Misrepresenting Halliday And Matthiessen On Lexicogrammatical Systems

Fawcett (2010: 53): 

We saw in Section 4.3 that in the mid-1960s Halliday changed the theoretical status of the system networks, so that they came to be seen as modelling choices between meanings. And yet a close study of the system networks in Matthiessen (1995) shows that many are essentially the same as Halliday's 1964 networks (as published in Halliday 1976). In other words, system networks that Halliday had originally developed on the assumption that they were at the level of form were re-interpreted as being at the level of meaning. Is it really possible, one has to ask, that networks that were developed for one level of representation should be able to be transported, unchanged, to function at another level of representation? After major theoretical changes of the sort described above, the next logical steps should surely be a critical reexamination of the existing networks to discover where they were and where they were not already sufficiently 'semanticised', followed by the careful semanticisation of those parts that needed it, in order to turn a brilliant insight into a practical reality.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is manifestly untrue.  As demonstrated in the critiques of Section 4.3, Halliday did not reinterpret his grammatical networks as semantic networks.  This was merely a misinterpretation of Fawcett and his colleagues.  The continual repetitions of this falsehood are instances of the logical fallacy known as 'proof by assertion'.

[2] This is misleading, because it is manifestly untrue.  The networks in Matthiessen's Lexicogrammatical Cartography (1995) are grammatical networks, and so, not re-interpretations of Halliday's networks as semantic networks.  See also (the title of) the immediately preceding post.

[3] Here Fawcett is chiding Halliday for not acting according to Fawcett's misunderstanding.

Criticising Matthiessen's Lexicogrammatical Systems For Not Being Semantic Systems

Fawcett (2010: 52-3):

Finally — but not until 1995 — Halliday's close collaborator Matthiessen brought the networks out of the computer and made them available in Matthiessen (1995). As Matthiessen says (1995:i-ii), "the interpretation of English [in this book] is based on Halliday's work and [... it] is intended to be read together with his 1985/1994 Introduction to Functional Grammar." It is clear that the system networks are in fact Matthiessen's re-working of Halliday's original networks, incorporating minor improvements and suggestions from other systemic linguists (including, in a small way, myself: see Matthiessen 1995:655).

However, while it is certainly useful to have access to these more recent networks, the reader who is hoping to find explicitly semantic system networks in Matthiessen (1995) is likely to be disappointed. Most of the networks are essentially as they were in the late 1960s and early 1970s — or, where they are different, they are not noticeably more semantic. Despite this caveat, it is extremely valuable to have, at last, a reasonably complete set of system networks for the Sydney Grammar. (However, see Section 7.6 of Chapter 7 for a critical view of the value to the text analyst of these networks as they stand.) 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. The work Fawcett refers to is:

Matthiessen, C. M. I. M., 1995. Lexicogrammatical Cartography: English Systems. Tokyo: International Language Sciences Publishers.

As the title 'Lexicogrammatical Cartography' makes plain, Matthiessen's networks are clearly sign-posted as lexicogrammatical systems, not semantic systems. Semantic systems, on the other hand, can be found in:

Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. Μ. Ι. Μ., 1999. Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-Based Approach to Cognition. London: Cassell Academic.

which Fawcett lists (p346) as one of his references. In short, Fawcett is criticising Matthiessen for not validating his own misunderstanding.

[2] See the critique of Section 7.6 for the misunderstandings that undermine Fawcett's "critical view".

Misrepresenting A Misunderstanding As Halliday's Suggestion

Fawcett (2010: 51-2):

We saw in Section 4.3 that many systemic linguists, including myself, welcomed Halliday's suggestion that we should regard the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on as constituting the level of semantics, and that where the networks had not yet been pushed to the semantics, we developed new networks that were explicitly semantic. This leads in turn to the question: "What changes did Halliday make to his own system networks in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as a result of the realization that they should be regarded as 'meaning potential' of the language?"

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading in a way that exaggerates Fawcett's contribution.  In Section 4.3, Fawcett (p. 50) made no mention of anyone other than Halliday developing new networks, merely noting that he and his colleagues relocated Halliday's grammatical network to semantics:

… 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 …

[2] This misrepresents Fawcett's misunderstanding of Halliday as Halliday's suggestion; see the most recent previous posts.

[3] This is misleading.  Any changes that Halliday made to his grammatical networks were not as a result of the realisation that they represented language as meaning potential; see [4] below.

[4] This continues the confusion of language as meaning potential with meaning as a stratum of symbolic abstraction; see the most recent previous posts.

∞

In case it is not clear to the reader, the reason Fawcett is repeatedly misrepresenting Halliday's grammatical networks as semantic is in order to claim the theoretical space of grammar for his own model of syntax.  Note that Halliday published his semantic networks, for the ideational metafunction — Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) — one year before the first edition of Fawcett's book, and eleven years before this revised edition.  See Fawcett's assessment of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) here.

Misunderstanding The IFG Notion Of 'Strands Of Meaning'

Fawcett (2010: 51):

The recognition of the 'multifunctional' nature of language — and so of equivalent system networks that model the 'meaning potential' of each "strand of meaning" in a text (IFG p. 34) — has become one of the defining characteristics of the contemporary systemic functional approach to understanding the nature of language. See Figure 7 in Section 7.2 of Chapter 7 and Figure 10 in Section 7.8 for two contrasting ways of representing this concept in the diagrams that represent the analysis of a clause. And see Chapter 7 also for the suggestion that the concept of 'strands of meaning' was over-extended when it came to be equated with the concept of 'multiple structures'. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the recognition of the multifunctional nature of language is not peculiar to SFL theory, and it is the theoretical notion of metafunction that motivates the organisation of systems at the levels of lexicogrammar, semantics and context.

[2] There are several confusions here, between

• meaning (semantics) and meaning potential (language as system),
• the stratum of meaning (semantics) and the stratum of wording (lexicogrammar), and
• instantiation (potential to instance) and axis (system vs structure).

To be clear, in SFL theory, grammatical system networks, organised by metafunction, model the choices of wording for given grammatical rank, most importantly, for clause rank.  The 'strands of meaning' are structural realisations of grammatical systems that realise meaning (the stratum of semantics).  The meaning of a clause is the semantics it realises.  In the absence of grammatical metaphor, wording and meaning are congruent (agree).

[3] Trivially, Fawcett's Figure 7 (below) misinterprets the Scope of the material Process, Mrs Skinner, as its Goal;  Mrs Skinner is the Range (domain) of the 'visiting', not the Medium through which the 'visiting' process unfolds:

A second misunderstanding is the use of the function class 'circumstance' as an element of function structure.  On the IFG model, the function of every Sunday is Extent.

[4] More importantly, in Figure 10 (below), Fawcett's syntax labels are a confusion of functional categories (Subject, Agent, Operator, Complement/Affected, Adjunct) and formal (Main verb).

Note also that this misconstrues the agency of the clause, since the Subject we is wrongly analysed as the Agent of the 'visiting' Process, rather than as the Medium through which the Process unfolds.

[5] And see the upcoming critique of Chapter 7 for the theoretical misunderstandings on which this suggestion is made.