Fawcett's Eight Major Types Of Meanings

Fawcett (2010: 51n):

In fact, Halliday recognises four 'metafunctions': the experiential, logical, interpersonal and textual. I have long advocated the value of recognising the eight major types of meaning listed in the main text (and three minor ones), e.g., as described in Fawcett (1980), (in press) and (forthcoming a). This difference in the degree of 'delicacy' between the Sydney and Cardiff Grammars — a metaphor explored in Gregory (1987) — will be reflected in the descriptions of texts in Sections 7.2 and 7.9 of Chapter 7, but it has no direct consequences for the theoretical concepts discussed in the present book. 

Blogger Comments:

As the term 'metafunction' suggests, these are 'functions of functions' or 'the functions behind functions'.  That is, they are of a different order to the functions of which they are 'meta'; cf. phenomenon vs metaphenomenon.  Fawcett's eight major types of meaning confuse functions of the two distinct orders, grouping second-order functions — the experiential, interpersonal and logical metafunctions — with first-order functions — polarity, validity, affective, thematic and informational, the first three of which are interpersonal, and the final two textual.