If formal logic is derived from ‘natural' logic of language, then this kind of
symbolism may be useful for a ’natural’ philosophy of language
It frees us to re-interpret choices we are given, beyond simply either/or. Are
simultaneous choices possible? Are there more general or more delicate choices
we can make?
For example, if we choose the metalinguistic feature [functional], then
[systemic], must we then choose between lexicogrammatical or discourse semantic
analysis, or are both possible? If we choose a [solidary] relation between
language and social context, must we choose between a denotative or connotative
perspective, or are both possible?
Selections from these metalinguistic systems are continually instantiated as
linguistic fields unfold, and always couple features from both field and tenor
systems. As with language systems, 'users share attitude and ideation
couplings…to form bonds’ , to affiliate with one or another group (or both:)…
Martin, J. R., M. Zappavigna, P. Dwyer & C. Cléirigh (2013). Users in uses of
language: embodied identity in Youth Justice Conferencing. Text & Talk, 33.4-5,
467-496. doi.org/10.1515/text-2013-0022<http://doi.org/10.1515/text-2013-0022>
[cid:A511FE2A-6DED-4DC9-B910-063D7B31567D@modem]
On 1 Dec 2021, at 11:31 pm, Michael O'Donnell
<michael.odonnell@xxxxxx<mailto:michael.odonnell@xxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi Ed, Kieran,
In my undergraduate studies, I took courses in Philosophy of Language within
the Philosophy Department (Michael Devitt), and at the same time, courses in
the Linguistic Department, with Halliday, Martin, and others.
I found the stuff in Philosophy of Language particularly useless, an endless
dwelling on issues such as how does a noun refer. Halliday's linguistics on the
other hand really made sense. At the time I made an analogy: in Philosophy,
they ask, if one takes a step, whether or not the ground will be under your
foot to support you. Halliday on the other hand, assumes the ground will be
solid, but asks, where do you want your steps to take you?
On the other hand, Michael Walsh, also in the Linguistics Department, once
pulled apart my linguistics to show me that I was making various philosophical
assumptions (free-will vs determinism, empiricism vs rationalism, etc.). He
showed me that one could unpack one's model, switch the underlying philosophy,
and put it back together as a different solution, which may be better or worse
than the original. This to me demonstrated the value of a philosophical
approach to linguistics (i.e., the need to understand the philosophical
assumptions one is making in one's model of language, and how they may limit or
distort the utility of that model).
Some of the better works along these lines I've seen are those of Chris
Butler's comparison of multiple functional theories of language,
E.g., Exploring Functional-Cognitive Space (with Francisco Gonzálvez-García),
E.g., Structure and Function – A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional
Theories
These provide a good breakdown of the philosophical underpinnings of these
theories,
Mick
On Wed, 1 Dec 2021 at 11:54, Edward McDonald
<laomaa63@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:laomaa63@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Dear Kieran and all:
Although I'm not familiar with Adrian Pable's article, I would agree with him
"about the need for philosophy of language behind the study of language"; but
if he is implying that there is currently no "philosophy of language", or
perhaps, philosophising about language, within the traditions of the "study of
language" on which we (linguists) draw, I would have to demur.
I myself, as I indicated in an earlier email, would regard Halliday rather as a
"superexcellent describer" - in the old Greek superlative ho grammatikṓtatos
‘the most grammarian’ - but I would certainly regard Firth as a philosopher of
language, even if at the time his discourse would probably have been regarded
by many as neither "philosophy" nor "linguistics''! And the thinker who was in
many ways Firth's foil, Saussure - well if he's not a philosopher of language -
as the editors of a 2011 reissue of the first English translation of the Cours
say: “his place in the history of ideas suggests [that] he is a philosopher,
however unwillingly” (Meisel & Saussy 2011: xv) - I do not know who is. I would
also suggest that if there is "philosopher" of SFL, it would have to be Hasan,
for her constant probing into the conceptual bases of the theory.
