lhs (print) issn 1742–2906

lhs (online) issn 1743–1662

Article

The language of identity discourse:

introducing a systemic functional framework
for iconography

Ken Tann

Abstract

This paper attempts to model the discursive construction of identity in a way that
retains its multifaceted dynamics within a coherent framework. It examines the con-
struction of a sense of communities, shared values, and historical figures as part of a
collective culture, and proposes a model of iconography for the study of the linguistic
mechanisms underlying these discursive tropes in identity discourses. Focusing on
the exoticization of Japanese identity in popular texts, the study seeks to map out
the potential space of this iconography, drawing on the latest research in Systemic
Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory.

Keywords: iconography; Systemic Functional Linguistics; Discourse Analysis

1. Introduction
Just when everyone thought that Japanese nationalism was on the wane at the
turn of the millennium, a book ostensibly touting the virtues of Japanese iden-
tity and culture took the world by surprise. Little did anyone suspect that Fuji-
wara Masahiko’s (2007 [2005]) The Dignity of the Nation was to stay on the
bestseller list in Japan for five consecutive years. Overseas too, it caused con-
siderable stir when the bilingual edition of the book was published in 2007,
and it quickly became the most talked about book in the World Economic

Affiliation
The University of Sydney, Australia.
email: ken.tann@gmail.com

lhs vol 8.3 2013  361–391 doi : 10.1558/lhs.v8i3.361

©2013, equinox publishing
362     The language of identity discourse

Forum held that year in Tokyo (Frederick 2006). The epidemic interest owes
in part to fears of a revival in Japanese militarism, and Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe did little to assuage the concerns when he upgraded the Defense Agency
to a full ministry in 2006, and called for a review of the constitution to remove
restrictions on the military the following year. The sales figure of the book has
surpassed 2 million copies since.
So what is it about the book that so compellingly draws adherents and cri-
tiques alike? Denouncing ‘Western’ values such as ‘logic’ and ‘equality’, the
book behoves the Japanese nation to turn instead to ‘indigenous’ values of
‘emotions’ and ‘bushido’ to preserve Japan’s dignity and save the world. Such
rhetoric is a familiar one to Japanese historians and political scholars who
recognize it as a well established tradition of writing, known collectively as
‘nihonjinron’ (see for example Dale, 1986; Yoshino, 1992; Sugimoto and Mouer,
1995; Aoki, 1999; Befu, 1993, 2008). The collection of writing includes both
English and Japanese books and magazines, constituting a dialogue between
the two language communities steeped in nationalist sentiments, where both
sides are equally complicit in exoticizing Japanese identity (Iwabuchi, 1994,
see also Tann, 2010b: 7–8). Within this discourse, Japanese identity is inex-
tricably bound to a communal culture and its system of shared history and
values that supposedly transcends any passage of time. We can get a feel of just
such a discourse from a page in Fujiwara’s controversial bestseller:
The Heike Monogatari includes a famous episode which Nitobe Inazō mentions in his
Bushido. At the Battle of Ichi no Tani, Kumagai Naozane has captured the general of
the enemy Heike clan. Kumagai intends to kill him, but when he comes face to face
with the general, he discovers that he is just a young man, the fifteen-year-old Taira
no Atsumori.
Can Kumagai properly kill a young man of around the same age as his
own son? When he hesitates, it is Taira no Atsumori who earnestly instructs him to
behead him. Reluctantly Kumagai does so, but afterward, grieving for the young man
he has killed, he becomes a priest.
Tearful empathy for the loser and for the weak: these are the emotions that
the Japanese sense of impermanence incorporates. The Noh play Atsumori continues
to be popular after all this time because the Japanese still have feelings akin to this
sense of impermanence and to the compassionate empathy of the samurai, and are
still moved by the same emotions. (Murray trans. 2007: 143–145)

At first blush, we may notice that the text discusses the nature of the Jap-
anese community by invoking a number of cultural heroes such as Nitobe,
Kumagai and Atsumori. The products of their exemplary conduct are in turn
handed down to posterity as a cultural heritage, in the form of the Noh play
and literary canons Heike Monogatari and Bushido. The historical and myth-
ical characters are the embodiment of shared cultural values such ‘Japanese
 Ken Tann     363

sense of impermanence’ and ‘compassionate empathy of the samurai’ that are

enshrined in the literary works. As the passage unfolds, what appears initially
as a cluster of different concepts come together to produce a larger, abstract
sense of what constitutes ‘Japaneseness’. The story therefore serves to foster
what Anderson (1991) describes as the ‘imagining’ of a community that is
based on such a shared sense of membership. The characters in the story, their
artefacts and values collaboratively define the ‘Japanese community’ by pro-
viding the ‘image of their communion’ (Anderson 1991: 7).
These images thus function discursively in a similar way to the ‘symbolic
icons’1 that Martin and Stenglin (2006) describe in museology, and much like
the museum displays in their study, the historical characters, artefacts and
values in this text ‘align people into groups with shared dispositions’ and rally
their audience around communal ideals (Martin and Stenglin, 2006: 216). The
act of reading allows the reader to participate in the sharing of these ideals,
and from a sociological perspective, they serve as what Maton (2008) calls
‘emotive symbols or emoticons’ that serve as ‘flags around which people rally
in ritualized performance of their … gaze’. On the page however, these charac-
ters, artefacts and values have to be constructed through language use, and it
remains the task of the linguist to investigate the linguistic features that enable
these ‘symbolic icons’ to be recognized by readers as such.
I shall argue in this paper that instead of treating icons as a handful of dis-
parate items, iconicity is better understood as an economy of signs with which
we identify socially. Icons, in other words, are semiotic phenomena that are
only meaningful within an economy of meanings that constitutes a common-
sense theory of social persons as collectives. I shall draw on Systemic Func-
tional Linguistics (SFL) and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to illustrate the
discursive function of these constructions with examples from the English
copy of Fujiwara’s book, and propose a general outline of a functional frame-
work in this paper for understanding iconography.

2. Linguistic structures of identity discourses

SFL theorizes three distinct metafunctions in every instance of language use
(e.g. Halliday, 2002; Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004). The grammar construes
a particular representation of reality for its speakers as events and partici-
pants ideationally, enacts the relationship between the author of the text and
its audience, positioning them as giving or demanding services and informa-
tion interpersonally, as well as organizes the information value of elements in
the text, foregrounding and backgrounding them as semiotic reality textually.
The three metafunctions are simultaneous in a single stretch of text, and real-
ized differently in terms of their syntagmatic structure. Taking an example
from the passage above, a simple statement on identity such as ‘The Japanese
364     The language of identity discourse

are moved by these emotions’ is simultaneously structured in three different

ways, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Identity as syntagmatic selections

The Japanese are moved by these emotions.

