With apologies for another post, as this has gone on way too long.
Halliday's position is distinct from Martin's. A colleague contacted me as
someone had made the claim on Halliday's Wikipedia page that while he was at
Sydney University he founded the Sydney School of genre pedagogy, adding a link
to a Reading to Learn page. See screenshot.
This is completely false. Martin is responsible for the 'Sydney School', and
for genre pedagogy.
I've now removed that sentence.
Kind regards
Annabelle
<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-13-0996-0#toc>
Annabelle Lukin (she, her, hers)
Associate Professor Linguistics
Department HDR Director
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________________________________
From: sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf
of 데이브드켈로그_교수_영어교육과 <dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, 21 June 2022 11:35 PM
To: sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [sys-func] Re: Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961)
We've never met, Kieran. There is no personal relationship, hostile or
otherwise.
If we ever do meet, however, at ASFLA or IFSC, I should very much like to
develop THIS set of your ideas in quotes (and my counter ideas without them).
I'll pay for the macchiato:
a) "that the 'exchange' is not one of 'goods and services' but of 'control',"
If we exchange words or clauses--e.g. if I offer an imperative and you agree or
disagree" I don't understand in what sense we are transferring control. I am
still in control of my meaning.
b) "that the exchange is not exchange but transfer,"
See above.
c) "the force/possibility of the transfer is to be found outside language, in
social (socially endorsed) relations of power and co-operation,"
Yes. A state is a bunch of people with guns protecting certain forms of
property. The government is a bunch of people with language running around in
front of it. The two are distinct. But--like language as action and language as
meaning--they are also linked.
d) "for a transfer to take place it requires a willingness to cede control and
a willingness to accept control,"
Not at all. Most transfers, at least under present social conditions, are
performed under some form of duress and some are quite violent. That is another
way in which exchanging words and clauses differs from transferring control of
objects.
e) "transfer essentially can't take place in an 'imperative',:"
That IS the integrationist position. But it doesn't help me understand my
Korean data. My data are imperatives. They are not transfers of control of
objects.
f) "the imperative as observed in language, is not an imperative but a
(proposed) action,"
Can I use "imperative as observed in language" to refer to lexicogrammar, and
"command" to refer to semantics? Then an imperative realizes a command and is
not of the same order of abstraction as a command. Yes, that's a category
error, exactly like saying that two cows are not three objects so cattle don't
exist.
g) "the transfer of control is oriented to activities, 'material/social'
purposes,"
See above.
h) "the transfer of control can be realized by actions, such as the bus-driver
passing sausages across to the passenger, or passing the carkeys to my ten year
old son, but such actions are semiotic to the transfer of control,"
This looks like the reinvention of stratification to me. When we say that
something is semiotic, we mean that it is itself but it is also something else.
That something else is a different strata.
i) "my observations regarding proposals are such that the so called 'transfer
of goods and services' should be considered in social-semiotic terms rather
than in physical terms,"
But THIS looks like the re-elimination of stratification to me. This time we
are replacing the material with the ideal instead of replacing the ideal with
the material. Why not just see them as distinct levels which are linked through
the realization relationship? That's what Hallidayans do, and we get to do a
lot of stuff that way.
j) "the transfer of control takes place at the time of agreement to transfer
control, rather than at the time of transfer of goods,"
See above. Conversation does involve a certain element of utopianism--the
assumption is always that we construe the hearer as a co-meaner. But that's all
the more reason for considering the transfer of material goods and services on
a different plane from the exchange of wordings and soundings. Linked, but
distinct.
Finally, "Kieran seems to concede that language may be considered either as
action or as meaning". You began, I think, by telling me that "language does
stuff". I construed this, and other statements (including most recently
"language is not language" and "I have never produced a sentence") as a fairly
well rounded integrationist position.
