Modelling Content And Expression As The Same Level Of Symbolic Abstraction

Fawcett (2010: 39-40n):

There is a difference from Halliday's model in the way in which the term "form" is being used here. He uses "form" in a sense that includes (1) grammatical structures and items and (2) lexical items, but not intonation or punctuation. However, the Cardiff model of language integrates intonation and punctuation with syntax and lexis as the co-realizations of the meaning potential of the language, so that these too are regarded as types of 'form'. The effect is that intonation is not treated as 'below' the level of syntax and items, but as a parallel form of realization.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, it is grammatical units, not grammatical structures, that correspond to grammatical form in Halliday's model; that is, the compositional rank scale of clause, group/phrase, word and morpheme.  Grammatical structures, on the other hand, are function structures: i.e. function not form.

[2] To construe grammatical form and phonological/graphological form as the same level of symbolic abstraction is to construe content and expression as the same level of symbolic abstraction.  The distinction between content and expression is the major distinction of all semiotic systems.

[3] Here again Fawcett misleads by strategically confusing 'meaning' as a level of symbolic abstraction with 'meaning potential', the entire language conceived as a resource for making meaning (semogenesis).