The medium, the channel and the message: technologies of mind and matter in the current meaning of mode
A/Prof David G. Butt. Centre for Language in Social Life, Macquarie University
In this discussion, I will consider some options in the network representation of the contextual parameter of mode (following the contextual theory developed by Halliday eg.1973 and Hasan 2009; 1979; 1980; see the summaries in Halliday and Hasan 1985/89). In my view, such context networks have a practical, pragmatic function (after the pragmatism of William James 1907). A relevant evaluation of context networks is the degree to which they “narrow the gap” between the generalisations one might make about the language of a register (or of a single instance) and the characteristics of the context; and (as a corollary) the degree to which the output of the networks (Hasan’s “contextual configuration”) leads to more reliable predictions about the language (the register) which realizes the context type (Butt 2001).
This appears simple enough, as a research goal. One is seeking the ‘differences which make a difference’ in a human collective. In such an approach, one carries the original relationalism of Ferdinand de Saussure towards the pragmatisim of JR Firth (1950; 1957) – namely, that linguistic sciences adopt the means (even ‘ad hoc’ methods: Henderson 1987) to see more clearly into “the general mush of goings on” (Firth quoting Whitehead: Butt 2008).
One of the positive consequences of such a network based approach is that in proposing sub-systems of a contextual parameter (whether field, tenor or mode), numerous differences that have consequences for the structure and direction of the social process become apparent. The reflection on networks of available choices provokes us to attend to the plasticity of social actions and expectations. One may see the reactance to some underlying relationship and be provoked into asking “why this response when another must have been as probable, or even more expected”? On the other hand, one’s ‘theory’ of this situation may produce only ‘silence’ or gaps at various points in a description. Such silence or absences in the way a social process ‘plays out’ may be an intimation that differences proposed in the sub-system of a network are not being realized by any linguistic or behavioural expression. That is to say, for practical purposes, they are wrong (or ‘falsified’ with respect to the scope of the stated research goals).
The importance of distinguishing medium from channel produces both complexity and obscurity in developing networks of mode. The medium involves statistical tendencies in the grammatical consistencies of the text. The issue is not one of simple presence or absence of a cultural or linguistic feature. Furthermore, the fact that medium focuses on the organisation of texture (lexical density and clausal “emplexity” (Tuckwell 1999: 198ff.) by contrast with clausal intricacy) indicates how problematic it is to draw a theoretical boundary between variables of context and those of language. On the other hand, by mapping medium and channel as distinct systems, there is a clarity about “congruent” and “non-congruent” combinations between spoken/written-like and phonic/graphic (the cross mapping of differences being something set out in early networks by Hasan). This potential for medium and channel to shape or direct meaning is brought out in various studies in SFL, for instance, in Huisman’s study of the effects of writing down the forms of English poetry, from alliterative Anglo-Saxon poetry to free verse lines in the 20th century (Huisman 1998).
Mode systems, I will argue, are the most complex and latent of the three systems in the contextual variables. Their subtle, pervasive effects are difficult to make vivid in that they provide the background of collective assumptions by which we understand the roles of language in our community. Because mode is a function of cultural technologies, mode encompasses technologies of material channels (viz. “information”) and what might be called our “technologies of thinking”; and, through this internalisation, mode silently legislates a “ground” to which the “figures” of our field and tenor choices must be accommodated. The problems of meaning in mode are further complicated by overlap with the concepts of “information” and entropy. I will comment on the issues here with special reference to Deacon’s recent work (2012).
In support of my claims, I will refer to changes over human history in the relationship between writing systems and community activities. ‘Silent reading’ was, at least up to the 15th century, an amazing feat, even amongst scholars: “Libraries were noisy places” as readers mumbled their way down pages of text. Non-mumblers were suspected of being “illiterate”. Yet now we live in a ‘logogenetically’ fixated world in which the representations of sounds (in alphabets, syllabaries and logographs) are unconsciously invoked as the direct manifestation of language rather than as an arbitrary, pragmatic compromise of a number of considerations (including sound patterns). This fixation (and its consequences) are to be seen in the strange inversions of popular and of academic discourses: for example, respectively, educators are urged to correct punctuation under the notional heading of “grammar”; and Derrida has been relatively successful in convincing a generation of text theorists that linguists were misled by their “phonocentric” views (Derrida 1976). This is despite the unusual training needed to report accurately on the evanescent regularities of articulation and on the sound patterns of any stream of speech (Halliday 1985/89 on spoken and written language; and see also Harris 1989 for a systematic historical enquiry into the limited reach of literacy, especially in relation to Classical Greek and Latin).
