Hi Mick
A decade’s not such a long time in lx is it? getting to the point of resolving
key Martin vs Hallidayan model differences is still making it interesting ;-
As BB predicted... ‘At some point, sometimes later than sooner, because of
special investments, a choice is possible’ ...well, it’s been 30 years so far
since ET.
But is resolution or refutation really necessary? A model is valid if it works,
according to Popper and MAKH. Maybe we should just be looking at differences in
appliability, and labelling models by those criteria, or by internal features
that afford them.
David
From: sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf
of Michael O'Donnell <micko.madrid@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, 20 June 2022 at 5:57 pm
To: sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [sys-func] Re: Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961)
Hi all,
On David K's request, the example I posted was:
Talking about the e predictivity of language instances from known context :
in a conference in 1996 I made the point that some language choices, while
possible, are inappropriate, thus unlikely. I gave the example of getting on a
bus and saying to the busdriver "pound of sausages please". A Scotsman in the
audience said that in his remote village, that is exactly what you would say to
the busdriver, who would pick up the sausages in the next village and bring
them back to you.
So, whatever we think about the predictability of language needs to be taken
along with a wide allowance of cultural variation in context-meaning
appropriacies.
Now, Kieran was spot-on when he said I basically posted it for interpersonal
rather than ideational motives, I was trying to lighten the tone of a
conversation getting a little tense. But not aimed at you Kieran as an
individual, but rather at the whole chain getting too personal. And you are not
a 'coldhearted, completely insensitive, vicious batard'. You are a pussycat
inside.
Although I do think that the tension in the air brings us to our best. I think
Keiran has never expressed his ideas so clearly, and DavidK has been forced to
put into words his position (and his reading of Keiran's) more explicitly than
ever, which is only good.
It reminds me with a biff we were having with David Rose on Sysfling a decade
ago. For me, it was getting to the point of resolving key Martin vs Hallidayan
model differences when the thread was shut down for being too rowdy.
Ths my injection. Be polite and considerate guys, but keep moving towards the
truth.
Mick
On Mon, 20 Jun 2022 at 09:12, Kieran McGillicuddy
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Yo David 2 and whatever remaining others,
I took Mick's 'example' as a generally directed attempt to inject a friendlier
tenor into the exchanges. I didn't pick up that it was also a good illustration
of a particular point, as Geoff Williams observed, but the quality of Mick's
example, I think, would have been 'in addition' to the attempt to introduce a
friendlier tone.
I don't think Mick's attempt to introduce a friendlier tone would have been
directed towards me, either to protect me from attack or discouraging my
attacking. Mick has plenty of reasons to believe in my gross insensitivity, and
related utter imperviosity to personal attacks, or reasons.
On the other hand, I would endorse Mick's implied call for a more civilized
discourse, if that is what he was implying, but no-one would take me seriously.
I observe, if anyone were to care what I observe, that there are many reasons
for people to care, and to care deeply, about what is said in systemic fora. I
understand, that for me to say that the weather/climate analogy is silly or
stupid, especially when I write stupid 'stoopid', is offensive to the memory of
Michael Halliday, even though I seem to think that I have huge respect for
Michael Halliday, and Ruqaiya incidentally, but bugger it, the analogy is
stoopid, and in saying that, I am also insulting people who have accepted the
analogy, implying that they who accept it are 'stoopid', but luckily my
thinking is sufficiently shallow, I am so insensitive, that I am not aware of
that offensiveness.
If you take offense, well, yeah, fair enough, and if I was someone else, with
power within the systemic community, then perhaps I would behave otherwise, and
I would be a little bit more careful about insulting people directly, rather
than Halliday, who is a big boy who can look after himself. I remember in 94? I
gave a paper somewhere, a systemic conference, which attacked Halliday's
discussion of modality in the then current IFG, but in a very rare attempt to
be civil I identified another very close version of Halliday's position and
attacked that instead. And after the talk a senior systemicist praised me on
the quality of my arguments but said that I should have highlighted the quality
of Halliday's alternative approach. What moral was I to take from that?
