19 January 2024

Metafunction As A Parameter That Organises Paradigmatic Relations

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 6):

Over the past five decades of research (Martin, 2016), SFL has generalised a number of key parameters concerning the way paradigmatic relations are organised in language. One is metafunction.


Blogger Comments:

[1] This is potentially misleading to the intended readers of this section: those unfamiliar with SFL Theory. These key parameters were not "generalised" over five decades of research, and Martin played no role in their formulation. SFL Theory was devised entirely by Halliday, with the first statement on the theory appearing in A Brief Sketch of Systemic Grammar in 1969, and the first statement on the metafunctions appearing in Language Structure and Language Function in 1970.

[2] This misunderstands the architecture of language proposed by Halliday. It is not that metafunction organises paradigmatic relations, but that paradigmatic relations, like syntagmatic relations, are orders of a local semiotic dimension, axis, over which the global semiotic dimension of metafunction extends. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 32):

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