Perspective:
Ideational Medium Process Agent
Interpersonal Subject Finite Predicator Adjunct
Textual Theme New

Within this clause, the participants ‘the Japanese’ and ‘emotions’ are related
grammatically in three distinct ways: ideationally, the ‘emotions’ are construed
as the agents that caused ‘the Japanese’ as mediums to undergo the process of
‘being moved’; interpersonally, the subject ‘Japanese’ and finite ‘are’ constitute
the mood element of the clause as a statement about the Japanese; textually,
‘the Japanese’ forms the nub of the argument as the theme, which is then com-
mented upon in terms of the ‘emotions’. This particular statement about the
nature of ‘the Japanese’ thus constructs it simultaneously as a medium, a sub-
ject and a theme, and relates it to ‘emotions’ as its agent, adjunct and new. The
example demonstrates how linguistic structures play an important role in for-
mulating identities in a very particular way for the reader.
SFL also understands these specific formulations as meaningful choices
against a background of alternative meanings. In this way, the syntagmatic
structuring of texts correspond to a set of meaningful selections from a para-
digmatic perspective as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Identity as paradigmatic selections

Ideational The Japanese are moved by these emotions.
proportions The Japanese feel these emotions.
Interpersonal The Japanese are moved by these emotions.
proportions Are the Japanese moved by these emotions?
Textual The Japanese are moved by these emotions.
proportions These emotions move the Japanese.

This example clearly demonstrates that even within a single clause, meaning-
ful choices are made in terms of all three metafunctions in the representation
of identity (cf. Tann, 2010a), and more importantly, that statements about iden-
tities such as this are by no means a straightforward description of the world,
since they are not the only possible ones. Nonetheless, statements about identity
do not exist in isolation of course – their significance as meaningful choices has
 Ken Tann     365

to be understood within the textual environment in which they are located, so it

is necessary to go beyond the clause for a fuller account of identity construction.
Subsequent work in SFL has extended this multiperspectival analysis of
language beyond the clausal level, to the metafunctional organization of texts
at the level of discourse (e.g. Martin, 1992; Martin and Rose, 2003; Martin and
White, 2005). For instance, the last paragraph of the above extract from Fuji-
wara’s book construes Japanese identity as lexical strings, positions the reader
towards it in affective terms, and organizes it as identity chains. Ideationally,
‘empathy for the loser’ and ‘empathy for the weak’ are ‘incorporated’ in a ‘Jap-
anese sense of impermanence’, which together with ‘compassionate empathy’,
comprise the ‘feelings’ and ‘emotions’ that the Japanese purportedly have. The
unfolding text constructs ‘empathy’ and ‘sense of impermanence’ as parts that
make up ‘emotions’ as the whole, thereby linking those terms syntagmatically
through the relationship of meronymy as lexical strings (Martin, 1992: 331),
as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Japanese identity as lexical strings.

From a paradigmatic perspective, the list of values accumulate through the

course of the text to form a set of taxonomic relations (Martin, 1992: 294) that
define Japanese identity, as shown in Figure 2.
366     The language of identity discourse

Figure 2: Japanese identity as taxonomy of values.

Interpersonally, the text is framed in affective expressions (see Martin and

White, 2005), colouring these concepts in a sensual and emotive lexis.
Tearful empathy for the loser and for the weak: these are the emotions that the Japa-
nese sense of impermanence incorporates. The Noh play Atsumori continues to be
popular after all this time because the Japanese still have feelings akin to this sense of
impermanence and to the compassionate empathy of the samurai, and are still moved
by the same emotions.

Textually, it foregrounds and backgrounds the identities and values in a way

that allows the reader to track them coherently through the length of the text.
This includes anaphoric references that point the reader to an earlier stretch
of text and homophoric references that point the reader to shared cultural
knowledge. These references allow us to track participants over a stretch of
discourse through reference chains (Martin 1992: 140), shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Tracking Japanese identity.

The system of ideation allows us to establish a taxonomy of participants and

values, appraisal allows us to align with the text, while identification allows us
to retrieve references in the text. Nonetheless, these piecemeal accounts of the
text still leave us deeply dissatisfied in our attempt to get at the sense of ‘Jap-
anese identity’ built up collectively as a sum of these functions. How are the
 Ken Tann     367

exploits of Kumagai and Atsumori of any relevance to present day Japanese?

How is the contemporary reader in the comfort of his study meant to recog-
nize and identify with twelfth-century samurai values?
A solution can be found in Halliday and Matthiessen’s (1999) account of
the construal of ‘cat’ as a commonsense category in language learning. They
suggest that taxonomic elaboration, meronymic extension and participant
roles collectively contribute to the child’s acquisition of the concept of a ‘cat’
as a ‘network of relations’ that emerges from everyday dialogic interactions
(Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999: 80–81). This suggests that the equally com-
monsense category of ‘Japanese’ as constructed in this passage can be simi-
larly understood as a network of relations that are ‘simultaneously construed,
enacted and organized’ (Tann, 2010a: 183) at both the level of discourse seman-
tics and lexicogrammar as described above. What remains to be mapped out is
a model of how these different aspects of language intersect in the discourse.
Even though the various analyses at the grammatical and discourse seman-
tic levels fail to capture the way they combine in the unfolding of the text to
produce an account of Japanese identity, they provide two important theoret-
ical insights for understanding language use in these constructions. First, as
the characters, artefacts and values that we have identified in the preceding
section are constructed through language, they are the composite effect of ide-
ational, interpersonal and textual meanings, and a detailed iconography must
provide an account for this triple articulation. Second, the icons may be inves-
tigated in terms of both their syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes, to establish
how each underlies the other at adjacent levels of analysis. Through this alter-
nation between the synoptic and dynamic perspectives, we can query the rela-
tionships within and between these icons.
Syntagmatic relations such as those described in Table 1 can be modelled
sequentially. At the level of discourse semantics (e.g. Figures 1 and 3), Martin
(1992) models these relations as ‘covariate structures’ (Martin, 1992: 331), in
which each element presumes the preceding and/or subsequent one, hence
relating them serially. For example, the syntagmatic structure as shown in
Figure 4 consists of the pairs of relationships x-y and y-z, where the meaning
of y presumes that of x and vice versa, while z in turn presumes y, and so on.

Figure 4: Syntagmatic relations.

368     The language of identity discourse

Paradigmatic relations such as those described in Table 2 on the other hand

can be modelled as taxonomies (e.g. Figure 2), a basic version of which is
shown in Figure 5. In the set of relations in this example, the presence of ele-
ment affords the selection of either b or c, and the meaning of b has to be
understood in the context of a non-selection of c.

