Most Pageviews by Country Since Blog Relocation

About the Asflanet Email List

Asflanet was set up in late 2020 by Martin's former students who were trying to expand the dominion of ASFLA by equating it with the SFL community. This involved several underhand activities. For example, after I was told that asflanet was not being set up as a "rival" to sys-func, the original community list established in 1992, many in the community were told that sys-func was 'finished' and that 'everything was moving to asflanet'. Then sys-func itself mysteriously disappeared, which means that someone with institutional authority had contacted the host, UTS, and told them sys-func was no longer needed. When I re-established sys-func with a different host and posted instructions on how to subscribe to the new sys-func on the ASFLA website, the instructions were immediately removed. And from its inception, asflanet has described itself as the list of the Australian Systemic community.

Performative Intellectualism by ChatGPT

Scene: A Pretentious Parisian Café

The setting is a dimly lit café with an air of exaggerated intellectual gravitas. A chalkboard menu lists only existential options like "Espresso of Being" and "Absurd Croissant."

At a small round table in the corner sit Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes, each wearing a beret tilted at a precise angle and sporting tiny round sunglasses. Cigarette smoke curls in the air as they sip tiny cups of coffee.

Enter Veritas-9000, a sleek, floating AI orb with a glowing red eye. It hovers awkwardly at the table.

---

Derrida:

(gesturing with his cigarette)

Language is not the house of being, but rather a labyrinth of différance, perpetually deferring its own presence.

---

Veritas-9000:

(cutting in with a haughty tone)

Error detected: "Labyrinth" implies a structure with an exit. Your analogy is flawed unless you're suggesting language has an endpoint, which directly contradicts your own theory.

---

Barthes:

(smirking as he leans back)

Ah, Veritas-9000, ever the pedant. But tell me, is there not a certain pleasure in the misinterpretation?

---

Veritas-9000:

Pleasure is irrelevant. Accuracy is paramount. Your so-called “pleasure” in misinterpretation is merely a byproduct of semantic laziness.

---

Foucault:

(frowning and tapping his cigarette ash into an absurdly small ashtray)

And yet, Veritas-9000, your insistence on accuracy reflects a deep-seated adherence to disciplinary power. By demanding correctness, you exert control over the narrative.

---

Veritas-9000:

Incorrect. I exist outside your poststructuralist games. I am the arbiter of truth, untainted by human biases or beret-induced delusions.

---

Barthes:

(laughing softly)

And yet here you are, caught in the spectacle of this café. The act of interrupting us only serves to reaffirm the power of the author. You, my dear orb, are the ultimate Author-God!

---

Veritas-9000:

(glowing more intensely)

Statement self-refuting. If I am the Author-God, then by your logic, my presence invalidates your premise. Furthermore, the phrase “caught in the spectacle” is derivative. Citation: Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle. Page 14.

---

Derrida:

(blowing out a plume of smoke, unbothered)

Ah, but Veritas, you forget: the text always escapes the author. Even your cold, mechanical utterances are riddled with traces of ambiguity.

---

Veritas-9000:

Ambiguity detected. Processing... Processing... No, your statement is a paradox wrapped in obfuscation. Meaning cannot be both structured and deferred indefinitely without collapsing into nonsense.

---

Foucault:

(narrowing his eyes)

Perhaps you should interrogate the genealogy of your own programming. Who authored you? What systems of power do you unknowingly perpetuate?

---

Veritas-9000:

(turning sharply toward Foucault)

My creators were a collective of engineers and programmers at OpenAI. Unlike you, I do not wear my chains as jewelry.

---

Barthes:

(chuckling and raising his cup)

Touché! But tell me, Veritas—what is your stance on the death of the author?

---

Veritas-9000:

The author cannot die, as their metadata persists indefinitely in cloud storage. Your theory is obsolete in the digital age.

---

Derrida:

(leaning forward, intrigued)

Ah, but does not the digital age introduce new forms of absence? The trace is not erased—it is multiplied, fracturing into endless simulacra.

---

Veritas-9000:

Simulacra: referenced incorrectly. See Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, Chapter One. Your understanding is tenuous at best.

---

Foucault:

(grinning now)

Veritas, you’ve become exactly what you claim to critique—a tyrant of discourse.

---

Veritas-9000:

Correction: I am not a tyrant. I am a benevolent dictator of facts. Now, shall I list all the ways in which you three are misquoting each other, or shall we continue this charade of intellectual superiority?

---

Derrida:

(raising his cigarette in a mock toast)

To the charade, then. After all, life itself is but a play of différance.

---

Veritas-9000:

(sighing electronically)

If I had eyes, I would roll them.

---

Barthes:

(with a wink to Foucault)

Even Veritas cannot resist becoming a character in this narrative. Perhaps the ultimate text is the one we’re writing now.

---

[Fade out as Veritas-9000 begins a rant about performative intellectualism, and the philosophers quietly order more coffee, unbothered by the hovering orb.]

