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The commensurate functional realities in the semantic and context strata are accounted for in a theory of register where they are named field, tenor, and mode respectively.²⁸ “By functional,” says Halliday, “we simply mean that language is doing something in a context.”²⁹

In the Hallidayan tradition, the overall framework comes in many permutations. J.R. Martin’s strata are phonology > grammar > semantics > register > genre > ideology.³⁰ Sometimes there are more metafunctions, four perhaps if ideational is split into two and renamed as experiential-relational, and logical.³¹ Jay Lemke renames the original three: presentational, orientational, and organizational.³²

What persists through these reconfigurations is the idea that, however much context is needed for the purposes of social explanation, it is a stratum on the outside of the expression forms of the meaning system. And in the delineation of strata, written text and speech are frequently conflated, mostly just by ignoring writing. Phonology is the canonical form of expression in language.

The consequences of this conflation are serious, as an analysis of context and interest will show. Take “is” or “here” – the meaning of time (e.g. tense) or place (e.g. case). These are radically different between in-person speech and written text, and this difference is determined by context. In text, “is” and “here” are “was” and “there,” whereas in speech they more or less are what they say they are. Or for the function of interest, the “I” of speaking, versus the “I” of the text of a novel – the dynamics of empathy,^§AS2.5b in which I feel for you, are fundamentally different – the one an embodied, visceral co-presence of a corporeal “you,” where the textual “you” is a distanced “other” in time and space.^§MS2.2 In the analysis of interest and context we come across more of the many reasons why we need to abandon the idea of language in a multimodal grammar, collapsing as it does forms of meaning that should, for their quite basic differences, be kept analytically separate.

These are some of the reasons why, in this grammar, context is not a stratum, across which functions traverse. It is itself a meaning function, an orientation within meaning as distinctive, significant, universal, and cross-cutting as the other functions. So is interest.

Fig. 0.2(i): Meaning functions

In this grammar, we locate medium as an aspect of context because it consists of the material stuff that gets pulled from the world, the available raw materials with which to make meaning and their practical scope for meaning. These raw materials are phonemics as the medium of expression for speech,^§AS1.4.1 and graphemics as the medium of expression for text.^§AS1.4.7 Their affordances are profoundly different, and this helps us to account for the differences of their form.

Or, in John Bateman’s terms, the forms of meaning, or the technical features of a semiotic mode, are realized in a “material substrate.”³³ Form is designable meaning, and medium the raw materials for meaning, available to be pulled from context in sensuous human reality and affording each form its meaning-potentials. Here is a rough map with examples of media and their characteristic affordances as forms of meaning:

Fig. 0.2(ii): Form and media

Connecting form to function, we can create a matrix. By filling out its empty cells, we are able to raise foundational questions about meaning.

Fig. 0.2(iii): Matrix for a transpositional grammar

On one axis, we can raise a series of questions about the function of some meaning, any meaning, every meaning, that may for the moment have become an object of our concern. Reference: What is this about? Agency: Who or what is doing this? Structure: What holds this together? Context: How does this fit with its surroundings? Interest: What is this for?

Then, on the other axis, questions about its form: How is this meaning made, in text, image, space, object, body, sound, or speech, or combinations of these? How do the material media of these acts of representation and communication shape the form of their meaning?

Meaning form and meaning function in this conception are not bipolar opposites. They are not a dualism. The one is immanent in the other. They are an inseparable unity. No meaning form without meaning function. Meaning form is how meaning manifests itself – in text, image, space, object, body, sound, and speech. Meaning function is what it does, to refer, to establish agency, to structure, to set in context, to express or realize an interest.

Nor is one dimension to be prioritized over the other. Form does not (just) follow function. Function does not (just) determine form. Meaning is the tension that integrates form and function.

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²² Philipp Wegener, 1885 [1971], “The Life of Speech,” pp. 111–294 in Speech and Reason: Language Disorder and Mental Disease, edited by D.W. Abse, Charlottesville: University Press of Virgina, p. 270; Brigitte Nerlich, 1990, Change in Language: Whitney, Bréal, and Wegener, London: Routledge, pp. 162, 181; J.R. Firth, 1968, Selected Papers of J.R. Firth, 1952–1959, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, p. 139; David Butt and Rebekah Wegener, 2008, “The Work of Concepts: Context and Metafunction in the Systemic Functional Model,” pp. 590–618 in Continuing Discourse on Language: A Functional Perspective, Volume 2, edited by R. Hasan, C.M.I.M. Matthiessen and J.J. Webster, London: Equinox.

²³ J.R. Firth, 1937 [1986], The Tongues of Men, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 110–13; J.R. Firth, 1968, Selected Papers of J.R. Firth, 1952–1959, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 138, 14, 147–48.

²⁴ Louis Hjelmslev, 1963 [1970], Language: An Introduction, translated by F.J. Whitfield, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 99, 106; Louis Hjelmslev, 1943 [1961], Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, translated by F.J. Whitfield, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 48–57.

²⁵ M.A.K. Halliday and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, 2014, Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (Edn 4), Milton Park: Routledge, p. 31.

²⁶ M.A.K. Halliday, 1999, “The Notion of ‘Context’ in Language Education,” pp. 1–24 in Text and Context in Functional Linguistics, edited by M. Ghadessy, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, p. 16.

²⁷ M.A.K. Halliday and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, 2014, Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (Edn 4), Milton Park: Routledge, p. 26; Rebekah Wegener, 2016, “Studying Language in Society and Society through Language: Context and Multimodal Communication,” pp. 227–48 in Society in Language, Language in Society: Essays in Honour of Ruqaiya Hasan, edited by W.L. Bowcher and J.Y. Liang, Berlin: Springer, pp. 235–36.

²⁸ M.A.K. Halliday and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, 2014, Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (Edn 4), Milton Park: Routledge, p. 33; Annabelle Lukin, Alison Moore, Maria Herke, Rebekah Wegener, and Canzhong Wu, 2008, “Halliday’s Model of Register Revisited and Explored,” Linguistics and the Human Sciences 4(2):187–213, pp. 192–93.

²⁹ M.A.K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, 1985, Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective, Geelong, Australia: Deakin University Press, p. 10.

³⁰ J.R. Martin, 1992, English Text: System and Structure, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, p. 496; J.R. Martin, 1999, “Modelling Context: A Crooked Path of Progress in Contextual Linguistics,” pp. 25–62 in Text and Context in Functional Linguistics, edited by M. Ghadessy, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 38–39.

³¹ M.A.K. Halliday and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, 2014, Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar (Edn 4), Milton Park: Routledge, p. 85.

³² Jay Lemke, 2009, “Multimodal Genres and Transmedia Traversals: Social Semiotics and the Political Economy of the Sign,” Semiotica 173(1):283–97, pp. 284–85.

³³ John A. Bateman, 2016, “Methodological and Theoretical Issues in Multimodality,” pp. 36–74 in Handbuch Sprache Im Multimodalen Kontext, edited by N. Klug and H. Stöckl, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 46–47; John A. Bateman, 2011, “The Decomposability of Semiotic Modes,” pp. 17–38 in Multimodal Studies: Exploring Issues and Domains, edited by K. O’Halloran and B.A. Smith, London: Routledge, p. 19; ibid., p. 21.

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Kalantzis, Mary, and Bill Cope. 2020. Adding Sense: Context and Interest in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 9–13. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108862059

Meaning Function §AS0.2