Figure 5: Paradigmatic relations.

Serial unfolding such as those illustrated in Figure 4 and taxonomic rela-

tions such as those in Figure 5 present two useful ways for thinking about the
construction of identities in language. A syntagmatic representation provides
a dynamic perspective on language use, whereas a paradigmatic representa-
tion provides us with a synoptic perspective on language use, and they can be
used as complementary analytical tools for the iconography pursued in this
paper.
It should also be mentioned that only extracts from the English version of
Fujiwara (2005) will be analysed here due to space constraints. In this discus-
sion, we are interested primarily in the discourse semantic structures of the
text (e.g. lexical strings, appraisal, identity chains, etc.) that have been kept
fairly consistent between the Japanese and English versions by the translator,
at least at the level of delicacy pursued here, although these meanings at the
level of discourse may be realized differently at the lexicogrammatical level
(e.g. transitivity and mood analysis, etc.). A comparison of subtler differences
in meaning at other levels between the two versions would have to be left to
another paper.

3. Mapping Icons as a linguistic resource

Turning back to the passage under discussion, there are a number of iconic ele-
ments that we have identified as central to the discourse of Japanese identity.
These elements are associated with different syntagmatic structures in the text
at the level of lexicogrammar and discourse semantics that allow us to distin-
guish them as people, things, community membership and values respectively.
There are historical and mythical characters that exemplify the commu-
nity as national Heroes such as Nitobe, Kumagai and Atsumori, and their
accomplishments in the form of the literary canons Bushido and the Noh play
 Ken Tann     369

Atsumori as cultural Heritages. These quasi-religious Oracles serve as the

sacred incarnations of the Japanese communal geist, situated in a particular
space and time in history. Their actions set the standards of communal behav-
iour, and their voice represents the voice of the community.
Then there is the sense of a Japanese community that readers are obliged to
identify with and to which they owe their loyalty. The membership category
‘Japanese’ is used to construct what we may term its Gemeinschaft, a concept
borrowed from the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies who contrasted it
against the gesellshaft as forms of social association. Whereas the gesellschaft,
such as a corporate organization, is an association formed around individual
interests, the gemeinschaft is formed around common geography and values,
such as kinship and religious communities.
Finally, the community is held together by shared beliefs and mores that
define its boundaries. Concepts such as the ‘sense of impermanence’ and ‘com-
passionate empathy’ serve as the Doxa of the Japanese community, drawing
on Bourdieu and the Barthesian notion of the taken-for-granted and assimi-
lating language of culture.
We can therefore distinguish between three main kinds of icons (labelled
with initial capitals) in the discourse, and model them as a set of paradigmatic
relations from a synoptic perspective as outlined in section 2. As it was also
mentioned in section 2, modelling them this way allows us to track the lin-
guistic choices in the way identities are formulated for the reader.

Figure 6: A basic network of identity icons.

This section will set out to examine each of these in turn, and investigate
the structures that set them apart. Due to length constraints, I shall only high-
light the main characteristics of the icons identified in the passage presently
discussed here, but the reader may refer to Tann (2010b) for a more extensive
linguistic description.
370     The language of identity discourse

3.1. Oracles: People and things we celebrate

Oracles exemplify the Gemeinschaft as specific people and things, and they
serve as tokens of the abstract membership categories. The people and things
that instantiate Oracles anchor Japanese identity in a shared history construed
in terms of a specific space and time that lends credibility to them as part of
the reality shared by the community.
In Fujiwara’s account of the Battle of Ichi no Tani introduced at the begin-
ning of this paper, Kumagai Naozane and Taira no Atsumori are presented as
Oracles that exemplify Japanese sensibility. However, Fujiwara attributed the
story to a ‘famous episode’ in Nitobe’s Bushido (1899), and it is interesting to
compare between the two accounts.
Benevolence to the weak, the down-trodden or the vanquished, was ever extolled as
peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art must be familiar with the
representation of a priest riding backwards on a cow. The rider was once a warrior
who in his day made his name a by-word of terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-
ura, which was one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy and in
a single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms … his helmet was ruth-
lessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and beardless, made the aston-
ished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth to his feet, in paternal tones he bade
the stripling go: ‘Off, young prince, to thy mother’s side! The sword of Kumagayé
shall never be tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o’er yon pass
before thine enemies come in sight!’ The young warrior refused to go and begged
Kumagayé, for the honour of both, to dispatch him on the spot … In an instant the
sword flashes in the air, and when it falls it is red with adolescent blood. When the
war is ended, we find our soldier returning in triumph, but little cares he now for
honour or fame; he renounces his war-like career, shaves his head, dons a priestly
garb, devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never turning his back to the
West where lies the Paradise whence salvation comes and wither the sun hastes daily
for his rest. (Nitobe, 1899/1998: 89–91)

The first thing that strikes us is the significant difference in expressions

between Nitobe’s writing in 1899 and Fujiwara’s in 2005 (trans. Murray 2007),
and more surprisingly, we recognize it as being essentially the same story in
spite of the difference. The fact that we perceive continuity between these two
accounts tells us a number of things about the nature of Oracles. Kumagai in
Fujiwara’s account for instance, appears as Kumagayé in Nitobe’s, which tells
us that the ontological status of these historical and mythical characters is
not entirely dependent on their names, nor are we necessarily dependent on
the names as readers to recognize them. Indeed, the name Atsumori does not
even appear in the latter. This suggests that there are other means by which
readers can ‘retrieve’ the identities of these characters, hence ‘recognizing’
them.
 Ken Tann     371

Central to our recognition of the story is a number of participants and pro-

cesses that constitute the core of the story that makes it tellable. They are cen-
tral to our understanding of the story, and the story loses its point if any of
them were absent.

Table 3: Central elements in the story of Kumagai and Atsumori

1 Kumagai captures Atsumori

2 Kumagai intends to kill Atsumori
3 Kumagai discovers that Atsumori is a young man
4 Kumagai hesitates
5 Atsumori instructs Kumagai to kill him
6 Kumagai kills Atsumori
7 Kumagai becomes a priest

The value of the story, and hence the status of the Oracles, is in this sense a set
of nuclear relations (Martin, 1992: 309) that hold between specific participants
and processes. Furthermore, these relations may be instantiated in a variety of
ways, and the latitude of potential instantiations is what allows for subsequent
reiterations of the Oracles to remain recognizable. Where Kumagayé ‘overtook
an enemy and in a single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms’
for instance, the same action is summarized as ‘captured’ in Fujiwara’s text, and
where he ‘renounces his war-like career, shaves his head, dons a priestly garb,
devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage,’ he simply ‘becomes a priest’ in
the reproduction. Oracles are therefore not reducible to a single name or nom-
inal group, but are constructed through a relatively stable set of relations that
hold between a specific combination of participants, events, and circumstances.
We can further distinguish between two types of Oracles. These are the
Heroes – social actors that exemplify particular virtues and responsible for
bringing valued artefacts into existence. Their products function correspond-
ingly as Heritage. The canonical literature Bushido for instance, hailed as an
authority on the Japanese identity, is attributed to the cultural guru Nitobe as
the exemplar of the national character. The Oracle in this case is instantiated
through the relationship of attribution (Martin and White, 2005) between the
Hero Nitobe and the Heritages Heike Monogatari and Bushido.
The Heike Monogatari includes a famous episode which Nitobe Inazō mentions in his
Bushido.