I'm going to quote David 2, momentarily, but firstly, to show that Mick
O'Donnell is correct in describing me as a 'coldhearted, completely
insensitive, vicious batard', I am going to agree with a point that David 2
makes, or implies, at least in his capitalisation. I did not address a delicacy
in Michael's arguing, that 'we invest' a theory with explanatory power. I
ignored the 'we invest'. I was aware that I was ignoring it. And I am not going
to unignore it now.
As for the 'monstrously bad' in the monstrously bad atheoretical and even
anti-theoretical pose, and even the use of 'pose' instead of, say, 'stance', I
can cope with that, I can perhaps even cope with 'atheoretical', but
'antitheoretical', I will see you sir at dawn.
Roy? I am not his fault. My position, which you identify as the integrationist
stance, comes from reading Bhaskar and Harre between 94 and 97. Admittedly, I
was shocked when I finally learnt of Roy Harris' existence, and that he agreed
me with me on so many points.
First of all, there is the monstrously bad atheoretical and even
anti-theoretical pose. In defense of Kieren, it's not original; it's the stance
that Roy Harris and the integrationists take. Any attempt to try to INVEST a
theory with explanatory power is halted by their stout insistence that a theory
of language cannot explain anything because it leaves out the non-linguistic
channels of communication. This "refusal to rise to the level of theory" (as
Halliday called it) is also category error: if it is a mistake to go by a field
with two cows and insist that there are three objects there--a cow, a calf and
a pair of animals--then it is likewise a mistake to stoutly insist that there
are no cattle there (only two cows) and no such "thing" as cattle to begin
with. Yes, of course, a theory explains no actual "thing" by itself; a theory
is a virtual object and not a sentient being and "explaining" is a verbal
process. That is precisely why Halliday says that WE invest the theory with
explanatory power.
Now, I don't take the integrationist position..., let's not get into that, but
Any attempt to try to INVEST a theory with explanatory power is halted by their
stout insistence that a theory of language cannot explain anything because it
leaves out the non-linguistic channels of communication.
that's not really the integrationist position is it? There must be something I
misunderstood. And, do I take that integrationist position? I wouldn't have
thought so, but who am I to disagree with David 2?
I observe, if anyone were to care what I observe, that there are many reasons
for people to care, and to care deeply, about what is said in systemic fora.
And when people care so deeply, and have so much of their lives invested in the
theory, and the good that the theory does, (I mean 'invested' in a
non-financial sense) at times things go wrong, and sometimes rather profoundly
wrong. But, I certainly don't think David 2's attack on me is a 'going wrong',
it's Mick O'Donnell I can't forgive.
There's a string of issues that David 2 has (re-)introduced, such as
propositions/proposals
But I am not deceived or disarmed when he breaks off before he tackles
propositions and proposals--in fact, the distinction between proposals and
propositions--that is, between language as action and language as meaning--is
just what we were talking about.
I broke off at that point. Fair enough. The propositions/proposals distinction
is a crucial issue. I have to be careful, because I might say something about
the non-existence of the imperative, when the existence of the imperative is
obvious to anyone with half a brain, and obviously it has existed since, well,
forever. And then, there is risk that I might say that the distinction is not
between language as action and language as meaning, and we would be down a
rabbit hole, at least I would be and David and most others would be refusing to
follow.
Kieren misconstrues Halliday... for the integrationist, text cannot include
context, because context is always and only what Ruqaiya Hasan called the
material situational setting.
context is always and only (…) the material situational setting
And again here, I break off, as I see 'the material situational setting' as an
oxymoron, and explaining how I see it as oxymoronic, would be..., to start off
with, not now the important issue.
I'd kind of like to apologise to David 1, but explaining why there might be a
need to apologize would be a pain in the ar.e, at a time when I have some
sciatica, and I certainly don't trust me not to do it again. Who would? Perhaps
though, David 2, you need to appreciate the extent of insult to David 1 when
you say,
Kieren misconstrues Halliday in very much the same way that David Rose was
misconstruing him
That is borderline unforgiveable.
