Sex Education In Schools

The Survival Value Of Ignorance

Consolations Of A Whistleblower

Verbal Group Structure Analysed For The More Common Secondary Tenses

Independent Assessment

Dealing With Whistleblowers

Mislabelling

Attacking The Messenger

The Place of 'Reading' In SFL's Architecture Of Language

Martin & Rose (2007: 310) place 'reading' on the cline of instantiation as more instantial than the text:

However, this is untenable for two reasons. Firstly, a reading of a text is at the same level of instantiation as the text it is a reading of. Secondly, a text is an instance of the system of the speaker/writer, whereas a reading is an interpretation of a text by a listener/reader.

As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384) explain:

If we look at logogenesis from the point of view of the system (rather than from the point of view of each instance), we can see that logogenesis builds up a version of the system that is particular to the text being generated: the speaker/writer uses this changing system as a resource in creating the text; and the listener/reader has to reconstruct something like that system in the process of interpreting the text — with the changing system as a resource for the process of interpretation. We can call this an instantial system.

On this basis, a reading is variant instantial system that is reconstructed by a listener/reader of the instantial system of a speaker/writer.

Metaredundancy Explained

Metaredundancy is not "the lexicogrammar construing the semantics construing the context" (Bartlett 2022). Metaredundancy, as the name implies, is a redundancy on a redundancy. Halliday uses the term for the three strata of language: semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology:

1. the redundancy of semantics and lexicogrammar is redundant with phonology, or
2. semantics is redundant with the redundancy of lexicogrammar and phonology.

One reason why Halliday took up Lemke's term was that it allowed him to explain that stratification is not a temporal (or causal) chain relation, as in 'semantics is realised in lexicogrammar, which is then realised in phonology'.

To be clear, the relation between strata is not enhancing (temporal or causal), but elaborating, and identifying, with the higher stratum of two as Value and the lower stratum as Token. Metaredundant relations in stratification can thus be expressed by either of the following:

For Halliday:

1. the realisation of semantics in lexicogrammar is realised in phonology, or
2. semantics is realised in the realisation of lexicogrammar in phonology.

On the other hand, the notion of lexicogrammar construing semantics is the notion that semantics is intellectually constructed by lexicogrammar, and the notion of semantics construing context is the notion that context is intellectually constructed by semantics.

Yægan Doran Undervaluing Michæl Halliday

Yaegan Doran wrote to SYSFLING on 27 Oct 2022, at 17:02:

The M.A.K. Halliday Prize is an international book prize awarded biennially for the most significant scholarly monograph recently published in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). It is named in memory of M.A.K. Halliday, who was the leading figure in the development of SFL theory.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this seriously undervalues the rôle of M.A.K. Halliday in the development of SFL theory. It is analogous to reducing Albert Einstein to the leading figure in the development of the General Theory of Relativity. SFL Theory is the creation of M.A.K. Halliday. Everyone else merely works in the theory that Halliday created. Without Halliday, there would not be any SFL Theory; without everyone else, there would.

For the motivation, see The Purpose Of Martin & Doran (eds).

Negotiating Tenor: Enacting Affiliation In Dialogue And Monologue (Yaegan Doran)

Negotiating tenor: Enacting affiliation in dialogue and monologue

Yaegan Doran

Australian Catholic University

Growing work in SFL has illustrated a wide range of strategies that people use to affiliate with each other and build community. To this point, however, these strategies have yet to be systematised into an integrated model. 

This talk presents one component of a model that aims to bring together these strategies into one system, as an evolving model of tenor (developed with Michele Zappavigna and J. R. Martin). 

Much work on affiliation, building on Knight (2010), has highlighted the regular use of both dialogue and evaluation in establishing and negotiating bonds: what we can analyse discourse semantically through NEGOTIATION and ATTITUDE (e.g. Zappavigna 2018). 

Similarly, descriptive work on interpersonal grammar across languages has highlighted the nuanced interactions that often occur between NEGOTIATION and the positioning of voices through ENGAGEMENT (e.g. Zhang 2020, Muntigl 2009, Martin et al. 2021). And work by White (2020), among others, has emphasised the crucial role of alignment in monologic discourse, highlighting the parallels between dialogic resources of NEGOTIATION and monologic resources of ENGAGEMENT. 

This talk aims to synthesise these interactions and parallels into a systemic model of tenor (being prepared as Doran, Martin and Zappavigna in prep.). The model developed views tenor as a set of resources for enacting social relations. 

The talk first explores the unfolding of dialogue, in terms of how people tender meanings to be reacted to, as well as how they can render these meanings in terms of support or reject. 