The Heroes Kumagai and Atsumori in the excerpt are similarly responsible for
the Noh play that is established as Heritage that rallies the Japanese audience,
372     The language of identity discourse

drawn by their communal sensibility. Unlike Bushido, the relationship is not

one of attribution in this case, but is established through the title of the play as
a reference to the Hero Atsumori (see Figure 7).
The elements that take the role of circumstance in the instantiation of Ora-
cles are themselves variable. Readers who are not familiar with Japanese his-
tory may be surprised at the apparent discrepancy between the two accounts
as Nitobe locates the event in a ‘battle of Sumano-ura’ whereas Fujiwara seems
to locate it in a ‘battle of Ichi no Tani’. As it turns out, Ichi no Tani is the
name of the Taira fortress located within Sumano-ura, which is a beach in
the Suma region. These geographical locations are therefore linked taxonomi-
cally, each one nestled within the next, and it seems the circumstance of events
that instantiate the Oracles is recognizable in each iteration insofar as they
enter into the same set of meronomic relationship, i.e. Ichi no Tani is part of
Sumano-ura, which is part of Suma.
There is also a complex management in Fujiwara’s text between the identi-
ties of Kumagai and Atsumori, tracked textually through the stretch of text as
reference chains shown in Figure 7. The two characters are initially linked ide-
ationally through the process of Kumagai capturing Atsumori, and each sub-
sequent mention of the two characters refers back to the last through proper
names and anaphoric references (see section 2). The relationship between the
two chains is then reinforced through other such core processes (in parenthe-
ses) mentioned earlier.
The long stretches of text sustained by these reference chains signal the
status of Kumagai and Atsumori as central elements of the identity discus-
sion, hence allowing readers to recognize them as icons in the discourse. The
analysis presented in Figure 7 is based on the English translation of the extract
by Murray (2007), whereas ellipsis and proper names are often used to track
identities in Japanese in the place of the pronouns shown above, as is the case
in Fujiwara (2005). Despite such differences, it is particularly remarkable that
the identity chains have been kept consistent by the translator between the
English and Japanese versions at the discourse semantic level to constitute
what is recognized as essentially the same story.
In terms of evaluation, the story of Kumagai and Atsumori is predominantly
coloured by affect (Martin and White, 2005) that is realized grammatically
in a number of different ways. Affect may be realized as explicit inscriptions
through processes (grieving) and nominalizations (tearful empathy).
Reluctantly Kumagai does so, but afterward, grieving for the young man he has killed,
he becomes a priest.

Tearful empathy for the loser and for the weak: these are the emotions that the Japa-
nese sense of impermanence incorporates.
 Ken Tann     373

Figure 7: Reference chains of Kumagai and Atsumori.

As Oracles are instantiated through the construction of specific people and

events, these evaluative meanings may be realized implicitly as part of the
actions of the characters in the story. The actions of Kumagai in Nitobe’s
account for instance, serve as ideational tokens for invoked affect, which is
explicitly inscribed in Fujiwara’s reproduction introduced earlier.
… he renounces his war-like career, shaves his head, dons a priestly garb, devotes the
rest of his days to holy pilgrimage …

These evaluative meanings serve an important function in this discourse since

they may also be condensed as icons around which readers rally. It is to this
second type of icons that we shall now turn.
374     The language of identity discourse

3.2. Doxa: Values we share

Scholars of Japanese identity discourses often point out that many writers love
to explain any observation of Japanese behaviour with their idiosyncratically
selected ‘keywords’ (e.g. Dale, 1986; Befu, 1992, 1993; Yoshino, 1992), and that
each writer claims that the keyword of their choice sums up the quintessence
of Japaneseness. As Befu (1993) explains, ‘the importance of language in cre-
ating a national identity stems not only from the fact of speaking a common
tongue, but also … from the unique connotations, meanings, and values
implied in its expressions’ (Befu, 1993: 128). In Fujiwara’s iteration of Kum-
agai and Atsumori’s encounter, the evaluative meanings of the story outlined
in 3.1 have been condensed into keywords such as ‘tearful empathy’ and ‘sense
of impermanence’ that supposedly, are unique to the Japanese sensibility and
explain the behaviour of the Japanese community.
Tearful empathy for the loser and for the weak: these are the emotions that the Japa-
nese sense of impermanence incorporates. The Noh play Atsumori continues to be
popular after all this time because the Japanese still have feelings akin to this sense of
impermanence and to the compassionate empathy of the samurai, and are still moved
by the same emotions.

Ideationally, the cultural value system symbolized by these keywords form

a taxonomy that constitutes the Doxa of Japanese identity discourse (see
Figure 2). The Doxa instantiated through the nominal group ‘tearful empa-
thy for the loser and the weak’ in Fujiwara’s passage is itself a reiteration
of that instantiated through the nominal group ‘benevolence to the weak,
the down-trodden or the vanquished’ in Nitobe’s book. However, the dif-
ferent expressions remain recognizable as instantiations of the same taxon-
omy. The Doxa is therefore not a single word, but a relatively stable network
of ideas that constructs the collective identity of a community as verbiage.
Hence, we are not interested in the referent or translatability of such key-
words, but the discourse semantic function they serve within the text, that
is to say, the instantial relationship between terms, that we shall now pro-
ceed to explore.
As these keywords are used in discourse primarily for their explanatory
power, the Doxa is usually placed in textually prominent positions as pro-
posed by Martin and Rose (2003: 181), such as the initial position of a story
known as the ‘hypertheme’, or the final position of the story known as the
‘hypernew’. These positions are textually significant because the former serves
to orientate the reader and predict the contents of what is to follow, while the
latter serves to summarize the main point of the preceding story and interpret
its moral significance. Fujiwara’s discussion on ‘the Japanese sense of imper-
manence’ for instance, is located in the final paragraph of the story of Kum-
agai and Atsumori as a condensation of the evaluative meanings of the story,
 Ken Tann     375

thus narrowing its possible interpretations to being an illustration of the ‘sense

of impermanence’. The Doxa may conversely be instantiated through the ini-
tial position of the text, such as Nitobe’s account of the story that opens with
‘benevolence to the weak, the down-trodden or the vanquished’. The text thus
ascribes the value to the samurai and elaborates on it through the conduct of
Kumagayé. In these textually prominent positions, the interpersonal mean-
ings of the Doxa dominate the rest of the text, constraining our orientation to
and interpretation of the story.
However, the Doxa is not truly a universal value, but the supposedly ‘unique’
property of a people that serves to demarcate the community from others, and
a link must therefore be made between the Doxa and its community. This
is provided in Fujiwara’s text by the reference chain that connects ‘the Japa-
nese sense of impermanence’ to ‘the Japanese’ (see Figure 1). The Doxa is thus
reformulated in terms of the community as a third type of icons in the text that
will be explored in 3.3.

3.3. Gemeinschaft: Our sense of community

National identity discourses often construct collective identities in terms of
a timeless and homogeneous community, formed on the basis of an immu-
table communion of a deep, horizontal comradeship (Anderson, 1991: 224).
To Fujiwara’s understanding, Kumagai and Atsumori behave the way they do
because they are Japanese, the values they embody are Japanese, and the reader
should recognize these icons on account of themselves being Japanese – or not.
For the Japanese reader, they constitute the unconditional inclusion to a com-
munion with the author and complicity to the author’s values. For the non-
Japanese reader they present privileged glimpses into the exotic and ineffable
nature of an alien people. In this way, nihonjinron polarizes between Japanese
identity and ‘the West’ as its Other against which Japanese readers may distin-
guish themselves as a distinct community, while the icons constitute the shared
knowledge that distinguishes between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The polemic rhetoric of
this discourse is made abundantly clear in this next extract from the book.
As the sense of impermanence became more abstract, it evolved into the emotion
that we call mono no aware, or the sense of the pathos of things. Running through
much of the Japanese literature of the Middle Ages, this emotion is best defined as
the sensibility that finds beauty in the fragility of mankind and in things that change
amidst the permanence of nature.
Everybody grieves at the sight of things in decay. Western people do, too. But the
Japanese sense the beauty that is inherent in that fragility. Donald Keene, the Japa-
nese literature scholar, sees this as a sensibility that is unique to the Japanese. We are
able to discover emotional beauty even in fragile, fleeting things.
About ten years ago, a professor from Stanford University came round to my
house for a social visit. It was fall, so as we had our dinner, we could hear the sound
376     The language of identity discourse

from outside. ‘What’s that noise?’ my guest inquired. For a Stanford professor no less,
the sound of the insects was only so much noise.
His comment reminded me of my grandmother who used to live in the coun-
tryside of Shinshū. When the fall came with the sound of the insects and the falling
leaves blowing hither and thither, she would grow misty-eyed. ‘Ah, autumn is here,’
she would say.
I remember thinking to myself: ‘How on earth did we lose the war to characters
like this?’ (Murray, trans. 2007: 145–147)

As readers, we get a sense that the point of this story is to illustrate how dif-
ferent ‘Western people’ are from ‘the Japanese’. The account certainly disre-
gards the possibility of any ‘Western people’ who may appreciate the sounds of
nature, or ‘Japanese’ who do not, much less to say anyone who does not fall into
those binary categories. It also presumes that a single poignant personal experi-
ence does more to convince the audience than any extensive sociological survey
could have ever done. It is this highly generalizing tendency that characterizes
nihonjinron as a discourse. We shall now examine the discourse semantic orga-
nization of this text that constructs ‘the Japanese’ as a collective Gemeinschaft
against which other communities such as ‘Western people’ may be contrasted.
The text constructs people ideationally as categories rather than individ-
uals, such that they may be contrasted oppositionally against one another,
establishing ‘Western people’ and ‘the Japanese’ as co-hyponyms, i.e. contrast-
ing subclasses of the term ‘everybody’, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Contrasting identities.

As Befu (1993) points out however, these contrasts are inherently eval-
uative. Not only are ‘the Japanese’ distinct from ‘Western people’, they are
superior to them, signalled here by the contrastive conjunction ‘but’ and the
attribute ‘unique’.
But the Japanese sense the beauty that is inherent in that fragility.
… a sensibility that is unique to the Japanese.

The judgement of the Japanese capacity for their unique sensibility is also
invoked by the use of modality (i.e. are able to discover), amplified here by ‘even’.
We are able to discover emotional beauty even in fragile, fleeting things.
 Ken Tann     377

The taxonomy of identities is therefore overlaid with an evaluative framework,

polarizing them interpersonally. The Gemeinschaft is a relatively stable net-
work of associations that place people in discrete evaluative categories, instan-
tiated through these sets of participants, processes and attributes.

Figure 9: Polarizing identities.

Instances of the reference ‘we’ are ellipsed and signalled through the auxil-
iary verb (-shimau) in the Japanese version, and are recovered as pronouns in
the English version. The polarization between ‘Japanese’ and ‘Western people’
is thus reinforced and tracked textually through reference and the derogatory
expression ‘characters like this’ (from the Japanese ‘konna yatsura’).
How on earth did we lose the war to characters like this?

The anaphoric reference ‘characters like this’ allows Fujiwara to fudge the lines
between individual participants in a specific event, i.e. the Stanford profes-
sor, and a category of people, i.e. Western people, by conflating them through
a single reference, thereby generalizing his observation of a specific individ-
ual, i.e. the Stanford professor, to that of a ‘community’, as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Reference chain of Western people.

378     The language of identity discourse

As the taxonomy in Figure 9 suggests of course, this community of ‘West-

ern people’ does not necessarily have any empirical basis outside of its con-
trast against ‘the Japanese’ as a function of the discourse. The reference ‘we’
that is simultaneously anaphoric, i.e. referring to people mentioned in the pre-
ceding text, and exophoric, i.e. referring to the reader outside of the text, also
conflates the author and/or reader with ‘the Japanese’, such that readers find
themselves unwittingly positioned within the dichotomous categories of ‘the
Japanese’ and ‘Western people’.

Figure 11: Reference chain of the Japanese.

The Gemeinschaft therefore constructs identities in terms of categories of

people and contrasts them evaluatively. It then provides coherence to the text
by tracking the participants in terms of these identities, and relates the text
explicitly to readers by including/excluding them in the text.