The backgrounded, cognitive consequences of technologies of mode were also signalled by Vygotsky (in relation to the tool power of words, patterns of labour and the movement from concrete functional thinking to more abstract processes (eg. Luria 1976; Vygotsky 1978)). In terms of the history of colonial contact between languages (each with a different mode spectrum), Mithun argues that various languages of the Americas have taken on explicit expressions for logical relationships (a semantic pressure in a written medium) as their interactions with Spanish speaking (and writing) colonialists created a need for a channel previously unnecessary to their affairs (Mithun 2003 and issues raised in Mufwene 2001). A contemporary phenomenon that measures the consequences of drift in medium (and channel) has emerged from the work of Flynn on I.Q. scores (Flynn 2007). Flynn’s analysis of the inflation of I.Q. scores since 1947 (and before) is an anomaly in search of a fuller explanation. The often cited “explanations” in terms of an increase of abstract words and/or in terms of screen and computational experiences are partial and anachronistic. Highly suggestive here, however, is Halliday’s depiction of the vast grammatical tide towards “Things and Relations” in the development of scientific English (and in the lexicogrammatical resources of Chinese: see Halliday 2004/1998).
The contemporary tide of abstractions and reifications in discourse fits tightly with Halliday’s analysis. The roots of this drift have been illuminated by studies of the role of the Classical Greek language on the development of scientific approaches to experience – for example, in Snell’s work on genres (1953) and in the recent SFL analysis, by Kappagoda (2004), of the forensic stance of Thucydides as witness to the plague of Athens. Kappagoda explains his enquiry as a study of the semiotic “sixth sense”.
New patterns in medium are both the harbingers and consequence of new directions for thinking. Without relying heavily on neologisms, the linguistic system can renew its meaning potential through shifts in the relation between medium and channel in mode. Such change is ‘glacial’ but measurable. It resets our proclivities in speech, and in what we take to be natural in thought.
References:
Butt, David G. (2001) Firth, Halliday and the development of systemic functional theory. In S. Auroux, E.F.K. Koerner, H. Nierderehe and K. Versteegh (eds) History of the Language Sciences: an international handbook in the evolution of the study of language from the beginning to the present. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Butt, D. G. (2008a). Whiteheadian and functional linguistics. Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought. M. Weber and W. Desmond. Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag
Deacon, Terrence W. (2012) Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter New York: London: W.W.Norton &Co.
Derrida, Jacques. (1976), Of Grammatology. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak).
Flynn, James. 2007. What is intelligence? : beyond the Flynn effect. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press
Firth, J.R. 1950, ‘Personality and Language in Society’, The Sociological Review, xlii.2, , reprinted in J.R. Firth, 1957, Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951, Oxford University Press: London.
Firth, J.R. (1957). A synopsis of linguistic theory 1930-1955. In Studies in Linguistic Analysis, pp. 1-32. Oxford: Philological Society
Halliday, M. A. K. (1973[2003]). Towards a sociological semantics. In J. J. Webster (Ed.), On Language and Linguistics. London and New York: Continuum.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1985/89) Spoken and written language. Deakin Uni. Press. Victoria; Oxford Uni. Press 1989
Halliday, M. A. K. (2004 [1998]). Things and Relations: Regrammaticizing Experience as Technical Knowledge. The Language of Science. Edited by J. J. Webster. London and New York, Continuum.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1985/1989). Language, context and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Geelong, VIC/ Oxford.: Deakin University Press/Oxford University Press.
Harris, William V. (1989) Ancient Literacy Cambridge, Massachussets, London: Harvard University Press.
Hasan, R. 1979. On the notion of text. In J S Petöfi (ed.), Text vs. Sentence: basic questions of text linguistics, First Part. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
Hasan, R. (1980/1996). What's going on: a dynamic view of context in language. In C. Cloran, D. Butt & G. Williams (Eds.), Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning (pp. 37-50). London: Cassell.
Hasan, R. (2009). The Place of Context in a Systemic Functional Model. In M. A. K. Halliday & J. Webster (Eds.), Continuum Companion to Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 166-189). London and New York: Continuum.
