Dear Chris and sysfunc'rs:
It's so good to remind ourselves every once in a while of what we are doing
as linguists. I recently found this very compatible quote from Wallace
Chafe, an almost exact contemporary of Halliday who died just a couple of
years ago. Chafe was one of the generation of American linguists who were
"displaced" by the Chomskyan "revolution", but who continued to do useful
work - and useful reflection! - drawing on the positive and enduring
traditions of the discipline.
best to all
Ed
WALLACE CHAFE. 2002. SEARCHING FOR MEANING IN LANGUAGE: A MEMOIR
*Historiographia Linguistica* 29: 245-261 (2002).
http://www.benjamins.nl/cgi-bin/t_seriesview.cgi?series=HL
"It seems to me that the word “theory” is used all too loosely these days.
In linguistics a theory is usually labeled a “grammar” and reduced to
initials—transformational grammar (TG), relational grammar (GB), role and
reference grammar (RRG), lexical-functional grammar (LFG), head-marking
phrase structure grammar (HPSG), cognitive grammar (CG), and so on.
Theories, or grammars, are thought to offer the advantage of being precise
and testable, and there is a willingness to sacrifice richness and insight
in pursuit of that goal. It is said that what makes a theory good is the
fact that it can be disproved, a statement I heard repeatedly from Bloch in
the 1950s. I suspect that many who adhere to this philosophy of science
today are unaware of its origins in behaviorism and logical positivism, the
twin philosophical foundations of American structuralist
linguistics. Unlike many who profess to be scientific, I believe that this
way of “doing science” has retarded progress. Understanding is in the end
an ability to place one’s inevitably limited observations within a larger
and more encompassing vision. The only true way to increase our
understanding is by seeking constantly to improve and extend whatever
observations we can make, while at the same time improving the quality and
scope of the larger vision our imaginations have created to give those
observations a natural place. Confining that larger vision to some rigidly
articulated theory locks us into an understanding that is inevitably
deficient, simply because the forces confronting us are far too complex to
be accommodated in that way. If it were the case that theories marched
forward in a parade of ever-increasing progress, each an advance over what
preceded, something could be said for rigid formulations at each successive
stage. But the history of the human sciences, well reflected in the history
of linguistics, suggests otherwise. There is no reason to suppose that a
particular choice among the various competing grammars will prove to be
correct, whatever that might mean. We see a collection of competing cults.
I would prefer to see an opening of our understandings
to continued refinement and growth as observations accumulate and improve,
with a constant willingness to modify or replace our larger visions
whenever necessary."
On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 10:44 AM Dr ChRIS CLÉiRIGh <c.cleirigh@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
The following explanations might be helpful for anyone keen to understand
what Halliday means by 'the ineffability of grammatical categories'.
Halliday (2002 [1984]: 303, 306-7):
*The meaning of a typical grammatical category thus has no counterpart in
our conscious representation of things.* There can be no exact paraphrase
of Subject or Actor or Theme – because there is no language-independent
clustering of phenomena in our experience to which they correspond. If
there was, we should not need the linguistic category to create one. If
language was a purely passive partner, ‘expressing’ a ‘reality’ that was
already there, its categories would be eminently glossable. But it is not.
Language is an active participant in the semogenic process. Language
creates reality – and therefore its categories of content cannot be
defined, since we could define them only by relating them to some
pre-existing model of experience, and there is no model of experience until
the linguistic categories are there to model it. The only meaning of
Subject is the meaning that has evolved along with the category itself. …
But a language is an evolved system; and evolved systems rest on *principles
that are ineffable – because they do not correspond to any consciously
accessible categorisation of our experience*. Only the relatively trivial
meanings of a natural language are likely to be reducible to (meta-)words.
Fundamental semantic concepts, like those underlying Subject, or Theme,
Actor, New, definite, present, finite, mass, habitual, locative, are, in an
entirely positive way, ineffable.
--
dr chris cléirigh
*Education: teaching how to think*
*Indoctrination: teaching what to believe *
====================================
My Linguistics Sites
Factoring Out Structure <https://yaegandoran.blogspot.com/>
Martin's Discourse Semantics, Register & Genre
<http://discourse-semantics.blogspot.com.au/> (凌遲
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingchi>)
Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause
<http://workingwithdiscourse.blogspot.com.au/> (凌遲
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingchi>)
The Cardiff Grammar <http://cardiff-grammar.blogspot.com.au/> (凌遲
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingchi>)
Thoughts That Cross My Mind
<http://thoughts-that-cross-my-mind.blogspot.com.au/>
The Thought Occurs <http://thethoughtoccurs.blogspot.com.au/>…
Thoughts That Didn't Occur <http://master-bateman.blogspot.com.au/>…
Informing Thoughts <http://informingthoughts.blogspot.com.au/>
Systemic Functional Linguistics <http://systemictheory.blogspot.com/>
Sysfling <http://sysfling.blogspot.com.au/>
Sys-Func <http://sys-func.blogspot.com.au/>
Attitude In Systemic Functional Linguistics
<http://attitude-in-sfl.blogspot.com.au/>
Martin's Model Of Paralanguage <https://sflparalanguage.blogspot.com/>
Lexis As Most Local Context
<https://lexisasmostlocalcontext.blogspot.com/>
Making Sense Of Meaning <https://meta-sfl-theory.blogspot.com/>
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