Fawcett's Three Sub-Questions On The Status Of Representations In Halliday (1994)

Fawcett (2010: 117):

Now that we have examined the nature of representations such as that in Figure 7, we are ready to consider their theoretical status. We shall do this by breaking down the first question that we asked in Section 7.1 into three sub-questions: 

1a. Is it desirable — or indeed necessary — to have representations of a text at the levels of both form and meaning? 

1b. In a model with representations at the level of both form and meaning, is it desirable — or indeed necessary — to show explicitly the multifunctional nature of language at both levels? 

1c. In the representation at the level of form, is the conflation that occurs between the realisations of the various strands of meaning a conflation of whole structures or a conflation of individual elements? 

In answering these questions, we shall make two discoveries about the status of the representations of texts in IFG which are likely to surprise most readers. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] Reminder: Fawcett (2010: 117):

Let me begin by expressing our first question in relatively general terms (though we shall later divide it into three sub-questions): 

1. What is the status in systemic functional theory of the representations of the functional structure of text-sentences given throughout both IFG and the various associated texts?

[2] This is misleading, because it misrepresents levels of Fawcett's model, form and meaning, as levels in Halliday's SFL Theory, on which IFG (Halliday 1994) is based.  The linguistic levels (strata) in SFL Theory are semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology/graphology. Grammatical form is modelled as a rank scale of units, each of which provides the entry condition to systems of functional features.

[3] This is misleading.  What Fawcett terms the "conflation of whole structures" is the integration of the three metafunctional structures of the clause in a syntagm of clause constituents, such as nominal group ^ verbal group ^ prepositional phrase.

[4] In examining Fawcett's answers to these questions, we shall discover that Fawcett misleads by misrepresenting Halliday's theory, which is unlikely to surprise readers of this blog.