4. Theorizing iconography
The preceding sections examined some of the discourse semantic structures
that work in tandem to produce the identity discourses discussed in this paper.
These structures construct identities in terms of people, values and communi-
ties that function as icons to rally readers around polarized camps. However,
we have also observed that these icons are the sum of the discourse structures,
and it is pertinent to provide more than partial accounts for the icons through
each of these structures. This section will consider the modelling of language use
in SFL and explore how we may go about theorizing the relationship between
these icons and language in terms of their intertextuality, i.e. how they are main-
tained over time, and iterability, i.e. how they evolve over time, to account for the
immutability and mutability of the sign. These two important aspects make the
icons simultaneously compelling and open to negotiation.
 Ken Tann     379

4.1. A synoptic account of iconography

The first aspect of icons to consider is how they are maintained through actual
language use. That is to say, how do readers recognize Kumagai and Atsumori in
novel texts as essentially the same cultural icons despite the fact that each subse-
quent retelling may differ from the last? We have observed in 3.1 for instance, that
the language in which Nitobe wrote his account in 1899 is vastly different from
that in Fujiwara’s in 2007, and furthermore, new details of the story are added,
while others are elided or summarized. It is also suggested in 3.1 that there are
core elements of the story that allow readers to recognize the story, but given that
is the case, from where then do writers and readers retrieve these core elements?
These icons are effectively the conceptual framework that interlocutors
built from their previous experiences of other texts, and brought with them
to new acts of communication as a form of cultural resource. I shall argue that
icons, as such a form of abstract conceptual framework, can be understood
through Halliday’s concept of ‘instantiation’. Halliday (2002) suggests that the
relationship between instances of language use and the linguistic system is one
of differing degrees of abstraction.
The climate and weather are not two different phenomena. They are the same phe-
nomenon seen by two different observers, standing at different distances – different
time depths. To the climate observer, the weather looks like random unpredictable
ripples; to the weather observer, the climate is a vague and unreal outline. So it is also
with language; language as system; and language as instance … Now the relation of
system to instance is in fact a cline, a continuous zoom; and whenever we focus the
zoom we can take a look into history. (Halliday, 2002: 359)

The linguistic system on the one hand, and instances of language use on the
other, offer different perspectives in terms of abstraction and timeframe. In
terms of abstraction, the system is the meaning resource drawn from an aggre-
gate of instances that informs the production and consumption of subsequent
texts, and in terms of timeframe, the system provides the means for ensuring
the continuity of such meanings. In this way, SFL conceptualizes the linguis-
tic system as a theory of intertextuality. Furthermore, there is no ontological
distinction between these two aspects of language, and the continuity between
the linguistic system and the individual texts as instances of language use is
conceptualized as a cline, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Instantiation as a cline.

380     The language of identity discourse

As this study has shown, the icons are repeated motifs across texts to serve
as a cultural resource for text production and recognition. They are hence
located further up the cline of instantiation as what Zappavigna et al. (2008)
describe as ‘syndromes of meaning’ that inform the coupling across metafunc-
tions at the level of discourse semantics observed in section 3. The icons pro-
vide the meaning resource for the production and consumption of identity
texts, and the texts in turn sustain the icons as socially legitimate ways of talk-
ing about identity. It is nonetheless important not to reify these icons, as the
situational production of individual texts entails their adaptation in innova-
tive ways at every level of language.
The system is the pattern formed by the instances; and each instance represents an
exchange with the environment – an incursion into the system in which every level
of language is involved. The system is permeable because each instance redounds
with the context of situation, and so perturbs the system in interaction with the envi-
ronment. Thus both realization and instantiation are involved in the evolution of lan-
guage as a dynamic open system. (Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999: 17)

4.2. A dynamic account of iconography

Now that we have established how icons are maintained over time and across
texts, the next aspect to consider is their iterability. In other words, if icons
change over time as this study has shown, how and why do they evolve?
Recent studies in SFL and LCT provide some useful concepts for thinking
about meaning change in icons.
One of them is Hood’s (2008) study on summary writing that proposes the
notion of ‘commitment’ for understanding changes in meaning across texts.
Drawing on Martin’s (2006) description of the relationship between texts fur-
ther up the instantiation cline, she theorizes the relationship between the
source text and its reproduction in summary form as different selections in
the subsequent instantiation of related meaning. The notion of commitment
is therefore an attempt to describe the shift in meaning from one instance to
another over time, whereby the ‘process of change can be understood as a
process of distantiation, moving up the hierarchy, opening up the meaning
potential as we move, and then taking advantage of this under-specification
of meaning to reinstate (the meaning potential)’ (cited in Hood, 2008: 353). It
provides the means for theorizing about the continuity across texts, and each
instance constitutes a commitment of the same meaning potential by specify-
ing it in different ways. This conception of meaning shift has two implications
for a dynamic account of the iconography presented in this study: it provides
a means for analysing the intertextual development of specific icons in terms
of intertextual relations, as suggested by Hood, and for analysing the intratex-
tual development between icons in the unfolding of the text.
 Ken Tann     381

It has been noted that icons are located further up the cline of instantiation
where they inform situated instances of discourse semantic features in indi-
vidual texts. It has also been observed in 3.1 that subsequent instantiations
differ from former ones. These texts can therefore be traced in terms of com-
mitment. At the end of Nitobe’s story of Kumagai for example, his actions after
killing Atsumori is broken down into a series of activities that constitute his
renunciation of the secular life.
When the war is ended, we find our soldier returning in triumph, but little cares he
now for honour or fame; he renounces his war-like career, shaves his head, dons a
priestly garb, devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never turning his back
to the West where lies the Paradise whence salvation comes and wither the sun hastes
daily for his rest.

This activity sequence (Martin 1992: 321) in Nitobe’s story is distilled and con-
densed into a single clause in Fujiwara’s summary.
… afterward, grieving for the young man he has killed, he becomes a priest.

Ideationally, the various material processes of shaving his head, donning the
priestly garb, etc. have been generalized into a more abstract relational clause
of becoming a priest. As the actions of renouncing one’s career, shaving one’s
head, etc. are part of becoming a priest, the subsequent commitment of the
Oracle from Nitobe (1899) to Fujiwara (trans. Murray 2007) involves a shift
from the specific to the general, as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13: Ideational commitment of Kumagai over time.

382     The language of identity discourse

Interpersonally, the affect implicit in the various actions Kumagai under-

goes has been spelt out more specifically as an act of ‘grieving’ in Fujiwara’s
version. Whereas Nitobe’s descriptions of Kumagai’s actions are more open
to interpretation, Fujiwara’s account specifies the emotional content of those
actions such as renouncing his career, shaving his head, etc. as the result of
‘grief ’. In Hood’s (2008) terms, Fujiwara’s text on Kumagai’s actions is less
committed ideationally and more committed interpersonally than Nitobe’s
summary.
It does not stop there however. Fujiwara goes on to explain that the emo-
tions are shared by the Japanese in general, and ends by interpreting the story
in terms of a sense of impermanence and to the compassionate empathy of the
samurai. Thus within Fujiwara’s account of the story, we may also track the
reformulation of meaning in terms of commitment, as he reasons from the
story (Oracle) to the nature of the community (Gemeinschaft) to a system of
values (Doxa), as shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14: Commitment of identities in unfolding text.

