Fawcett's "Iconoclastic Approach To Scale and Category Grammar"

Fawcett (2010: 159-60):

I gave "Some proposals" the subtitle of "an iconoclastic approach to Scale and Category Grammar" — a subtitle that was, I have to admit, a little provocative. But I did so for what I thought at the time (and still think) to be a good reason — namely, that too many of those who were working in SFL seemed to look upon "Categories" as a set of concepts whose authority fell not far short of the tablets brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses. And yet there were serious questions, I felt, that needed to be asked.

If, for example, the meaning of the term "system" had changed by becoming a choice between meanings rather than forms, where did that leave the concept of "class"? After all, 'class' was a term which had been interpreted in "Categories", like 'system', as a paradigmatic relationship, such that one might set up 'systems' of 'classes'. So what did it mean, in a model in which the system networks were semantic, to say that a nominal group was a 'class of group'? Since the concept of a 'nominal group' was used to refer to a syntactic unit, it belonged, surely, at the level of form rather than meaning — so at what level of language did the concept of 'class' now belong? Indeed, did any of the original four categories remain as concepts that could be used for the task of modelling what we might term 'pure form'?

In other words, it seemed to me that the elevation of the concept of 'system' to the level of meaning meant that the whole framework for describing language needed to be re-examined. Moreover, if we did retain concepts such as 'class of unit' at the level of form, we needed new terms for the equivalent concept at the level of meaning.² (See Figure 12 in Section 10.2.10 of Chapter 10 for the equivalent terms that I use.)

² The entry conditions for Halliday's system networks for 'meaning potential' have always had labels such as "clause", "nominal group", etc. It is odd to find these terms being used at the level of meaning, because they are the names of syntactic units at the level of form — the outputs from the grammar. This is why, in the Cardiff Grammar, the equivalent features have explicitly semantic labels, such as "situation" and "thing".

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[1] To be clear, in this discussion, Fawcett is not concerned with the current model of Systemic Functional Grammar, but with two different superseded theories — Halliday's first theory, Scale and Category Grammar, and the earliest version of Halliday's second theory, Systemic Functional Grammar. Fawcett's assumption throughout is that the second superseded theory must be consistent with the first.

[2] To be clear, in both of the superseded theories, the concept of (grammatical) class is located in the rank scale of the lexicogrammatical stratum. For the first theory, Halliday (2002 [1961]: 49) writes:

The structure is set up to account for likeness between events of the same rank, and it does so by referring them to the rank next below. To one place in structure corresponds one occurrence of the unit next below, and at each element operates one grouping of members of the unit next below. This means that there will be certain groupings of members of each unit identified by restriction on their operation in structure. The fact that it is not true that anything can go anywhere in the structure of the unit above itself is another aspect of linguistic patterning, and the category set up to account for it is the class. The class is that grouping of members of a given unit which is defined by operation in the structure of the unit next above.

For the early version of the second theory, Halliday (1978: 129) writes:

[3] To be clear, the original four categories from Halliday's first theory are unit, structure, class and system (Halliday 2002 [1961]: 41), all of which also figure in the current theory. Of these, unit and class are concerned with form, which SFL Theory, then and now, models as a rank scale.

[4] This non-sequitur (see above) is misleading, because it is untrue. In the superseded version of Halliday's second theory, each formal unit is a structural composite deriving from the (metafunctional) components of the semantics. Halliday (1978: 129)

It follows from the above that each type of unit — clause，verbal group, nominal group etc. - is in itself a structural composite, a combination of structures each of which derives from one or other component of the semantics.

[5] To be clear, because semantics is not a level of form, there is no 'equivalent concept' of class of form at the level of meaning. However, for ideational semantics, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) propose sequence, figure and element as the semantic counterparts of clause complex, clause and group/phrase, and distinguish sub-types for each of these three 'order of phenomena'.

[6] To be clear, the reason why, in the current theory, units of the grammatical rank scale — clause, group etc. — serve as the entry conditions to "Halliday's system networks" is that such networks are grammatical systems. Here again Fawcett confuses 'meaning potential' (language as system) with 'meaning' as stratum (semantics).

[7] To be clear, Fawcett's Figure 12 (p210) is internally inconsistent and inconsistent with SFL Theory:

It is internally inconsistent because it presents relations between levels — expression, realisation — as levels. It is inconsistent with SFL Theory, because the inclusion of a 'belief system' component takes a transcendent, rather than immanent, perspective on meaning. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 415-6):

We can identify two main traditions in Western thinking about meaning (see Halliday, 1977):

(i) one oriented towards logic and philosophy, with language seen as a system of rules; 

(ii) one oriented towards rhetoric and ethnography, with language seen as resource. …

The two orientations towards meaning thus differ externally in what disciplines they recognise as models. These external differences are associated with internal differences as well.

(i) First, the orientations differ with respect to where they locate meaning in relation to the stratal interpretation of language:

(a) intra-stratal: meaning is seen as immanent — something that is constructed in, and so is part of, language itself. The immanent interpretation of meaning is characteristic of the rhetorical-ethnographic orientation, including our own approach. 

(b) extra-stratal: meaning is seen as transcendent — something that lies outside the limits of language. The transcendent interpretation of meaning is characteristic of the logico-philosophical orientation.

Many traditional notions of meaning are of the second kind — meaning as reference, meaning as idea or concept, meaning as image. These notions have in common that they are 'external' conceptions of meaning; instead of accounting for meaning in terms of a stratum within language, they interpret it in terms of some system outside of language, either the 'real world' or another semiotic system such as that of imagery.

Fawcett's 'external' conception of meaning, 'belief system', together with his stratification of language into meaning and form, place his work — unknown to Fawcett himself — in a different intellectual tradition from that of SFL Theory.