Hasan, R. (1999). Speaking with reference to context. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.), Text and Context in Functional Linguistics: Systemic Perspectives (pp. 219-328). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Henderson, E.J.A. 1987. ‘J.R.Firth in retrospect: a view from the eighties’ in Steele, R. & Threadgold, T. Language Topics: Essays in Honour of Michael Halliday. John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam.
Huisman, R. (1998) The Written Poem: Semiotic conventions from Old to Modern English. Continuum Publishing Co.: London.
James, William. 1907. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking Hackett Publishing
Kappagoda, Astika K. (2004) Semiosis as the Sixth Sense:Theorising the Unperceived in Ancient Greek Unpublished PhD Thesis, Macquarie University, Sydney.
Luria, A. R. 1976. Cognitive Development: Its cultural and social foundations, edited by Michael Cole. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mithun, M. (2003). Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. In B. D. Joseph and R. D. Janda (eds). Carlton, Victoria, Blackwell Publishing: 552-572.
Mufwene, S. S. (2001). The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Snell, Bruno (1953) The discovery of the mind: the Greek origins of European thought. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tuckwell, K. 1999. The grammar of desire: complexity, metaphor and signification in Lacan. Unpublished honours thesis, Dept of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Australia.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
This appears simple enough, as a research goal. One is seeking the ‘differences which make a difference’ in a human collective. In such an approach, one carries the original relationalism of Ferdinand de Saussure towards the pragmatisim of JR Firth (1950; 1957) – namely, that linguistic sciences adopt the means (even ‘ad hoc’ methods: Henderson 1987) to see more clearly into “the general mush of goings on” (Firth quoting Whitehead: Butt 2008).
One of the positive consequences of such a network based approach is that in proposing sub-systems of a contextual parameter (whether field, tenor or mode), numerous differences that have consequences for the structure and direction of the social process become apparent. The reflection on networks of available choices provokes us to attend to the plasticity of social actions and expectations. One may see the reactance to some underlying relationship and be provoked into asking “why this response when another must have been as probable, or even more expected”? On the other hand, one’s ‘theory’ of this situation may produce only ‘silence’ or gaps at various points in a description. Such silence or absences in the way a social process ‘plays out’ may be an intimation that differences proposed in the sub-system of a network are not being realized by any linguistic or behavioural expression. That is to say, for practical purposes, they are wrong (or ‘falsified’ with respect to the scope of the stated research goals).
The importance of distinguishing medium from channel produces both complexity and obscurity in developing networks of mode. The medium involves statistical tendencies in the grammatical consistencies of the text. The issue is not one of simple presence or absence of a cultural or linguistic feature. Furthermore, the fact that medium focuses on the organisation of texture (lexical density and clausal “emplexity” (Tuckwell 1999: 198ff.) by contrast with clausal intricacy) indicates how problematic it is to draw a theoretical boundary between variables of context and those of language. On the other hand, by mapping medium and channel as distinct systems, there is a clarity about “congruent” and “non-congruent” combinations between spoken/written-like and phonic/graphic (the cross mapping of differences being something set out in early networks by Hasan). This potential for medium and channel to shape or direct meaning is brought out in various studies in SFL, for instance, in Huisman’s study of the effects of writing down the forms of English poetry, from alliterative Anglo-Saxon poetry to free verse lines in the 20th century (Huisman 1998).
Mode systems, I will argue, are the most complex and latent of the three systems in the contextual variables. Their subtle, pervasive effects are difficult to make vivid in that they provide the background of collective assumptions by which we understand the roles of language in our community. Because mode is a function of cultural technologies, mode encompasses technologies of material channels (viz. “information”) and what might be called our “technologies of thinking”; and, through this internalisation, mode silently legislates a “ground” to which the “figures” of our field and tenor choices must be accommodated. The problems of meaning in mode are further complicated by overlap with the concepts of “information” and entropy. I will comment on the issues here with special reference to Deacon’s recent work (2012).
