Metafunctions As Generalisations About Bundles Of Oppositions

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

Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1990) groundbreaking publication and its better-known reworking (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996) are both organised around the spectrum of meaning SFL calls metafunctions (Kress and van Leeuwen’s interaction, representation and composition). It is crucial to keep in mind that metafunctions are generalisations about bundles of oppositions.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is potentially misleading to the intended readers of this section, those unfamiliar with SFL Theory, since it fails to acknowledge Halliday as the intellectual source of 'metafunction', his first publication on the subject being Language Structure and Language Function in 1970.

[2] This is potentially misleading to the intended readers of this section, those unfamiliar with SFL Theory. To be clear, the metafunctions are highly generalised functions of the linguistic system that extend over all of the local dimensions of the content plane, not just the paradigmatic order of axis. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7-8):

The content plane of a natural language is functionally diverse: it extends over a spectrum of three distinct modes of meaning, ideational, interpersonal and textual. These highly generalised functions of the linguistic system are referred to in our theory as metafunctions. The ideational metafunction is concerned with construing experience — it is language as a theory of reality, as a resource for reflecting on the world. The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with enacting interpersonal relations through language, with the adoption and assignment of speech roles, with the negotiation of attitudes, and so on — it is language in the praxis of intersubjectivity, as a resource for interacting with others. The textual metafunction is an enabling one; it is concerned with organising ideational and interpersonal meaning as discourse — as meaning that is contextualised and shared. But this does not mean processing some preexisting body of information; rather it is the ongoing creation of a semiotic realm of reality.