And finally, a personal explanation as to why I broke off with respect to some
issues in my previous post,
But I am not deceived or disarmed when he breaks off before he tackles
propositions and proposals
To my mind, the post wasn't 'about' those kinds of issues. I see a great (huge?
enormous?) streak of intensity and faith and commitment and community within
the systemic community, which I don't share, and which I have consciously
chosen, from my earliest engagement with systemics, not to share, for reasons
which muchly don't matter to you guys. However, also, over the years,
repeatedly, there have been outbreaks of intolerance and malevolence, and
paranoia and misinterpretations, directed internally and externally, and
perhaps the community might like to get a grip on it.
A suggestion in that respect, consider blaming Mick O'Donnell.
On Sunday, 19 June 2022 at 23:22:37 BST, 데이브드켈로그_교수_영어교육과
<dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Geoff:
I don't think that Kieren's example is a beautiful one--I find it, to coin a
phrase, "monstrously bad".
First of all, there is the monstrously bad atheoretical and even
anti-theoretical pose. In defense of Kieren, it's not original; it's the stance
that Roy Harris and the integrationists take. Any attempt to try to INVEST a
theory with explanatory power is halted by their stout insistence that a theory
of language cannot explain anything because it leaves out the non-linguistic
channels of communication. This "refusal to rise to the level of theory" (as
Halliday called it) is also category error: if it is a mistake to go by a field
with two cows and insist that there are three objects there--a cow, a calf and
a pair of animals--then it is likewise a mistake to stoutly insist that there
are no cattle there (only two cows) and no such "thing" as cattle to begin
with. Yes, of course, a theory explains no actual "thing" by itself; a theory
is a virtual object and not a sentient being and "explaining" is a verbal
process. That is precisely why Halliday says that WE invest the theory with
explanatory power.
Secondly, Kieren misconstrues Halliday in very much the same way that David
Rose was misconstruing him (i.e. a semantics without discourse). For the
integrationist, text cannot include context, because context is always and only
what Ruqaiya Hasan called the material situational setting. Similarly, language
is always and only embodied language. Yes, it is impossible to order a
macchiato without a coffee shop to order it in--an admirable grasp of the
utterly obvious that makes these protestations about being taken to be an idiot
somewhat more ironic than the protestor intended. It is likewise unnecessary to
order it without a body to drink it with. But it is also impossible to order a
macchiato without the word "macchiato" and something very much like a system
network (i.e. a menu), not to mention some aliquot and fungible form of value
(cash or credit), and that's a little hard to explain without investing in some
form of abstraction.
Thirdly, and more generally, Annabelle is right. An important lesson of this
whole sorry-cum-wacky thread is the amount of crudely anti-intellectual
"thinking" that can be disguised behind appeals to good or bad feelings,
onomatopoeia, grunts, moans, gestures, etc. Kieren would like to fit his acute
content to a cutesy form, and I am willing to accept it and even admire it--for
a moment. But I am not deceived or disarmed when he breaks off before he
tackles propositions and proposals--in fact, the distinction between proposals
and propositions--that is, between language as action and language as
meaning--is just what we were talking about. It's the whole meta-functional
distinction between the interpersonal and the ideational that was the chief
difference between Halliday 1961 and Halliday 1985. More importantly for me
(because I work on child language) it is the "macrofunctional breakthrough"
that Halliday notes in Learning How to Mean: it's the distinction between the
pragmatic orientation and the mathetic one.
In the end, I think all that Kieren does is to prove my argument and not his
own. He accidentally slips back into the non-relational one-to-one analogy
between weather and text and climate and language in that very email (there is
no reason to accept the cogency or even relevance of his argument that a
theory of climate explains nothing about climate unless you accept the
climate-to-language analogy). He also shows how little explanatory power we can
invest in anti-theoretical integrationist posturing. It will butter no
parsnips, and code no clauses. To coin another phrase, it is language that
doesn't do stuff.
dk
2022년 6월 18일 (토) 오후 7:26, Geoff Williams
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>님이 작성:
Beautiful example, Mick!
Geoff
Geoff Williams
mobile: +61 (0)417540821
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