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Trinocular views of register: Approaching register trinocularly

Article  in  Language Context and Text The Social Semiotics Forum · January 2020
DOI: 10.1075/langct.00019.mat

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 Trinocular views of register
Approaching register trinocularly

Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Michael Halliday’s argument for the value of ‘trinocular vision’ in linguistic

research has particular relevance to the observation, exploration and
description of register. Taking each semiotic dimension relevant to the char-
acterisation of register by turn, I begin by discussing Halliday’s proposition.
I then proceed, using the metaphor of cartography, to examine register vari-
ation via the intersection of three semiotic dimensions: stratification,
instantiation and metafunction. I discuss how such examinations enable us
to create description maps of register variation. From this basis, I discuss a
long-term programme of systematically producing descriptive maps of reg-
isters, which I and colleagues have begun. Finally, I suggest that by using
such maps we can better understand such important phenomena as aggre-
gates of registers and personal register repertoires.

Keywords: register, dialect, code, rank scale, trinocular vision, stratification,

instantiation, registerial cartography, metafunction, systemic functional
paradigm

1. Introduction

Like many other linguistic phenomena, or indeed more generally all semiotic
ones, register, in the sense of functional variation (register variation), has
proved to be “slippery”. This is partly because semiotic phenomena are inherently
hard to pin down: they exist (or unfold) as semiotic phenomena, of course; but at
the same time are also enacted as social phenomena, embodied as biological phe-
nomena, and (ultimately) manifested as physical phenomena. And within their
own order of phenomena, while they are located stratally, they derive their value
from their stratal neighbourhood, and (crucially) they are extended somewhere
along the cline of instantiation.

https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.00019.mat
Language, Context and Text 2:1 (2020), pp. 3–21. issn 2589-7233 | e‑issn 2589-7241
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
4 Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

The slippery nature of register is reflected in the history of the term in sys-
temic functional linguistics (SFL). Taken from Reid (1956) by Halliday and his
colleagues in the 1960s (e.g. Halliday et al. 1964; Gregory 1967; Hasan 1973), the
term register meant registerial variation – functional variation in language accord-
ing to context of use. It reflects the nature of language as an adaptive system (and
it can be extended to the exploration of other semiotic systems: cf. Bateman 2008;
Matthiessen 2009). However, in J. R. Martin’s work, the term slipped stratally from
language into context, and it came to stand for the contextual variables that corre-
late with functional variation, i.e. field, tenor and mode. Martin has documented
this terminological slippage very clearly and carefully (e.g. 1992). So terminologi-
cally, we now have two distinct (but related) uses of the term “register” – its orig-
inal and still current sense of functional variation in language, and its later sense
within context as context of use – (roughly) situation type.1 But the phenomenon
of functional variation – register variation – is still recognised, regardless of the
terminology (cf. Martin 2010). In what follows, I will use “register” in its original
sense in SFL of functional variation of language within context (as I do in all my
work; cf. Matthiessen 1993, 2015a,b,c, 2019).
The slippery nature of the phenomenon of register variation makes me think
of one of M. A. K. Halliday’s technical terms, viz. “semantic slime”. He had in mind,
in the first instance, the semantic slime that accompanies terms as they slide from
everyday use to technical-scientific use; but perhaps we need to recognise the
emergence of such slime also when terms such as register slither from one theo-
retical area to another. (And of course, “register” is also used with other senses in
linguistics, as in phonetics.)
I will proceed as follows. First I will discuss Halliday’s trinocular vision in
general and its application to the observation, exploration and description of reg-
ister in particular, dealing with each semiotic dimension relevant to the charac-
terisation of register one at a time (Section 2). Then I proceed to intersect three
semiotic dimensions, first stratification and instantiation and then also meta-
function, and discuss how these intersections help us create description maps of
register variation (Section 3). Building on the discussion of the intersection of
semiotic dimensions, I then turn to the long-term programme of systematically
producing descriptive maps of registers – what I have called registerial cartogra-
phy (Section 4). By way of conclusion, I suggest that by viewing registers trinocu-
larly, we can also bring out tendencies in certain approaches to adopt a particular
angle of vision (Section 5).

1. But see below on the extension along the cline of instantiation from institution to situation
type within the contextual stratum of semiotic systems: Figure 2.

