Martin (1992: 509):
As with textual meaning in general, mode is concerned with symbolic reality — with texture. Since symbolic reality (i.e. text/process) has the function of constructing social reality, mode is oriented to both interpersonal and experiential meaning. It thus mediates the rôle played by language along two dimensions.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, it is the textual metafunction that is concerned with symbolic reality (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 7-8, 398, 512, 532).
[2] Symbolic reality is neither texture nor text/process. Texture is the quality of being a text; text/process is the unfolding of the text at the instance pole of the cline of instantiation during logogenesis.
[3] Symbolic reality does not have the function of constructing social reality. Moreover, the term 'social reality' blurs the distinction between the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions. The ideational metafunction construes a natural reality; the interpersonal metafunction enacts an intersubjective reality. Symbolic reality is a second-order reality with regard to natural and intersubjective reality (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 398).
[4] Mode is not oriented to interpersonal and experiential meaning. The textual metafunction is both enabling and second-order with regard to the interpersonal and ideational metafunctions.
[5] Mode does not mediate the rôle played by language along two dimensions (interpersonal and experiential). The textual metafunction is both enabling and second-order with regard to the interpersonal and ideational metafunctions.
[2] Symbolic reality is neither texture nor text/process. Texture is the quality of being a text; text/process is the unfolding of the text at the instance pole of the cline of instantiation during logogenesis.
[3] Symbolic reality does not have the function of constructing social reality. Moreover, the term 'social reality' blurs the distinction between the ideational and interpersonal metafunctions. The ideational metafunction construes a natural reality; the interpersonal metafunction enacts an intersubjective reality. Symbolic reality is a second-order reality with regard to natural and intersubjective reality (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 398).
[4] Mode is not oriented to interpersonal and experiential meaning. The textual metafunction is both enabling and second-order with regard to the interpersonal and ideational metafunctions.
[5] Mode does not mediate the rôle played by language along two dimensions (interpersonal and experiential). The textual metafunction is both enabling and second-order with regard to the interpersonal and ideational metafunctions.
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398):
The textual metafunction is second–order in the sense that it is concerned with semiotic reality: that is, reality in the form of meaning. This dimension of reality is itself constructed by [the] other two metafunctions: the ideational, which construes a natural reality, and the interpersonal, which enacts an intersubjective reality. … The function of the textual metafunction is thus an enabling one with respect to the rest; it takes over the semiotic resources brought into being by the other two metafunctions and as it were operationalises them …
This second–order enabling nature of the textual metafunction is seen both at the level of context, where mode (the functions assigned to language in the situation) is second–order in relation to field and tenor (the ongoing social processes and interactant rôles), and the level of content — the semantics and the lexicogrammar, where the systems of THEME and INFORMATION, and the various types of cohesion, are second–order in relation to ideational and interpersonal systems of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, and the rest.