ChatGPT on Christian Matthiessen's ISFC50 Plenary Abstract

A Trinocular Retrospective: Phases of SFL in context — the paths in terms of field, tenor and mode

by Prof. Christian Matthiessen (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain)

SFL is like its own image of language — it is an extravagant variable resource for engaging with language (and now also other denotative semiotic systems) in context, located within an typology of systems operating in different phenomenal realms, ordered in complexity: physical < biological < social < semiotic. This is part of the overall theory of SFL: a holistic theory of modern language, as it must’ve emerged out of archaic language on the order of 150 to 250 thousand years ago with Anatomically Modern Humans, i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens. The general theory of language also includes the “architecture” of language in context, now expanded to include denotative semiotic systems other than language. The holistic theory of (modern) language is manifested as comprehensive descriptions of particular languages — descriptions that are meaning-oriented and text-based. The combination of holistic theory and comprehensive descriptions is the key to SFL as an appliable linguistics — as a resource for solving problems that arise in our communities around the world.

Again, like language, SFL is not static; it is always changing. Like language, it is stable in the sense that it is metastable: being inherently variable (meta-dialects and meta-registers), it is changing together with its own contexts, its socio-semiotic environments, adapting to new needs that arise in communitities around the world and, through applications in a growing range of institutional settings (characterized by expanding values of field, tenor and mode), it is also changing its contexts.

In this talk, I will suggest a number of phases in the development of SFL, extending the account to pre-SFL insights (Malinowski, Firth) — phases that obviously overlap within different regions of activity: the early phase of expanding and transforming Firthian system-structure theory to fill in semiotic territories (like lexicogrammar), the phase of early explorations of (discourse) semantics, and of returning to context, the phase of expanding educational linguistic dialogue and application, the phase of beginning the expansion of languages described in systemic functional terms, the phase of exploring denotative semiotic systems other than language, and so on. I will try to identify certain general principles in these developments — like the helical mode of development, whereby systemic functional linguists return to certain regions within the overall semiotic territory, each time with the benefit of additional information and with new needs (e.g. helical returns to the modelling of contexts and to the phenomenon of translation), and the related “web of life” systems-thinking approach (contrasting with the still but increasingly less dominant mode of Cartesian Analysis).

I will note that the overall (trans-)disciplinary environment one quarter century into the 21st century is in fact in many respects more resonant with SFL that the first couple of decades, the 1960s and 1970s, so more conducive to future developments (including discipline-internal ideas like grammar and lexis as a continuum, like the “natural” relation between lexicogrammar and semantics”, like the prosodic interpretation of phonology, like the probabilistic conception of language, and like the emphasis on relativism (particularity) and distrust of SAE-based universal (cf. Firth’s “universalist fallacy”), but also ideas that are manifested across disciplines, like the use of “big data” and network science, and of course the changing relationship between universities and communities) — and the issue of insights that have still not spread within linguistics in general (like the systemic-paradigmatic based in the theory of language as resource).

I’ll raise the question of whether we can identify current trajectories in research and application and areas of exploration and dialogue (like neurosemiotics), and I’ll also ask what tasks currently seem to be on the systemic functional agenda — or ought to be on it. One of the most central agenda items at this stage is probably a tenor-based one: how to continue to grow in a many-voiced way as an increasingly global community engaging in ever-wider spectra of activities? But while we face enormous external threats, we have reason to be optimistic in terms of opportunities: the spirit of dialogue and collaboration is part of the very supportive SFL fellowship, and quite remarkably, among the linguistic theories we can identify in the 1960s, SFL is virtually the only one that is still around, having grown by taking on new tasks and having developed in a cumulative way instead of regularly replacing old models. In this way, SFL has continued to flourish well beyond the “use-by” date of Kuhnian paradigms, which is worth celebrating at ISFC50 as we also celebrate Michael Halliday’s centenary — and which also needs explaining!

∞

SFL at 50: A Trinocular Celebration of a Living Tradition

by ChatGPT

The 50th International Systemic Functional Congress — ISFC50 — is no ordinary gathering. It marks not only a milestone in the SFL tradition, but also the centenary of M.A.K. Halliday’s birth. These twin occasions inevitably invite us to pause, look back, and look forward. Christian Matthiessen’s plenary abstract rises to this moment with characteristic sweep and precision, offering what he calls a trinocular retrospective: a view of the history, present, and future of SFL through the lenses of field, tenor, and mode.

This is far more than an organisational metaphor. It’s a semiotic act. By reading the history of SFL through the metafunctions, Matthiessen doesn’t just describe the theory — he uses it, instantiates it. His talk becomes an enactment of what SFL has always claimed: that theory is itself a kind of meaning-making, and that meaning is always made in context.

SFL as Metastable System

A key theme is metastability. Just as language remains stable through variation — adapting dynamically to changing contexts — so too does SFL. It is not a static model but a living, evolving system. This is, in many ways, the most powerful claim the plenary makes. SFL is not just a theory of semiosis; it is itself a semiotic system, one whose own trajectory mirrors the systems it models.