Likewise going back into the history of "modern" linguistics /
Sprachwissenschaft which was so much a German creation, in the early 19th
century Humboldt's work is deeply philosophical, as is that in the latter part
of that century of the strongly German-influenced American scholar William
Dwight Whitney, whose work also drew on the strong Scottish educational
traditions of rhetoric as well as the new discipline of anthropology. For the
20th century, if we only choose two "philosophical linguists" - Sapir, and
Hjelmslev and two "linguistic philosophers" - Ernst Cassirer with his
"philosophy of symbolic forms" and our course Wittgenstein, both the early and
the late, it's very clear that although the disciplines of philosophy and
linguistics as institutionalised were not particular open to each other, there
were a lot of common ideas permeating across the boundaries. And it seems to me
that the key commonality here is the recognition that what both philosophy and
linguistics (and semiotics!) need is a "lexicogrammatical" theory of language,
in other words, one that acknowledges the crucial contribution of grammar - as
Whorf's work did so strongly - not just lexis, to the relationship between our
language and our world.
I don't think it's "unfair" to expect that people should "listen" to each other
on this list - but the kind of listening is important: always a two-way street,
not expecting to agree but trying to understand. And from this point of view
I'm not sure what to make of your "you are not people, you are linguists"
crack. If we are all members of this list group, why not say "we" rather than
"you"? And as for "people", it reminds me of something reputedly said by the
first Professor of Chinese at Sydney Uni, like Michael Halliday one of those
"steered into" Asian languages by the British Government in World War Two, to
the effect that he regarded linguists as "barely human". Since this was said to
one of his students who was himself a linguist, I hope we can assume there was
a large dose of humour in it!
best to all
Ed
On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 5:38 PM Kieran McGillicuddy
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
You bar steward!
And that is my opening gambit. You have given me a choice between engaging with
something difficult, or going away, with my tail tucked, and hoping no-one will
notice.
But it seems that here I am, at a page on my computer, faced with a choice
between Immanent or Transcendent? But, in your now, I'm not at my computer am
I? As you read this, you are somewhere else, faced with your own activities,
which are probably only very partially yours.
It's hard to talk to you, in part because you use words like Transcendental and
Immanent, and I don't really understand those words. Mmm. No! I can do
something with them, but not a lot. And in any case, here I am talking to you,
but perhaps there are other people watching, or perhaps reading. For me, it's
threatening to have someone reading. But here I am. Or I was here, and for my
(these) interactants now, I am somewhere else. So, to be a little more precise,
here I am, even though I'm not.
I'm watching my back here. Because someone somewhere else has asked me to
elaborate on the difference between a production and reception perspective on
language, and I have done some of it tentatively and am continuing to doing it,
to some extent, and here I'm worried that my interactant from somewhere else
will be watching actually here. I don't want to do too much stupid.
I'm supposed to be a linguist. At least to me I'm supposed to be a linguist,
but I have trouble staying within bounds, and that is not, I think, entirely my
fault. For me here, which is for you very much not here, but nevertheless I can
say, for me here... Stop.
I have problems. I don't know what the real is. There, I admit it. And I will
therefore have some trouble with materialisms, of the various kinds, and
knowing where I fit in with them. But I need to know what is real, it would
seem, if I am going to use language to point to stuff. What am I pointing to/at?
And now I can play my common man schtick. I am only trying to work out what
happens when we use language. And I am wary of even saying that. Because I
worry that I don't use language, in that to say that I use language implies a
phenomenon 'language' which I then go on to deploy. It is a conception which
worries me, which has been carried over rather literally so that we linguists
tend to start with linguistics proper and then go on to pragmatics. Someone
quoted to me recently something to the effect that Halliday didn't study
'language' first, as some sort of linguistics phenomenon, what he looked at was
language, and I took that to mean that he wanted to look at language in its
functioning. But my 'took that to mean', is not necessarily what was meant.