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 Trinocular views of register 5

2. Halliday’s trinocular vision – applied to register

2.1 Trinocular vision

Fortunately, SFL comes with a theoretical principle, and method, that enables us
to deal with slippery phenomena like register. This is Halliday’s trinocular vision
(spelled out by him and others in many places, e.g. Halliday 1978, 1979, 1996;
Halliday & Matthiessen 2014). The principle is simple but very powerful: since the
systemic functional theory of the “architecture” of language is relational in nature
(rather than modular), and is based on intersecting semiotic dimensions like the
hierarchy of stratification (cf. Matthiessen 2007), the cline of instantiation and the
spectrum of metafunctions, we can shunt along these dimensions (cf. Halliday
1961, on shunting – borrowed from the railways) and adopt different observer
points, viewing phenomena trinocularly.2
Halliday (e.g. 1978) worked this out for the hierarchy of stratification: any
phenomenon can be viewed “from above” (from a higher stratum), “from below”
(from a lower stratum) and “from roundabout” (from its own stratum, its own
primary location).3 Register variation is semantic variation in the first instance,
so its primary location is the stratum of semantics. Consequently, when we view
it “from above”, we look at it from the point of view of context – an ecologically
informed view, when we view it “from below”, we look at it from the point of
view of lexicogrammar (and by further steps, phonology, and then phonetics, or
graphology, and then graphetics).

2.2 Shunting along global and local semiotic dimensions

Now, I think that Halliday’s trinocular vision can be applied to all semiotic dimen-
sions, not only to the hierarchy of stratification, where it was first applied (cf.
Halliday 1978). For instance, locally within a given stratum, we can use it to move

2. Given the increasing popularity of the term “theoretical lens”, beginning to increase expo-
nentially sometime in the 1990s according to Google’s Ngram Viewer, it makes sense to relate
these two ways of construing observation and exploration of phenomena by referring to the
centrality of our visual systems in the construal of our experience of the world. (Canine scien-
tists would, no doubt, have chosen olfactory figures of speech in discussing how they sniff out
data.) As we change our angle of vision trinocularly, we choose different theoretical lenses: for
example, the view from above tends to be more wide-angle or fish-eye. But we can also allow
for the possibility of changed lenses while retaining the same angle of vision.
3. Halliday’s trinocular vision thus provides one more angle of vision than the common con-
trast between “top down” (i.e. “from above”) and “bottom up” (i.e. “from below”) – viz. “from
roundabout”, and this angle of vision is crucial in the observation, investigation and explanation
of semiotic systems.
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6 Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

up and down the rank scale as we adopt different views on some particular phe-
nomenon that we have located within that stratum. While I think this is by now a
well-known extension of the use of trinocular vision to semiotic dimensions other
than stratification, I believe it is still helpful to view register trinocularly in terms of
all the relevant semiotic dimensions, also helping us avoid the danger of reifying it:
– global semiotic dimensions:
– the hierarchy of stratification: register viewed from above – in terms of the
contextual variables and values that constitute the semiotic environment
that it adapts to through variation; register viewed from below – in terms
of lexicogrammatical realisations (and lower-stratal ones as well); register
viewed from roundabout – registers seen as “meanings at risk” (with the
possibility of extending this to the study of meaning in semiotic systems
other than language).
– the cline of instantiation: register viewed from above – from the point of
view of the overall meaning potential at the potential pole of the cline:
registers as subpotentials [with potentially distinct probabilities of instan-
tiation]; register viewed from below – from the point of view of instances
of this potential, i.e. texts as flow of meaning: registers as particular pat-
terns (in contexts of situation), possibly emergent as new adaptations that
can be detected at first as text types [with new relative frequencies]; reg-
ister viewed from roundabout – the point of view of the mid-region of
the cline of instantiation, between potential and instance: registers as sys-
tems of semantic strategies adapted to institutional settings (as in Halliday
1973; Patten 1988). Interpreting language as an aggregate of registers also
enables us to explain the metastability of language: it is constantly chang-
ing (evolving), adapting to (and helping create) new contexts; thus regis-
ters may come and go, having limited lifespans, but languages continue to
evolve (unless their speakers meet with catastrophic conditions).
– the spectrum of metafunction: all metafunctions (and their contextual cor-
relates) are equally involved in the characterisation of register, but we still
benefit from viewing registers horizontally as it were – ideationally (logi-
cally, experientially) as variation in the construal of our experience of the
world as meaning, interpersonally as variation in the enactment of our
roles, relations and values as meaning, and textually as variation in the
engendering of ideational and interpersonal meaning as a flow of text in
context (or rather as a swell of text; cf. Halliday 1985).

