Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) On Rank

Fawcett (2010: 85):

Notice that while Halliday introduces the word "rank" in "Systemic theory", the idea that it means a 'rank scale' of units with the associated concept of 'accountability at all ranks' is simply omitted from what is presented as a summary of the "basic concepts" of the theory. One reason why this is particularly surprising is that the concept of the 'rank scale' is still reflected quite strongly in IFG, as we shall see in the next chapter. Nor is there any help on this matter in Halliday (1996). On the other hand, Matthiessen uses the concepts of the 'rank scale' and 'rank shift' quite freely in his Lexico-grammatical Cartography, and he defines 'rank' in the standard "Categories" manner in the book's useful Glossary section (Matthiessen 1995:790). Thus it would be premature to interpret Halliday's failure to foreground the concept of the 'rank scale' in "Systemic theory" as a weakening of his commitment to the 'rank scale'. It is nonetheless a curious omission.

Whatever the reason for this omission …

Blogger Comments:

This is yet another attempt to mislead.  What Halliday (1993: 273) actually says is:

3. Other Basic Concepts

Systemic theory retains the concepts of 'rank,' 'realisation,' and 'delicacy' from scale and category grammar. 'Rank' is constituency based on function, and hence 'flat,' with minimal layering;

Here Fawcett is attempting to cast doubt on the notion of rank, on the basis of the brevity of an entry in an encyclopædia entry.  The reason Fawcett wishes to do so is that his own model does not include a rank scale, and so, by casting doubt, Fawcett primes the uncritical reader for his later dismissal of the theoretical value of a rank scale.

Not Understanding Halliday (1993) On Rank

Fawcett (2010: 84):

We turn now to the concept of 'rank' — the 'scale' which, with 'unit', provides the major organising principle of the grammar in "Categories". The definition that Halliday gives of it in "Systemic theory" is one of the more puzzling sections of the paper. Here he defines 'rank' in a somewhat opaque manner, writing: 

'Rank' is constituency based on function, and hence 'flat', with minimal layering. (Halliday 1993:4505) 

The meaning of "and hence flat" can be clarified by expanding the last part of Halliday's definition to "and hence represented by diagrams that resemble 'flat trees' rather than 'trees with multiple branching'". And such trees naturally have "minimal layering".

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Fawcett provides no evidence that he understands Halliday here.  By 'constituency based on function, and hence 'flat', with minimal layering' Halliday means constituency based on minimal bracketing (ranked constituents) rather than maximal bracketing (immediate constituents).  Halliday (1985: 23):

 

 

Minimal bracketing at three ranks yields (Halliday 1985: 21):

Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) On Delicacy

Fawcett (2010: 84):

Let us begin with delicacy. I suggested in Section 2.4 of Chapter 2 that this concept belongs essentially with that of 'system' (and so with 'system network'), such that one system is more "delicate" than another if its entry condition is a feature in that other system — and so on, across a chain of such dependencies (as illustrated on a small scale in Figure 1 of Appendix A). It follows, then, that the elevation of the 'system' to model contrasts in 'meaning potential' rather than contrasts between forms brings with it a similar change in the meaning of 'delicacy' — so that 'delicacy' has similarly become a partly different concept. It is therefore not simply "retained", as Halliday says (p. 4505); it has been adapted, just as the concept of 'system' has been adapted. However, there is what we might term a "second order" manifestation of the concept, i.e., its use to describe the relationship between 'primary' and 'secondary structures'. (See Figure 7 in Section 7.2 of Chapter 7 for the presentation of MOOD as having both a 'primary' and a 'secondary' structure, and see Section 10.3.4 of Chapter 10 for a critical discussion of this concept.) With these substantial provisos, then, we may say that the term "delicacy" is used in "Systemic theory" in a roughly similar sense to that which it had in "Categories". 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, the theoretical meaning of systemic 'delicacy' is Halliday's formulation, not Fawcett's suggestion.

[2] This is misleading because it seriously misunderstands the notion of delicacy.  Because the scale of delicacy is a dimension of systems — semantic, lexicogrammatical, phonological — the stratal location of systems does not change the meaning of systemic delicacy.

[3] Here again Fawcett confuses language as system (meaning potential) with semantics as stratum (meaning).