I'm trying to work out what 'the real' is. And with that, 'truth'. I have, you
see, a problem with my nephew. My nephew plays the French horn. And I want to
discuss an aspect of that fact, as a linguist. I have told you, My nephew plays
the French horn, and I have put that in italics, because it is words, something
that I am saying, but, in fact, My nephew plays the French horn, which I have
bolded, because it is real, a fact?, and I want to distinguish the real world
from language. But, practically, I run into problems. When I write my nephew
plays the French horn, what I am saying and what you are hearing have to be two
different things. My my nephew is not your my nephew. We don't share the same
meanings. Which is kind of tricky, and simple, and important. When I say 'the
cat' or 'a cat', what I am saying and what you are hearing are not the same
thing. And it might be said that we don't share the same language, but it isn't
a problem of language, my 'a cat' and your 'a cat', are not the same thing.
There's a problem in our signifier/signified relationship, and the problem
doesn't lie with the 'word' cat, it lies with cats. Your 'a cat' is not he same
thing as my 'a cat'. In essentially the same way that my my nephew, Declan, is
not the same as your my nephew.
Language is amazing, and the magic of words, to me, is that the difference
between our worlds can be so cleverly bridged by a technique which allows us to
talk about different 'things', without noticing.
I'm reading stuff by a guy called Adrian Pable, from Hong Kong. But I am not
reading his stuff. I'm trying to understand it, and I am trying to understand
it because too much of the stuff going by in his writing makes sense to me, so
I keep hoping that I can struggle forward and make sense of the rest. In part
that is difficult, and time consuming. To understand as well as I would wish, I
needed to read a Roy Harris book that I hadn't had access to, After
Epistemology, and now I have it. I also need to get hold of two articles from
Nigel Love, which, it seems, will be important for a variety of reasons. That
will happen eventually.
Amongst the stuff from Adrian Pable, is that linguists need to engage with
philosophy. And that is not happening, too much. Mmm. Nah, I'm going to stick
with that. Linguists aren't engaging enough with, mmm, not philosophy so much
as trying to work out what they are talking about.
Your 'a cat' is not the same as my 'a cat'. And this throws up a couple of
problems. Some of which, due to a defect in language, can be difficult to talk
about. Lately, I have decided that it doesn't work to talk about the meaning of
'cat', and I can dodge some problems by talking about 'a cat'. And I have
troubles with whether a cat is a thing or a concept. And this edges into
problems I have in working out the difference between epistemology and
ontology. I have trouble working out the distinction between my concept of a
cat, and what I think a cat is. You see, I live in a world where a cat is a cat
is a cat, but as soon as I talk about the feline basterds which populate too
much of the world, these real things turn into concepts. But I refuse to live
in a world where there are concepts of cats, I live I a world where there are
cats. Does that make me an immanentist, or am I a transcendentalist? I take it
as an article of faith that my 'a cat' is not the same as your 'a cat', but
both of us will still be talking about real cats', real to me and differently
real to you.
My nephew plays the French horn. Now, that is true. It is true for me, and I am
just going to take it that you believe me. But it is not real, in that he is
not playing the French horn now, he is probably asleep. Now, I'm edgy about
saying that it is a fact that my nephew plays the French horn. I can say that
it is a fact that my nephew has played the French horn. And it is a fact that
he has played the French horn on several occasions. But is it a fact that he
plays the French horn? There are instances/facts, but what is the relationship
between these instances of fact, and the simple present tense of a material
process. I think I am nearing an answer.
But, I will divert myself just briefly. It doesn't help much to understand how
language works, to say that the sentence has a Process and Range, or some such.
To name parts doesn't say how it works
One of our problems with My nephew plays the French horn, is that my 'plays the
French horn' in this case, is not the same as yours. Especially when attached
to my nephew. Knowing stuff about him, changes what plays the French horn is
likely to mean. Before getting into what meaning means. Now, do I mean, or do
the words mean, or do you take to mean?
I'm going to quit this, without going into where I was aiming, which was a
discussion of the simple present, and the conditonality of the present, rather
than, say, some sort of generalisation from instances, because I think I have
worked out what my point is.
Which is, that I think you have asked the right question, perhaps not
necessrily the specific question, but the class of question.
