Misrepresenting Halliday (1984)

Fawcett (2010: 55-6):

In just one area of meaning Halliday provided a small "semantic" network which 'preselected' options in what has always been the rather 'form-centred' MOOD network (Halliday 1984:13). This little network for the semantics of MOOD only had eight pathways through it, but Hasan & Cloran (1990) and Hasan (1992) have developed very much fuller system networks which can be regarded as expansions of it for use in describing children's language, all within the Sydney Grammar framework.*

* See Fawcett (1999:247-9, 258-9) for a discussion of some of the differences between Halliday's 'grammatical' network for MOOD and my much richer MOOD network, which is explicitly at the level of semantics. See Fawcett (forthcoming a) for the full version of the computer-implemented network for MOOD (which replaces that in Fawcett 1980:103).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading on at least four counts.  Firstly, the semantic network in Halliday (1984) is that of SPEECH FUNCTION (Figure 2):


Secondly, the semantic network is clearly distinguished from the grammatical system of MOOD (Figure 3):


Thirdly, the term 'preselected' does not appear in Halliday (1984).  Its use here serves to blur the distinction between the two networks.

Fourthly, the use of the term 'semantics of mood' and the avoidance of the term 'speech function' also serves to blur the distinction between the two networks.

The reason for these attempted deceptions is that the validity of Fawcett's model — the Cardiff Grammar — depends on the MOOD network being semantic, not grammatical.

[2] To be clear, what Fawcett refers to geographically as 'the Sydney Grammar framework' is Halliday's version of his own theory.

[3] A MOOD network at the level of semantics mistakes wording for meaning and, more importantly, is unable to account for grammatical metaphor, as when a command (speech function, semantics) is incongruently realised as an interrogative clause (mood, lexicogrammar).

[4] To be clear, Fawcett (forthcoming a) is Functional Semantics Handbook: Analyzing English at the Level of Meaning. London: Continuum, and it is still "forthcoming" 18 years after the first edition of this publicaton.