System in Systemic Functional Linguistics - A System-based Theory of Language - Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen
The System as a Navagational Tool in Language Description and Text Analysis
System in Systemic Functional Linguistics - A System-based Theory of Language - Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen
Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen [+]
University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing
Description
In the previous chapter, I have shown how language can be conceptualized as a resource and represented by means of systems forming system networks. These system networks are ‘dispersed’ throughout the stratal systems that make up language and also the extra-linguistic higher-order system of context. Systemic terms are related across strata by inter-stratal realization so that all of language in fact can be thought of as a gigantic system network. In this chapter, I will discuss some of the consequences of modelling language systemically – of foregrounding the paradigmatic mode of axial order. I show how the system can serve as a cartographic and navigational tool in both descriptions of the linguistic system and the analysis of texts. First I explain the notion of systemic cartography, and then I show how systemic descriptions are used in text analysis, and how systemic text analysis can be presented as systemic scores with chords. In the course of this account, I introduce systemic frequencies in text and relate them to probabilities in the system, noting how this conception of language as a probabilistic system enables us to interpret evolution as gradual change in systemic probabilities and register variation as variation in probabilities. I end the chapter with a summary of the system as a navigational tool.