Where The Problems Are

Dealing With Reasoned Argument

Data And Reason

Halliday On The Natural (Not Arbitrary) Relation Between Semantic And Grammar

Halliday (1985 & 1994: xvii-xix):

Halliday (2002 [1984]: 293):

Grammars are ‘natural’, in the sense that wordings are related iconically to meanings.

Helpful Advisor

Enculturating The Post-Doc

Reviewer Feedback After Paper Submission

Collegial Feedback Before Paper Submission

Who Is Right vs What Is Right

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?).

Word Power

Evidence

Epiphany

How Dunning-Kruger Confidence Proliferates

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.

Believing Frauds Without Question

IT

IT Support

Presentations

A Matter Of Circumstance

Fieldwork

Abstract Nouns

Our Values

Sweet Revenge

The Secret To Being A Great Academic

On Parole

Knowers vs Knowledge

Trying To Go Beyond Supervisor Knowledge

Impostor Syndrome

Positive Feedback

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.