I have gone on a chunk, and it is sort of unfair to think that people
(actually, you are not people, you are linguists) should listen to me. But you
should listen to someone, someone who knows that they are talking about. Adrian
Pable has written an article, somewhere, about the need for philosophy of
language behind the study of language. And I think he argues that it isn't
happening. Which seems odd when there are huge fields of philosophy of
language. But..., if we take the quotation from Halliday too seriously, then we
do have a problem. The quotation needs a philosophying of language.
On Tuesday, 30 November 2021, 22:02:31 GMT, Dr ChRIS CLÉiRIGh
<c.cleirigh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Kieran,
Your discussion of the exophoric reference of that in
• That is the second biggest arrow I've ever seen.
raises the issue of the two orientations to meaning: immanent vs transcendent.
What is your understanding of these two orientations,
and which of them do you adopt?
ChRIS
On Tue, 30 Nov 2021 at 18:08, Kieran McGillicuddy <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi Chris,
I often notice that you draw attention to this quotation, and this line of
thought, from Halliday. And it is very hard to disagree with a call to provide
a foundation for our analyses. And, if there is to be a solid foundation, it is
at the least more likely to be found in 'grammar' (note 'scare quotes') than in
'discourse semantics' (more bloody 'scare quotes') . And, Halliday in his own
work has managed to produce some impressive analyses of texts which for me have
been very much consistent with my intuitive responses to the text in question.
And, subsequently a mass of systemic linguits and fellow travellers have
produced analyses of texts which have been, 'informative', doesn't cut it, and
'useful' cuts it even less. Mmm, I'll just mutter past with some wide comment
like 'they have a huge amount to be proud of'.
And of course, a 'but' (not 'scare quotes') is coming.
But also, before the biggish but, the analyses based on the lexicogrammar, are
systematic, and often enough language users appear to be making choices rather
than other choices, and we tend to accept that in making certain choices
certain other choices are being rejected, and to some it appears that that is
where meaning lies.
- a quick diversion here to thank some clearsightedness from Margaeret Berry in
trying to get the distinction between system options and choices cleared up,
the which, I believe never happened to her satisfaction.
So..., I can say pending the bigger buts, that I am extremely attached to
language being systematic, but, I am concerned about what has shaped and is
shaping whatever system we are deploying. And, foreshadowing my obvious big
buts, what has shaped the system, is hardly likely to be found internal to the
system.
So, my brother! The one who is a basterd. Was/is great at finding
something/anything which challenged the foundations of one's argument. You
couldn't get any foundation, and the argument would end up turning and turning
in some pretty much unrecognisable gyre.
And there may be some family trait, which we should all pronounce with a
vocalised 't'. Over time I have put together, largely for myself, a set of
phenomena where the lexicogrammar doesn't cut it. I'm a destructive basterd by
character perhaps, but I feel as if I shouldn't have been able to find so many
problems.
And many many many of the problems entail that 'meaning' isn't able to be found
within the lexicogrammar. Though I may 70% agree with you, for example,
A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all,
but simply a running commentary on a text … the exercise remains a private one
in which one explanation is as good or as bad as another.
'grammar' (scare quotes) doesn't really solve the problem. But, pending stating
one of the problems that I see, discourse analysis, at least as practiced
within systemics, tries very hard to base itself on 'grammar'. While adding
other tricks/techniques, often enough I suspect to counter/supplement problems
of grammar.
(Damn, am I still preluding?)
So, I'm destructive, and I find problems, and if I find a problem left in the
bathwater by the baby. that is almost certainly not a reason to throw out the
baby.
One of the problems is to be found in my last sentence, and like a lot of my
problems, but not all, has some deictic or pointing component. What is 'that'?
Now you and I might know that 'that' is I find a problem left in the bathwater
by the baby, or if I find a problem left in the bathwater by the baby, (or some
such not much difference) but from a lexicogrammar perspective that does me no
good. Neither of those possible meanings is in the clause in question, all I
can find is 'that', and clause complexing doesn't help me, that doesn't tell me
what the 'that' is. (Furtherly, the lexicogrammar and discourse analysis won't
tell you what the clause complexing relationships might be.) A discourse
analyst with systematising tendencies would attempt to deploy endophora, in
this case, and that would help, but not explain how we track things down, and
in any case endophora is not a feature of the lexicogrammar, the last time I
looked.