A complementary perspective on meaning shift can be found in LCT,

developed in the Bernsteinian tradition of sociology in dialogue with SFL.
The movement from one type of icon to another can similarly be tracked in
terms of Maton’s (2010) concept of ‘semantic gravity’ that is the relative extent
to which meaning relates to its social or symbolic context, and his concept of
‘semantic density’ that is the relative extent to which meanings and values are
condensed within terms, concepts or phrases. The relative strengths of these
two aspects of semiosis are useful independent parameters for contrasting dif-
ferent degrees of abstraction in the development of an idea from a sociological
perspective on knowledge structures.
Fujiwara generalizes the story of Kumagai and Atsumori as the collective
sentiment of the Japanese community that persists over time, in the process
of which the historically situated experience has been rendered abstract and
 Ken Tann     383

timeless. The text therefore shifts from higher to lower semantic gravity (–SG)
to generalize the meanings of the story, as shown in Figure 15. Accompanying
this is a shift from lower to higher semantic density (+SD) as the ideational
contents and their implicit interpersonal meaning of the story is condensed as
a Japanese collective sensibility.

Figure 15: Logogenetic development of Atsumori.

Beyond this step, the Japanese sensibility is further condensed to endorse

the notion of a ‘sense of impermanence’ and ‘compassionate empathy’, with a
corresponding increase in semantic density (+SD).
Similar reformulations can be observed in Fujiwara’s passage about his
encounter with the Stanford professor in 3.3. The passage begins with an
instantiation of Doxa through a discussion on the ‘sense of impermanence’
and ‘mono no aware’.
As the sense of impermanence became more abstract, it evolved into the emotion that
we call mono no aware, or the sense of the pathos of things. Running through much
of the Japanese literature of the Middle Ages, this emotion is best defined as the sensi-
bility that finds beauty in the fragility of mankind and in things that change amidst the
permanence of nature.

Participants in this paragraph are highly abstract entities, consisting of

nominalizations such as ‘the sense of impermanence’ and ‘the sensibility’,
and loanwords such as ‘mono no aware’. The Doxa is a network of relation-
ships between these abstract entities, instantiated through the various struc-
tural links between these participants provided by relational processes such
as ‘evolved’ and ‘is defined as’, forming a taxonomy ideationally. The stretch
of text is committed interpersonally in terms of aesthetic evaluations such as
‘abstract’ and ‘beauty’, and the Doxa is placed in a textually prominent position
384     The language of identity discourse

as the hypertheme to provide an interpretation for what is to follow. The Doxa

is then reformulated in terms of Gemeinschaft, instantiated through the con-
trast between ‘Western people’ and ‘the Japanese’.
Everybody grieves at the sight of things in decay. Western people do, too. But the Jap-
anese sense the beauty that is inherent in that fragility. Donald Keene, the Japanese
literature scholar, sees this as a sensibility that is unique to the Japanese. We are able
to discover emotional beauty even in fragile, fleeting things.

The text shifts from a specific set of values to the community in general, and in
this sense the Gemeinschaft is less committed interpersonally with respect to
the Doxa. Whereas the evaluative meanings of aesthetic appreciation is either
inscribed or infused as part of the Doxa, and emanating towards the rest of
the text in a dominating prosody, the evaluative meaning in the Gemein-
schaft in the form of capacity is invoked by ideational tokens (e.g. the Japanese
sense the beauty, we are able to discover) or indirectly ascribed (e.g. sensibil-
ity that is unique to the Japanese). The interpersonal meaning of the terms ‘the
sense of impermanence’ and ‘mono no aware’ is also unpacked for the reader,
marked by a decrease in semantic density (–SD). At this point the passage
switches track to Oracles, instantiated through the contrasting accounts of the
‘Stanford professor’ and the author’s ‘grandmother’.
About ten years ago, a professor from Stanford University came round to my house
for a social visit. It was fall, so as we had our dinner, we could hear the sound from
outside. ‘What’s that noise?’ my guest inquired. For a Stanford professor no less, the
sound of the insects was only so much noise. His comment reminded me of my
grandmother who used to live in the countryside of Shinshū. When the fall came with
the sound of the insects and the falling leaves blowing hither and thither, she would
grow misty-eyed. ‘Ah, autumn is here,’ she would say.

The Oracles instantiated through the Stanford professor and Fujiwara’s grand-
mother serve to exemplify the Gemeinschaft by providing readers with char-
acters they can identify with. These accounts are important because they
constitute an increase in semantic gravity (+SG) to ground the discussion in
concrete examples (e.g. ten years ago, my house, countryside of Shinshū, etc.),
making the argument more convincing to the audience. This is because the
paragraph is highly committed in ideational meanings that act as ideational
tokens invoking capacity, and the evaluation is solicited from the reader,
rather than inscribed explicitly as the author’s position.
When the fall came with the sound of the insects and the falling leaves blowing
hither and thither, she would grow misty-eyed.
‘Ah, autumn is here,’ she would say.

Fujiwara’s grandmother is evaluated positively through her physical disposi-

tions and speech in terms of her capacity to appreciate the ‘emotional beauty’
 Ken Tann     385

in the sound of the insects as a part of autumn that ‘Westerners’ such as the
professor purportedly lacks. The Stanford professor in contrast is evaluated
negatively in his capacity for appreciating the sounds, flagged by amplifying
his status and down-scaling his opinion of the sound.
For a Stanford professor no less, the sound of the insects was only so much noise.

These observations and evaluations are then generalized as part of the

Gemeinschaft, instantiated through the contrast between ‘we’ (the Japanese)
and ‘characters like this’.
I remember thinking to myself: ‘How on earth did we lose the war to characters like
this?’

As the Gemeinschaft is a generalized account, it is not specific to any events or

circumstance, and is therefore less committed ideationally with respect to the
Oracles. This is associated with a decrease in semantic gravity (–SG), but an
increase in semantic density (+SD) where the evaluation of the Stanford pro-
fessor is condensed into a judgemental label ‘characters like this’.
Paradigmatically, the paragraphs analysed here are characterized by dis-
tinct ways of constructing Japanese identity, as Gemeinschaft, Doxas or
Oracles, and each of these icons is configured differently in terms of their
metafunctions. The contrast between these paragraphs calls our attention to
the difference in linguistic features that instantiate different types of icons.
Syntagmatically, we observe the text unfolding in a sequence of phases, i.e.
Doxa (–SD) Gemeinschaft (+SG) Oracle (–SG, +SD) Gemeinschaft. This gives
us a sense of how meanings snowball as the text unfolds, shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16: Logogenetic development of mono no aware.

