Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) On Delicacy, Realisation And Rank

Fawcett (2010: 92):

As for the three 'scales' found in "Categories", the concepts of 'delicacy' and 'exponence' (the latter now renamed "realisation") have changed as a natural consequence of the elevation of 'system' to model 'meaning potential'. And the term 'rank' (which has no meaning without 'unit', in its "Categories" sense) is re-interpreted in "Systemic theory" as a general statement about 'flat tree constituency', with no statement at all about the concepts of a 'rank scale' and the associated limitations on 'rank shift'. According to "Systemic theory", then, it would appear that all of the concepts that are presented in "Categories" as "fundamental" have either been dropped or been changed — many quite drastically. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The concepts of delicacy, exponence (as realisation) and rank have not changed across the two theories, as Halliday (1995 [1993]: 273) makes clear:

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; 'delicacy' is variable paradigmatic focus, with ordering from more general to more delicate; 'realisation' (formerly 'exponence') is the relation between the 'strata,' or levels, of a multistratal semiotic system — and, by analogy, between the paradigmatic and syntagmatic phases of representation within one stratum. But in systemic theory, realisation is held distinct from 'instantiation,' which is the relation between the semiotic system (the 'meaning potential') and the observable events, or 'acts of meaning,' by which the system is constituted.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  As previously demonstrated, Fawcett's mistaken notion of 'system' being "elevated" to "meaning potential" arises from his (motivated) confusion of language as potential with meaning as stratum (semantics).

[3] This is misleading, on two counts: because it is untrue, as previously demonstrated, and because it is irrelevant (a red herring).  Moreover, the implication here is that new theories should be consistent with the theories that they replace.  In this way of thinking, quantum mechanics should be consistent with classical mechanics, and both should be consistent with the physics of Aristotle, and so on.