What Does Saussure Mean By 'Sign'?

The extracts below from the 3rd edition of de Saussure, Ferdinand (1915) Course in General Linguistics.

1 A Sign Is Not An Association Of A Thing And A Name

p65:

Some people regard language, when reduced to its elements, as a naming-process only — a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names. For example:

 

This conception is open to criticism at several points. 

• It assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words (on this point, see below, p. 111); 
• it does not tell us whether a name is vocal or psychological in nature (arbor, for instance, can be considered from either viewpoint); 
• finally, it lets us assume that the linking of a name and a thing is a very simple operation — an assumption that is anything but true. 

But this rather naive approach can bring us near the truth by showing us that the linguistic unit is a double entity, one formed by the associating of two terms.

2 A Sign Is A Psychological Association Of Concept And A Sound-Image 

p66:

The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. The latter is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses. The sound-image is sensory, and if I happen to call it "material," it is only in that sense, and by way of opposing it to the other term of the association, the concept, which is generally more abstract. …

The linguistic sign is then a two-sided psychological entity that can be represented by the drawing:

 

3 A Sign Is A Psychological Association Of Signified (Concept) And A Signifer (Sound-Image = Word)

p67:

Our definition of the linguistic sign poses an important question of terminology. I call the combination of a concept and a sound-image a sign, but in current usage the term generally designates only a sound-image, a word, for example (arbor, etc.). One tends to forget that arbor is called a sign only because it carries the concept "tree," with the result that the idea of the sensory part implies the idea of the whole.

 

Ambiguity would disappear if the three notions involved here were designated by three names, each suggesting and opposing the others. I propose to retain the word sign [signe] to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified [signifié] and signifier [signifiant]; the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts.

p117:

Now the real interpretation of the diagram of the signal becomes apparent. Thus

means that in French the concept "to judge" is linked to the sound-image juger; in short, it symbolises signification.

The Plight Of The Unpaid Mentor

Collegiality

In his review of The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics (2017), edited by Tom Bartlett and Gerard O’Grady, Chris Butler (2018: 114, 123) writes:

… the editors chose to represent in their handbook not only the Hallidayan model of SFL which has received the most attention (see Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014), but also the Cardiff model elaborated by Fawcett and his colleagues (e.g. Fawcett, 2008) … 

A further very positive feature is the inclusion of a considerable quantity of material relating to the Cardiff Grammar, as well as to the approaches centred on the Sydney linguists. In my own writings I have strongly supported the view expressed by Huang at the end of his chapter:

We might say something here, as a concluding remark, that is important, but which may arouse controversy in the SFL community: that the Cardiff Grammar, an alternative model of language that is designed with the aim of being ‘an extension and simplification of Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar’ (Fawcett, 2008), has its own characteristics and needs more attention from SFL scholars other than those associated with Cardiff. (p. 176).

Blogger Comments:

[1] Note that this is one Cardiff grammarian (Chris Butler)

• remarking that two other Cardiff grammarians (Tom Bartlett and Gerard O'Grady) have "chosen" to include the Cardiff Grammar in their edited volume, and 
• endorsing his own view expressed by another Cardiff grammarian (Guowen Huang).

[2] As the review of the Cardiff Grammar here demonstrates, it is only the lack of critical attention by theory-competent SFL scholars that keeps the model alive.

Halliday's 'Metafunctional' Hypothesis

Halliday (1994: xxxiv):

it is postulated that in all languages the content systems are organised into ideational, interpersonal and textual components.

Note that 'content' refers to both semantics (meaning) and lexicogrammar (wording).

Stupidity Detector

Halliday On 'Collocation'

Collocation Defined

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 648-9):

At the same time there are other instances of lexical cohesion that do not depend on any general semantic relationship of the types just discussed, [repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, meronymy] but rather on a particular association between the items in question – a tendency to co-occur. This ‘co-occurrence tendency’ is known as collocation.

