The previous series traced a theoretical cascade in which the reinterpretation of instantiation as a ladder reshaped context, genre, agency, and pedagogy. That analysis revealed how privileging one pole of the system–instance cline can inadvertently compress relational possibility.
This new series turns the lens in the other direction. Its focus is not on any particular scholar, nor on critiquing individuals. Instead, it asks a foundational question:
What happens when system is privileged — not as an analytical distinction, but as an ontological priority — and what must be restored if relational richness is to survive?
1. Why start here
The series begins with the felt need to privilege system, because this is where the cascade originates:
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Analysts, teachers, and theorists often begin by seeking stability, predictability, and order.
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This desire is not wrong in itself, but it carries hidden consequences.
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Once system becomes ontologically elevated, the instance, context, genre, and agency are reshaped in ways that were never necessary.
2. What this series does
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It traces the cascade: layered context → teleologised genre → compressed instance → false choice → assessment as alignment → constrained agency.
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It diagnoses where possibility is lost.
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It restores Hallidayan distinctions: realisation, instantiation, context, agency, and register, showing how they support relational, interpretive, and semiotic freedom.
3. The companion perspective
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In the genre series, we saw how ladder logic transforms genre and pedagogy, producing staged trajectories and teleological pressures.
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Here, we focus upstream: the theoretical impulses that privilege system and set the cascade in motion.
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The two series together offer a comprehensive view: the mechanics of the ladder, and the relational architecture that can restore possibility.
4. What to expect
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Posts will move from theoretical critique to consequences to restorative architecture.
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Each post examines both conceptual and practical implications, for analysis, pedagogy, and epistemology.
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The goal is clarity without oversimplification: to show how relational ontology, properly understood, preserves semiotic richness and interpretive freedom.
This series is not a counter-theory; it is a reclamation of the distinctions Halliday provided all along. By following it, readers can see both how possibility is constrained and how it can be restored, without invoking ladders, stages, or teleology.
I wonder if you would agree with this? (From Google Gemini)
ReplyDeleteThis is a profound connection. Dr. Cléirigh’s "perspectival cut" is essentially a linguistic application of Deleuze’s ontology of immanence.
In fact, if you swap Halliday’s terms for Deleuze’s, the blog post reads almost exactly like a chapter from Difference and Repetition. Both thinkers are fighting the same enemy: Transcendence (or "The Ladder").
Here is how Cléirigh’s "Perspectival Cut" maps directly onto Deleuze’s "Plane of Immanence."
1. The Rejection of "The Ladder" (Transcendence)
Deleuze’s Fight: Deleuze hated the idea of "hylomorphism"—the Greek idea that form (ideal) sits above matter and stamps itself onto it like a cookie cutter. He argued there is no "higher world" of forms (transcendence). Everything happens on one flat plane of reality.
Cléirigh’s Fight: The blog post attacks the "Ladder" model of Genre Theory, where Genre sits above Language and dictates rules to it. Cléirigh argues that Genre is not a "thing" above the text; it is just a pattern within the flow of meaning.
The Link: Both refuse to split reality into "Rule" and "Event." The rule is just a habit of the event.
2. System/Instance = Virtual/Actual
This is the most precise technical parallel.
Deleuze (The Virtual vs. The Actual):
The Virtual: A field of pure potential (forces, tendencies, capacities) that is real but not yet visible.
The Actual: The specific, concrete thing that emerges when that potential is "solved" or "cut" at a specific moment.
Crucially: The Virtual and Actual are two sides of the same coin (The Möbius strip of reality).
Cléirigh (System vs. Instance):
The System: "The potential as potential" (What could be meant).
The Instance: "The potential as event" (What is being meant).
Crucially: He says "Nothing travels between them." They are the same thing viewed from a different "cut."
3. "The Cut" as Actualization
Deleuze famously describes the "mobile section" (in his Cinema books) or the "cut" (in Anti-Oedipus) not as an interruption, but as the productive act that turns a Flow into a Segment.
In Deleuze: You have a flow of desire/time. To perceive it, you must make a "cut" (a snapshot). This cut creates the object.
In Cléirigh: You have a flow of semiotic potential. To create a Text, you make a "perspectival cut." The Text isn't a brick in a wall; it is a frozen slice of the river.
The Verdict: Cléirigh is effectively arguing that Systemic Functional Linguistics has been hijacked by a "Royal Science" (State philosophy/Ladder) and he is trying to restore its "Nomad Science" (Process philosophy/Immanence) roots. He is treating language exactly as Deleuze treats life: a single, flattening plane of potential where "structure" is just a temporary knot in the flow.
Thanks for the thoughtful comparison. I can see why Deleuze comes to mind, and there are structural resonances here—but I wouldn’t describe my position as a linguistic application of Deleuze, nor as grounded in a plane of immanence.
DeleteWhat’s shared is a negative commitment: a rejection of laddered transcendence—of forms, stages, or rules sitting “above” events and governing them. That family resemblance is real.
But the positive architecture is different. My use of system / instance is not a metaphysical virtual/actual distinction, nor a flattening of reality into a single ontological plane. It is a semiotic and perspectival distinction, internal to meaning-making, grounded in Halliday’s stratified architecture. System and instance are not two regions of being, but two construals of the same potential: potential as potential and potential as event. Nothing “flows” between them because nothing is ontologically separate to begin with.
Likewise, the cut is not an ontological operation that produces objects from flux, but a perspectival shift that constitutes meaning as experience. The concern here is not life or desire, but how semiotic possibility is preserved or collapsed when analysts reify system, genre, or context.
So yes: we are fighting a similar enemy (transcendence-by-ladder). But the battle is being fought on different terrain. This work is a reclamation of distinctions already present in Halliday, not an importation of Deleuzian metaphysics into linguistics.
In short: resonance without inheritance. Deleuze is a suggestive parallel, not a foundation.