What Fawcett Means By 'Meaning'

Fawcett (2010: 38):

Now let us consider the term "meaning', as used in Figure 4. Throughout this chapter I have been careful to use to use the term "meaning" rather than "semantics" — even though I have happily used it elsewhere as the label for this level of language. Many systemic functional linguists (including Halliday in most of his writings) are understandably reluctant to use the term "semantics", because of the conceptual baggage that it brings with it from other disciplines and, within linguistics, from other theories of language. The types of 'meaning' that are covered in SFL by the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so one are much more comprehensive than the sense in which the term "semantics' is used by many linguists and philosophers. Nonetheless Halliday has till fairly recently allowed himself to use "semantic" (as a modifier) to refer to phenomena at this level of 'meaning'. And some systemic functional linguists — including Halliday himself in his important paper 'Text as semantic choice in social contexts" (1977/78) and myself — have regularly used the term "semantics" in the systemic functional sense of 'meaning potential'. We have done so because it is one way of expressing the theory's important claim that all of the different types of meaning covered by the system networks have to be included in any adequate theory of 'meaning', if only because the various sub-networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and the others are partially interdependent on each other. SFL offers a particularly rich and powerful way to model the level of 'meaning' in language, and I have always felt it right to refer to this level of language by the term "semantics". Thus, in Figure 4.1 would be happy to replace "choice between meanings" by "semantic choices" and "meaning' features" by "semantic features".

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[1] This is misleading in a way that favours Fawcett's own position. It is Fawcett, not Halliday, who locates these systems at the level of meaning. In SFL, the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME are systems of wording (lexicogrammar), not meaning (semantics).  That is, they are posited as being of a lower level of symbolic abstraction than meaning — they realise meaning.

[2] Again, this is misleading in a way that favours Fawcett's own position of locating Halliday's grammatical systems at the level of meaning.  Halliday uses 'semantic' to refer to the stratum of meaning, with 'text' as the highest unit at that level of symbolic abstraction, and uses 'meaning potential' to refer to the theoretical construal of language as system.

[3] The argument here is:

• reason: because the more delicate metafunctional systems of the clause are partially interdependent on each other
• result: the meanings "covered" (realised) by the metafunctional systems of the clause have to be included in any adequate theory of 'meaning'.

It can be seen that this is a non-sequitur.  The latter does not follow from the former.  The partial interdependence of the more delicate metafunctional systems of clause is not itself a reason for the inclusion of all such systems in a theory of 'meaning' — any more than the "non-interdependence" would be.

[4] Rhetorically, this non-sequitur is presented as part of Fawcett's argument for locating Halliday's clause systems in semantics, rather than lexicogrammar.

[5] This is potentially misleading.  For Fawcett, modelling the level of 'meaning' is to interpret the metafunctional systems of the clause as semantic systems.  On the SFL model, on the other hand, modelling the level of meaning is modelling it as a higher level of symbolic abstraction (stratum) than all lexicogrammatical systems — not just those of the clause.  On the SFL model, the grammar not only realises the semantics, but makes possible the type of meaning that is only found in a tri-stratal semiotic system (i.e. language).

[6] Feeling that something is right is mere opinion, not reasoned argument.