When Other Semiotic Systems Met Language: III. When We Gave Other Semiotic Systems a Grammar

Once we notice that language can supply the wording for meanings made in other semiotic systems, another question arises.

Why have we so often described those systems as though they had grammars of their own?

The answer is not difficult to see.

A great deal of work in systemic functional linguistics has extended linguistic concepts to other semiotic systems: visual art, architecture, diagrams and many others. Halliday and Matthiessen described such systems as being constructed, in some cases, “in the image of language itself” — and therefore capable of being modelled on language as a prototype.

There is an important qualification in that formulation.

They can be described as if they had grammar and semantics.

That as if matters.

It recognises that the grammar may be a model we bring to the system rather than a grammatical stratum that the system possesses in the same sense that language does.

This is not a trivial distinction.

When we analyse a painting in terms of composition, information value, salience and framing, for example, we may be identifying real organisational principles in the visual system. But we are also describing those principles through concepts that have been developed within a theory of language.

The same question arises with architecture, gesture, diagrams and other semiotic resources.

Are we discovering their own semiotic organisation?

Or are we discovering how useful it is to model that organisation through the prototype of language?

Sometimes the two may amount to much the same thing.

But they need not.

The traffic light gives us a simple case in which the distinction is difficult to ignore.

We can describe its organisation perfectly well without inventing a grammar:

red → STOP

We can then describe what happens when that meaning enters language:

STOP → Stop!

The second relation belongs to the linguistic system.

There is therefore a danger in moving too quickly from:

“We can describe this semiotic system grammatically”

to:

“This semiotic system has a grammar.”

Those are not necessarily equivalent claims.

And yet there is a good reason for the first kind of description.

Language is the semiotic system through which we can make explicit, compare and theorise meanings made in other systems. Its categories give us powerful tools for discovering patterns that might otherwise remain difficult to articulate.

So modelling another semiotic system in the image of language is not simply a mistake.

It may be a productive theoretical strategy.

The question is what kind of claim we are making when we do it.

Are we proposing that the other system has an organisation analogous to language?

Are we using linguistic categories as an analytical model?

Or are we claiming that the other system actually contains a grammatical stratum corresponding to the lexicogrammar of language?

Those are different propositions.

The traffic light suggests that we should keep them apart.

It can mean without grammar.

It can enter an exchange without grammar.

And its meanings can be expressed in grammatical wording without grammar ever becoming part of the traffic-light system itself.

Perhaps, then, the interesting question is not whether other semiotic systems can be given a grammar.

It is what we learn about them when we do.

When Other Semiotic Systems Met Language: II. When Language Supplied the Grammar

In the first post, we saw that a traffic light can make meaning without having a grammar of its own.

But we also noticed something curious.

When a driver sees red, it is almost irresistible to put the meaning into words:

Stop.

The traffic light supplies the meaning.

Language supplies the wording.

That distinction is easy to overlook because the two events can happen so quickly that they seem like one.

The traffic light expresses STOP.

The driver construes that meaning through language as Stop!

The grammar belongs to the driver.

This gives us a rather different way of thinking about the relation between language and other semiotic systems.

We don't necessarily need to imagine that a non-linguistic system contains a grammar corresponding to the wording we can give to its meanings. The language user may simply be bringing the resources of language to bear on another semiotic system.

The same thing happens whenever we put something non-linguistic into words.

A diagram can be described in a sentence.

A gesture can be glossed verbally.

A piece of music can be described as sad, urgent or triumphant.

A map can be explained in language.

In each case, language can provide a grammatical construal of something that does not itself have to possess a grammatical stratum.

The important question, then, is not necessarily:

What is the grammar of this other semiotic system?

It might instead be:

How does a language user construe what this other system means?

The distinction is subtle, but it changes what we are looking for.

Consider the traffic light again.

Its system gives us:

red → STOP

The driver's language can turn that into:

Stop!

But we should not work backwards from the wording and conclude that Stop! must therefore be structurally present inside the traffic light.

The wording is an achievement of the linguistic system.

This also explains how the traffic light can function as a Sayer without becoming linguistic.

The traffic light can project STOP.

The driver can supply the wording.

The two semiotic systems therefore cooperate without having the same organisation.

And perhaps this is one of the things that language makes possible for linguate beings.

We can take meanings from other semiotic systems and bring them into language. We can describe them, interpret them, classify them, argue about them, and respond to them in words.

Language does not merely provide another mode of meaning-making.

It can provide a grammar for talking about meanings made elsewhere.

That possibility may be easy to miss when we ask whether other semiotic systems have grammars of their own.

Perhaps sometimes the grammar we are looking for is not there.

Perhaps it is ours. 

When Other Semiotic Systems Met Language: I. When a Semiotic System Didn't Need a Grammar

A traffic light is a semiotic system.

It has expressions and meanings. Red, amber and green are expressions; STOP, STOP IF SAFE and PROCEED are their contents.

red → STOP

It is a perfectly functional system.

But there is something it doesn't have.

It doesn't have a grammar.

