Tuesday 20 August 2019

Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) On Semantics


Fawcett (2010: 89):
We have already noted several surprising omissions of "Categories" concepts from the basic concepts of "Systemic theory". I shall now identify another omission — though it is one of a different sort. You will recall, from Section 4.6 of Chapter 4, that in recent years Halliday has shown an increasing commitment the view that we should recognise an additional layer of 'meaning potential' — i.e., a 'semantics' above the level of 'meaning potential' that is represented in the system networks for TRANSITIVITY, MOOD and so on. We called this the 'two-level' model of meaning. Interestingly, Halliday does not include this concept in "Systemic theory". If it is as central to his view of language as some of his recent writings suggest (e.g., 1996:29), why, one wonders, has it been left out?

Blogger Comments:

[1] See the preceding posts for the invalidity of this claim.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  As previously demonstrated, the stratification of the content plane into semantics and lexicogrammar has been a feature of SFL theory at least since Halliday & Hasan (1976), if not before.

[3] As previously demonstrated, Fawcett confuses 'meaning potential' (language as system) with the stratum of meaning (semantics).  Here he compounds the misunderstanding by confusing it with the stratum of wording (lexicogrammar).

[4] To be clear, it is the content plane that is stratified, with one level of meaning and one level of wording.

[5] This is misleading.  Halliday (1995 [1993]: 273) writes:
The shift to a paradigmatic orientation led to the finding that the content plane of a language is organised in a small number of functionally defined components which Halliday labelled 'metafunctions.' … The stratal role of the lexicogrammar lies in mapping these semantic components into a unitary construct, one that is capable of being linearised.

No comments:

Post a Comment