And/ but even endophora does not really explain. If I am to track down 'that'
to 'if I find a problem in the bathwater', how do I do it, the tracking? And,
frankly, for the foundations of the lexicogrammar, it happens at least partly
in my head, and who would want to sort through that jumble.
The problem is more noticeable, much more noticeable, when what we are
analysing is not texty texts.
• That is the second biggest arrow I've ever seen.
• This is this, this aint something else, this is this.
• He died here.
An awful lot of the time, from an analysis of the lexicogrammar, we won't know
what the hellsapoppin' is goin' on.
But we do know, within some limits. It's just we don't know from the bit of
text/utterance or/and a lexicogrammatical analysis.
And here, I step briefly into the huge whingewhich has been building up in me
since Reading Images first prouded my bookshelf. Why the hell aren't we
reassessing the lexicogrammar itself in response to the damage which has been
done to it, and is being done to it, by 'multimodality' (scare quotes) (end
whinge)
In a) 'that' is a nuclearly warheaded arrow aimed at Washington DC. And part of
the 'meaning' could be worked out from 'the second biggest arrow', but on the
spot, watching the interactants between a teepee and the arrow, there was
pretty much nothing to work out. I could see the thing, and it has already been
established that it was a nuclear weapon. I don't need 'discourse analysis',
because I can see the thing, except that seeing also doesn't deal with all that
I cognize. A perhaps more important problem is to be found in the 'Value', in
'the second biggest arrow I've ever seen', which somehow, explicably somehow,
set up a contrast between 'this' arrow and another in a set of arrows which
includes one which was bigger. This was clearly a basterd of a situation. My
head was manipulated, and I was made to attempt a chunk of visual stuff, in my
head/memory to see/imagine this other arrow.
Now, in this case the lexicogrammar isn't cutting it. I can't deal with these
things without seeing stuff, at the least without seeing stuff.
And I can't really step up to 'discourse analysis' to sort things out, and
construing doesn't cut. When I am told, 'That is the second biggest arrow I've
ever seen'. I'm there. I'm already there. When I hear 'that' I start to sort a
few things out, working out what 'that' is, but that isn't what we mean by
construing is it? And the 'that' is pretty much a physical thing.
In b) the grammar doesn't cut it, but in the situation, where it was said,
'this' is a bullet.
So, is this just one problem I'm pointing to now? Can we throw out the baby
yet? Deixis/pointing is in fact, I very strongly believe, a major major
problem, with threads unwinding their way right through the lexicogrammar. It
leads, I believe, to a need to reverse the analysis of the nominal group, with
the deictic to be head, though Croatians may disagree. The deixis problem, for
example, also creates some problems for the nominalisation variant of
grammatical metaphor. And surely I have previously raised my concerns about a
nominal group starting the second world war.
In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and this started the second world war.
Is 'this' a nominalisation of Hitler invaded Poland. We linguists don't
instinctively relate to it as nominalisation as we would, say, to
'this invasion started world war 2'
But what would be the difference? 'This' treats/transforms 'Hitler invaded
Poland' as a Thing/Entity but that Thinging of a complex phenomenon happens
separate to a grammatical transformation. At this point, traditionally, I kind
of get cranky at the notion of a nominalisation starting a war. So, why would
one think that the issue here is one of a verb being changed to a noun? I don't
get it. But the linguists are doing it everywhere, and it needs to be explained
why they think they are doing something languagey.
And to give ammunition against me, that kind of attack on nominalisation is a
same kind of attack which matches up with my claim that I have never produced a
sentence, and that I have never engaged in discourse. Why the gorblimey would I
want to produce a sentence? Even on those occasions when I have talked and
talked and talked, saying nothing much at all perhaps like now, I have actually
been doing something else, such as blocking critics from
intervening/interacting. But that is another debate.
Give me the gun!