From this starting point, it then builds a more fleshed out description, that allows for the nuancing of meanings in terms of who has control or purview, the means by which propositions and proposals can be negotiated and ways in which each of these resources can be organised in both dialogue and monologue. 

Together, these sets of choices offer nuanced possibilities for negotiating people’s social relations in ways that complement a perspective on social relations in terms of status and contact.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this work simply confuses social relations (context plane) with the means of enacting social relations (language plane). That is, it misconstrues interpersonal language as interpersonal context (tenor). (And this is true even in terms of Martin's stratification, since although tenor is misunderstood as register, it is nevertheless understood as context.)

Halliday (1989: 12) describes tenor as follows:

TENOR — the role structure: 'who is taking part'

refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles: what kinds of role relationship obtain among the participants, including permanent and temporary relationships of one kind or another, both the types of speech role that they are taking on in the dialogue and the whole cluster of socially significant relationships in which they are involved.

The 'strategies that people use to enact social relations', on the other hand, are the interpersonal systems of language (and other parallel semiotic systems). 

In a previous seminar on tenor, Doran similarly presented systems of exchange structure (interpersonal semantics) as systems of tenor (interpersonal context).

This basic confusion between different levels of symbolic abstraction invalidates the proposed model of tenor.

Positive Discourse Analysis

He who praises everybody praises nobody.

 — Samuel Johnson

The most positive men are the most credulous.

 — Alexander Pope

Her Attitude

The Dialectical Method

The Lies That Bind

How To Identify The Thing (And Head) Of A Nominal Group

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 394):

… while the Thing … is the entity that is functioning as participant in the transitivity structure of the clause … It is the Head that determines the value of the entity in the mood system, and therefore as a potential Subject.

To demonstrate: 

Here it is clearly the word picture that serves as Thing, since it was the picture that was eaten by the llama, not Dorian Grey.

For Matthiessen (1995: 656-7), on the other hand, it is Dorian Grey that serves as Thing in such nominal groups:

Targeting Individuals For Abuse

The Snowflake Offensive

Whistleblower Protection

The Dunning–Kruger Effect

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realise it.

The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast, the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.

This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people.

It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.

Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.

Deceiving 1 Undeceiving 0

How To Win A Debate

The Lucifer Effect

The fundamental human need to belong comes from the desire to associate with others, to cooperate, to accept group norms. However, the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) shows that the need to belong can also be perverted into excessive conformity, compliance, and in-group versus out-group hostility. The need for autonomy and control, the central forces toward self-direction and planning, can be perverted into an excessive exercise of power to dominate others or into learned helplessness.

(The Lucifer Effect, by Philip Zimbardo, 2007, Rider Books)

Groupthink

Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when the desire for group consensus overrides people's common sense desire to present alternatives, critique a position, or express an unpopular opinion. Here, the desire for group cohesion effectively drives out good decision-making and problem solving.

Fear Of Being Disillusioned

Mass Debating

Teaching-Learning Cycle

Theo van Leeuwen On The Social Semiotics Of Time

 THE SOCIAL SEMIOTICS OF TIME

Theo van Leeuwen (leeuwen@sdu.dk)

The course will deal with time-based multimodal texts. It has two main objectives. Theoretically, it seeks to show that the semiotic resources we have for the temporal structuring of multimodal texts reflect the temporal structuring of social life. Practically, it introduces resources for analysing the temporal structuring of multimodal texts, including music and film, and for analysing the verbal and visual representation of time and timing in multimodal texts.

5 August Time and society

The lecture introduces the course and discusses its basic assumption – that the structuring of time-based multimodal texts is closely related to the way society organizes the timing of activities. It also discusses the power structures and normative discourses that regulate social timing.

12 August Rhythm (1)

Starting by discussing the differences between clock time and our body clocks, the lecture argues that the structuring of everyday social interaction and the structuring of time-based multimodal texts is primarily based on rhythm, and introduces a method for analysing the rhythmic structure of multimodal texts and the role it plays in meaning-making.

26 August Time and music (1)

This lecture discusses the relation between musical time and social time, introducing a number of key concepts, including measured and unmeasured time, regularized and non-regularized time, metronomic and non-metronomic time, and polyrhythmic and mono-rhythmic time, in each case explaining how these forms of timing create meaning, and how they can combine in complex structures.

9 September Time and film (1)

This lecture discusses the relation between filmic time and the changes in social time and timing which came about at the time film language was developed, as a result of technological innovations and new ways of understanding time (e.g. relativity theory). Key themes include the relation between past, present and future, the stretching or condensing of time and the presentation of distant events as simultaneous and connected.

23 September Time and language (1)

The lecture discusses linguistic resources for representing the timing of social activities, their relation to the way time and timing are organized in contemporary society, and the way they can be used to analyse the representation of time in discourse.

