How To Distinguish Theme From Subject In A Free Declarative Clause

Theme comprises everything in the clause up to the end of the first experiential unit.
Subject is what is picked up by a Mood Tag.

For example:

A little further on is the Rijksmuseum (isn't it?)

Theme: a little further on
Subject: the Rijksmuseum 

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