386     The language of identity discourse

The passage generalizes the Doxa as Gemeinschaft by decreasing semantic

density, simultaneously lowering the interpersonal commitment to appeal to
the wider audience. It then exemplifies the Gemeinshaft as Oracles, increas-
ing semantic gravity by committing it ideationally. As the Oracles are gener-
alized once again as Gemeinschaft, semantic gravity is deceased, but semantic
density is increased as the interpersonal meanings invoked through ideational
tokens are condensed.
It can be observed from the two texts analysed in this section that the
Gemeinschaft may be exemplified by Oracles and endorsed by Doxas, while
Doxas and Oracles may conversely be generalized through the Gemein-
schaft. Exemplification involves an increase in semantic gravity, committing
the Gemeinschaft ideationally, while endorsement involves an increase in
semantic density, committing it interpersonally. The generalization of Oracles
and Doxas as Gemeinschaft involves a decrease in the semantic gravity and
density respectively.

5. Iconography as a framework
As I mentioned at the start of the paper, the purpose of the present study is
to propose a functional framework for analysing the discursive construction
of collective identities. I have explored extracts of publications on Japanese
identity as a case study to demonstrate the use of identity icons as a linguistic
device in such discourses to rally and align communities. This is not to say that
readers are automatically and homogeneously oriented by such devices, and
there have been considerable critiques over the years. Amongst them, Sugi-
moto and Mouer (e.g. 1983, 1986) in particular are a very influential voice
against the discourses. However, their work has been largely limited to the cri-
tique of the discourses on their methodological flaws as sociological treatises.
The fact that the discourses are methodologically unsound does not explain
their popularity or the appeal they hold for their adherents. Through a linguis-
tic analysis of the discourses, the framework proposed here exposes the rhe-
torical contingency that contributes to their persistence. I shall summarize a
number of observations in this study that will hopefully be useful for under-
standing iconography in general.
From a typological perspective, the three kinds of icons comprise three dis-
tinct ways in which we talk about collective identities. These three forms of
identity construction shape discourse differently through the linguistic features
that characterize them. Gemeinschaft constructs identities as communities
and oppositional categories; Doxa constructs identities in terms of communal
values around which the communities rally; Oracle constructs identities as spe-
cific people and things that exemplify the community. The linguistic structures
 Ken Tann     387

associated with these constructs outlined in 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 allow readers to
identify the icons and distinguish between them, as shown in Figure 17.

Figure 17: Typological perspective of iconography.

Even though each of these icons may be reformulated in terms of another

as the text unfolds, but the taxonomy of icons provides a useful analytical tool
that allows the analyst to ‘talk about variability against a background of invari-
ability’ (Thibault, 1997: 87). Distinguishing between the three kinds of icons
enable us to track the development of the text to analyse its persuasive strat-
egy, and more generally, ways of generalizing, endorsing and exemplifying
identities that are considered socially legitimate.
It has been observed in 4.2 that the reformulation between Doxa and
Gemeinschaft is characterized by +/–SD, involving the commitment of inter-
personal meaning, while that between Oracle and Gemeinschaft is character-
ized by +/–SG, involving the commitment of ideational meaning. This opens
up a topological space in the reformulative relationship between the three
types of icons, as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18: Topological perspective of iconography.

388     The language of identity discourse

This topological space allows us to track the logogenetic movement of the

icons across a stretch of text, to explore how semantic relations and the inter-
play of the metafunctions are used to reason about identities in the text.
The icons are signs around which communities rally, and the readers’ rec-
ognition of their iconic status is central to their discursive function. While the
icons are observed in situated instances, readers recognize them as a form of
cultural resource through their intertextuality, and they are therefore further
up the cline of instantiation as syndromes of meaning, enabling and delimit-
ing the linguistic structures in individual texts, as shown in Figure 19.

Figure 19: Coalescence and instantiation of icons.

This relationship is a dynamic one however, and while the icons are instan-
tiated through the coupling of linguistic features in texts, their social relevance
is retained and recharged through the coalescence of these situated instances
of language use. In terms of a phylogenetic timeframe, these repeated cou-
plings of meanings associated with notions of our collective identities coalesce
as syndromes of meaning over time. The chain of texts provides an intertex-
tual environment for these syndromes that are recognized by readers as the
icons of a community. They are instantiated in the production of identity texts,
and they are retrieved by the authors and readers as a cultural pretext to those
discourses. Successful retrievals and identification with these icons led to the
renewed communion between author and reader, while unsuccessful ones
result in alienation and outrage, hence demarcating the borders between read-
erships polemically, and provoking controversy.
However, each instantiation and retrieval of an icon also brings it into a
new discursive act, where it recharges and regains significance within the
discourse community. The icon then coalesces again as a renewed cultural
understanding of identity. Communal stories such as the Heike Monogatari
that began life as part of an oral tradition and the theatrical arts in the four-
teenth century were reiterated by Nitobe in the prewar search for national
 Ken Tann     389

identity in the face of European imperialism, and subsequently by Fujiwara

in the postmodern surge of anti-Americanism; cultural heroes are co-opted
and recontextualized at each turn to serve the contemporary cause and justify
its doxa. Meanwhile, new stories such as Fujiwara’s personal anecdote evolve,
along with their proto-heroes, to give these values a new lease of life. These
icons are hence ‘floating signifiers’ in more than one sense: intratextually, the
identity of each instance of an icon is always deferred to the next to address the
argument at hand; intertextually, the icon is continually revised by the com-
munity in ever new understandings of their identity against the background of
other identities. A linguistic map of this discursive space will allow us to inves-
tigate the moment-to-moment situational concerns that enable and delimit
their reproductions, and track the historical development of these meanings.

Note
1. Martin and Stenglin draw on the notion of cultural icons, as distinct from C. S. Peirce’s
theory of signs (e.g. Peirce, 1931–1958). While the Peircean concept of icon is defined in terms
of formal semblance to its object, the concept of iconicity within SFL literature is concerned with
the sign’s function in facilitating bonding and affiliation among language users (see also Martin,
2010; Knight, 2010).

About the author

Ken Tann lectures at the University of Sydney on the application of linguistic
research to identity issues in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. He
adopts an interdisciplinary approach to discourse analysis, and his publications
include work on both the English and Japanese languages, particularly in relation
to nationalism and identity politics.

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