Field: The Ideational Dimension Of Culture As Semiotic System

Note that 'field' does not refer to the ideational meanings of language (as system, register or text).


Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384):

context of culture: the culture as social-semiotic system: networks of social semiotic features constituting the systems–&–processes of the culture; defined as potential clusters of field, tenor and mode.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 320): 

The context encompasses both the field of activity and the subject matter with which it is concerned (‘what’s going on, and what is it about?’) … .  The field is thus the culturally recognised repertoires of social practices and concerns …

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 321-2):

… there are two aspects to this category. In most contexts, there is both a first order field and a second order field — the first order field is the social activity being pursued (e.g. instructing somebody in how to prepare a dish …) and the second order field is the ‘subject matter’ the activity is concerned with (e.g. the ingredients and methods of cooking …).

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 322): 

… a full account of field would include a typology of the possible first and second order values that occur in a culture. Such a typology would show how closely various fields are related — how they form families.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 323):

… the semantic correlate of a contextual field is a domain. When we model the ideational semantics of a particular field, we create a domain model.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 323): 

Domain models are variants of the general model. A particular domain model specifies which of the semantic systems in the overall model are activated in a particular contextual field: the ideational meanings that are “at risk”. Each field thus has its own semantic profile, which can be seen against the background of the overall semantic potential.