Language, Context and Text - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2021

Abstract

Drawing on a social semiotic framework, this paper sets out to examine two different semiotic systems whose default mode of expression is the human voice – language and music. Through comparing how each system differentially employs the human voice, we can identify both their commonalities and differences, and go some way to treating both equally within de Saussure’s envisaged broader field of “semiology”, avoiding the common trap of “linguistic imperialism”, i.e. taking language as the model for all semiotic systems. Starting by conceptualising the key relationship between the text, or unified instance of meaning-making, and the social contexts in which it functions, the paper then examines the material affordances utilised by each system, and the kinds of social meanings they express.

Abstract

In this paper, I re-examine the notion of ‘clause-as-representation’ in Michael Halliday’s systemic functional theory of language. I argue that ‘representation’ is a mode of linguistic action that cannot be understood in terms of the experiential metafunction alone. Instead, a theoretical account of representation must be undertaken in relation to all the metafunctions. Rejecting encodingist accounts of representation, I develop the argument that representations are interactively constituted and emergent in languaging activity. The paper develops these arguments in relation to a process ontological account of the relations between language and the world-side phenomena that language represents. Language does not encode actualities. The future-oriented, anticipatory character of languaging is fundamentally modal in character. A co-articulated self-utterance-situation matrix never attains full actuality. The virtual potentialities of languaging always have the potential for further individuation.

Abstract

Previous studies of translations from the Philosophical Transactions to the Journal des Sçavans in 1665 and 1675 showed that the translators adopted a strategy of selective translation. The present study looks at five examples published in 1686. Selective translation is again in evidence. Analyses of thematic structure and process types, however, show only slight differences, but with biases towards constant progression and material processes in the French versions. It is suggested that this can be explained by the translator adapting his texts to his readership. Whereas the Philosophical Transactions was restricted to questions of science and technology, the Journal des Sçavans dealt with all the academic disciplines of the time, and thus had a wider readership than its English counterpart.

Abstract

Systemic functional linguistics focuses on the study of language use within its registerial context of situation. The theory offers a meaning-based approach for the analysis of discourses in generic and culture-specific settings. When it comes to the analysis of conflict discourses across cultural boundaries, SFL may be integrated into a framework that relates language use to the notions of power and ideology and the dimensions of culture and history to provide a broader picture to inform future political decision-making. This paper presents a pragma-functional approach combining systemic functional linguistics, argumentation theory, critical theory and postcolonial insights. The analytical tool is illustrated with reference to the New Caledonian independence debate through the analysis of salient linguistic patterns and discursive moves in two open letters, published in April 1988 by Kanak independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and former French President François Mitterrand.

This article reviews Describing language: Form and function, volume 5 in the collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan