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Article published In:
Context in Systemic Functional Linguistics: Theoretical developments and directions
Edited by Wendy L. Bowcher and Tom Bartlett
[Functions of Language 28:3] 2021
► pp. 260–290

The pragmatism of drawing context networks

Social hierarchy and social distance as dimensions of Tenor

ORCID logo | Macquarie University
ORCID logo | University of Wollongong
ORCID logo | Macquarie University
ORCID logo | Macquarie University

Linguistics has embraced the functional and contextual turn but, when building tools for systematic contextual description, we have not made as much use as we could of our own functional traditions. Rather, we have largely relied on the metaphors of law and rule, which do not adequately capture tensions between consistency and variability in how language and context relate to each other. Our aim in this paper is to show the economy and practicality of representing context as a pathway through a network, drawing on the network technique for mapping systems of grammatical choice introduced by Michael Halliday, and on its application to other linguistic strata first offered by Ruqaiya Hasan. The paper begins by outlining why alternative frameworks are needed for describing context-language relations. We then present a contextual network for one specific domain of the Systemic Functional Linguistic notion of Tenor, namely social distance, and use this to explore how different configurations of features of social distance influence the way that traditions of practice are passed on as a specialised legacy in two different professional collaborations. While the kind of context modelling discussed here is in a very early phase of development compared to phonetic, morphological and grammatical description, it has many advantages: contextual networks are paradigmatic in orientation; they help display and theorise metastability in language; they are “ad hoc” in Firth’s positive sense; and they constitute a proposal to be tested against observed behaviour within specific cultural and situational settings.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data used to illustrate contextual networks
  • 3.Our approach to context using Halliday’s network conventions
    • 3.1Towards a linguistically responsible proposal for a context network
    • 3.2Halliday’s illustration of semantic or semiotically motivated networks
    • 3.3Context, register and the cline of instantiation
    • 3.4Proposing networks: Pragmatism in drawing networks
  • 4.Proposed context networks: social hierarchy and social distance
    • 4.1Illustrations of social backgrounds of the surgeons
    • 4.2A first view of a Tenor network: Introducing and applying fragments of the network
    • 4.3 social hierarchy
    • 4.4 social distance
      • 4.4.1 local history in common
      • 4.4.2 cultural ‘capital’ in common
  • 5. social hierarchy and social distance: Comparing the interactions in the Ukraine and in Australia
  • 6.Wider applications for networks?
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 13 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.20040.but
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