Review of: Halliday and Matthiessen: 'Construing Experience through Meaning'

Halliday and Matthiessen’s Construing Experience connection between language and its uses in society. through Meaning (hereafter CETM) is an attempt to Halliday, as the originator of the systemic-functional describe the organisation of English semantics. More tradition in the early 1960s, and Matthiessen are precisely, it is an attempt to set out the abstract currently two (probably the two) central figures in categories which speakers of English use in order to the continuing development of systemic-functional organise their experiences of the world. Halliday and theory and so it is particularly useful to have the Matthiessen approach this task by considering this extensive discussion they present. But, that being abstract organisation to be one aspect of ‘meaning’ said, it also contributes to the fact that this is no rather than a kind of ‘knowledge’. They use these introductory work. At many points the book contains terms to identify two metaphors that offer contrasting distillations of arguments and positions made in ways into the problem: whereas ‘knowledge’, as systemic theory and its application over the years something that is discussed and described in areas and these are often sharply distinct to some current like cognitive science, suggests structures and mech‘mainstream’ received ideas in linguistics and cognianisms that have an, at best, indirect relation to tive science. Particular areas drawn on are earlier language, ‘meaning’ is itself a level of linguistic work on language development, on the historical description — that is, a level that is approachable development of technical registers in English and, and understandable using the constructs and dimenmost crucially, on the relation between grammar and sions appropriate for linguistic theorising. This gives semantics — which are both (following Firthian then the second part of the book’s title: a languagelinguistics from the 1940s and 50s) considered as based approach to cognition. For Halliday and meaningful and inextricably related levels of linMatthiessen, ‘cognition’ can be approached benefiguistic description. For those not familiar with the cially by a thorough investigation of the development approach to language — particularly to grammar — and organisation of meaning within the linguistic developed in systemic-functional linguistics over the system and they show that many claimed properties last 40 years, the book will require a considerable of ‘knowledge’ and ‘thinking’ are in fact mechainvestment in effort. To what extent that effort is nisms provided by, and inherent to, language. worthwhile will depend on the interests and quesThe book should therefore be required reading for tions of the reader, and so in this review I will those interested in the underpinnings of such notions attempt to set out both the major background asas ‘cognitive structures’ and in the relations between sumptions of the book and the kinds of questions for language and thought — but it will not be simple which its detailed study would be most rewarding. reading. CETM is the first major descriptive exploraThe book contains material of three major kinds: tion in print of the view of (experiential) semantics first, the detailed description of the semantic organifound in systemic-functional linguistics — a direcsation proposed; second, discussions and arguments tion in linguistics concerned centrally with the concerning the methodology adopted for constructing