Affliation

University Management

Performance Reviews

The Realisation Of Meaning In Wording

The Institutionalisation Of Affect As Judgement

Speaking Truth To Power

Interpersonal Skills

How To Deal With Criticism

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