1. Instantiation: the perspectival cut
In M.A.K. Halliday’s model, instantiation is often misunderstood. It is not a temporal process. It is not a psychological occurrence. It is not a generative mechanism by which the system “produces” a text.
Rather:
Instantiation is a perspectival relation between systemic potential and instance.
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Potential: the set of all possible systemic configurations — the “theory of possible instances.”
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Instance: the realised event — a text, an utterance, a moment of semiotic actualisation.
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The cut: the act of perspectival recognition that positions the instance relative to the system.
Every text we observe is simultaneously an instance across all strata. Every semantic choice, every lexicogrammatical pattern, every phonological contour is a cut through potential — a relational configuration, not an event in the Whiteheadian sense.
2. Realisation: the stratificational axis
Realisation is orthogonal to instantiation. It is vertical, not temporal.
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Higher strata are realised by lower strata.
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Context (field, tenor, mode) is realised by semantics.
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Semantics is realised by lexicogrammar.
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Lexicogrammar is realised by phonology/graphology.
The key is directionality: lower strata realise higher strata, and higher strata are realised by lower strata. There is no ontological production — only structural asymmetry.
Whitehead’s process philosophy tempts us to read this vertical hierarchy as temporal sequence: “semantics flows into lexicogrammar, which flows into sound.” This is seductive but false. Realisation is relation, not becoming.
3. Logogenesis: temporal unfolding at the instance pole
Logogenesis, by contrast, describes the temporal progression of a text as it unfolds. It is the only axis in this discussion that is genuinely temporal.
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As a text progresses, semantic selections shift.
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Lexicogrammatical patterns accumulate.
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Contextual effects are perceived by participants.
But this unfolding is not instantiation itself. Each moment of logogenesis is an instance of prior potential; it does not “become” potential anew. Logogenesis is the experience of successive cuts along the instantiation axis, realised across the stratified hierarchy.
4. Where Whitehead Tempts and Threatens
Whiteheadian actual occasions are fundamentally temporal and ontological:
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Events are primary.
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Stability is derivative.
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Becoming is ontologically real.
Applied naïvely to SFL:
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Instantiation risks being read as temporal production.
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Realisation risks being interpreted as event generation.
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Logogenesis risks being conflated with ontological flux.
The result is seductive prose — a river of becoming — but it is a river that swallows the distinction between perspective, relation, and instance.
5. The Relational Rescue
By maintaining rigour:
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Instantiation remains the perspectival cut (potential ↔ instance).
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Realisation remains stratificational and directional (higher ↔ lower strata).
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Logogenesis remains the temporal unfolding of an instance.
Whitehead enriches our imagination: we feel the dynamism, the unfolding, the patterning of events. But relational ontology keeps our conceptual feet on the ground: dynamism does not become ontological production.
6. Conclusion
The first post of this series must be read as a warning: the process temptation is powerful, elegant, and seductive. But it is precisely this seduction that risks collapsing:
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instantiation → process
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realisation → temporal flow
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logogenesis → ontological becoming
Keeping the distinctions intact is not pedantic. It is the condition of possibility for a productive dialogue between Hallidayan relational linguistics and Whiteheadian process philosophy.
In the next post, we will allow mythic imagination to take over. Liora will navigate the river of becoming itself — experiencing what Whitehead describes — while the distinctions clarified here silently anchor our understanding.
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