In support of my claims, I will refer to changes over human history in the relationship between writing systems and community activities. ‘Silent reading’ was, at least up to the 15th century, an amazing feat, even amongst scholars: “Libraries were noisy places” as readers mumbled their way down pages of text. Non-mumblers were suspected of being “illiterate”. Yet now we live in a ‘logogenetically’ fixated world in which the representations of sounds (in alphabets, syllabaries and logographs) are unconsciously invoked as the direct manifestation of language rather than as an arbitrary, pragmatic compromise of a number of considerations (including sound patterns). This fixation (and its consequences) are to be seen in the strange inversions of popular and of academic discourses: for example, respectively, educators are urged to correct punctuation under the notional heading of “grammar”; and Derrida has been relatively successful in convincing a generation of text theorists that linguists were misled by their “phonocentric” views (Derrida 1976). This is despite the unusual training needed to report accurately on the evanescent regularities of articulation and on the sound patterns of any stream of speech (Halliday 1985/89 on spoken and written language; and see also Harris 1989 for a systematic historical enquiry into the limited reach of literacy, especially in relation to Classical Greek and Latin).
The backgrounded, cognitive consequences of technologies of mode were also signalled by Vygotsky (in relation to the tool power of words, patterns of labour and the movement from concrete functional thinking to more abstract processes (eg. Luria 1976; Vygotsky 1978)). In terms of the history of colonial contact between languages (each with a different mode spectrum), Mithun argues that various languages of the Americas have taken on explicit expressions for logical relationships (a semantic pressure in a written medium) as their interactions with Spanish speaking (and writing) colonialists created a need for a channel previously unnecessary to their affairs (Mithun 2003 and issues raised in Mufwene 2001). A contemporary phenomenon that measures the consequences of drift in medium (and channel) has emerged from the work of Flynn on I.Q. scores (Flynn 2007). Flynn’s analysis of the inflation of I.Q. scores since 1947 (and before) is an anomaly in search of a fuller explanation. The often cited “explanations” in terms of an increase of abstract words and/or in terms of screen and computational experiences are partial and anachronistic. Highly suggestive here, however, is Halliday’s depiction of the vast grammatical tide towards “Things and Relations” in the development of scientific English (and in the lexicogrammatical resources of Chinese: see Halliday 2004/1998).
The contemporary tide of abstractions and reifications in discourse fits tightly with Halliday’s analysis. The roots of this drift have been illuminated by studies of the role of the Classical Greek language on the development of scientific approaches to experience – for example, in Snell’s work on genres (1953) and in the recent SFL analysis, by Kappagoda (2004), of the forensic stance of Thucydides as witness to the plague of Athens. Kappagoda explains his enquiry as a study of the semiotic “sixth sense”.
New patterns in medium are both the harbingers and consequence of new directions for thinking. Without relying heavily on neologisms, the linguistic system can renew its meaning potential through shifts in the relation between medium and channel in mode. Such change is ‘glacial’ but measurable. It resets our proclivities in speech, and in what we take to be natural in thought.
References:
Butt, David G. (2001) Firth, Halliday and the development of systemic functional theory. In S. Auroux, E.F.K. Koerner, H. Nierderehe and K. Versteegh (eds) History of the Language Sciences: an international handbook in the evolution of the study of language from the beginning to the present. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Butt, D. G. (2008a). Whiteheadian and functional linguistics. Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought. M. Weber and W. Desmond. Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag
Deacon, Terrence W. (2012) Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter New York: London: W.W.Norton &Co.
Derrida, Jacques. (1976), Of Grammatology. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak).
Flynn, James. 2007. What is intelligence? : beyond the Flynn effect. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press
Firth, J.R. 1950, ‘Personality and Language in Society’, The Sociological Review, xlii.2, , reprinted in J.R. Firth, 1957, Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951, Oxford University Press: London.
Firth, J.R. (1957). A synopsis of linguistic theory 1930-1955. In Studies in Linguistic Analysis, pp. 1-32. Oxford: Philological Society
Halliday, M. A. K. (1973[2003]). Towards a sociological semantics. In J. J. Webster (Ed.), On Language and Linguistics. London and New York: Continuum.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1985/89) Spoken and written language. Deakin Uni. Press. Victoria; Oxford Uni. Press 1989
Halliday, M. A. K. (2004 [1998]). Things and Relations: Regrammaticizing Experience as Technical Knowledge. The Language of Science. Edited by J. J. Webster. London and New York, Continuum.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1985/1989). Language, context and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Geelong, VIC/ Oxford.: Deakin University Press/Oxford University Press.
Harris, William V. (1989) Ancient Literacy Cambridge, Massachussets, London: Harvard University Press.
