own, but they are parasitic on natural language – their meaning potential derives from the fact that those who use them already have a grammar.

[5] To be clear, one way to assess whether a semiotic system requires its users to have a grammar is to look for such a system in species without a grammar. To date, no other species have been demonstrated represent their experience iconically by drawing pictures, and the earliest evidence of human cave painting long postdates the estimated emergence of language.

Ed McDonald On Halliday's Linguistic Imperialism

Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 8 Jul 2024, at 08:49:

We've often had this debate before, and presumably if music has no "grammar" it has no "semantics" either. I would agree, in the sense that those two terms are traditionally applied to language and so come with all sorts of associations and presuppositions. … 

But as a semiotic system - by definition (IMFFHO) - must have the two mutually defining strata of what in general terms I like to call interpretation and expression: specifically for music, what I call "phonotactics" and "e/motion" - see my 2021 paper in Language, Context, Text, then it presumably has a "grammar" of sorts, in the sense of distinctive patterns with significant interpretations. In a separate step, In relation to music, I also depart from orthodoxy in characterising the expression stratum of phonotactics as purely textural (= textual), with the other metafunctions coming in only at the stratum of e/motion, whether interactional (= interpersonal) or figurative (= ideational) (I haven't found the need to distinguish between experiential and logical). …

Halliday "privileging" language in this way for me invokes the spectre of what, following Horst Ruthrof, I call "linguistic imperialism"; and the fact that Social Semiotics (again IMFFHO) is shot through with linguistic imperialism for me explains why Ruqaiya for one didn't "believe in" multimodality, in the sense of a model of same that wasn't simply parasitic on the theory of language.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here McDonald is commenting on Halliday's view (2002[1996]: 388-9) that language is the only semiotic system that has a grammar, in his sense of the term.

[2] This misunderstands Halliday. On Halliday's model, if music is a social semiotic system, then it has content and expression, but its content is not stratified into semantics and lexicogrammar. For Cléirigh, on the other hand, in terms of Halliday's linear taxonomy of complex systems, music is social, not semiotic. That is, it carries value, but not symbolic value. In terms of Edelman's neuroscientific theory, music selects perceptual categorisations of positive or negative value, and such value systems play an important rôle in the experience of emotions.

[3] Again, this misunderstands Halliday. For Halliday, the "two mutually defining strata" are the content and expression planes, following Hjelmslev. This is a prerequisite of semiotic systems, but it does not entail that content is stratified to include a grammar, in Halliday's sense, as 'an entirely abstract semiotic construct that emerges between the content and the expression levels of the original, sign-based primary semiotic system' (ibid.).

[4] To be clear, the problem with reconstruing 'content' as 'interpretation' is that the latter is the perspective of the listener only.

[5] This misunderstands the metafunctions. The metafunctions are types of meanings, and so are a dimension of the content plane only. For example, phonological systems are not metafunctional; they realise metafunctional meanings of the content plane.

[6] As demonstrated above, McDonald's accusation of "linguistic imperialism" is entirely unwarranted, since it derives only from his own misunderstandings of Halliday's theorising.

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.

Ed McDonald On There Being 'No Such Things As Words, Sounds Or Meanings'

Edward McDonald replied to David Kellogg on sys-func on 13 Dec 2022 at 10:50:

I would go even further than either you or Chris and say simply this: there are NO such things as "words" - or "sounds" or "meanings" for that matter. We're misled by the lexicogrammar of our metalanguage into seeing such things are "entities", whereas, as Chris in effect pointed out, they're really "intersections" of a whole array of overlapping features. This is how I've framed the issue for my editing clients:

There are no such things as “meanings”, only *contrasts* in meaning; there are no such things as “words”, only alternative *choices* of wording. This is the hard truth about using a language that fluent users know "instinctively” but many learners - and teachers! - seem to try and avoid: you can’t know what a word means unless you know the other possible alternative choices in that context. And because each contrast in meaning, through the appropriate choice in wording, derives from and leads on to further choices, the process of writing, like that of reading, is one of negotiating future choices in the light of past ones, the key at every point being to anticipate what your reader will be expecting.

Such a relational point of view is very hard to keep in mind - so much of modern linguistics and philosophy of language rejects it outright - but if we look at how language actually functions - text in context - then for me it's the only perspective that makes sense.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, 'things' are construals of experience as meaning. 'Sounds' are construals as first-order (material) things, whereas 'words' and 'meanings' are construals as second-order (semiotic) things; that is: as meta-things. Semiotic things have no material existence.