Okay, I say that Give me the gun, as it exists in this passage of text, is not
an instance of language, it is an attempted example. And you, in fact, never
give me the bloody gun. Leave that aside. We lexicogrammaticalists, I believe,
want to treat 'Give me the gun!' as `a material process, but perhaps there are
some who would take account that what is being 'exchanged' (yet more bloody
scare quotes) is control, and that the 'exchange' is not really any exchange of
matter or action. No matter, my point is as someone who would sometimes like to
analyse 'dscourse', I don't give a sherbet whether 'Give me the gun' is
material or control. I want the gun, or more precisely, I want to have the gun.
If I say Give me the gun, and you give me the gun, zowee, I have the gun. And
my new possession, which can all very well not show up in any analysis, is the
state of affairs which sadly leads to X being deaded, or not.
A text is a semantic unit, not a grammatical one. But meanings are realised
through wordings; and without a theory of wordings — that is, a grammar — there
is no way of making explicit one's interpretation of the meaning of a text.
When we read, a lot of us read smoothly and slide over the page, the words.
Perhaps more so, when we are working out way through an extended passage of
text. And, things can appear differently when we look at them slowly in detail,
as when analysing. So, let's try and slow down our reading of the Halliday
quotation.
without a theory of wordings — that is, a grammar — there is no way of making
explicit one's interpretation of the meaning of a text.
But, instead of analysing this short passage in lexicogrammatical terms, let's
contrast it with,
with a theory of wordings - that is a grammar - one will be able to make
explicit one's interpretation of the meaning of text
Er, nah! As I said to my wife while recently walking along a country road, that
is quite possibly bullsheet. And in our analyses, virtually every systemicists
analyses, we gloss the sentence/words, contextualise them, and pretend that we
are analysing the wordings when we are actually analysing the 'wordings' in
conjunction with the gloss/contextualisation. Err, nah! But would such a change
to the quotation be justified?
And I have a cart/horse problem too? Where does one's interpretation of the
meaning of the text fit in? Is the process one where my interpretation of the
meaning of the text is correct, albeit 'intuitive', and then the deployment of
the grammar will make explicit/explain my interpretations/intuitions? We have a
bit of slipperiness going on here. Where the result, one's interpretation,
something 'intuitive', is given, and the purpose of the analysis is to prove
it. We seem to have our conclusion before our evidence, which in some respects
would not necessarily be wrong.
I interpret 'texts' all the time, and I read and I listen, albeit that even
when I read I don't just read for the sake of reading. But leave that
distinction aside. I interpret texts, that is, I read and think and react to
some and various purposes. And that is what I do.
So, to follow on, what is the relationship between what I do when faced with a
'text' with what I do when I lexicogrammatically analyse that text.
Let's say that once upon a time, a policeman knocked on my door, and when I
opened it, he took off his headgear and said solemnly, (note the glossing)
I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your wife has tragically died in a car
accident this afternoon!
To which I replied, similarly solemnly,
No, that'll be the bloke next door (pointing to my left) I'm not married.
It's not clear, once again, that the lexicogrammar will cut it. There's lot
going on in the copper's talk, but most of it is dismissed to the netherworld
while I focus on the failed deixis of 'your wife' trying to find some other
perhaps relevant wife, who will not be mine, because it can't be mine. (The
real world really has some part to play here.) And there is nothing about the
nominal group 'your wife', analysed as a nominal group, which will much help.
The above, you may have guessed, was an invented example. I now give you an
example which is 'real', although, being an example, it is not real, and, as
usual, I use it because I think it is funny.
I went to see a kidney specialist after a biopsy of my left adrenal gland. And
this kidney specialist, who would prefer not to be named, said 'you have a
cancer of the adrenal gland! You only have a few months to live.' And please
excuse that somewhat paraphrasing. One of my brothers, not a busterd, was with
me at the time, and I suppose I could check. In any case, he handed over the
pathologist's report. To cut a long interpretation very short, it took me an
hour to get home, I didn't have a mobile, so I had to wait till I got home to
call the doctor to tell him he was wrong, and I managed that even without
looking on the internet. But, apart my boasting, did that kidney specialist
provide we with information, deploying a possessive relational Process, of the
kind, 'You have a very nice car', or should that 'information' be treated as
something more, of the kind, I have a gun, but worse, because you can't escape
the information no matter how fast you run. The interpretation was consequently
a much more elaborate process.