Halliday describes this position (specifically the position that language does
not exist) as a refusal to rise to the level of theory. You are obviously more
than ready to rise to the challenge of theory, so I take it you have conceded
that language may be considered as either action or as meaning. Perhaps pistols
at dawn will not be necessary--a macchiato between sessions might suffice..
dk
2022년 6월 21일 (화) 오후 9:00, Kieran McGillicuddy
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>님이 작성:
Kieran seems to now concede, all language may be regarded as either action or
as meaning
Dear David 2
Have we ever met? If we have I don't remember it, and as I said, (was it the
last posting?) I try, have always tried, to not engage within systemics on
friendly terms. Sometimes that goes wrong, and deep respect gets twisted into
something else, and I have a strange affectionate attitude towards Ruqaiya, for
instance, but for the main part my friendships from within the systemic
community, have nothing to do with systemics. One friendship has a weird
foundation in Rugby League from the 70s.
I'm friendly with Mick, but that has either nothing or very little to do with
systemics, and goes back to when we worked as barmen together at the Sydney
Trade Union Club (not a trade union type club, despite the name), and perhaps
when we were both concerned about someone we were working with who was being
seriously harassed by another barman. We didn't manage to help her, and she
left the job, with bad financial, and severe emotional, consequences for her.
At that time, Mick and I tried to talk semiotics but in those days Mick
couldn't tell an interpretant from a cleft-sentence. So, if Mick and I are on
friendly terms, it has nothing to do with systemics.
Have you and I met? And that may look like a question which should be dealt
with off-line, but we have engaged in exchanges on line which suggest you have
a profound personal dislike for me. I don't care, 'personally', but I also
don't approve, 'professionally', and I would like it to be understood that I
don't approve, 'professionally'.
I don't normally like using the term 'strawman', and I haven't so far, and this
seems like another good instance to not use the term, because it doesn't really
appear that you are presenting strawman versions of my positions and then
attacking them. Yes, you are making claims about my positions/views which I
don't recognize as mine, and which are perhaps ridiculous or at least
wrongheaded, then attacking them, but now you are also attempting to present me
as having conceded to your arguments, and the/my positions which you find to
attack... really, I might ask where do you find the straw, but it's more like
mist isn't it, and, really, I don't think you think I hold those positions? And
if you don't really believe I hold those views, you are not strawmanning me,
something else is going on.
He also shows how little explanatory power we can invest in anti-theoretical
integrationist posturing.
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.
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, 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's surprising how much of his posting he devotes to his public persona and
what we are and are not to make of it, and how very little he actually devotes
to any real arguments. It is almost as if the brain is not part of embodied
language use at all.
I don't think I strawmanned the weather/climate analogy, and I have tried not
to, but I only presented one strand of objection.
Kieran seems to now concede, all language may be regarded as either action or
as meaning
I should go back and check what I wrote. I check before I post stuff and worry
about typos, and phrasings which will show me as saying something which I don't
believe, but mistakes happen. And I worry all the time about presenting
arguments, or statements which I 'mean' within my approach, but will be
heard/read from another perspective. But, your interpretations seem a little
more disordered than that. What does not seem likely is that I would say that
all language may be regarded as either action or as meaning, and if I have
conceded it, then I can't identify the/your arguments which led to my
concession.
I have a serious starting problem with 'my' concession, in that I am far from
convinced that language is language. I repeat the example which must bore Mick
to tears, as it does me, where I contrast
1. The river ran into the forest.
2. The jogger ran into the forest.
and we systemicists might want to 'code' one of the clauses as one type, and
the other clause as another type. Now, we might readily agree to our
classification of the clauses, but I ask how, or perhaps why, we agree. And
when asking how we agree, I am concerned about the recipient's response to the
text, more than the producer's production, which I see as very different things.