[2] To be clear, the distinction here between "misled" (words, sounds and meanings) and "really" (intersections of overlapping features) is a theoretical distinction between a Token and a Value:

McDonald's view is that the higher level of abstraction (Value) of the identity is real, whereas the lower level abstraction (Token) is not real. Logically, McDonald's argument is:

P = Q 

∴ ~ P

[3] To be clear, 'contrasts in meaning' presupposes that there are meanings that can be contrasted.

[4] To be clear, 'choices in wording' presupposes that there are words that can be chosen.

[5] To be clear, 'what a word means' presupposes that there are words that mean.

[6] To be clear, the relational point of view that McDonald meant to express is Saussure's view that 

concepts... are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterises each most exactly is being whatever the others are not (Saussure 1983, 115; Saussure 1974, 117).

In other words:

But, as above, it can be seen that the nub of McDonald's misinterpretation of Saussure is to treat the Value (contrast) as 'real' and to dismiss the Token (meaning) as 'no such thing'.

See also The Thoughts Of Spinoza In Systemic Functional Linguistics.

Edward McDonald On The Natural Relation Between Semantics And Lexicogrammar

 Edward McDonald wrote to SYSFLING on 20 Aug 2020 at 17:11:

I remember when I read that passage [Halliday (1985: xvii-xix) on the natural relation between meaning and wording] way back in the day I thought it made perfect sense, but more recently I’ve come to wonder what exactly “natural” implies. In a multilingual context, it must presumably mean “ ‘natural’ as defined within each language”, while in a multimodal context it would refer to the intersection of the range of different semiotic systems involved, or some common system lying behind all of them (this latter possibility I personally would be rather resistant to because I’m against semiotic universalism as I am all other kinds).

So “natural” presumably can’t mean “given by nature”, because in that case the semantics of all languages would be the same; but if this “naturalness” is “conventional”, to what degree? Or to put it another way, how do the many commonalities across the material and social worlds of human communities get “translated” or “semioticised” into individual human languages. And if all human communication is multimodal, and all semiotic systems are “natural” in their different ways, how do these different “natures” get to be coordinated or mutually-enforcing in communicative contexts?

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, by 'natural' Halliday means a non-arbitrary relation between lexicogrammatical form and the meaning it realises. Halliday (1985: xvii, xviii, xix):

The relation between the meaning and the wording is not, however, an arbitrary one: the form of the grammar relates naturally to the meanings that are being encoded. A functional grammar is designed to bring this out; it is a study of wording, but one that interprets the wording by reference to what it means. …

What this means is that both the general kinds of grammatical pattern that have evolved in language, and the specific manifestations of each kind, bear a natural relation to the meanings they have evolved to express. … the distinction into word classes of verb and noun reflects the analysis of experience into goings-on, expressed as verbs, and participants in the goings-on, expressed as nouns; and so on. …

Since the relation of grammar to semantics is in this sense natural, not arbitrary … 

[2] To be clear, according to Halliday, the non-arbitrary relation between meaning and wording evolved naturally in language; 'natural' is thus not defined differently for different languages.

[3] To be clear, the natural relation between meaning and wording only concerns language, because language is the only semiotic system with a content plane stratified into meaning and wording. That is, language is the only semiotic system that affords the verbal projection of locutions (wordings).

[4] To be clear, according to Halliday, language — evolved and developed from protolanguage — is the social semiotic system that makes other such social semiotic systems possible; see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602-6).

[5] To be clear, the natural relation between semantics and lexicogrammatical form does not entail that the semantics of all languages would be the same, since it is the relation that is shared by languages, not (necessarily) the semantics.

[6] To be clear, in this context, 'natural' (non-arbitrary) is the opposite of 'conventional' (arbitrary).

[7] To be clear, on the one hand, this topic, the construal of experience as meaning, is a different issue from the foregoing discussion on the natural relation between meaning and wording. On the other hand, it assumes that experience is already categorised (as "commonalities across the material and social worlds of human communities") before being construed as meaning by language. SFL Theory assumes the opposite: that experience only becomes meaning when construed as such by semiotic systems. The former is known as the transcendent view of meaning, the latter is known as the immanent view of meaning. See Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 416, 426, 439, 441, 603, 605).

[8] To be clear, in this context, it is not semiotic systems that are "natural", but the relation between meaning and wording in the only semiotic system with wording: language.

[9] As can be seen from the foregoing, this question is distinct from what Halliday means by a natural relation between meaning and wording. For Halliday (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 602), it is context that makes the co-ordination of language with parallel social semiotic systems possible.