But, the interpretation!
I have been asked by someone to comment on the following passage on symbolism,
from some apparently highly reputable linguist.
Language rests fundamentally on the ability of speakers and hearers to deal with
symbols. A symbol is an object (sound, gesture, behavior) that has become
associated with meaning by convention. The introduction of new words is clearly
an act of symbolism. Grammatical constructions are also symbolic.
And I keep shaking my head. How the hell am I supposed to deal with this? I
don't think I know what a symbol is. And until I sort that out, it's going to
be hard for me to understand what he is saying. My problems are numerous. I
don't think that I have ever produced a gesture, qua gesture. The middle
finger? Which I only use very sparingly. But gesture seems like a a grammatical
category, rather than something I would do.
And to be fair with my interactant. I don't blame him for asking me to comment.
I think he was trying to get me to think what I think, or to say what I think,
aware that it would not be easy for me. I suppose that's a kind of trolling.
What does 'this' mean, as opposed to what does it do? And 'the' and 'second'
and 'biggest', and perhaps most importantly, what does 'sarcoma' 'mean'? And,
what is the convention for 'sarcoma'? Now, the pathologist wrote sarcoma, or
some such, and the specialist read it and said it, and I heard it, and sort of
understood it, and took some time to think through what I had earlier read
about it. And, quite amazingly, despite all of use using the same soundingish
apparently a word, we weren't talking about the same word/meanng/thing. And,
one needs to face facts, I didn't care about the word, and I didn't care about
the meaning, what was in play was the 'Thing', but not a thing as if it was a
Thing, but a Thing with a set of potential behavriours and interactions. It was
amazing. We were talking about the same word/sounding which was attached to
different and for me and my specialist sadly unstable meanings which changed
for me in the course of my going home. I'm telling you, this lexico end of the
lexicogrammar can be a little dodgy too.
Adenoma/sarcoma/carcinoma/incidentaloma, what's the difference, or is the
appropriarte question, what's the consequence?
On Tuesday, 30 November 2021, 00:39:08 GMT, Rodrigo Esteves de Lima Lopes
<rll307@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks for sharing. I went through mine and noticed I had highlighted the same
passage.
All the best,
Rodrigo
On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 at 01:18, Dr ChRIS CLÉiRIGh <c.cleirigh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Halliday (1985/1994: xvi-xvii):
The current preoccupation is with discourse analysis, or 'text linguistics';
and it has sometimes been assumed that this can be carried on without grammar —
or even that it is somehow an alternative to grammar. But this is an illusion.
A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all,
but simply a running commentary on a text … the exercise remains a private one
in which one explanation is as good or as bad as another.
A text is a semantic unit, not a grammatical one. But meanings are realised
through wordings; and without a theory of wordings — that is, a grammar — there
is no way of making explicit one's interpretation of the meaning of a text.
--
dr chris cléirigh
All you need is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure.
— Mark Twain
====================================
My Linguistics Sites
Factoring Out Structure
Martin's Discourse Semantics, Register & Genre (凌遲)
Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause (凌遲)
The Cardiff Grammar (凌遲)
Thoughts That Cross My Mind
The Thought Occurs…
Thoughts That Didn't Occur…
Informing Thoughts
Systemic Functional Linguistics
Sysfling
Sys-Func
Attitude In Systemic Functional Linguistics
Martin's Model Of Paralanguage
Lexis As Most Local Context
Making Sense Of Meaning
====================================
--
dr chris cléirigh
Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
— William Shenstone
====================================
My Linguistics Sites
Factoring Out Structure
Martin's Discourse Semantics, Register & Genre (凌遲)
Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause (凌遲)
The Cardiff Grammar (凌遲)
Thoughts That Cross My Mind
The Thought Occurs…
Thoughts That Didn't Occur…
Informing Thoughts
Systemic Functional Linguistics
Sysfling
Sys-Func
Attitude In Systemic Functional Linguistics
Martin's Model Of Paralanguage
Lexis As Most Local Context
Making Sense Of Meaning
====================================
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