Hasan, R. 1979. On the notion of text. In J S Petöfi (ed.), Text vs. Sentence: basic questions of text linguistics, First Part. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
Hasan, R. (1980/1996). What's going on: a dynamic view of context in language. In C. Cloran, D. Butt & G. Williams (Eds.), Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning (pp. 37-50). London: Cassell.
Hasan, R. (2009). The Place of Context in a Systemic Functional Model. In M. A. K. Halliday & J. Webster (Eds.), Continuum Companion to Systemic Functional Linguistics (pp. 166-189). London and New York: Continuum.
Hasan, R. (1999). Speaking with reference to context. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.), Text and Context in Functional Linguistics: Systemic Perspectives (pp. 219-328). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Henderson, E.J.A. 1987. ‘J.R.Firth in retrospect: a view from the eighties’ in Steele, R. & Threadgold, T. Language Topics: Essays in Honour of Michael Halliday. John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam.
Huisman, R. (1998) The Written Poem: Semiotic conventions from Old to Modern English. Continuum Publishing Co.: London.
James, William. 1907. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking Hackett Publishing
Kappagoda, Astika K. (2004) Semiosis as the Sixth Sense:Theorising the Unperceived in Ancient Greek Unpublished PhD Thesis, Macquarie University, Sydney.
Luria, A. R. 1976. Cognitive Development: Its cultural and social foundations, edited by Michael Cole. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mithun, M. (2003). Functional Perspectives on Syntactic Change. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. In B. D. Joseph and R. D. Janda (eds). Carlton, Victoria, Blackwell Publishing: 552-572.
Mufwene, S. S. (2001). The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Snell, Bruno (1953) The discovery of the mind: the Greek origins of European thought. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tuckwell, K. 1999. The grammar of desire: complexity, metaphor and signification in Lacan. Unpublished honours thesis, Dept of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Australia.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Addenda for David's talk:
David's slides
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A paper by David Butt called Ideational Meaning and the 'Existential Fabric' of a Poem. in Fawcett and Young, 1988
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David's handout
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David will refer to this TEDS video in his talk. The talk is by Professor Bonnie Bassler, and the topic is 'How Bacteria Talk'.
Summary: Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves. Bonnie Bassler studies how bacteria can communicate with one another, through chemical signals, to act as a unit. Her work could pave the way for new, more potent medicine |
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Space and Time in the Texture of Verbal Art
A/Professor Rosemary Huisman University of Sydney
In a Newtonian view of science, space and time were axiomatic primaries; in everyday talk, the two singular nouns 'space' and 'time' still enable us to construe our experience as of two separate things. Yet as introductions to contemporary physics explain, from Einstein's special theory of relativity, the one concept of "space-time" should replace the two separate concepts for positioning bodies relative to each other. (Kennedy 2003)
In J.T. Fraser's model of temporalities, this time of special relativity is eotemporality, a reversible time, as what is measured will depend on the location of measuring (ie, the same physical event can be before or after another event from the perspective of differently positioned observers). But clearly, Dr Who notwithstanding, eotemporality is not how humans construe experience of time on this earth. In full, Fraser's model describes six temporalities, six different understandings of time: three from the human umwelt, the context of human experience, as understood until comparatively recently, and three from the extended umwelt of human experience, extended through science and technology.
The concept time then, rather than being a singular thing, describes various means of coherence, of making sense of experience. For language, making coherent sense is an important aspect of textual meaning: 'a text has coherence; it forms a unity, a whole that is more than the sum of its parts '. (Halliday 2002: 223) Temporal ties in the text can be compared to those of cohesion. Halliday notes when discussing cohesion ('... a necessary but not a sufficient condition of coherence'): 'the mode [of the text's context of situation] would determine the balance among the different types of cohesive resource'. (225) Similarly the mode of a text will determine the balance among the different types of temporal cohesive resource, each of which is associated with a different understanding of temporality. For example, a chronological sequence is the mode of coherence of biotemporality (the living organism's progress from birth to death), while a determinable but reversible sequence is the mode of coherence of eotemporality (that mentioned in paragraph 2). As with other choices of textual meaning, the choices of temporal cohesive ties will 'contribute to the "texture", to fashioning the fabric of the text' (as Halliday writes of Given and New, p 207). Social and historical differences in the context of situation will be realised in different discursive textures, - of written and spoken texts, of texts from different periods. From such study of texture in individual texts one can 'move up' the SFL instantiation cline to make generalisations about register (semantic configuration) and genre (social purpose).
