Restoring Possibility: 6 The False Choice

By this stage, the cascade of consequences from privileging system is evident. Context is layered, genre is teleologised, and the instance is compressed. What emerges is a false dichotomy: system versus instance, security versus contingency, explanation versus interpretive openness.

But this dichotomy is not ontologically grounded; it is manufactured by the ladder logic.

1. The illusion of opposition

In Halliday’s cline:

• System and instance are poles of a relational spectrum.

• Neither is ontologically prior; each exists in dynamic interplay with the other.

• Perspective, not direction, governs their relation.

In ladder logic:

• The system is elevated to primacy.

• The instance is reduced to a measure of compliance.

• The interplay of semiotic potential is replaced with a trajectory toward presumed endpoints.

The result is the illusion that one must choose: do we prioritise the system, or the instance? Halliday’s model never imposes such a choice; the ladder does.

2. Consequences for analysis

This false choice shapes both practice and interpretation:

• Analysts are forced to defend systemic patterns rather than explore situated enactments.

• Variation is problematised, not embraced.

• Creative or unexpected instances are interpreted as errors or noise, rather than legitimate construals.

The analytical frame narrows before the research even begins.

3. Consequences for pedagogy

The ladder shapes teaching as well:

• Students are taught to align, not to enact.

• Success is defined as system compliance, not meaningful participation.

• The richness of context, the relationality of enactment, and the contingency of interpretation are subordinated to a preordained plan.

Pedagogy, in effect, mirrors the architecture it inherits.

4. Consequences for epistemology

The ladder creates the appearance of certainty:

• The system is stable, knowable, and authoritative.

• Instances are predictable, measurable, and comparable.

• Complexity, ambiguity, and relational emergence are reduced to artefacts of misalignment.

The cost is not minor. The ladder transforms possibility into protocol.

5. Restoring perspective

Recognising the false choice is not a plea for abandoning system or instance. It is a call to restore their relational logic:

• Perspective governs the cline.

• Instances enact and re‑construe system; system exists in and through instances.

• Variation, improvisation, and multimodal enactments are not anomalies — they are semiotic necessity.

This is not a matter of preference, but of ontology.

6. Looking ahead

The next post will explore how the ladder shapes assessment and authority, tracing the institutional and evaluative consequences of privileging system. We will see that the false choice is not merely theoretical: it structures practice, power, and pedagogy.