The Semantic Basis Of Collocation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 649):

In general, the semantic basis of many instances of collocation is the relation of enhancement, as with dine + restaurant, table; fry + pan; bake + oven. These are circumstantial relationships (for collocations involving Process + Manner: degree, e.g. love + deeply, want + badly, understand + completely, see Matthiessen, 2009b), but as the example with smoke + pipe illustrates, participant + process relationships also form the basis of collocation – the most important ones involving either Process + Range (e.g. play + musical instrument: piano, violin, etc.; grow + old) or Process + Medium (e.g. shell + peas, twinkle + star, polish + shoes); and there are also combinations involving functions in the nominal group, in particular, Epithet + Thing (e.g. strong + tea, heavy + traffic, powerful + argument) and Facet + Thing (e.g. pod + w[h]ales, flock + birds, school + fish, herd + cattle, gaggle + geese).

The Measure Of Collocation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 59):

The measure of collocation is the degree to which the probability of a word (lexical item) increases given the presence of a certain other word (the node) within a specified range (the span). This can be measured in the corpus.

SFL Work On Collocation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 60n):

The notion of collocation was first introduced by J.R. Firth (1957) (but note Hoey, 2005), and gained wide acceptance, particularly in work based on corpus analysis, as in the Birmingham tradition, e.g. Sinclair (1987, 1991), Coulthard (1993), Hoey (2005) and Cheng et al. (2009). For further systemic functional accounts of collocation, see e.g. Halliday (1966b), Halliday & Hasan (1976: Section 6.4), Benson & Greaves (1992), Gledhill (2000), Tucker (2007) and Matthiessen (2009b); Matthiessen (1995a) relates collocational patterns to structural configurations such as Process + Medium, Process + Range, Process + Degree; Thing + Epithet (for a corpus-based study of Process + Degree, see Matthiessen, 2009b).

Collocation Vs Other Types Of Lexical Cohesion

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 644):

A Guide For Parents

The Subjunctive In Modern English

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 143n):

Note that the system of MOOD is a system of the clause, not of the verbal group or of the verb. Many languages also have an interpersonal system of the verb(al group) that has been referred to as ‘mood’: it involves interpersonal contrasts such as indicative/subjunctive, indicative/subjunctive/optative. To distinguish these verbal contrasts from the clausal system of MOOD, we can refer to them as contrasts in mode. The subjunctive mode tends to be restricted to the environment of bound clauses — in particular, reported clauses and conditional clauses having the sense of irrealis. In Modern English, the subjunctive mode of the verb is marginal, although there is some dialectal variation.

Back To Work

Mission Statements

Know-Howable Linguistics

Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.

 — Gregory Bateson Mind And Nature (1979: 26)

All Opinions Are Equal In SFL

Clause Types

The Culture Of The SFL Community Is Our Best Capital

Self-Assessment

"If there are any idiots in the room, will they please stand up" said the sarcastic teacher.

After a long silence, one freshman rose to his feet.

"Now then mister, why do you consider yourself an idiot?" enquired the teacher with a sneer.

"Well, actually I don't," said the student, "but I hate to see you standing up there all by yourself.

The Study Of Discourse (‘Text Linguistics’)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 731):

A text is meaningful because it is an actualisation of the potential that constitutes the linguistic system; it is for this reason that the study of discourse (‘text linguistics’) cannot properly be separated from the study of the grammar that lies behind it.

The Word: Lexical Item vs Grammatical Rank

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 568-9):

The folk notion of the “word” is really a conflation of two different abstractions, one lexical and one grammatical.

(i) Vocabulary (lexis): the word as lexical item, or "lexeme". This is construed as an isolate, a 'thing' that can be counted and sorted in (alphabetical) order. People "look for" words, they "put thoughts into" them, "put them into" or "take them out of another's", and nowadays they keep collections of words on their shelves or in their computers in the form of dictionaries. Specialist knowledge is thought of as a matter of terminology. The taxonomic organisation of vocabulary is less exposed: it is made explicit in Roget's Thesaurus, but is only implicit in a standard dictionary. Lexical taxonomy was the first area of language to be systematically studied by anthropologists, when they began to explore cultural knowledge as it is embodied in folk taxonomies of plants, animals, diseases and the like. 

