The Difference Between Context And Register

		POTENTIAL	SUBPOTENTIAL	INSTANCE
CONTEXT	as	culture	subculture = situation type	situation
realised by		realised by	realised by	realised by
LANGUAGE	as	system	register = text type	text

Context and register have different locations in the theoretical architecture of SFL.

Context is a level of symbolic abstraction above language.  Its cline of instantiation extends from culture (potential) to situation (instance).

Register is a functional variety of language, which means:

• register is a point (of variation) on the cline of instantiation of language (not of context);
• register is at a lower level of symbolic abstraction than context.

Registers are varying subpotentials of language (text types) that realise varying subpotentials of context (situation types).


The confusion of context and register is widespread in the discourse of SFL.

Halliday On The Transformationalist And Behaviourist Models Of Language Learning

Halliday (Interviews with M A K Halliday p 50):

The broader point is that l think that, once you take the protolanguage seriously, the nativist point of view was only tenable in so far as you assume that the whole process begins with the mother tongue. But once you find that there is this protolinguistic stage, which has nothing whatever to do with grammar or any of the formal properties of human language, then the issue becomes rather meaningless. What I am much more concerned about is to say that what is really false — and it's common to the Transformationalist and behaviourist views, which are really variants the same thing in this respect — is that they are both individualist. They are both the products of extreme Western philosophical individualism. That is, the child is treated as an isolate bound by his skin and the rest of the world is out there. And his job is to go and get it. It's readymade. It's a construct. It exists in some sense. And the child has to, in some sense, acquire it. I don't believe this at all. I think that the child is in fact — if you like, you could use the word 'creating', but the word 'creating' has so many overtones in English. Let me use the term 'construing' rather, because it implies mental construction - the child is construing language, that is to say. But the child is not doing it as an individual. He is doing it as an intersubjective process together with the mother. And it is a process that cannot happen in the individual. It can happen only as a social interactive or inter-subjective process. And it's this that constitutes my main philosophical objection to both the Transformationalist and behaviourist models of language learning. And until people like Trevarthen (e.g. 1974) came along I didn't... I am not a psychologist, as you know, but I wasn't aware of psychological theories which seemed to me to be saying what I wanted. It seems to me that that kind of work does. He has the very much same idea, not about language but about the whole of what you call psychological acts. Now, l see that as being a very good model of language learning.

Social Semiotics

A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

 — Groucho Marx

The Incubation Of Economic Units

Fieldwork

How Are The Paradigmatic And Syntagmatic Axes Related?

System is more abstract than structure:

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 22):

It will be clear that [system] is a more abstract representation than that of structure, since it does not depend on how the categories are expressed.

so syntagmatic organisation realises paradigmatic organisation:

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 24):

Structural operations — inserting elements, ordering elements, and so on — are explained as realising systemic choices. … When we speak of structural features as ‘realising’ systemic choices, this is one manifestation of a general relationship that pervades every quarter of language. Realisation derives from the fact that a language is a stratified system.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 13):

… on the one hand, syntagmatic organisation realises paradigmatic organisation; on the other hand, types in a network of paradigmatic organisation correspond to fragments of syntagmatic specification …

Symposium

Origin

late 16th century (denoting a drinking party): via Latin from Greek sumposion, from sumpotēs ‘fellow drinker’, from sun- ‘together’ + potēs ‘drinker’.

Nominal Groups: The Modifying Relation Is Inherently Ascriptive (Intensive, Possessive Or Circumstantial)

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 183):

Experientially, there is a ‘carrier’ — the Thing — and there are ‘attributes’ — Epithets and other modifiers. However, participants are construed not only experientially but also logically, which means that the Thing (typically) serves as a Head that can be modified by successive attributes and that this modifying relation is inherently ascriptive. […] There is the same range of types of ascription as are found in ascriptive figures, and these can be interpreted in terms of the different categories of expansion.

expansion of Thing	Deictic	Epithet	Classifier	Thing	Qualifier
elaboration (intensive)	these	nutritious		swedes
	these		Mexican	mangoes
				kitchens	of distinction
extension (possessive)	my aunt’s			teapot
	the			stems	of the leek
	the		table	leg
enhancement (circumstantial)	these		18th C	vases
	some			mangoes	from Mexico
	a	chicory-like		plant

The Tyranny Of Deixis

Workplace Psychopaths

We all know one.

