Slide 12: The Social Domain Of Experience: Doing And Being

[Extract from Figure 4-1]

So to model the social dimension of experience, we will use the domain that can be understood as the complementarity of what is ‘quintessentially either active (doing) or inert (being)’ (Halliday and Matthiessen 1999: 131, 132).

Slide 13: The Socio-Semiotic Domain Of Experience: Sensing And Saying

[Extract from Figure 4-1]

And to model the socio-semiotic dimension of experience, we will use the domain that can be understood as the complementarity of internal and external symbolic processing, sensing and saying — what Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 131) refer to as the ‘conscious-semiotic centre of the ideational universe’.

Slide 14: Act 1: Mapping The Social Onto The Biological

So let’s begin mapping the social onto the biological.

Slide 15: Mapping The Social Onto The Biological

This act is composed of three scenes which signpost where we are headed: 

Scene I is concerned with Social Potential, 

Scene II with the Instantiation Social Potential, and 

Scene III with the Individuated Instantiation of Social Potential. 

It is the last of these which specifically deals with the mapping of the social onto the biological.

Slide 16: Scene I: Social Potential

OK, let’s start with social potential.

Since we have defined the social dimension of experience in terms of doing–&–happening and being–&–having, social potential means doing–&–happening potential and being–&–having potential; that is, material potential and relational potential.

Slide 17: Material Potential: Social Doing-&-Happening

One way to model doing–&–happening potential, in the most general terms, is to use Halliday & Matthiessen’s system network of material clauses.

[Extract from Figure 5-44 in Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 302): system network of transitivity (agency and process type)

This construes material social potential, least delicately, as either transformative or creative and either non-impacting (‘happening’) or impacting (‘doing’).

That is, material social potential can be classified by these general categorial combinations.

Slide 18: Relational Potential: Social Being-&-Having

And similarly, one way to model being-&-having potential, in the most general terms, is to use Halliday & Matthiessen’s system network of relational clauses.

[Extract from Figure 5-44 in Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 302): system network of transitivity (agency and process type)]

This construes relational social potential, least delicately, as either intensive (elaborating) or possessive (extending) or circumstantial (enhancing) and either attributive (class membership) or identifying (identity).

That is, relational social potential can be classified by these general categorial combinations.

Slide 19: Scene II: Social Instantiation: From Potential To Instance

If we switch now to considering the actualisation of social potential, the relevant theoretical notion is the vector of ‘instantiation’. But let’s first be clear about what we mean by ‘instantiation’.

Slide 20: Theoretical Tool: Elaborating Figures Of Ascription: Instantiation

As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 14-5, 145) point out, instantiation can be construed as an attributive relational process; that is, one that construes a relation of class membership.  More specifically, instantiation relates a token to a type: an entity to category.  So, in this biological example, it relates a specific organism — the token, or instance — to a biological type: the taxonomic classification Boa constrictor.

From this example, we can generalise a biological cline of instantiation, along the following lines…