(ii) Grammar: the word as one of the ranks in the grammatical system. This is, not surprisingly, where Western linguistic theory as we know it today began in classical times, with the study of words varying in form according to their case, number, aspect, person etc.. Word-based systems such as these do provide a way in to studying grammatical semantics: but the meanings they construe are always more complex than the categories that appear as formal variants, and grammarians have had to become aware of covert patterns.

Knowledge

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 3):

We contend that the conception of ‘knowledge’ as something that exists independently of language, and may then be coded or made manifest in language, is illusory. All knowledge is constituted in semiotic systems, with language as the most central; and all such representations of knowledge are constructed from language in the first place.

Multiplying Meaning

The Transitivity Of Bamboozlement

John Bateman wrote to sysfling on 2 November 2017 at 19:10:

One of the main points of these papers (derived from our 12 year collaborative research center on space ...) is to open up the 'space' (ha ha) between a grammatically-induced semantics and any contextualised use of involved grammatical constructions so that the enormous flexibility of ranges of interpretation is both made visible and constrained sufficiently so that it can be worked with productively.

This is a hypotactically elaborating clause complex, with the dependent clause enclosed within the main clause:

One of the main points of these papers	<< derived from our 12 year collaborative research center on space >>	is to open up the 'space' between a grammatically-induced semantics and any contextualised use of involved grammatical constructions so that the enormous flexibility of ranges of interpretation is both made visible and constrained sufficiently so that it can be worked with productively
	= β
α

Ranking α Clause

The ranking α clause has a lexical density of about 23, depending how it it measured.  It metaphorically construes an identity of purpose, wherein the Value (one of the main points of these papers) is encoded by reference to the Token (to open up the 'space' between a grammatically-induced semantics and any contextualised use of involved grammatical constructions so that the enormous flexibility of ranges of interpretation is both made visible and constrained sufficiently so that it can be worked with productively):

One of the main points of these papers	is	to open up the 'space' between a grammatically-induced semantics and any contextualised use of involved grammatical constructions so that the enormous flexibility of ranges of interpretation is both made visible and constrained sufficiently so that it can be worked with productively
Identified Value	Process	Identifier Token

The clause is marked for both voice (receptive) and direction of coding (encoding).

Identifier Token

The Identifier Token in this relation is realised as an embedded clause complex in which the main clause is hypotactically enhanced, first in terms of result — and this includes a nested paratactic extending nexus — and then in terms of purpose:

to open up the 'space' between a grammatically-induced semantics and any contextualised use of involved grammatical constructions	so that the enormous flexibility of ranges of interpretation is both made visible	and constrained sufficiently	so that it can be worked with productively
α	x β cause: result		x γ cause: purpose
	1	+ 2

Embedded α Clause

The α clause in the embedded complex serving as Identifier Token is a non-finite abstract material clause:

to open up	the 'space' between a grammatically-induced semantics and any contextualised use of involved grammatical constructions
Process	Goal

The Goal of this clause is realised by a nominal group in which the Thing is both metaphorical (circumstantial) and abstract:

the	'space'	between a grammatically-induced semantics and any contextualised use of involved grammatical constructions
Deictic	Thing	Qualifier

The Qualifier of this nominal group is realised by a prepositional phrase whose Range is realised by a paratactically extending nominal group complex:

between	a grammatically-induced semantics	and any contextualised use of involved grammatical constructions
Process	Range
	1	+ 2

The first nominal group construes a semantic theory as Thing and sub-classifies it as grammatically-induced:

a	grammatically-induced	semantics
Deictic	Classifier	Thing

The second nominal group metaphorically construes a process ('use') as Thing, which it sub-classifies as contextualised, and metaphorically construes the congruent medium of the process involved grammatical constructions as Qualifier:

any	contextualised	use	of involved grammatical constructions
Deictic	Classifier	Thing	Qualifier