Read this to learn what to do if you find yourself working with one...

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.

Frequency Vs Usuality

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 264):

In the temporals there is an additional category of ‘frequency’, how many times?. This is related to the interpersonal category of usuality, but it is not identical to it; usuality is a modal assessment referring to position on a scale between positive and negative (always/never), whereas frequency is the extent of the repetition of the process. The categories of extent and usuality may, however, work together, as in a narrative where habitude is established.

Literally Inflamed

Tenor & Field

Perhaps the difference between a professor and a bus driver is 

that the professor can say stupid things with complete authority 

while the bus driver is not authorised to make brilliant insights.

― Les Back, The Art of Listening

Signifié et Signifiant

ISFC Update

Latest conference news

Word Class

Exacting Through Torture

examine (v.) 

c.1300, from Old French examiner "interrogate, question, torture," from Latin examinare "to test or try; consider, ponder," literally "to weigh," from examen "a means of weighing or testing," probably ultimately from exigere "weigh accurately" (see exact (adj.)). Related: Examined; examining.

The Academic "Selfie"

Academic discourse analysts presenting snapshots of academic discourse…

Doubly Negative

Emotive Sensing As Ascribed Graduated Qualities

Chomsky Confusing Biology With Language

Chomsky (1980: 48):

I have not hesitated to propose a general principle of linguistic structure on the basis of observation of a single language. The inference is legitimate, on the assumption that humans are not specifically adapted to learn one rather than another human language. … Assuming that the genetically determined language faculty is a common human possession, we may conclude that a principle of language is universal if we are led to postulate it as a 'precondition' for the acquisition of a single language.

 Blogger Comments:

[1] Genes are biological entities.  The expressions of genes are biological entities.  Any phenotypic traits whose genes have been selected because they are adaptive are biological entities.  Therefore, when Chomsky speaks of a genetically determined "language faculty", he is speaking about a biological entity.

[2] On the other hand,  linguistic structure and principles of language are properties of language, not biology, and so are not the expression of genes.

If a language faculty was "genetically determined", there would be genetic variation (alleles) for it in the population.  The language faculty of an adopted child would be less like the language faculty of its adoptive parent and more like the language faculty of a biological parent it had never met, such as a sperm donor.

Genes provide the biological capacity for children to learn the language whose expressions are perceivable phenomena in their material environment.  What children learn through a biological capacity and the biological capacity itself are distinct phenomena.

[3] Because the preconditions for the acquisition of language are biological, in contradistinction to principles of language, Chomsky's conclusion that a principle of language is universal because it is a precondition for acquisition is entirely spurious.

∞

The problem Chomsky faces is trying to make 17th Century Cartesian 'innateness' scientifically credible as 'genetic inheritance' in the 21st Century.  Given the huge disjunct between the Cartesian Rationalism (non-Empiricism) of the 17th Century and empirical science of the 21st, he is forced to cherry-pick ideas from biology and present them in a way that disguises the inconsistencies.  In a linguistic community largely ignorant of biology and the history and philosophy of science, and whose institutional status and economic well-being depends on affiliating with his work, Chomsky, who in 1972 said that Natural Selection has 'no substance', remains a credible intellectual force.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

— Galileo Galilei

Circumstance As Process: Identifying Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 243):

… all clauses of this type are metaphorical.

Instantiation

One forgets words as one forgets names. 

One's vocabulary needs constant fertilising or it will die.

— Evelyn Waugh

But There Ain't No Sanity Clause