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Article published In:
Language, Context and Text
Vol. 3:1 (2021) ► pp.33–92

Selves, interactive representations and context

A systemic functional linguistic account of process in language and world

| University of Agder

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.

Keywords: affordance, anticipatory dynamics, interactivity, functional constraint, functional individual, metafunction, representation, process ontology, self, systemic functional linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Clause as representation
  • 2.Metafunctional constraints and utterances as operations on situations: Towards an interactive theory of representation
    • 2.1Experiential semantics
    • 2.2Interpersonal semantics
    • 2.3Textual semantics
    • 2.4Logical semantics
    • 2.5Metafunctional constraints on interactively constituted representation
  • 3.Anticipatory representation as emergent interactive process: Intentionally directed utterance activity as a simplex principle working for selves-in-interaction
  • 4.A brief excursus on substance versus process ontological accounts of the world
  • 5.Field of discourse as network topology of functional individuals and their locations: A process ontology of the world compatible with functional linguistics
  • 6.Representational interactivity in Action I: Example 16
  • 7.Representational interactivity in Action II: Example 17
  • 8.Translucent selves gaming the reflexivity of the interactive system: Hillary Clinton misspeaks about landing in Tuzla
  • 9.Functional individuals, situatedness and Seibt’s General Process Ontology
  • 10.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 24 February 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.00032.thi
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