The Qualifier of this nominal group is realised by a prepositional phrase:

of	involved grammatical constructions
Process	Range

The Range of this prepositional phrase is realised by a nominal group that sub-classifies constructions as grammatical, and identifies them as involved:

involved	grammatical	constructions
post-Deictic	Classifier	Thing

Embedded β1 Clause

The β1 clause in the embedded complex serving as Identifier Token is an attributive clause that assigns the enormous flexibility of ranges of interpretation to the set visible:

so that	the enormous flexibility of ranges of interpretation	is	both	made	visible
	Carrier	Process			Attribute

The Carrier is realised by a nominal group that metaphorically construes a quality as Thing:

the	enormous	flexibility	of ranges of interpretation
Deictic	Epithet	Thing	Qualifier

The Qualifier is realised by a prepositional phrase:

of	ranges of interpretation
Process	Range

The Range of this prepositional phrase is realised by a nominal group:

ranges	of interpretation
Thing	Qualifier

Embedded β2 Clause

The β2 clause in the embedded complex serving as Identifier Token has an ellipsed Mood element:

the enormous flexibility of ranges of interpretation	is constrained		sufficiently
Carrier	Process	Attribute	Manner: degree

Embedded γ Clause

The γ clause in the embedded complex serving as Identifier Token is a receptive material clause:

so that	it	can be worked with	productively
	Goal	Process	Manner: quality

Ranking β Clause

The ranking elaborating clause can be analysed as 

derived from	our 12 year collaborative research center on space
Process: circumstantial	Attribute

The Attribute is realised by the nominal group:

our	12 year	collaborative	research center	on space
Deictic	post-Deictic	Classifier	Thing	Qualifier

The Thing of the nominal group is realised by a word complex:

research	center
β	α

Conclusion

This is the wording of someone who expects not to be understood, the social function of which has been described by Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 272):

So the more the extent of grammatical metaphor in a text, the more that text is loaded against the learner, and against anyone who is an outsider to the register in question. It becomes elitist discourse, in which the function of constructing knowledge goes together with the function of restricting access to that knowledge, making it impenetrable to all except those who have the means of admission to the inside, or the select group of those who are already there. 

It is this other potential that grammatical metaphor has, for making meaning that is obscure, arcane and exclusive, that makes it ideal as a mode of discourse for establishing and maintaining status, prestige and hierarchy, and to establish the paternalistic authority of a technocratic elite whose message is 'this is all too hard for you to understand; so leave the decision-making to us.

See also John Bateman Positively Judging Himself and John Bateman On "The 'Space' Between A Grammatically-Induced Semantics And Any Contextualised Use Of Involved Grammatical Constructions".

We don't understand.

He must be clever.

He must be right.

— Peter Hammill 'The Jargon King'

Leading To Earn

Meaning "Beyond" The Clause

Halliday & Hasan (1976: 10):

It will be clear from what has been said above that cohesion is not just another name for discourse structure.  Discourse structure is, as the name implies, a type of structure; the term is used to refer to the structure of some postulated unit higher than the sentence, for example the paragraph, or some larger entity such as an episode or topic unit.

Note that the units postulated by Martin (1992: 325, 385) for discourse semantic structure — move, participant, message, message part — are not 'higher than the sentence', and have no postulated internal structure.

As Halliday & Hasan (1976) theorised, on the SFL model, "meaning beyond the clause" is realised by the systems of cohesion, the non-structural resource of the textual metafunction.

Another Boy For 'R2L'

How To Distinguish Circumstance From Qualifier

Diagnostic: Thematicity

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 270-1):

To differentiate them in analysis, we can apply textual probes: in principle, being an element of the clause, a circumstance is subject to all the different textual statuses brought about by theme, theme predication and theme identification. … In contrast, a Qualifier cannot on its own be given textual status in the clause since it is a constituent of a nominal group, not of the clause; so it can only be thematic together with the rest of the nominal group it is part of.

Vowel Movement

Be A Teacher [8]

Join The Dots

Be A Teacher [7]

Be A Teacher [6]

The Schooling Of Human Potential

Be A Teacher [5]