Metaphorical Expansion Of Ideational Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 226):

Projection And Expansion Manifested Throughout Ideational Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 224):

Two Fundamental Semantic Motifs: Expansion And Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 223):

Projections And Expansions Construed As Things

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 202):

The Possibilities Of Projecting Sequences

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 116):

Consciousness In Projection And The Two Levels Of Metaphenomena

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 108):

Dreyfus And Hao On Circumstantial Meaning

A multi-stratal perspective on circumstantial meaning

Shoshana Dreyfus (with Jing Hao in absentia)

This presentation provides a ‘broader’ understanding of what is previously known from a grammatical perspective as ‘circumstantial meaning’ or circumstantiation. This ‘broader’ perspective takes into account more abstract meanings beyond grammar, considering both field (at the register stratum) and discourse semantics, in addition to lexicogrammar. The paper shows how the lexicogrammar alone is not able to adequately account for the meaning potential of ‘circumstantial meaning’, and how by examining this region of meaning from three strata, a fuller account of circumstantial meaning is made possible. A richer account of circumstantial meaning is necessary because, while circumstances may be considered structurally peripheral, earlier explorations of circumstantial meaning (such as Dreyfus & Jones 2008, 2011; Dreyfus & Bennett 2017) show that this area of meaning often makes important contributions to the register of any given text and to the building of disciplinary knowledge. This exploration is demonstrated through two texts: a student’s high scoring piece of creative writing from the subject of English in the final year of schooling and a synopsis of a history book on the Chinese fishing industry in colonial Australia. These texts reveal the significantly different ways in which circumstantial meanings are used in different subject areas – i.e. to contribute to setting up an ‘ambience’ in literary texts and to developing knowledge in history.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) have argued, the 'broader', 'more abstract' meanings that are manifested in circumstantiation are the highly generalised categories of expansion and projection, which they term 'transphenomenal' because they 'operate across the various categories of phenomena' (p223), and generate patterns that constitute 'fractal types' because:

… they are principles of construing our experience of the world that generate identical patterns of semantic organisation which are of variable magnitude and which occur in variable semantic environments.

[2] To be clear, in SFL theory, 'field' is the ideational dimension of context — from the culture as potential to varying institutions/situation types to varying situations as instances.  Register, on the other hand, as a functional variety of language, is a sub-potential of language, not the systemic potential of context.  Here the authors are merely repeating Martin's (1992) misunderstandings of field, context and register, as demonstrated here (field), here (context), and here (register).

[3] To be clear, in SFL theory, it is the grammar that construes ('intellectually constructs') the semantics.  That is why understanding the grammar (wording) of a language is the means of understanding its semantics (meaning).

[4] Here the authors misinterpret the peripheral status of circumstances in terms of ergativity as peripheral status in terms of semogenesis (making meaning), and use this misinterpretation as a straw man against which to argue.

[5] To be clear, in SFL theory, knowledge is meaning, and 'disciplinary knowledge' is the meaning (semantics) that realises an institution (context sub-potential).  Both levels of symbolic abstraction involve all metafunctions, and so are not limited to field (context) and ideational meaning (semantics).

Projecting Verbal Group Complex Or Projecting Clause Complex?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 586):

Fig. 8-14 Projecting verbal group/clause nexuses: 

(a) Mary wanted to go (i) as verbal group complex [preferred], (ii) as clause complex; 

(b) Mary wanted John to go (i) as verbal group complex, (ii) [preferred] as clause nexus

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 588):

A verbal group nexus is intermediate between a clause nexus and a verbal group: a verbal group construes a single event, and a clause nexus construes two distinct processes; but a verbal group nexus construes a single process consisting of two events. These different options are available to speakers and writers when they construe their experience of the flow of events. They choose whether they construe a given experience as a process consisting of a single event, as a process consisting of a chain of two (or more) events, or as a chain of two (or more) processes.

The Difference Between The Social Environment Of A Text And Its Context Of Situation

When we construe the social environment of a text, we are construing phenomena of first-order experience.

When we construe the 'context of situation' of a text — an instance of the culture as semiotic system — we are construing phenomena of second-order experience, that is: metaphenomena.

The cultural context is realised by the language that is projected by interlocutors.  The semiotic context realised by language is second-order experience, whereas the interlocutors doing the projecting constitute first-order experience.

See also here.

What Is The Advantage Of Distinguishing Between Embedding And Hypotaxis?

