The Nature And Purpose Of SFL Representations Of Clause Structure

Fawcett (2010: 141):

What status, then, should we give to a representation of the structure of a clause-length text-sentence that shows it as consisting of several lines of structure, as found in IFG and the many derived works? The answer, I suggest, is that it is a mental construct whose purpose is to make it easier for the text analyst to think about the multifunctional nature of language in structural terms.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the epistemological perspective of SFL Theory, not only is linguistic theory a mental construct, but language itself is a mental construct. That is, language, as a phenomenon, is a construal of experience as meaning, and a theory of language, as a metaphenomenon, is a reconstrual of language as meaning, where 'construal' means an intellectual construction.

[2] This is misleading. To be clear, the purpose of SFL representations of clause structure as realising three metafunctional lines of meaning is to represent how SFL Theory models clause structure.  As such, the concern is not with "thinking about" the metafunctions in structural terms, but with "thinking about" structure in metafunctional terms.