Genres As Text Types

As text types, genres are registers,
viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation,

but they are registers that vary with
the mode* features (textual metafunction)
of the situation type (context)
that they realise as language (not context)


*Mode: the part language plays in any given context

Happy Grammar Day!

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