There is no lexicogrammatical stratum between red and STOP. The traffic light does not combine smaller meaningful elements into larger ones. It does not inflect, rank, or organise clauses. It has no words from which sentences can be constructed.

And yet it can participate in meaning remarkably effectively.

Red can mean STOP.

More than that, STOP can function as a command. A driver can construe the traffic light as saying Stop! and respond accordingly.

So how can this work if the traffic light has no grammar?

Perhaps the answer begins with something fundamental about language.

For Halliday, grammar is not simply one more resource among those available to a semiotic system. It is the distinctive stratum of language: the level at which meanings are organised into wording.

The traffic light does not need such a stratum because it is not doing what language does.

Its own semiotic organisation is sufficient for the meanings it needs to express.

This is easy to miss because, as language users, we can immediately put its meanings into words.

We see red and think:

Stop.

We see green and think:

Go.

But the availability of linguistic wording does not mean that the wording was already present in the traffic-light system.

The traffic light gives us STOP.

Language gives us Stop!

That distinction may matter more generally.

When we encounter a non-linguistic semiotic system, it is tempting to ask where its grammar is. How does it combine elements? What are its clauses? What are its equivalents of nouns, verbs and sentences?

But perhaps that is sometimes the wrong question.

A semiotic system does not necessarily need grammar simply because it has meaning.

It needs whatever organisation is required for the meanings it makes.

For a traffic light, content and expression are enough.

And that leaves us with an intriguing possibility.

Perhaps some semiotic systems do not have a grammar of their own because they don't need one.

Perhaps what makes this seem strange is not the semiotic system.

Perhaps it is us.

We are language users, so when something means something, we are extraordinarily good at putting it into words.

The traffic light may never have needed a grammar.

We may simply have been supplying one.

When a Traffic Light Became a Sayer: V. When a Traffic Light Became a Social Participant

We began with a simple observation:

Red means stop.

But a traffic light is more than a system in which colours have meanings.

Its meanings are simultaneously ideational and interpersonal. STOP construes a material process, but it also functions as a command. The traffic light can therefore function as Speaker, addressing a driver as Addressee.

Ideationally, the traffic light can also function as Sayer in a verbal process:

The traffic light signals [STOP].

What is projected is not the wording Stop!

The traffic light has no lexicogrammatical stratum. Its own semiotic system consists of content and expression:

red → STOP

A driver, however, has language. The driver can construe the traffic light's content through linguistic wording:

Stop.

The wording belongs to the driver's language, not to the traffic light.

This resolves the apparent paradox with which we began.

A traffic light can say STOP without having a word for stop.

It does not need to be a linguistic system in order to participate in a linguistic social world.

Its signal can function as a command. Its content can be projected in a verbal process. Its meaning can be directed towards another participant. And the other participant can respond.

The traffic light therefore participates in an exchange without becoming a human conversationalist.

It does not need consciousness.

It does not need language.

It does not need a grammar of its own.

It needs only a semiotic system whose meanings can enter into a socially organised exchange.

That may be the more general lesson hidden inside those three familiar colours.

A semiotic system can do more than represent the world.

It can participate in the organisation of social action.

And sometimes the thing that says STOP does not need to know the word at all.

When a Traffic Light Became a Sayer: IV. When a Signal Entered an Exchange

So far, we have followed the traffic light from meaning to saying.

But a traffic light does not say something into an empty world.

Its signals are directed towards someone.

Red makes the command STOP. Green makes the command PROCEED. Amber makes the command STOP IF SAFE.

And the driver can respond.

The response need not be verbal. The driver can stop, proceed, or, in circumstances where the command is not undertaken, continue moving.

This is an exchange.

The traffic light initiates a move; the driver responds to it.

Nothing about this requires the traffic light to be conscious or to deliberate about what it will say next. The exchange is built into the social organisation of the traffic system. The light has been designed to make particular meanings available at particular moments, and drivers have learned how to respond to them.

The signal therefore does more than convey a meaning.

It has a social function.

And this helps explain why the interpersonal meaning of STOP matters. If STOP were merely information, the driver could receive it without being called upon to do anything. As a command, however, it places an expectation on the Addressee.

The same content can therefore be viewed from several angles:

red realises STOP

STOP construes a material process

STOP enacts a command

the traffic light functions as Speaker and Sayer

the driver functions as Addressee

None of these descriptions replaces the others.

They are different ways of seeing the same semiotic event.

And the event does not happen only once.

The light changes.

Green becomes amber. Amber becomes red. Red eventually becomes green again.

The meanings therefore occur in a socially organised sequence. A signal has its place in relation to the signals that precede and follow it.

This is particularly clear with amber. Its meaning cannot be understood simply as the meaning of a third colour alongside red and green. Its significance depends on its position in the changing sequence and on the circumstances in which the driver encounters it.

The traffic light is consequently not just a code that a driver deciphers.

It is a semiotic system that takes part in an exchange.

And that may be the most important discovery so far.

We began with three colours and three meanings.

We found a system of content and expression.

Then we found ideational and interpersonal meaning.

Then we found a Speaker and a Sayer.

Now we find an exchange: a semiotic system makes a move, and another participant responds.

The traffic light has not become a human conversationalist.

