Systemic Functional Linguistics - Multidimensional Semiotic System

Multidimensional Semiotic System

The point of departure for Halliday's work in linguistics has been the simple question, "how does language work?". Across his career he has probed the nature of language as a social semiotic system, that is, as a resource for meaning across the many and constantly changing contexts of human interaction. In 2003, he published a paper in which he set out the accumulated principles of his theory, which arose as he engaged with many different language-related problems. These principles, he wrote, 'emerged as the by-product of those engagements as I struggled with particular problems' as various as literary analysis and machine translation. Halliday has tried, then, to develop a linguistic theory and description that is appliable to any context of human language. His theory and descriptions are based on these principles, on the basis that they are required to explain the particular complexity of human language. These principles are:

1. that meaning is choice, i.e. that users select from 'options that arise in the environment of other options', and that 'the power of language resides in its organization as a huge network of interrelated choices'. (See Linguistic system)
2. that in its evolution from primary to higher order semiotic, 'a space was created in which meanings could be organized in their own terms, as a purely abstract network of interrelations'. Between the content of form pairing of simple semiotic systems emerged the 'organizational space' referred to as lexicogrammar. This development put language on the road to becoming an apparently infinite meaning making system.
3. that language displays 'functional complementarity'. In other words, it has evolved under the human need to make meanings about the world around and inside us, at the same time that it is the means for creating and maintaining our interpersonal relations. These motifs are two modes of meaning in discourse, what Halliday terms the 'ideational' and 'interpersonal' metafunctions. They are organized via a third mode of meaning, the textual metafunction, which acts on the other two modes to create a coherent flow of discourse.
4. that language unfolds syntagmatically – as structure laid down in time (spoken) or space (written). This structure involves units on different ranks within each stratum of the language system. Within the lexicogrammar, for example, the largest is the clause, and the smallest the morpheme and intermediate between these ranks are the rank of group/phrase, and of the word.
5. that all of these resources are, in turn, "predicated on the vector of instantiation", defined as "the relation between an instance and the system that lies behind it". Instantiation is a formal relationship between potential and actual. Systemic functional theory assumes a very intimate relationship of continual feedback between instance and system: thus use of the system may change that system