Metafunctional Oppositions

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 8):

In this respect SFL is very different from models of language which distinguish form and meaning, treat meaning as representational (semantics) and then ask questions about how representational meanings are used (pragmatics). SFL’s paradigmatic perspective on meaning suggests on the other hand that [metafunctional oppositions] are not stacked up in layers – from form to meaning to use. Rather the sets of oppositions are seen as complementary kinds of meaning, generalised as metafunctions and manifested simultaneously in everything we speak, write or sign.

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[1] This is potentially misleading to the intended readers of this section: those unfamiliar with SFL Theory. Firstly, contrary to the implication above, SFL does distinguish form from meaning, modelling form as rank scales on the strata of lexicogrammar and phonology. Lexicogrammar is theorised as forms realising meanings.

Secondly, contrary to the implication above, SFL does treat meaning as "representational", as demonstrated by the Chapter title Clause As Representation in IFG (Halliday ± Matthiessen 1985, 1994, 2004, 2014). This is the ideational meaning that SFL complements with interpersonal meaning (Clause As Exchange) and textual meaning (Clause As Message).

Thirdly, contrary to the implication above, SFL does "ask questions" about how all meanings are used, including ideational meanings. This is modelled as subpotentials of the semantic system, registers, which realise specific situation types. In the case of ideational semantics, this is termed a domain model (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 563).

With regard to pragmatics, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 12) identify its two distinctive aspects and how they relate to SFL Theory:

There is no separate component of "pragmatics" within our interpretative frame. Since it emerged as a distinct field of scholarly activity, pragmatics has by and large been associated with two aspects of language. 

On the one hand, it has dealt with those aspects of the meaning of a text which depend on specific instances — particulars of the situation and of the interactants, and inferences drawn from these. But just as, in grammatics, we do not distinguish between the grammar of the system and the grammar of the instance — a systemic theory is a theory of both, and necessarily (therefore) of the relationship between them — so in semantics we would not want to separate the system from its instantiation in text. In this aspect, pragmatics appears as another name for the semantics of instances. 

And on the other hand, pragmatics has served as an alternative term for the interpersonal and textual domains of semantics. Here the distinction that is being labelled is one of metafunction, not of instantiation; but it seems undesirable to obscure the relationship between ideational meaning on the one hand and interpersonal and textual meaning on the other hand by locating them within different disciplines.

[2] This is potentially misleading to the intended readers of this section: those unfamiliar with SFL Theory. Metafunctional oppositions are "stacked up" in layers, but these layers are the strata of lexicogrammar, semantics and context. Moreover, it is not SFL's paradigmatic perspective that suggests this, since axis is a local dimension of language, whereas stratification is a global dimension. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 32):