[4] This is misleading.  To be clear, delicacy is a dimension of system, not structure.  To anticipate the examination of Chapter 7, compare Fawcett's Figure 7 with the delicacy of the MOOD system of Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 162):

 

Using Halliday (1961) As The Benchmark Of Halliday (1993)

Fawcett (2010: 83-4):

Thus, only one of the four "fundamental" categories of "Categories" appears in the list of "basic concepts" in "Systemic theory" (i.e., 'system') — and even then it has a significantly modified sense. Two are either used informally or presupposed (i.e.,  'element' and 'class (of unit)'), but it is really surprising to find that they are not presented as "basic concepts". And one of the four original "fundamental concepts" ('unit') is completely missing.

How far, then, are the 'scales' of "Categories" still treated as "basic concepts" in "Systemic theory"? In the section headed "Other basic concepts" Halliday makes the claim that "systemic theory retains [from "Categories"] the concepts of 'rank', 'realisation' [his 1966 replacement for 'exponence'] and 'delicacy'" (Halliday 1993:4505-6). But are these the same concepts that we met in the summary of "Categories" in Chapter 2? 

Blogger Comments:

[1] See the preceding 6 posts for the validity of these claims.

[2] See the next 4 posts for the validity of these claims.

Misunderstanding Halliday (1993) On Class

Fawcett (2010: 83):

The fourth "fundamental category" in "Categories" is 'class' — and this concept too is missing from the list of "basic concepts" in "Systemic theory". This absence is equally surprising, because the concept of 'class of unit' is essential to any generative SF grammar. The reason is that the way in which such grammars work is that each pass through the system network builds the structure of a given class of unit. For example, the class of unit that the simple system network in Figure 1 of Appendix A generates is the nominal group, and it cannot generate any other class of unit. The class of unit that is generated in all of the illustrative generative grammars that Halliday presents is the clause (e.g., Halliday 1969/81). "Systemic theory" is oriented to the use of the theory in generation so that the concept of 'class (of unit)' is, in a sense, presupposed throughout, yet the fact is that it is not presented as a "basic concept".

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the reason why 'class' is not presented as a "basic concept" in Halliday (1993) is because Systemic Theory is "basically" a functional theory, rather than a formal theory, and 'class' is the categorisation of form.

This, of course, does not mean that 'class' is not accounted for by the theory.  SFL models grammatical form as the rank scale, where it distinguishes classes, most explicitly at group and word rank; e.g. nominal vs verbal vs adverbial vs preposition vs conjunction group.

[2] To be clear, as already demonstrated, Fawcett's system network is inconsistent with SFL theory, not least because it construes lexical items as grammatical features of the nominal group.

[3] To be clear, here Fawcett mistakes a rank unit ('clause') for a class of rank unit (e.g. 'adverbial clause').

Deploying A Logical Fallacy In Discussing Halliday (1993) On Unit

 Fawcett (2010: 83):

How, then, have the two other "fundamental" categories from "Categories" fared, i.e., unit and class (of unit)? Amazingly, these two terms are also missing from "Systemic theory". One reason why it is surprising that the concept of 'unit' is not listed as a "basic concept" is that it is a vital part of the 'rank scale' concept — and it is this concept which provides the main organising principle in "Categories" (as we saw in Section 2.3 of Chapter 2). We shall discuss the curious treatment of the related concept of 'rank' shortly, when we ask what status is given in "Systemic theory" to the 'scales' that were introduced in "Categories".

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here Fawcett is amazed because two terms from an earlier theory, Scale and Category Grammar, are missing from a brief summary of a later theory, Systemic Functional Grammar. This is equivalent to being amazed because the term 'epicycle' from the earlier planetary model of Ptolemy is missing from the later planetary model of Copernicus. Clearly, Fawcett's presumption that the terms of an earlier theory should be included in a later theory is an instance of the 'red herring' logical fallacy. But see [2].

[2] This is very misleading indeed.  In this instance, Fawcett switches from 'term' to 'concept'. Contrary to Fawcett's claim, the concept of 'unit' is included in Systemic Theory, because the concept of 'rank', which is included (Halliday 1993: 273), entails the concept of 'unit', since a rank scale is a scale of units. Readers can judge for themselves whether Fawcett is deliberately trying to deceive his readers.

[3] Here again Fawcett uses the rhetorical strategy of implying a critique ("curious") while promising an argument elsewhere.  "We shall discuss" the misunderstandings that Fawcett deploys "shortly".

Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) On Element

Fawcett (2010: 83):

Perhaps, you might think, the concept of 'structure' in the "Categories" sense would still be reflected in "Systemic theory" through the presence of the term element, with which it is mutually defining? The term "element" does indeed appear in "Systemic theory", but once again it is used in a somewhat different sense (as I shall explain shortly). But the most surprising fact of all about the concept of 'element' in "Systemic theory" is that it is not presented as one of the "basic concepts". It is simply employed in defining other concepts — rather as if it was considered to be a non-theoretical concept whose meaning the reader is expected to interpret without guidance. In "Systemic theory", then, the concepts of both 'structure' and 'element' are used in different senses from those with which they were used in "Categories".