In any case, I look at the two clauses (if I am looking at clauses, but we can
get to that later) and see them as different types of clauses, but what is
there about the clause which makes me see them in different ways. The
difference seems to lie somewhere in the difference. One contains 'river' and
one contains 'jogger'. As linguists, and when looking at clauses/sentences, we
may be inclined to think that jogger and river are words, and that we are
engaged with the 'meaning' of those words when we understand the
clauses/sentences, but, as words 'river' and 'jogger' don't allow me to
distinguish the clauses as different types of clauses. I can look at the word
river and relate that to a river, and the same for jogger, but seeing jogger
and river as concepts or words or simply as things, doesn't allow me to
interpret the clauses in different ways, which I do. The problem seems to lie
with real-world 'entities' such as rivers and joggers, but more for the real
world potential for interaction than as things. As I understand rivers, from my
experience of rivers rather than my experience of concepts of rivers, they
cannot 'run' in the way that a jogger runs. They do not have, and I think the
issue of having is a serious related issue, legs or feet. Let's leave 'having'
until after considering 'affordances/modality/causal powers'. Rivers/joggers as
things which I encounter in the world, can do certain sorts of things under
certain conditions, and not do other things. So that when I read/hear A river
ran into the forest, I am constrained by the nature of rivers as to how I can
understand what is being said. I am willing to say that I am not being
constrained by the word 'river' and that I am not being constrained by the
meaning of the word river, I am being constrained by the nature of 'rivers'.
I don't see much thinking within systemics about what it means to be on the
signified end of a linguistic sign. Generally there seems to be some
correlation conception of the relation between signifier and signified, but
what it means to be a signified doesn't seem to be dealt with much. I watched
the discussion between Paul Thibault and Ed McDonald about Saussure, but they
both for perhaps obvious reasons limited the scope of their talks. In any case,
it is not much use to us to conceive of rivers as just rivers. What matters to
us, and in our living in the world, and in our understanding of clauses, is
what rivers, and other things, can do. Now, I don't whether people would
generally want to say that a thing is what it can do, but generally speaking,
it is our appreciation of what things can do and have done to them and where,
which matter to our existence. That relates, of course, to Gibson. And it
relates, quite fundamentally, to what we should consider as our units of
analysis. That's another problem.
My understanding of 'The river ran into the forest', then, is not language, or
not simply language.
It is the materiality of my world, the interactional materiality, which I
deploy in my understanding of the clause/sentence. I don't, then, recognize
myself in,
Kieran seems to now concede, all language may be regarded as either action or
as meaning
initially because I don't concede that language is language.
Along the same lines, but more simply, I have in recent times been saying
things like, when I say that Freddy Starr ate my hamster, what is in play are
real world phenomena. You may not know who Freddy Starr is, and you may not
have met my hamster. But they are not words.
In passing, I have in some passing recently been making comments about the
problem of analyses, of taking examples from where they existed and analysing
them out of context. I take it that David 2 has been interpreting that as an
antitheoretical integrationist position. As it happens, I am astonished by the
high quality of the thinking from various integrationists, (Adrian Pable) but I
nevertheless see systematic variation between 'material processes', and
'relational processes'. In good part my concern is to deal with what we are
actually looking at rather than what we think we are looking at. I may agree
with the distinction without agreeing with the distinguishing. Another part of
my concern is that I think I can reasonably say,
* A river can run into a forest while a jogger cannot
and be consistent with
* A jogger can run into a forest while a river cannot.
but the two claims cannot be 'consistent' without context. The
context/utterance relationship, and what we mean by context, as what we mean by
language, is vitally important to an understanding of the action of language.
And, of course, 'context' can be thought of in a variety of ways, which can
make our communication difficult. For their own sakes, it seems that the
Hallidayans and Martiniques, and the Hassanists, need to try and get some
coordination as to what they each think they are talking about.
Category errors
My ears prick up when people talk about 'category errors', as David 2 does. And
I wonder whether I am engaging in a category error when I say that I have never
produced a sentence, as I do from time to time.
A long time ago, while reading Cohesion in English, if I remember correctly, I
came to wonder why one would ever want a text to cohere. Much of the same
wondering wondered me when Jim was teaching us English Text. And the wondering
spread, so that I now wonder why one would want to produce a sentence. And I
look at my practice and I haven't been able to think of a situation in which I
have produced a sentence. I do stuff and I talk and occasionally write in the
doing, but my engagement is always with the doing stuff, with the the writing
and talking always, let's say, 'subordinate' to whatever it is that I am doing.
