Explanation and the Upstream Imperative

In recent Sysfling discussions about first-order and ecological approaches to language, a recurring tension emerges that is often misread as a conflict between system and instance. On closer inspection, however, the real fault line runs elsewhere: it is about where explanation is allowed to sit.

1. The anxiety of explanation

Some critiques of embodied, ecological, or first-order approaches are driven not by theoretical error but by a fear that:

if explanation does not remain upstream, above agents, bodies, and situated action, critique will lose its political and social grip.

This is why certain readings react strongly to the notion of local agency. It is not that first-order analyses are unconvincing in themselves; it is that they threaten a hierarchy in which ideology, structure, or social forces remain explanatory authorities.

2. Where semiosis is supposed to come from

Consider the question:

“If semiosis does not organise thinking, then where does it come from?”

Framed this way, the issue is not linguistic semantics. It is epistemic: the demand is for a location of organising power. Some scholars insist that, if theory is to remain politically and socially accountable, explanation must remain upstream of the individual instance.

From this perspective, bodies, encounters, and first-order languaging feel risky, because they relocate explanatory authority. The hierarchy feels threatened.

3. The ladder persists, independent of Martin

Interestingly, this anxiety produces a form of “ladder logic” even in the absence of layered context, genre, or register. The ladder here is not the instantiation ladder of formal theory; it is:

social structure → ideology → semiosis → instance

This is a ladder of explanatory priority, not of abstraction. Its persistence is understandable: once the explanatory imperative is in place, theory is read through its lens, and any approach that decentralises explanation feels suspect.

4. Implications for theory

This perspective allows us to reframe debates around first-order, ecological, or embodied approaches:

• The issue is rarely technical error.

• The tension is about where theory believes explanation should reside.

• Hierarchy and teleology can appear, not because of ladders or stratification, but because of an epistemic insistence on upstream authority.

5. Halliday’s alternative

Halliday’s model provides a different lens:

• System and instance are reciprocal, not directional.

• Explanation emerges through analysis, not from pre-assigned authority.

• Political or social critique is possible, but it arises through the semiotic potential of culture and texts, not above it.

In other words, Halliday’s perspective does not guarantee critique. It enables it — dynamically, perspectivally, and situationally — without needing to privilege one pole of a ladder.

6. The subtle lesson

The lesson here is conceptual and political:

• Technical misunderstandings often mask epistemic commitments.

• The persistence of ladder logic is sometimes a symptom of the need to keep explanation “upstream” — a protective move, not a theoretical necessity.

• Understanding why ladders are invoked helps us separate political and epistemic anxieties from the structure of language itself.