14 October Visual representations of time (1)

This lecture discusses semiotic resources for the (static) visual representation of time-based activities, showing how these resources can be used in analysing images and diagrams, and comparing the semantic reach of visual and verbal representation of time and timing.

Blogger Comments:

[1] On the model of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the dimension of time can be understood as the location and extent (duration or frequency) of the unfolding of processes. The difference between 'clock time and our body clocks' is in the processes whose rhythms provide the intervals of time measurement.

[2] Rhythm can be understood as the unfolding of a process relative to the time intervals used to measure it.

[3] The difference between musical time and social time is in the processes whose unfoldings provide the intervals of time measurement.

[4] This mistakes process for time. It is the unfolding of processes that is measured or unmeasured, regularised or non-regularised, metronomic or non-metronomic, polyrhythmic or monorhythmic. Timing is the unfolding of a process relative to temporal location and extent.

[5] From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the General Theory of Relativity models gravity as the relative contraction of space intervals and the relative expansion of time intervals with increasing proximity to a centre of mass.

[6] From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, past, present and future are relative to the time of meaning-making, mental or verbal.

[7] Interpreting the General Theory of Relativity in terms of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the 'simultaneity' of distant events can be understood in terms of the 'past in present' tense, because the time it takes light to travel entails that what is observed is a past event relative to the present of the observing process.

Pronoun Fascism

Binary Handshaking Preferences

 

Problems With Martin's ISFC Plenary 2022

Construing entities: types of structure

Over the past couple of years, Yaegan Doran, Zhang Dongbing and I have had the pleasure of editing three special issues of Word devoted to the analysis of nominal groups across a range of languages (including Dagarre, Lhasa Tibetan, Khorchin Mongolian, Korean, Serbian, Brazilian Portuguese, Old English, Ancient Greek, Pitjantjatjara, Tagalog, Mandarin Chinese, and Sundanese. In this talk I address some issues arising from this work, focusing on types of structure. In particular I will look at SFG's traditional distinction between multivariate and univariate structures and their association with non-recursive and recursive systems respectively (Halliday 1981, 1979). With respect to nominal group structure I'll suggest that the association of multivariate structure with non-recursive systems and univariate structure with recursive systems needs to be relaxed. Doing so makes room for recognition of non-iterative dependency structures, which I'll refer to as subjacency duplexes (first foregrounded as duplexes in Rose's work on Pitjantjatjara; 2001) – a structure which can be usefully applied to the analysis of what are often fudged as 'structure markers' in SFG descriptions of nominal groups – and elsewhere (i.e. adpositions and linkers).

References：

Halliday, M A K 1981 (1965) Types of Structure. M A K Halliday & J R Martin [Eds.] Readings in Systemic Linguistics. London:Batsford. 29-41.

Halliday, M A K 1979 Modes of meaning and modes of expression: types of grammatical structure, and their determination by different semantic functions. D J Allerton, E Carney, D Holcroft [Eds] Function and Context in Linguistics Analysis: essays offers to William Haas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 57-79

Rose, D 2001 The Western Desert code: an Australian cryptogrammar. Canberra:Pacific Linguistics.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, 'entity' here is a rebranding of 'participant' (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999) by Martin's student Hao.

[2] To be clear, Martin falsely claims that Halliday (1965) restricts multivariate structures to non-recursive systems and univariate structures to recursive systems. The truth is that Halliday (1965) associates multivariate structures with both non-recursive and cyclically recursive systems, and univariate structures with lineally recursive systems. Halliday (1981 [1965]: 45):

[3] The following are examples of Martin's 'subjacency duplex' structure:

The problems here are that a duplex is a two-unit complex, and a complex is an expansion of a rank scale unit, and Martin's proposed new structure violates both principles. That is, β# does not expand α, and α is not restricted to single rank unit.

Moreover, because a duplex is a two-unit complex, there should also be a subjacency simplex. Because this would be equivalent to the dominant unit (α) of the duplex, a subjacency simplex is subjacency duplex without the preposition or conjunction.

[4] This is misleading, because it is not true. Rose takes the term 'duplex' from Matthiessen (1995), where it just means a two-unit complex, which is how Rose also uses the term. Rose's work does not foreground Martin's mistaken notion of a subjacency duplex.

[5] This misleading, because it is untrue. there is no "fudging" involved in identifying 'structure marker' as the function of these forms.