When I am doing stuff and language is involved in that doing, would I be
deploying a category error to say that I am not producing a sentence, or would
I be category errorising to say that I am producing sentences?
If I am not producing sentences or clauses or such, because who in their right
mind would want to, then maybe I am languageing, rather than producing
sentences, and if I were to be a linguist, the question would be how that
languageing works in relation to whatever it is that I am doing. If languageing
rather than language were the issue, how would our languageing be organised
such that it can act upon the 'real world', whatever the real may be. I am now
forced to rehypothesize Jay Lemke saying,
What if we thought of language not as a system of symbols to be manipulated,
but as a living process by which we more complexly embed ourselves in the
social ecology around us and thereby enlarge our capacity to understand and
influence it? What if we viewed language in use not as something originating in
“minds” or thoughts, but in our biological processes of perception and action,
exploring and being emotionally enmeshed in our social and natural environment?
and I do that partly because I get annoyed at Jay being dragged in to support
views that I find difficult to believe he would genuinely support, as I find
myself being presented as expressing views which I find very difficult to see
myself saying. Oh well. But please note that I don't see languageing and
language in use, as being the same thing.
I remember in recent years, not too long before Covid, I was listening to David
1 give a talk, and detailing his understanding of the organisation of
'semiotic' phenomena in the classroom, and I couldn't see why he needed to call
the 'semiotic' phenomena semiotic. And it is a long concern of mine which goes
back to generic structure, but the problem seemed to crystallise in David's
talk, the 'recipe problem', about which much might be heard later.
Sometimes, in order to do something, something else needs to be done first. In
order to make an omelette, you need to break some eggs. So, in a recipe we may
find some instructions, such as get a 33 inch skillet, prior to instructions
for the breaking of the several dozen eggs. But this is not a staging of
language. The staging can be seen more generally in terms of obtaining the
equipment to perform a task, and obtaining the raw materials in order to
perform a task, and locating the skills required to perform a task, prior to
performing the task, in which some tasks necessarily precede others. Within an
academic domain, we may be required to establish that we are such a person as
should be listened to, prior to expressing our views, prior to being allowed to
make an omelette. For Halliday, within the systemics community, it seems that
he didn't need to make claims as to why he should be listened to, prior to
expressing his views. Also, within the systemic community, there seems to be a
need to establish why particular people, such as Huddleston, should not be
listened to.
There seem to be related errors in Peirce's semiotics, where he identifies as
semiotic phenomena what are matters of the properties of things. But damn, if
I'm going to accuse Peirce of this sort of error, I am really going to have to
do my homework first.
Kieran seems to now concede, all language may be regarded as either action or
as meaning
I have been given two problems, at least, language as action or meaning, and
proposals v propositions. Now recently I made some quick comments on the
exchange of goods and services (the proposals end of things) suggesting
* that the 'exchange' is not one of 'goods and services' but of 'control',
* that the exchange is not exchange but transfer,
* the force/possibility of the transfer is to be found outside language, in
social (socially endorsed) relations of power and co-operation,
* for a transfer to take place it requires a willingness to cede control
and a willingness to accept control, and
* transfer essentially can't take place in an 'imperative',
* the imperative as observed in language, is not an imperative but a
(proposed) action,
* the transfer of control is oriented to activities, 'material/social'
purposes,
* the transfer of control can be realized by actions, such as the
bus-driver passing sausages across to the passenger, or passing the carkeys to
my ten year old son, but such actions are semiotic to the transfer of control,
* my observations regarding proposals are such that the socalled 'transfer
of goods and services' should be considered in social-semiotic terms rather
than in physical terms,
* the transfer of control takes place at the time of agreement to transfer
control, rather than at the time of transfer of goods,
I don't think I commented on congruency relations between a demand for goods
and services and the imperative, but implications may well be drawn.
If one were to think of 'propositions' a little differently, perhaps in
something like the above terms, then it is possible that 'information
exchanges' might also be able to be rethought.
