Cline Of Instantiation on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
A cline of instantiation is a concept in
A cline of instantiation is a concept in systemic functional linguistics
Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to linguistics, among functional linguistics, that considers language as a social semiotic system.
It was devised by Michael Halliday, who took the notion of system from J. R. Firth, his ...
theory. Alongside stratification and metafunction
The term metafunction originates in systemic functional linguistics and is considered to be a property of all languages. Systemic functional linguistics is functional and semantic rather than formal and syntactic in its orientation. As a functional ...
, it is one of the global semiotic
Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of semiosis, sign processes and the communication of Meaning (semiotics), meaning. In semiotics, a Sign (semiotics), sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feel ...
dimensions that define the organization of language in context.
According to Michael Halliday
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; 13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018) was a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descri ...
, instantiation is "the relation between an instance and the system that lies behind it". It is "based on memory and is a feature of all systemic behaviour".
The cline of instantiation has two poles. At one end is "instance"; at the other is the "system", the whole potential to which the instance relates. In the study of language and other phenomena, including other semiotic phenomena, what can be observed is an instance of an underlying potential.
Halliday borrows the distinction between "weather" and "climate" to explain the relation. The weather can be observed day by day; over time, a picture of a climate is built up. Weather and climate are not distinct phenomena but different perspectives on the same phenomenon.
The notion of "cline of instantiation" reconciles the distinction between "langue" and "parole", made by Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wi ...
—a separation adapted by Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...
, who reconceptualized "langue" and "parole" from social constructs (language as collective) to the individual psychological constructs of "competence" and "performance" (language as genetic). Halliday suggests that this dichotomy has done considerable harm to linguistics as a discipline.
Halliday follows Louis Hjelmslev
Louis Trolle Hjelmslev (; 3 October 189930 May 1965) was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family (his father was the mathematician Johannes Hjelmslev), Hjelmslev studi ...
(1899-1965) in seeing linguistics as the study of both instances of language and the linguistic system. Halliday argues that linguists must take both into account: "For a linguist, to describe language without accounting for text is sterile; to describe text without relating it to the system is vacuous".
Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. Systemic Background. In "Systemic Perspectives on Discourse, Vol. 1: Selected Theoretical Papers" from the ''Ninth International Systemic Workshop'', James D. Benson and William S. Greaves (eds). Ablex. Reprinted in full in Volume 3 in ''The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday''. London: Continuum. p. 196.
References