But it has become a participant in a social process.

So what kind of participant can a non-linguistic semiotic system be?

When a Traffic Light Became a Sayer: III. When a Traffic Light Became a Sayer

We have called the traffic light a Speaker.

Now we can ask the ideational question: what kind of participant is a traffic light in the process of saying?

Halliday and Matthiessen use saying in a deliberately broad sense. A verbal process does not require a human being with a voice. Something can function as a Sayer whenever it puts out a signal that participates in symbolic exchange.

A notice can tell us to keep quiet.

A watch can tell us the time.

And a traffic light can tell us to stop.

So we can construe the traffic light as Sayer in a verbal process:

The traffic light signals STOP.

But now we have to be precise about what is being projected.

It is not the wording Stop!

The traffic light has no lexicogrammar of its own. Its semiotic system consists simply of content and expression:

red → STOP

The content STOP is what the traffic light's expression realises.

When that content is construed as a verbal process, the traffic light can therefore be understood as projecting a material process:

The traffic light signals [STOP].

And the same applies to amber:

The traffic light signals [STOP IF SAFE].

Here STOP is the material process, while if safe specifies the condition under which it applies.

The linguistic wording comes later — and from somewhere else.

A driver who encounters the red light can construe its meaning in language:

Stop.

But those words belong to the driver's linguistic system. They are not hidden inside the traffic light.

This is the point at which the distinction between the traffic light and language becomes important.

The traffic light does not need a grammatical stratum in order to say something in this broad symbolic sense. Its own semiotic system can supply the content. A human participant, whose semiotic system does include language, can supply the wording.

So the traffic light can be a Sayer without being a speaker in the ordinary sense.

It can say STOP without saying Stop!

And now the two perspectives line up.

Interpersonally, the traffic light is a Speaker making a command to an Addressee.

Ideationally, it is a Sayer in a verbal process projecting a material process.

The traffic light has not acquired language.

Something more interesting has happened.

A non-linguistic semiotic system has become capable of participating in symbolic exchange.

When a Traffic Light Became a Sayer: II. When a Meaning Became a Command

In the first post, we saw that STOP is the content realised by red.

But STOP is not only something that can be represented.

It is something that someone is being asked to do.

This is the interpersonal side of the traffic light.

When the light turns red, the traffic light is not merely presenting the meaning STOP to the driver. It is making a command.

The traffic light is therefore functioning as Speaker, and the driver as Addressee.

This does not mean that the traffic light has become a person. Speaker and Addressee are roles in an exchange. The traffic light can occupy the first role without possessing a human voice, consciousness or language.

The important thing is what its signal is doing.

Red realises STOP.

STOP functions as a command.

The two descriptions are not competing accounts. They are different metafunctional construals of the same semiotic event.

Ideationally, STOP is a material process.

Interpersonally, STOP is a command.

And the two meanings are not added together after the fact. They belong to the same content.

This helps explain something that otherwise seems rather odd about traffic lights.

We can say:

Red means stop.

But in an actual traffic situation, we naturally understand something stronger:

Stop.

The first describes the relation between expression and content within the semiotic system.

The second construes what that content is doing in an exchange.

A traffic light therefore does not merely have a meaning. Its meaning is organised so that it can function as a move directed towards another participant.

And this brings us back to the word saying.

If the traffic light is a Speaker, then perhaps it can also be understood as a Sayer.

But that seems to create a problem.

A Sayer is involved in a verbal process. And verbal processes normally involve language.

What, then, does the traffic light actually say?

Not Stop! — because those words belong to language, and there are no words inside the red light.

So perhaps the traffic light is saying something without saying it in words.

The next step is to find out what that could mean.

When a Traffic Light Became a Sayer: I. When Red Meant Stop

Everyone knows what red means.

At a traffic light, red means stop. Green means proceed. Amber means stop if safe.

It seems simple enough. Three colours, three meanings.

But what kind of meaning is STOP?

A traffic light is a small semiotic system. Its expressions are red, amber and green; its contents are STOP, STOP IF SAFE and PROCEED.

We can put the relation very simply:

red realises STOP

The colour is the expression; STOP is the content.

Nothing linguistic is required for this relation. The traffic light does not contain the word stop, or even an abbreviated version of the clause Stop! There is no hidden grammatical stratum between the colour and its meaning.

The traffic light has its own semiotic organisation.

But STOP is not quite like the meaning of an ordinary piece of information.

A traffic light doesn't merely tell us that stopping is relevant. When the light turns red, it tells someone to stop.

That introduces another dimension of meaning.

STOP is not only something represented. It is something demanded.

In other words, the content of the traffic-light system is doing more than one kind of semiotic work. STOP can be understood ideationally as a material process. But in the situation in which the traffic light operates, it also functions interpersonally as a command.

The same content is doing both.

And this changes the question.

We began with:

What does red mean?

Perhaps the more interesting question is:

What is the traffic light doing when red realises STOP?

It isn't merely displaying a colour.

It is saying something.

But the traffic light has no words.

So what could it mean to say that a traffic light says stop?

That is where our little three-colour semiotic system becomes much more interesting.