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  Halliday (1993: 272-3) uses 'element' in the same sense: as an element of structure, such as Subject, Finite, Theme, Process etc.

[2] This is misleading in two ways.  On the one hand, Halliday (1993: 272-3) presents 'element' in his discussion of the "basic concept" of Systemic Theory, systems, where it features in realisation statements.  On the other hand, it is not surprising that the concept should be presented this way, especially in a brief encyclopædia article, because what distinguishes Systemic Theory from Scale and Category Grammar (1961) is the 'shift to a paradigmatic orientation' (p273).  (Fawcett's orientation is to structure and form, rather than system and function.)

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue, as demonstrated above for 'element', and in the previous post for 'structure'.  That is, Fawcett has misrepresented Halliday (1993) on both matters.

Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) On Structure

Fawcett (2010: 82-3):

However, Halliday also uses the term system in a more general sense. In this second sense it denotes 'paradigmatic relations' (or 'options in meaning potential'), and it is in contrast with the term structure, which is itself to be understood in a broad sense that embraces all aspects of syntagmatic organisation at the level of form. But we should notice this is not the sense in which the term "structure" was used in "Categories". There it was used in a quite specific sense, i.e., one in which it was mutually defining with the concept of 'element'. In other words, a second "fundamental category" is now being used in a different sense.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is the same construal of system.  In this case, system is being theoretically located in terms of the axial relation between paradigmatic system and syntagmatic structure, rather than in terms of the instantiation relation between system and instance.

[2] This is misleading, because 'form' is a level in Fawcett's model of syntax, not in Halliday's functional linguistics.  Halliday models form as a rank scale at the level (stratum) of lexicogrammar.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  In Categories, Halliday  (2002 [1961]: 46) writes

A structure is made up of elements which are graphically represented as being in linear progression; but the theoretical relation among them is one of order.

This is the same sense of 'structure' in Systemic Theory; e.g. the experiential structure of a clause is a configuration of elements, such as Senser ^ Process ^ Phenomenon.  What is true is that the notion of structure is backgrounded in Halliday (1993), since the priority of Systemic Functional Theory is system, not structure (and function, not form).

[4] This is misleading, because it misrepresents a fundamental category in a superseded theory (Scale & Category Grammar) as a fundamental category in the theory that replaced it (Systemic Linguistics).

Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) On System

Fawcett (2010: 82):

Let us begin by looking for the four concepts from "Categories" of 'unit','class', 'structure' and 'system'. We shall find, as we would expect in a theory that has been re-named "systemic (functional) theory", that system is strongly fore-grounded, so let us begin with this concept. In Halliday's words (1993:4505): "the system takes priority," and he defines a system as a set of "options in meaning potential [my emphasis]". He then goes on to show how, because an option in one system can serve as an entry condition to another, large numbers of such systems combine to form a system network. … Thus the first two "basic concepts" of "Systemic Theory' are 'system' and 'system network', where they model the "meaning potential" of a language.

One might be tempted to say that the concept of 'system' has been expanded from what it was in "Categories" rather than changed — if it were not for the vital fact that the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on now model choices between meanings, as Halliday's use of the term "meaning potential" indicates.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading in a way that serves Fawcett's argument.  Systemic Theory is not a renaming of another theory.  It is a different theory.

[2] Here Fawcett continues his confusion of language as meaning potential with meaning as the semantic stratum of language.  To be clear, systems on the stratum of phonology represent the meaning potential of language, but they do not represent "choices between meanings" (semantics).  That is, Fawcett confuses instantiation (potential–instance) with the stratification of content (meaning–wording).

[3] This is very misleading. By 1993, the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, and THEME modelled choices between wordings (lexicogrammar); see [2].

Examining Systemic Theory (Halliday 1993) By Comparing It With Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961)

Fawcett (2010: 81-2):

With these issues in mind, we shall turn now to an examination of the concepts presented in "Systemic theory". Then in Chapters 6 and 7 we shall examine those in IFG. …

Halliday begins "Systemic theory" by reminding us that "systemic theory" is short for "systemic-functional theory", and this establishes from the start that the "systemic" approach to explaining language is one that is inherently oriented to 'function' and 'meaning'. The fact that SFG is a different theory of language from S&C is underlined when Halliday describes it (1993:4505) as "a development of Scale and Category Grammar"; indeed, the encyclopaedia in which "Systemic theory" appears contains a separate article on S&C grammar (Butler 1993a).