When discussing the structural tendencies of three metafunctions (elemental for experiential, prosodic for interpersonal, culminative-periodic for textual), Halliday observed that those in different 'traditions of linguistic thought' favoured the metafunction whose structural tendency best accommodated their focus. 'Those in the literary traditions, concerned primarily with texture and text structure, have developed models of a periodic kind: the structure of the paragraph ..., generic structures of various kinds and ...the whole theory of metrics.' (210-11) Acknowledging then the bias of my own interests, my paper turns to the texts of verbal art to study the texture of temporal cohesive ties.
References
Fraser, J.T., “List of publications.” KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time, 4 (2004): 185-196.
Kennedy, J. B., Space, Time and Einstein, An Introduction. Montreal & Kingston, Ithaca: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.
Halliday, M.A.K., On Grammar. Volume 1 in the Collected Works. London: Continuum, 2002.
In J.T. Fraser's model of temporalities, this time of special relativity is eotemporality, a reversible time, as what is measured will depend on the location of measuring (ie, the same physical event can be before or after another event from the perspective of differently positioned observers). But clearly, Dr Who notwithstanding, eotemporality is not how humans construe experience of time on this earth. In full, Fraser's model describes six temporalities, six different understandings of time: three from the human umwelt, the context of human experience, as understood until comparatively recently, and three from the extended umwelt of human experience, extended through science and technology.
The concept time then, rather than being a singular thing, describes various means of coherence, of making sense of experience. For language, making coherent sense is an important aspect of textual meaning: 'a text has coherence; it forms a unity, a whole that is more than the sum of its parts '. (Halliday 2002: 223) Temporal ties in the text can be compared to those of cohesion. Halliday notes when discussing cohesion ('... a necessary but not a sufficient condition of coherence'): 'the mode [of the text's context of situation] would determine the balance among the different types of cohesive resource'. (225) Similarly the mode of a text will determine the balance among the different types of temporal cohesive resource, each of which is associated with a different understanding of temporality. For example, a chronological sequence is the mode of coherence of biotemporality (the living organism's progress from birth to death), while a determinable but reversible sequence is the mode of coherence of eotemporality (that mentioned in paragraph 2). As with other choices of textual meaning, the choices of temporal cohesive ties will 'contribute to the "texture", to fashioning the fabric of the text' (as Halliday writes of Given and New, p 207). Social and historical differences in the context of situation will be realised in different discursive textures, - of written and spoken texts, of texts from different periods. From such study of texture in individual texts one can 'move up' the SFL instantiation cline to make generalisations about register (semantic configuration) and genre (social purpose).
When discussing the structural tendencies of three metafunctions (elemental for experiential, prosodic for interpersonal, culminative-periodic for textual), Halliday observed that those in different 'traditions of linguistic thought' favoured the metafunction whose structural tendency best accommodated their focus. 'Those in the literary traditions, concerned primarily with texture and text structure, have developed models of a periodic kind: the structure of the paragraph ..., generic structures of various kinds and ...the whole theory of metrics.' (210-11) Acknowledging then the bias of my own interests, my paper turns to the texts of verbal art to study the texture of temporal cohesive ties.
References
Fraser, J.T., “List of publications.” KronoScope: Journal for the Study of Time, 4 (2004): 185-196.
Kennedy, J. B., Space, Time and Einstein, An Introduction. Montreal & Kingston, Ithaca: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.
Halliday, M.A.K., On Grammar. Volume 1 in the Collected Works. London: Continuum, 2002.