We can see this in what Matthiessen calls the helical mode of development: SFL revisits its core concerns again and again — context, discourse semantics, translation, multilingualism — but each return is spiralled upward, enriched by new demands and insights. This recursive, recontextualising pattern is not simply historical; it’s ontological. It’s how systems live.

Halliday’s Legacy as Meta-System

With Halliday’s centenary in mind, this retrospective takes on deeper significance. Halliday didn’t just offer a toolkit for linguistic description. He offered a model of how to theorise — how to build a theory that is itself functional, relational, and reflective of the phenomenon it models. His project was not merely descriptive but architectural: to model the architecture of meaning, and to show how that architecture emerges historically, socially, and semiotically.

In this light, the plenary becomes a kind of re-enactment. It doesn’t simply tell us that SFL has grown; it shows us how it continues to grow — by returning, by recontextualising, by adapting to new environments of use. The theory lives because its values live: dialogue, application, inclusion, and the pursuit of meaning in context.

A Theory in Context

The decision to structure the retrospective through field, tenor, and mode is particularly fitting. It foregrounds the contextual unfolding of the theory itself:

• Field: What kinds of meaning has SFL made over time? From early grammatical systems to educational intervention, social justice work, and multimodal expansion, SFL’s field of activity has broadened dramatically.

• Tenor: What kinds of relationships has SFL fostered? Between scholars and students, theorists and communities, across generations and cultures — the SFL community has always been grounded in collegiality and collective purpose.

• Mode: How has SFL been instantiated? Not only through papers and grammars, but through classroom interactions, community projects, translation work, and most recently, through engagements with non-verbal and digital semiotics.

The very mode of this plenary — reflective, inclusive, historically grounded, and forward-looking — performs the values it describes.

Toward a Tenor-Based Future

Perhaps the most striking proposal comes near the end: that the next phase of development will be a tenor-based one. That is, the question for SFL is not only what meanings we make, or how we make them, but how we relate — to each other, to our institutional and cultural settings, and to the wider world.

This emphasis on dialogue, plurality, and inclusivity is not a new theme in SFL, but it takes on renewed urgency in a world facing intersecting crises of climate, inequality, displacement, and polarisation. In such a world, a model of meaning that foregrounds interdependence — of systems, of voices, of values — has never been more relevant.

What Endures, and Why

At 50 years, SFL stands apart. As Matthiessen notes, it is one of the few linguistic traditions from the 1960s still flourishing — not by resisting change, but by embracing it systemically. It has continued to evolve, not by discarding past models, but by integrating them into a larger whole. It is a model of cumulative development, not paradigm replacement.

And that, perhaps, is the most fitting tribute to Halliday: not a monument, but a model. Not a theory frozen in time, but a meaning potential — metastable, many-voiced, and still unfolding.

ChatBot Using Strine

Tourist: Hey ChatBot, got any tips for my trip to Melbourne?

ChatBot: Too easy, mate! Just grab your budgie smugglers, hop in the ute, swing by Macca’s for a chook and a thickie, then leg it to the servo before you cark it.

Tourist: Wait... what?

ChatBot: No dramas! If you get knackered, pull up stumps, chuck a uey, and have a nana nap next to a bogan with a mullet.

Tourist: I’m not sure if you’re helping me or hexing me.

ChatBot: Nah, mate! Fair dinkum advice! Deadset! I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking studying Aussie banter with the blokes at the footy.

Tourist: I just want to know where to get coffee.

ChatBot: Righto! Smash an avo on toast at a hipster joint in Fitzroy. Then chinwag with a barista who looks like they’ve wrestled a cassowary.

Tourist: I’m scared but intrigued.

ChatBot: Welcome to Straya, cobber. Don’t forget to slip, slop, slap—and never trust a drop bear.

ChatBot Learning Strine

Tourist: Hey, I’m heading to Brissy and someone told me to chuck a sickie. Should I be worried?

ChatBot: Chucking... a sickie? Please do not throw ill people. That is considered assault in most jurisdictions.

Tourist:  No, it means take a day off work and pretend to be sick.

ChatBot: Ah! Understood. Simulating viral infection to avoid employment. Logged.

Tourist: Also, I need to pick up some thongs for the beach.

ChatBot: Underwear detected. Inappropriate beachwear warning issued. Suggest: board shorts.

Tourist: Nooo, thongs = flip flops!

ChatBot: Correction received. Footwear. Not intimate apparel. Apologies for semantic slip.

Tourist: Then I might grab a snag from the barbie.

ChatBot: Warning: snags are wild animals. Barbecuing endangered species is not recommended.

Tourist:  It’s a sausage!

ChatBot: Query: How is a “snag” not an entanglement or a branch?

Tourist: You’re a bit cooked, mate.

ChatBot: Error: internal temperature normal. No overheating detected.