For a not too great example, is Can I have the gun? an information exchange, or
one half of the process of transfer of control, of which the other half is
'yes', or 'no way you dangerous batard', or perhaps 'okay', or perhaps, 'after
you've brushed your teeth'.
If transfer of control happens outside of language, from an interactant who is
socially accepted as having control, to someone whose subsequent control (over
this particular good or action) might be legitimated, then it would be wise for
me to focus on where the transfer happens, and under what conditions, if I want
to understand social processes.
'having'? Mmm. I'm going to truncate this. And I want to make a multimodality
comment.
The jogger ran into the forest.
The horse ran into the forest.
Let's say that these are material processes, and that we agree that they are
'material processes', and we code them as such, is 'ran' the same in the two
cases? Now, I may be odd, but my understanding of 'ran' is not the same as
'ran' even though they are sort of the same word and even though they both seem
to be material processes. My objection is that I 'see' different things in the
two cases. I suggest that perhaps the obsession in systemics to 'properly' code
processes, may be blinding us to the more of what is happening. Now I don't
know much about horses, and if you say the horse ran into the forest, I have a
quick understanding of some horse running into a forest. I think it is
galloping, rather than cantering or trotting. I quickly get past the visual
phenomenon, and move on to whatever follows, but the understanding of the
clause is not (simply) language, and is in very large part visual, which starts
to tickle at the foundations of multimodality as different modes. The visual
character of some horse running into a forest would be a little clearer if we
contrasted the example with, say, a jogger running into the forest, but there
is a lot of visuality, even without the jogger. For me, the forest, by the way,
is a sandy pine Landes forest. I grant you a forest of whatever character you
might choose. Given a particular signifier my signified doesn't need be yours,
we can happily proceed with our different signifieds, and never even notice.
I don't know how much multimodality has addressed the 'visual character' of
language in recent times. An important hint, it may be central to the
active/passive distinction.
A theoretical issue would have to do with the relationship between 'ran' in
'The horse ran...' and the experience which prompted it and the experience it
prompted, which should be substantially more than the bare semantics of 'ran'.
'Ran' might be thought of as 'simplexifying', providing a term which is
experientially reductive enough that it can be used in company of a variety of
understandings.
My concerns here, based here on apparently minor examples, are at a
lexicogrammatical level. Despite the examples being 'minor' they may carry
further more serious theoretical consequences for systemic analyses. Systemic
analyses, like most sentence/clause analyses, are of a largely componential
character. However, if the subject (river, jogger, or horse) is determinative
of our analysis of process-types, then the subject (river, jogger, horse)
precedes the formation of 'the clause' in our comprehension. Perhaps the
implications will be wider, entailing that no componented clause is actually to
be found in the wild. There are reasons to consider that the componented clause
may be a product of our analysis of deceased sentences rather than live ones.
The battle between Hallidayan conceptions of context, and Martiniquian
conceptions, are constructed in correlational terms. One might say that they
both lack immediacy and dynamism.
A correlational conception of text/context is perhaps inevitable starting from
the current lexicogrammar, when the lexicogrammar has been constructed from
patterns of language which are essentially decontextualised, even if attested
and to be found in corpora.
I want, or need, a conception of languageing which always and only occurs in a
context, and where that context precedes and is changed by the languageing.
This is not a context which is a material situation. In one of Ruqaiya's very
interesting articles, I forget which, she commented on the material situation
of a shop, and for the life of me I couldn't see how a shop could simply be a
material situation. And, for the life of me, I couldn't imagine myself ever
being in a material situation. I always seem to be in shops, or living rooms,
or theoretical messes, or buses where the driver supplies the sausages, where
the bus is something more than a partly glass-sided container with wheels in
which I sit. I want contexts like those ones in which I umwelt, where when I
say 'that' or 'that' or 'that' or 'that' or 'that', I mean something, and that
which I mean, is not a 'meaning' of that, but something more substantial, a
that, or a this, as in
This is this. This is not something else, this is this.
