On this basis, many systemic functional linguists have assumed that the networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on, do (or should) represent choices in meaning, and that they therefore do (or should) constitute the level of semantics. And for at least some of us who were working in SFL in the 1970s, the corollary of this was that, when we saw Halliday's system networks as still reflecting contrasts that were formal rather than semantic (e.g., his MOOD network, which has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s, in contrast with his TRANSITIVITY network) we revised them by 'pushing' them towards the semantics — exactly as Halliday himself had done with his networks for TRANSITIVITY during the 1960s.
However, it is not the case that all systemic linguists took this position, and it is certainly not the case that Halliday himself consistently did so, as we shall see in Sections 4.6 and 4.7.
Blogger Comments:
[1] Here once again Fawcett argues for his misunderstanding of Halliday by means of the logical fallacy known as 'Argumentum ad populum':
Argumentum ad populum (appeal to widespread belief, bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) – a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because majority or many people believe it to be so.
[2] Once again, see any of the previous posts on the distinctions
- between meaning potential (language as system) and meaning as stratum (semantics), and
- between functional grammar (wording viewed from semantics) and semantics (meaning).
See also Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) for Halliday's semantic systems of the ideational metafunction.
[3] This is misleading because it is manifestly untrue. As such features as 'declarative', 'interrogative' and 'imperative' demonstrate, Halliday's MOOD system, like his TRANSITIVITY system, is concerned with functional contrasts, not formal.
[4] Here Fawcett, having interpreted Halliday's MOOD system as reflecting contrasts at the level of form, nevertheless located the system at the level of meaning (semantics).
[5] This is misleading because it is manifestly untrue. It was Fawcett and his colleagues who mistook Halliday's grammatical systems for semantic systems, not Halliday; see [1] and [2].
[6] This is misleading because it is manifestly untrue, as we shall see in the critiques of Sections 4.6 and 4.7.
[3] This is misleading because it is manifestly untrue. As such features as 'declarative', 'interrogative' and 'imperative' demonstrate, Halliday's MOOD system, like his TRANSITIVITY system, is concerned with functional contrasts, not formal.
[4] Here Fawcett, having interpreted Halliday's MOOD system as reflecting contrasts at the level of form, nevertheless located the system at the level of meaning (semantics).
[5] This is misleading because it is manifestly untrue. It was Fawcett and his colleagues who mistook Halliday's grammatical systems for semantic systems, not Halliday; see [1] and [2].
[6] This is misleading because it is manifestly untrue, as we shall see in the critiques of Sections 4.6 and 4.7.
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