Text as Semantic Choice
M.A.K. Halliday. "Text as Semantic Choice in Social Contexts." Grammars and Descriptions (Studies in Text Theory and Text Analysis). Eds. Teun A. van Dijk and Janos S. Petofi. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1977. 176-225
In Text as Semantic Choice in Social Contexts, Halliday presents the semantic system as one of three levels constituting the linguistic system (the others being the lexicogrammatical and phonological). The semantic system in turn consists of four components: the experimental, the logical, the interpersonal, and the textual. Each component in turn affords a network of options or sets of interrelated choices (e.g., if a then either b or c, etc). In other words, "anything that realizes text is structured as the expression of all four components" (176). However, the textual component is distinct in its enabling function -- "text is languge in operation and the textual component embodies the semantic systems by means of which text is created" (178). It is through the semantic options of the textual component that language is contextualized in its environment as opposed to decontextualized language found in dictionaries or in sentences in a grammar book (181).
In his treatment of the nature of text, Halliday rejects the notion that text is a type of super-sentence, "something that is larger than a sentence but of the same nature." Instead, he views sentences as realizing text rather than constituting it. Text remains a semantic concept (194) with a generic structure. For example, the generic structure, "artistic unity," or register of a text may be that of traditional narrative ( his example), or the expository essay as socially defined by the school system (my example).
Unlike clauses or syllables that are "relatively well-defined entities," a text does not have a beginning and end. For Halliday text is always understood as "a continuous process of semantic choice. Text is meaning and meaning is choice, an ongoing current of selections...." (195). Halliday also views text as a projection of meaning at a higher level. He asks "What is above the text?" If text is semantic process, encoded in the lexicogrammatical system, what is it the encoding of? (196). He argues that the answer depends on one's perspective, the nature of the enquiry and the ideology of the enquirer, for there are different higher level semiotics and often different levels of meaning within each of them. Literary texts are an example. As he explains:
To say that a text has meaning as literature is to relate it specifically to a literary universe of discourse as distinct from others, and thus to interpret it in terms of literary norms and assumptions about the nature of meaning. The linguistic description of a text which is contextualized in this way attempts to explain its meaning as literature -- why the reader interprets it as he does, and why he evaluates it as he does. This involves relating the text to a higher level semiotic system which is faceted and layered in much the same way as the linguistic system itself.(196)
To summarize:
Text for Halliday is a product of its environment and functions in that environment. As he again explains:
In its most general significance a text is a sociological event, a semiotic encounter through which the meanings that constitute the social system are exchanged. The individual member is, by virture of his membership, a 'meaner,' one who means. By his acts of meaning, and those of other individual meaners, the social reality is created, maintained in good order, and continuously shaped and modified. (197)
To attempt to encapsulate Halliday's functional perspective regarding text and environment in summary or abstract form is to detract from the elegancy of his argument, the depth of his own understanding and vision of text as continuous process, and the constantly shifting reltionship between a text and its environment and culture. To be fair, one must listen to Halliday in his own voice:
The essential feature of text, therefore, is that it is interaction. The exchange of meanings is an interactive process, and text is the means of exchange: in order for the meanings which constitute the social system to be exchanged between members, they must first be represented in some exchangeable symbolic form and the most accessible of the available forms is language. So the meanings are encoded in (and through) the semantic system, and given the form of text. And so text functions as it were as potlatch: it is perhaps the most highly coded form of the gift. The contests in meaning that are a feature of so many human groups -- cultures and sub-cultures -- are from this point of view contests in giving, in a re-encoded form in which the gift, itself an element in the social semiotic (a meaning) but one that in the typical or at least the classic instance is realized as a thing, is realized instead as a special kind of abstract symbol, as meanings in the specifically linguistic sense. Such a gift has the property that, however great its symbolic value (and however much it may enrich the recipient), it does not in the slightest degree impoverish the giver.
We can see this aspect of text, its function as exchange, most clearly in the phenomenon of semantic contest: in competititve story-telling, exhcange of insults, capping another's jokes and other forms of verbal exploit. Oral verse forms such as ballads, competing, and even written composition may be predominantly a competitive act: late Elizabethan sonnets provide an outstanding example. In all such instances the aim is to excel in meaning, in the act of giving and the value of the gift. But it is not too fanciful to see the element of the gift as one component in all literature, and in this way to show how the act of meaning, and the product of this act, namely text, comes to have value in the culture.
Halliday goes on to say that "it is natural to conceive of text first and foremost as conversation, for it is in the contexts of ordinary everyday interaction that "reality is constructed" and "the culture is transmitted to or recreated by the individual." Unlike genres that depend on intermediate levels of symbolic interpretation, conversation's relationship to the environment is concrete and perceptible (198).
In his treatment of text and situation, Halliday underscores his initial premise that the social system creates the meanings that its members exchange in the form of text. Text, for Halliday, reflects "persistence and change in the social system" and remains "the primary channel of the transmission of culture" (199). As meaners (and users of language), we not only reflect on the environment but in this process "create the environment and transmit it across generations." This is made posible because "environment is a social construct...if things enter into it, they do so or because of social values." To summarize, "text is an instance of social meaning in a particular context of situation" with indeterminate boundaries.
Situation, as a "semiotic structure," according to Halliday, consists of:
The linguist approaching the study of text can identify "the selection
of options in a corresponding component of the semiotics" (201) as
follows:
| Field (type of action) | is associated with the experiential component |
| Tenor (role relationships) | is associated with the interpersonal component. |
| Mode (symbolic organization) | is associated with the textual component. |
The range of situational complexity in written texts that the linguist encounters includes simple environments requiring minimal or no level of interpretation as in Beware of the dog (203 ) to highly complex fictional narratives that involve multiple layers of interpretation, a constellation of social meanings, and orders of cultural values. The final sections of Text as Semantic Choice in Social Contexts detail Halliday's linguistic methodology for text explication and systemic description in network format well beyond the intent of this summary of his work.