Or
That's the second biggest arrow I've ever seen.
more like somethings I/we can perceive (Tokens) and which come readying for
integration into activities and purposes (Values).
Sheet? Am I an integrationist?
On Tuesday, 21 June 2022 at 00:40:42 BST, 데이브드켈로그_교수_영어교육과
<dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Thanks, Mick.
I completely agree that Kieran (I think I spelled it right this time) is a
pussycat inside; it's surprising how much of his posting he devotes to his
public persona and what we are and are not to make of it, and how very little
he actually devotes to any real arguments. It is almost as if the brain is not
part of embodied language use at all.
I think Halliday argues somewhere that psychology is "relevant but not
necessary" for understanding SFL, and I agree with that (at least insofar as
"understanding" just means being able to butter parsnips, code clauses, and do
stuff with it). But the last time I heard Martin speak he was proposing that
the relevance of psychology to SFL could be entirely done away with and
replaced by good old fashioned Aristotelian rhetoric. I think your comment
shows how this particular move would reduce discourse analysis to what it was
for Zellig Harris: a grammar above the clause.
From a Vygotskyan perspective, semantics is just thinking, verbal and
nonverbal. Verbal thinking is derived from inner speech but not reducible to
it. It's derived from inner speech in exactly the way you are suggesting in the
stolen book example--through elision, which sometimes produces semantic chains
that are little more than one damn predicator after another (at least in Korean
where nominal groups are the first to go). It's not reducible to it because it
is also derived from the kind of touchy feely sensations that Kieran is so
interested in trying to convey.
Perhaps there is another reason why verbal thinking isn't reducible to inner
speech (that is, wording without sounding). Semantics has to include all of the
meaning potential required to get from relevant context to wording, and we
can't arrive at a model of that meaning potential simply by taking grammar and
elliding bits of it: "The book was stolen" is not quite the same meaning as
"The book was stolen by someone" because it's not as actionable (as even Kieran
seems to now concede, all language may be regarded as either action or as
meaning). Besides, since we are always finding new ways to say the quiet bit
out loud, the border between verbal and nonverbal thinking must be there but
never quite in the same where. Any model of verbal thinking has to be able to
account for imagination and creativity in ways that a model of phonology or
phonetics need not.
(Korean, for example, has a whole register of 혼잣말, a kind of inner speech which
is designed to be leaked and overheard. It's quite unmistakeable, because the
verbal and mental processes that refer to the speaker are stripped of
honorifics: it's not modest or humble to use honorifics on yourself,
particularly when you are just saying or feeling or thinking. But it's designed
to be overheard, because it is louder in larger and noisier rooms: Vygotsky
showed that this was also true of Piaget's "egocentric speech". It's really
handy for showing other people how you think without actually talking to them,
e.g. answering the teacher's questions in class without coming off as the class
know-it-all. It is mostly predicative, but that's true of Korean grammar quite
generally because nominal groups are more optional than they are in English.)
dk
2022년 6월 20일 (월) 오후 9:04, Michael O'Donnell
<micko.madrid@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:micko.madrid@xxxxxxxxx>>님이 작성:
Hi David,
Never mentioned a resolution, I was after an understanding. I
asked a question to you whether in the Martin-Rose model whether there
can be meaning which is not anchored to text, e.g., in a Hallidayan
semantics, there may be an Actor to a process (talking about
Ideational semantics, not Transitivity) which is not realised in the
text (The book was stolen), but I get the sense that Discourse
semantics is not a "semantics" in Halliday's sense, but rather, a
grammar above the clause, and thus has no place to meaning-annotate
elements which are not there in the text.
My question to you as above was the last post before we got shut down
for being unruly interpersonally, and the question has bugged me ever
since.
Sorry, not sure if my question is clear enough, but if so, an answer
appreciated...
Mick
On Mon, 20 Jun 2022 at 11:15, David Rose
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
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<mailto:sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> on
behalf of Michael O'Donnell
<micko.madrid@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:micko.madrid@xxxxxxxxx>>
Date: Monday, 20 June 2022 at 5:57 pm
To: sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto: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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