In the case of projection, it lays the foundation for the semantic distinction between (pre-projected) facts and (projected) reports (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 28).

Why Projected Clauses Are Not Clause Constituents

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 578-9):

In our analysis (unlike that of the mainstream grammatical tradition), the projected clause is not a constituent part of the mental or verbal clause by which it is projected. There are numerous reasons for this; some of them are grammatical — for example, it cannot be the focus of theme–predication … it cannot be the Subject of a passive mental clause … it is presumed by the substitute so, which is also used to presume conditional clauses in clause complexes … But these, in turn, reflect the semantic nature of projection: this is a relationship between two figures, not a device whereby one becomes a participant inside another.

Meaning "Beyond" The Clause

In SFL theory, the two enabling metafunctions, the logical and the textual, provide the means of realising meaning "beyond" the clause.

The logical metafunction does this structurally, by relating clauses in complexes by means of interdependency and the logico-semantic relations of expansion and projection.

The textual metafunction does this non-structurally, through the cohesive relations of reference, substitution–&–ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion.

Anyone who claims that the grammatics does not model meaning "beyond" the clause does not understand the theory (or is being dishonest).

Facts Vs Reports

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 482):

Whereas any clause that is projected by another clause, verbal or mental, is either a quote (paratactic) or a report (hypotactic, or embedded if the process is a noun), any clause that has the status of ‘projected’ but without any projecting process is a fact and is embedded, either as a nominalisation serving as Head or as Postmodifier to a ‘fact’ noun serving as Head.

Semantic Weight

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 111):

… whenever two figures are related in a sequence, they may be either equal or unequal in semantic weight. … The projecting and projected figures may have equal status in the sequence: this relation is that of quoting … . Or they may have unequal status: this relation is that of reporting ….

Projections Of Meaning & Wording: Ideas & Locutions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 108):

We have suggested that the relation of projection sets up one figure on a different plane of reality — we refer to this as the second-order or semiotic level. This second-order level of reality is the content plane of a semiotic system. That is to say, the projected figure is projected in the form of ‘content’. We have seen that the content plane is stratified into two levels — semantics (the level of meanings) and lexicogrammar (the level of wordings). Consequently, we would expect projections to be located at either or both of these levels, and this is indeed what happens: a projected figure is either a meaning or a wording. […] We will refer to these [i.e. meaning and wording] in the context of projection as ideas and locutions.

Expansion & Projection Enable The Metaphorical Elaboration Of The Semantic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 294-5):

The whole metaphorical elaboration [of the semantic system] is made possible by a fractal pattern that runs through the whole system. We have suggested that the metaphorical elaboration is a token–value relation; but in order for it to be a token–value relation within the semantic system, it has to be natural in the sense that the token and the value domains have to be similar enough to allow for the token to stand for the value. … The principle behind this similarity is the fractal pattern of projection/expansion … 

That is, while grammatical metaphor constitutes a move from one “phenomenal domain” to another … this move is made possible because fractal types engender continuity across these domains: the metaphorical move from one phenomenal domain to another takes place within the one and the same transphenomenal domain.

Expansion & Projection: Fractal Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 223): 

Since projection and expansion operate across the various categories of phenomena, we referred to them as transphenomenal categories. As transphenomenal categories, they are meaning types that are in some sense “meta” to the organisation of the ideation base: they are principles of construing our experience of the world that generate identical patterns of semantic organisation which are of variable magnitude and which occur in variable semantic environments. Such patterns therefore constitute fractal types.

Expansion And Projection: Transgrammatical Semantic Domains

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 593):

… there are semantic domains that are construed in more than one place in the grammar, by more than one system local to one particular grammatical unit. These semantic domains range over two or more grammatical domains, spanning two or more grammatical units. There are two fundamental semantic domains of this kind — expansion and projection.

Wishful Thinking

Modulation smuggles desideration into cognition.

eg They think science should aggrandise humanity.

Projection Vs Realisation

Projection is a logical relation between the material order of experience and the semiotic order of experience — between a macrophenomenon (a senser sensing or a sayer saying) and a metaphenomenon (an idea or locution).

Realisation is both a logical relation and an experiential relation.  

As a logical relation, it is elaboration, a type of expansion.  

As an experiential relation, it is one of symbolic identity, a type of identifying relation.  

Realisation is an ideational relation between different levels of symbolic abstraction.