Rosemary's handout
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Degree, not kind: non-lexicalized points are symbolic indexicals regardless of whether they occur in the composite utterances of spoken languages or signed languages
A/Prof. Trevor Johnston
Macquarie University
Language is essentially embodied and the fundamental object of study for linguists, especially those that wish to compare signed languages (SLs) and spoken languages (SpLs), should thus be the composite utterance. A composite utterance is a turn in a face-to-face communicative exchange between two or more social interactants (Enfield, 2009). Composite utterances, whether signed or spoken, recruit three different types of symbolic units: conventional signs, symbolic indexicals, and non-conventional signs. (Symbolic indexicals are a hybrid of conventional and non-conventional signs and have elements which are partly conventional and partly contextual.) In this presentation I examine pointing signs in SLs using a broadly construction-based cognitive-functional approach to language structure and thus treat language as a system of form-meaning symbolic units (constructions) of various sizes across the lexicon and grammar which is seen as a continuum (i.e. as “lexicogrammar”) (e.g., Halliday, 1985; Langagcker, 1998) or the “syntax-lexicon continuum” (Croft & Cruse, 2004). Symbolic units are differentiated along two continua in this continuous symbolic space: one of size or simplicity (from atomic to complex), and one of lexical specificity (from substantive to schematic or abstract) (Croft & Cruse, 2004; Langacker, 2005). The notion that constructions are an emergent property of language that are created and fed by repeated usage events (Hopper, 1998; Bybee, 2007) is also discussed here insofar as it relates to the potential for (or barriers to) the grammaticalization of pointing signs within SLs. Within this context, I suggest that the non-lexicalized pointing signs found in deaf community SLs are not fundamentally different from the pointing gestures found in the composite utterances of SpLs in their everyday face-to-face form. The pointing gestures of spoken interactants have simply been under-analysed or ignored in language description and linguistic theory, contributing to an over interpretation of their role and status in SLs. I suggest that any difference between SLs and SpLs in the use of symbolic indexicals, whether points or otherwise, is essentially one of degree, rather than kind. With respect to kind, I support this claim by presenting an analysis of pointing signs extracted from an annotated SL corpus (Johnston, in press) and compare them with examples from composite utterances in SpLs, as reported by Enfield (2009). With respect to degree, I present data on the relative proportion of conventional signs and symbolic indexicals in the lexicons of a SL (Auslan) and a SpL (English), as well as on the frequency and distribution of the three types of symbolic units sample texts of face-to-face Auslan and English. Together, these data suggest that what distinguishes SLs from SpLs—comparing appropriately composite utterances in both—is the much larger proportion of symbolic units in SL utterances that are symbolic indexicals than in SpLs. This has interesting implications about how the textual metafunction plays out in SLs (cf Johnston, 1992). This comparison suggests a fundamental underlying identity in the use of points in all composite utterances. Contrary to the widely held view among most SL linguists that pointing signs, especially pronoun pointing signs, are fully-grammaticalized and fully-conventional signs, I conclude by suggesting that pointing signs in SLs remain gestural in nature or, to be more precise, are symbolic indexicals, just as they are in the composite utterances of spoken languages. They are not a fundamentally different kind of phenomena (‘linguistic’ pointing, e.g. pronouns, versus ‘gestural’ pointing) when they occur in signed languages.
References
Bybee, J. (2007). Frequency of use and the organization of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Croft, W. and A. Cruse (2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Enfield, N. J. (2009). The Anatomy of Meaning: Sign, gesture, and composite utterances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Hopper, P. J. (1998). Emergent grammar. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure (pp. 155-175). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Johnston, T. (1992). The Realization of the Linguistic Metafunctions in a Sign Language. Language Sciences, 14(4), 317-353.
Johnston, T. (in press, for 2013). Formational and functional characteristics of pointing signs in a corpus of Auslan (Australian sign language): are the data sufficient to posit a grammatical class of ‘pronouns’ in Auslan? Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, [Accepted Feburary 2012].
Langacker, R. W. (1998). Conceptualization, symbolization, and grammar. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure (pp. 1-39). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Langacker, R.W. (2005). Construction Grammars: Cognitive, radical, and less so. In F.J.R.D.M. Ibanez and M.S.P. Cervel (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics: Internal Dynamics and Interdisciplinary Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 101-159
Trevor's slides
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Medium and texture in two news stories
Dr John Knox, Macquarie University
Online newspapers preserve many of the story-telling practices of print newspapers. However, they also tell stories using media not possible in print (e.g. hypertext, video, audio), and this has led to new semiotic practices (Caple & Knox, 2012; Engebretsen, 2012; Knox, 2007). In this presentation, two news stories from the same edition of the same newspaper, the New York Times online, reporting on the same issue located at the same time and place are compared. One is a relatively ‘traditional’ newspaper story, employing text and image. The other also employs text and image, but is an online news gallery and uses these semiotic resources in a different manner. The ways in which different emphases and choices contribute to different texts, and different textures, is explored.