∞

See also Some Problems With Martin's Notion Of A 'Subjacency Duplex Structure'

What Liars Hate

Litteracy

The Realisation Of The Metafunctions In Phonology

At the rank of tone group:

• the system of TONALITY — choice in the distribution of tone groups — realises the distribution of information units (textual metafunction);
• the system of TONICITY — choice in the placement of tonic prominence — realises the culmination of New information (textual metafunction);
• the system of TONE — choice in the major pitch movement — realises the system of KEY (interpersonal metafunction);
• the systems of TONE SEQUENCE and TONE CONCORD realise the systems of TAXIS and LOGICO-SEMANTIC TYPE (logical metafunction).

The Global And Local Dimensions That Define The Architecture Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 20, 31-2)

… We have now introduced the major semiotic dimensions that define the ‘architecture’ of language in context. Some of these dimensions enable us to locate lexicogrammar in relation to the other sub-systems that make up the total system of language; these are known as global dimensions because they determine the overall organisation of language in context: the hierarchy of stratification, the cline of instantiation, and the spectrum of metafunctions. The other dimensions enable us to characterise the internal organisation of lexicogrammar and also of the other sub-systems of language, and of context; these are known as local dimensions because they operate locally within linguistic sub-systems. Let us summarise the semiotic dimensions of language in context under these two headings: see Table 1-7. 

Our Teachers

The Socio Path

Deceptive Use Of Wikipedia

Annabelle Lukin wrote to sys-func on 22/6/22 at 13:06:

Halliday's position is distinct from Martin's. A colleague contacted me as someone had made the claim on Halliday's Wikipedia page that while he was at Sydney University he founded the Sydney School of genre pedagogy, adding a link to a Reading to Learn page. See screenshot.

This is completely false. Martin is responsible for the 'Sydney School', and for genre pedagogy.

I've now removed that sentence.

 

David Rose replied at 19:41:

Annabelle, I agree that this Wikipedia edit was inappropriate. Can you see when it was done?

It is a widely held misconception that MAKH was directly responsible for genre pedagogy. One factor has been its dissemination without acknowledgement to JRM, while functional grammar is strongly associated with MAKH.

On the other hand, it is a major part of the careers of many in the SFL community, who teach and research both genre and grammar. It is by far the most widely known of SFL’s applications, bringing many 1000s of teachers to the grammar. So the terms genre pedagogy and Sydney school could bring readers to the Halliday page.

Would it be worth disambiguating this issue by saying that Halliday’s research provided the basis for the later development of the genre-based literacy pedagogy of the Sydney School, led by his student JR Martin?

I checked why a Sydney School link might lead to the Reading to Learn site. There have been several papers downloadable on the site, but gooogle scholar now directs mainly to researchgate.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, in her email, Annabelle Lukin alerted the Sys-Func community that the Wikipedia page of Michæl Halliday had been deceptively edited so as to use Halliday's high status to advertise Jim Martin's 'Sydney School' of Genre Pedagogy and David Rose's Reading To Learn program, neither of which is the work of Halliday. 

Clearly, the person most likely to have carried out this deception is David Rose, since his Reading To Learn program is a mixture of Martin's Genre Pedagogy and Brian Gray's Accelerated Literacy.

The only person to respond to Lukin's message was David Rose, who played down the deception as merely 'inappropriate', and went on to provide spurious reasons to excuse it, thereby unwittingly identifying himself as the person responsible for the deception.

Whistleblowers

Persuasive Presentation

Scare Quote's

Interpersonal Consensus Vs Experiential Consistency

Black & White Pronouns

Team Player

 

Professing

Supervision

Reputation And Reliability

Self-Importance

Temporal Meanings And SFL Worlds Of Experience

Temporal meanings and SFL worlds of experience

Rosemary Huisman

Later this year, Routledge is publishing my book, Narrative Worlds and the Texture of Time, a Social-Semiotic Perspective. The general blurb - no doubt more intended to be impressive than informative - says:

This book brings together a model of time and a model of language to generate a new model of narrative, where different stories with different temporalities and non-chronological modes of sequence can tell of different worlds of human – and non-human – experience, woven together (the ‘texture of time’) in the one narrative.

The model of language referred to is that of SFL, especially as developed in the publications of M.A.K. Halliday and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen. The model of time, of different temporalities in natural levels of complexity, is that of J.T. Fraser. Both Halliday and Fraser are influenced by Gerald Edelman's model of the brain, which links human consciousness with the development of language and temporal awareness. And for most narrative theorists, narrative is, at least, the way humans organise their awareness of time.

In this paper I focus on the contribution of SFL to the development of the narrative model. (In the book, the narrative model developed is then used to compare the "texture of time" in English literary texts of different historical periods.)

Blogger Comments:

In this seminar, time was equated with sequence. The problem here is that sequence is not time, but the ordering of processes in time. In SFL Theory, time is a circumstance of processes, and in physics, quantified as a dimension. See also Making Sense Of Time.

Tech Support

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

Expertise