The question that we need to ask is: "How far do the seven 'fundamental' concepts of "Categories" (as described in Chapter 2 of this book) coincide with the 'basic concepts' presented in "Systemic theory", thirty-two years later?" 

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Fawcett intends to examine one theory, Systemic Theory (Halliday 1993), not in its own terms, but by comparing it with a different theory, Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961).  It will be seen that Fawcett frames the differences between the two theories as shortcomings of the later theory.

Promising A Critique Of An Imaginary Theoretical Inconsistency

Fawcett (2010: 81):

However, as we shall see in Chapter 7, it seems that two different positions on how a grammar works have been allowed to develop alongside each other in the Sydney version of SFL — and that in this case the two positions are not compatible with each other. This then raises the difficult question of which one is the 'correct' version of the theory — and, in relation to the other version, why it is different and what status it has in the theory.

Blogger Comments:

[1] It is worth mentioning, given how frequently Fawcett uses it as a rhetorical strategy, that Fawcett  primes the uncritical reader by repeatedly making substantial claims for which the evidence is said to lie elsewhere (in an upcoming chapter, in a past or forthcoming publication, etc.).

[2] To be clear, Fawcett's Chapter 7 is concerned with the 'box diagram' representations of metafunctional structures at the rank of clause in IFG. "As we shall see in the examination of Chapter 7", Fawcett's misunderstandings in this regard are multi-dimensional and, as such, very instructive.

Misrepresenting Halliday's Presentations Of Theory

Fawcett (2010: 80-1):

Thus, when Halliday was asked to write an account of 'systemic theory' for the Encyclopaedia of Languages and Linguistics, it was natural that he should draw primarily on the theoretical-generative strand of the theory. However, this leaves unanswered the question of why the aspects of the theory that are relevant to the 'text-descriptive' work that is presented in IFG are so different from the aspects presented in "Systemic theory".

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, what Fawcett previously (p79) described as "most striking" is now described as 'natural'.

[2] This is misleading. On the one hand, all "aspects of the theory" are potentially "relevant to the 'text-descriptive' work", whether theory is being used to describe a language or to analyse text.

On the other hand, the reason for the different presentation of theory in Halliday (1993) and in IFG (1985, 1994) is that these texts are instances of different registers, each realising a different context.  For example, in terms of tenor, the addressee of Halliday (1993) is the general reader, whereas the addressee of IFG is an undergraduate linguistics student taking a course in Systemic Functional Grammar.

Misrepresenting Halliday's IFG

Fawcett (2010: 79-80):

The second strand of work in SFL is the one that is more widely known: this is the text-descriptive strand of work. Like the term 'theoretical-generative', the term 'text-descriptive' is intended to evoke two types of work in linguistics that do not necessarily occur together, but which in SFL tend to be mutually supportive. The first is the description of languages, where the goal is to achieve a functional description of a language with a broad coverage (rather than, for example, the identification of particular syntactic phenomena as part of a search for syntactic 'universals', as in some other theories). … Works such as Halliday's IFG and Fawcett (in press) are also in the text-descriptive tradition.

It is a descriptive linguistics of this type that is needed by many researchers in many fields of 'applied linguistics' for use in the description of texts. … The term "text-descriptive" is therefore intended to cover both of these aspects of what is perceived here as one general strand of work: the text-based description of languages and the description of texts. …

The two editions of IFG (1985 and 1994) and the many spin-off publications are the main testimony to this strand of work in the Sydney framework.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, Fawcett's notion of a 'text-descriptive aspect of theory' conflates the focus on instances of language ('text') with the practice of describing particular languages ('descriptive').

	theory	description
linguist as grammarian	language as potential	a language as potential
linguist as discourse analyst	language as instance	a language as instance

The failure to distinguish these "strands" leads to misunderstanding and misrepresentation, as demonstrated below.

[2] This is misleading.  Halliday's IFG uses a theoretical description of one language, English, to demonstrate his theory of language, Systemic Functional Grammar.  That is, in terms of Fawcett's dichotomy of 'theoretical-generative' vs 'text-descriptive', it is both 'theoretical' and 'descriptive', but not 'text', since it is concerned with language-as potential, not with language-as-instance.

[3] To be clear, this confuses the theory–description dimension with the potential–instance dimension.  The description of language-as-instance (text) requires a description of language-as-potential.  This is why linguists working on an undescribed language need to describe the language in terms of theory in order to describe (analyse) texts of the language.