References
Caple, H., & Knox, J. S. (2012). Online news galleries, photojournalism and the photo essay. Visual Communication, 11(2), 207–236.
Engebretsen, M. (2012). Balancing cohesion and tension in multimodal rhetoric. An interdisciplinary approach to the study of semiotic complexity. Learning, Media and Technology 37(2), 145-162.
Knox, J. S. (2007). Visual-verbal communication on online newspaper home pages. Visual Communication, 6(1), 19-53.
References
Caple, H., & Knox, J. S. (2012). Online news galleries, photojournalism and the photo essay. Visual Communication, 11(2), 207–236.
Engebretsen, M. (2012). Balancing cohesion and tension in multimodal rhetoric. An interdisciplinary approach to the study of semiotic complexity. Learning, Media and Technology 37(2), 145-162.
Knox, J. S. (2007). Visual-verbal communication on online newspaper home pages. Visual Communication, 6(1), 19-53.
Mode: how an imperfect theory creates working applications
Dr Rebekah Wegener Macquarie University
Like any grand theory, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has many challenges when it comes to the full integration of certain aspects within the theory. One such area that is a challenge for SFL is the question of how Mode, or “the nature of contact. . . ” (Hasan, 1999), is integrated into the theory. Halliday has on occasion referred to language as a social semiotic (see for example Halliday 1978). However, in his 1974 account and elsewhere, including the same 1978 text, language is represented as being only one realisation of a social semiotic and it is this later account that we see dominate in the theory. These two views create a tension between whether language is modeled as a mode within a social semiotic or as a social semiotic itself with various modes.
Despite the tensions, SFL is still a very powerful theory from which to create useful applications. Truly smart applications need to interface with the behaviour of human and non human actors in their surroundings. Systems with such interfaces have the potential of supporting those with non standard communication practices, the elderly living alone, people with disabilities, and many others. While the benefits are clear, the means of achieving true behavioural interfaces are more difficult.
In this paper I outline how SFL helps us to understand human and non-human behaviour and how such an approach can be used in modeling something as specific as intention to walk through a door. In outlining the process of building this application (Kofod-Petersen, A., Wegener, R. and Cassens, J. (2009)), I discuss the behaviours which need to be described to model intention and how this varies according to context. Reflecting on this process suggests the potential for a more general model of behaviour and feeds back into the discussion of the theoretical development of SFL and the representation of Mode.
References
Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1974). In H. Parret, (1974). Discussing Language. The Hague: Mouton.
Hasan, R. (1999). “Speaking with Reference to Context”. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.) Text and Context in Functional Linguistics: systemic perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (219-328).
Kofod-Petersen, A., Wegener, R. and Cassens, J. (2009). “Closed Doors: modelling intention in behavioural interfaces”. In Anders Kofod-Petersen, Helge Langseth, and Odd Erik Gundersen, editors, Proceedings of the Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Society Symposium (NAIS 2009) December 2009.
Despite the tensions, SFL is still a very powerful theory from which to create useful applications. Truly smart applications need to interface with the behaviour of human and non human actors in their surroundings. Systems with such interfaces have the potential of supporting those with non standard communication practices, the elderly living alone, people with disabilities, and many others. While the benefits are clear, the means of achieving true behavioural interfaces are more difficult.
In this paper I outline how SFL helps us to understand human and non-human behaviour and how such an approach can be used in modeling something as specific as intention to walk through a door. In outlining the process of building this application (Kofod-Petersen, A., Wegener, R. and Cassens, J. (2009)), I discuss the behaviours which need to be described to model intention and how this varies according to context. Reflecting on this process suggests the potential for a more general model of behaviour and feeds back into the discussion of the theoretical development of SFL and the representation of Mode.
References
Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as Social Semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1974). In H. Parret, (1974). Discussing Language. The Hague: Mouton.
Hasan, R. (1999). “Speaking with Reference to Context”. In M. Ghadessy (Ed.) Text and Context in Functional Linguistics: systemic perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (219-328).
Kofod-Petersen, A., Wegener, R. and Cassens, J. (2009). “Closed Doors: modelling intention in behavioural interfaces”. In Anders Kofod-Petersen, Helge Langseth, and Odd Erik Gundersen, editors, Proceedings of the Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Society Symposium (NAIS 2009) December 2009.