Addressing "The Central Problem In Marxist Theory" By Adding A More Abstract Level

Martin (1992: 575, 576):

In their interpretations of language, register and genre as semiotic systems, systemicists have generally attempted to model cultures as a whole — to generalise meaning potential across all imaginable texts… .  The problems with this are:

1. as noted above, this meaning potential is not evenly distributed across participants in a culture; and 

2. for a culture to survive, this meaning potential has to evolve.

These two problems are in fact closely related; it is the tensions produced by the unequal distribution of meaning potential that forces a culture to change.  This brings social semiotic theory face to face with the central problem in marxist [sic] theory: what is the nature of the dialectic between base and superstructure that facilitates and at the same time frustrates social change?  Even more to the point, from the perspective of a theory of linguistics as social action, how is it possible to intervene in a dialectic of this kind?  These are the questions that the communicative plane of ideology has been articulated to address.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading.  Theory–competent Systemicists do not distinguish register and genre from language and do not model them as systems.

[2] This confuses culture (context potential) with the language that realises it.  The confusion is thus along the dimension of stratification.

[3] Neither of these are problems for proposing a system of language potential.  On the one hand, the social distribution of language system variants is a further dimension to be added to the model, and on the other, the evolution of the language system is modelled in SFL theory (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 18) by phylogenesis in relation to the other two semogenic processes:

• logogenesis provides the material for ontogenesis which provides the material for phylogenesis, while
• phylogenesis provides the environment for ontogenesis which provides the environment for logogenesis.

[4] The claim here is that:

• it is the tensions produced by the unequal distribution of meaning potential that forces a culture to change

Leaving aside the possibility that there may be other factors that "force a culture to change", the implication here is that an equal distribution of meaning potential would reduce tensions, but by doing so, put an end to cultural change.

[5] On the basis of [4], the academic revolutionary is faced with the choice of either working for social inequity or working for cultural stagnation.

[6] The claim here is that adding another level of symbolic abstraction to Martin's stratification hierarchy will address two questions:

1. what is the nature of the dialectic between base and superstructure that facilitates and at the same time frustrates social change?
2. how is it possible to intervene in a dialectic of this kind?

It might be remembered that the following has also been promised (p546):

Discourses of generation, gender, ethnicity and class channel subjects in very different ways according to the coding orientations they enjoy. It is the responsibility of the plane of ideology to make the nature of this channeling clear, deconstructing the momentum and inherent contradictions which allow it to evolve.