Slide 68: Theorising The Meaner

…in this paper, we have attempted to bring the language user into the SFL model of language — in a systematic way that is suggested by the model of language itself; that is, we have used the architecture of the theory to expand the theory.

We have placed both language and semogenesis in a larger setting:

• relating language to the meaners that project and enact it, and
• relating semogenesis (meaning-making) to sociosemogenesis — meaners making meaning.

Slide 69: Mapping Levels Of Human Individuality

More specifically, in mapping the socio-semiotic individual onto the biological individual, we have identified Halliday & Matthiessen’s (1999) meaner with individuated socio-semiotic potential — projecting and enacting meaning — and modelled consciousness as its instance.

And, in mapping the social individual onto the biological individual, we have identified Halliday & Matthiessen’s (1999) person with individuated social potential — social doing and being — and modelled persona as its instance.

And just as we like to think, this construes human potential as greater than any of its actual instances.

Slide 70: Biological–Socio-Semiotic Analogy

But, there is a deeper analogy that emerges from this way of modelling.

In proposing a social origin for ‘higher’ consciousness, we suggested that,  through mimesis (imitation), conscious agency can be thought of as propagating through meaning groups down the generations like a wave disturbance through a medium.

We can take this further, and see this propagation of ‘higher’ consciousness through mimesis as the socio-semiotic analogue of biological reproduction.

That is: just as biological reproduction results in the creation of a new biological individual, an organism, socio-semiotic imitation results in the creation of a new socio-semiotic individual, a meaner.

And, just as the creation of a new organism involves the replication of biological potential, through the instantiation of the species genome, the creation of a new meaner involves the replication of semiotic potential, through the instantiation of the language as system.

This, then, adds another dimension to the mapping between biological and socio-semiotic levels of human individuality.

It also resonates with the view expressed by philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, in his work The World As Will And Representation, that Homo sapiens has gone beyond the notion of species, as applied to other animals, ‘since among men each individual is in himself, as it were, a species’ (Campbell 1991: 33).

Slide 71: Full Circle

Slide 72: References

Slide 73: Dedication

Slide 74: Q&A

Slide 75: Why Distinguish The Social And Socio-Semiotic?

Slide 76: Construing Experience As Meaning Quotes

Slide 77: Consciousness Quotes