On The Diagrammatic Representation Of Systemic Analyses

 Fawcett (2010: 120):

There are in fact three further practical reasons why IFG does not provide the reader with systemic analyses. The first is that if Halliday had included the systemic analyses too — and so also the system networks and realisation statements that would make that possible — the book would have had to be two to three times as long (Halliday 1994:xv). The second reason is that Halliday has never published full sets of his current system networks, and it would have been odd if their first public appearance had been in what was intended as a text book. As we saw in Section 4.5 of Chapter 4, it was only through the publication of Matthiessen (1995) that the system networks which accompany IFG were finally published. And the third reason is that it is not obvious how best to represent, in a readily interpretable diagram, the analysis of a clause in terms of its features. A simple list of all the features that have been chosen is clearly inadequate, because it may include the names of thirty or forty features, not all of which are immediately interpretable. There have in fact been very few published attempts — in any version of the theory — to develop any such method of displaying the systemic features of a text. The diagrams in Fawcett (1980: 195 and 231) are early forerunners of the method of presentation currently used in the Cardiff framework, an example of which is presented in Section 7.8. So far as I know, Fawcett (forthcoming a) will be the first work to introduce a method of analysing texts in terms of their systemic features. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, the first two editions of IFG were not intended as a textbook.  Halliday (1994: xxvi):

This book is not a textbook of English; it is an interpretation of the English code. No attempt is made to 'teach' the categories. But an attempt is made to interpret some of them, especially the difficult and important ones like Subject.

[2] To be clear, the obvious way to present a systemic — not structural — analysis of a clause is to identify the features that were selected in its instantiation.  A list of features is not inadequate because all of the features are immediately interpretable, because the meaning (valeur) of each feature is its relation to other features in the system. Halliday (1994: xxvii):

A systemic grammar is not syntagmatic but paradigmatic; hence there is no difference in describing something and relating it to everything else, because the description of any feature is its relationship to all the others.

[3] To be clear, Fawcett's method of presentation in Section 7.8 — Figure 10 (p148) — confuses systemic features (paradigmatic axis), such as 'repeated past', 'positive' and 'unassessed', with structural elements (syntagmatic axis), such as 'overt agent', 'overt affected', 'subject theme' and unmarked new':

This confusion of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes is inherent in Fawcett's model — Figure 4 (p36 ) — where selected features (paradigmatic axis) are misconstrued as the 'meaning level' counterpart of 'form level' structure (syntagmatic axis):

 

For the internal inconsistencies in Fawcett' model, see:

On 'The Main Components Of A Systemic Functional Grammar'.