The Thought Occurs

Tuesday, 7 July 2020

The Purpose Of Martin & Doran (eds)

From Stanley E. Porter's review of the 5-volume Systemic Functional Linguistics (2015) edited by Martin & Doran (p27):
The emphasis of the selected chapters is upon the stream of SFL that originated with Halliday’s precursors and then moved to Halliday (with thirteen authored articles included, dating from 1961 to 1998) and then to Martin (with 12 of his! Dating from 1983 to 2012), and hence the traditional or standard SFL and Sydney school SFL. As a result, the flow of the essays apparently frames these volumes as representative of Martin’s succession to the place of leadership within the SFL community or at least within the set of volumes (and near equality with Halliday?).

Wednesday, 10 June 2020

Uses Of The Term 'Social' In SFL Theory

Hasan uses 'social' to refer to parameters that classify language users in terms of age, gender, class, ethnicity, etc. Such parameters are relevant to both tenor, the interpersonal dimension of context (the culture as semiotic system) — not register — and the semantic variation that correlates with social difference.

Halliday's use of 'social' as an order of complexity refers to the social systems like those of eusocial insects (ants, bees, termites), which are organised on the basis of value, not semiosis.

Halliday's notion of language as a 'social semiotic' distinguishes language from other semiotic systems that are not social, such as the perceptual systems of the brain, as described by Gerald Edelman.

Friday, 28 February 2020

Why Martin's Notion Of A Monostratal Semiotic System Is Nonsensical

[This old post has been made relevant again by Martin's nonsensical claim being confidently reasserted by Yaegan Doran at today's seminar at the University of Sydney.]

Jim Martin claims that in a semiotic system where content conflates with paradigm and expression conflates with syntagm, there is only one stratum. Note, incidentally, that by this logic, it could be alternatively argued that there is only one axis, and therefore no system–structure cycle.

This is a bit like saying because all my squares are ('conflate with') blue and all my triangles are ('conflate with') red, there is only one shape (or only one colour).

If content conflates with paradigm and expression conflates with syntagm, then:

content/paradigm is realised by expression/syntagm.

This conflates
content is realised by expression
with
paradigm is realised by syntagm.

There are still 2 strata and 2 axes in this conflation.

By definition, a semiotic system has at least two levels of symbolic abstraction.
By definition, a symbol is something that means something other than itself.

Monday, 3 February 2020

Lise Fontaine's Right To Stop Me Saying It

Sun, 2 Feb 2020 20:31:11
You have been removed from the SYSFLING list (Systemic Functional Linguistics).
The change was carried out by a list administrator (Lise Fontaine).

To be clear, Lise Fontaine unsubscribed me from the Sysfling list when she was alerted to the existence of my blog The Cardiff Grammar by Robin Fawcett posing as Dmytro Poremskyi (to praise his own work) on the Facebook site of the NASFLA. The blog provides evidence that the architecture of language proposed by the Cardiff Grammar is invalidated by internal inconsistencies and that Fawcett repeatedly misrepresents Halliday in ways that always suit his own argument. Fontaine is a proponent of the Cardiff Grammar.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
— George Orwell

Giving And Demanding Goods–&–Services


Monday, 27 January 2020

Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory Vs Systemic Functional Linguistics

Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory ('Systemic Functional Grammar') is a scientific theory with a precisely defined architecture that provides the means of identifying misinterpretations of it.

Systemic Functional Linguistics, on the other hand, is a movement, the members of which have responded to a call to improve humanity by teaching students and/or analysing texts.  Because it is the movement that is paramount, it is not so much the theoretical consistency of the work that matters, but merely the fact that the work is 'Systemic' (i.e. 'us' not 'them'). When members of the movement die, they are chiefly praised for the extent to which they served the 'cause'.

Blind Trust