Misrepresenting Halliday On The Development Of Systemic Theory

Fawcett (2010: 45-6):

I have already suggested that the first three changes to the "Categories" model introduced by Halliday in the late 1960s and early 1970s were revolutionary. Interestingly, however, Halliday himself writes about these momentous developments in the theory as if they were, in large measure, simply additions to it — rather than changes that might involve re-assessing the existing concepts. Thus he writes (1993:4507) that "systemic work [...] has tended to expand by moving into new spheres of activity, rather than by re-working earlier positions". The difference between expanding a theory and changing it is an important one. The term "expand" typically implies additions rather than alterations, so that the "expansion" of a theory does not necessarily require one to rethink the concepts of the earlier version. But any changes to the existing concepts in a theory should be followed by a thorough check to discover whether they lead to the need for any further changes. In a theory of language, as in language itself, tout se tient (Meillet 1937). It is certainly true that the theory has expanded greatly, in the sense that it now covers many additional aspects of language and additional languages, and that is has been used in additional areas of application. But many of the innovations — including the three to be summarised here — have had an effect that is ultimately revolutionary. And such changes do indeed demand the "re-working [of] earlier positions". It is a nice irony that Halliday should have written the words cited above in his 1993 paper "Systemic theory", because it is there that he spells out most clearly the revolutionary effect of the changes from "Categories" — as we shall see in due course. (Perhaps this is part of the general phenomenon that it is often easier for others to see the significance of a new idea than it is for the innovator.)

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading.  Halliday (1993) is termed 'Systemic Theory', and the quote that Fawcett cites is concerned with theoretical developments since the inception of Systemic Theory — as the words 'systemic work' makes clear.  Halliday acknowledged significant difference between his earlier model, 'Scale–and–Category Grammar', and his later model, 'Systemic Grammar', by the change of name.

[2] Halliday uses 'expand' as a technical term that subsumes three subtypes:

• elaboration (exposition vs exemplification vs clarification)
• extension (addition vs variation vs alternation)
• enhancement (temporal, spatial, manner, causal, conditional).

[3] Here Fawcett identifies precisely what his alterations of Halliday's theory demand, and which he himself has not done, while implying that Halliday has failed in this regard.

[4] These "revolutionary innovations" were introduced at the beginning of Systemic Theory, not in the course of its development; see [1].

[5] The "earlier positions" that Halliday "reworked" are those of 'Scale–and–Category Grammar', and the outcome of that reworking is the new theory 'Systemic Grammar'; see [1].

[6] This might have alerted a more careful reader that he had misunderstood the quote from Halliday (1993).

[7] Halliday did see the significance, and changed the name of his theory to reflect this, and outlined the significant changes in his retrospective (Halliday 1993) that Fawcett quotes here.