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 Trinocular views of register 7

– local semiotic dimensions:

– the hierarchy of rank: any given register will extend across all of the rel-
evant ranks of the semantic rank scale, but we still need to shunt along
this hierarchy, viewing texts as instantiating particular registers (and so
the registers themselves) both from the highest rank and the lowest rank,
making sure that they meet in the middle. (The question whether there is
one general semantic rank scale, comparable to the general rank scales in
lexicogrammar and phonology, is a very interesting one, but a tough one
to answer since it depends on extremely extensive analysis of large vol-
umes of texts from a vast number of different registers, and nobody has
even come close to such a survey in any framework. I suspect it will turn
out that the semantic rank scale needs to be differentiated both metafunc-
tionally and registerially. And it is also important to note that rank is as
it were experientially biased; the other metafunctional modes have com-
plementary models for dealing with “composition” – including the logi-
cal one of complexing, which is what Bill Mann, Sandy Thompson and I
focussed on when developing Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST)).
– the hierarchy of axis: this hierarchy has only two “values”; but any given
register can be viewed from above in terms of systemic organisation [par-
adigmatic axis] and from below in terms of structural organisation [syn-
tagmatic axis]. For example, we can view a register from above as a
range of meanings at risk within the overall meaning potential of a lan-
guage – the subpotential relevant to the solving of recurrent contextual
tasks within a given institutional setting; and we can view it from below
as recurrent semantic patterns such as positive or negative interpersonal
semantic prosodies and textual prominences such as macro-Theme and
macro-New.

Note that register variation “in language” may involve more than one language in
a multilingual community or for a multilingual speaker (cf. Matthiessen 2018). In
a multilingual community, registers may be distributed across languages, as they
may be across the dialects of one language, with certain registers being charac-
teristic of the standard languages of nation states (cf. Neumann 2012, 2018). For
instance, for a period in the history of English, the registers of the community
were distributed among Norman French, Latin and English, but then English
gradually took over all of them. Similarly, in the Arab world, registers are dis-
tributed among classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic and regional varieties
(cf. Ferguson 1959, on diglossia). For a multilingual speaker, the personal register
repertoire may be distributed across languages.

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8 Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

2.3 Beyond semiotic systems: The ordered typology of systems

If we re-view register trinocularly along the lines that I have suggested, have we
covered everything there that needs to be said about register? The short answer is
obviously no.
On the one hand, phenomenologically, we also need to consider the ordered
typology of systems operating in different phenomenal domains, viewing register
not only semiotically, but also socially, biologically and physically. For example,
we need to take account of the role of register in the complex relationship between
social hierarchies and the division of labour operating in a community, noting the
way that register variation and dialect variation intersect. (Many of the semiotic
upheavals that we witness today can be related to the physical technology of the
internet – i.e. in the first instance (but not only!) to the rapid changes in the chan-
nel aspect of the mode variable of context. The ramifications are extensive, just as
when the printing press was introduced as another new channel technology.)
On the other hand, to address and take account of all the insightful obser-
vations that have been made about register (and also the potentially misguided
ones), we need to go meta – we need to find or create a framework of observations
that transcends SFL since a great deal of very valuable work on register has been
done and is being done outside SFL, as will be easy to see following the launch of
the new pioneering journal Register Studies in 2019.
On the third hand (semiotically, we are not at all limited to our two biological
hands – and even this may change Frankenstenially within the biological order of
systems if Yuval Noah Harari is on the right track with his vision of Homo Deus,
his “history” of tomorrow – which I would call a forecast), there are quite a few
phenomena where the community has yet to reach consensus – like ideology (see
Lukin 2019) and individuation (discussed by various contributors to Bednarek &
Martin 2010). I-deology and i-ndividuation are two of the i-ssues in the explo-
ration of language in context that I pointed to in a talk at ALSFAL XIV hosted
by BUAP in Puebla (8–12 October, 2018): “Issues: ideology, individuation, institu-
tions; intervention; impact; implementation”. They were all central to the theme
of the Third Halliday-Hasan Forum, to which this paper was originally presented.

3. The intersection of stratification and instantiation

In the previous section, I discussed briefly how the trinocular view can be applied
to individual semiotic dimensions, both global and local ones, and to the ordered
typology of systems. By another step, we can intersect semiotic dimensions, and
view them together as we shunt up and down each dimension adopting trinocular
vision. To explore register variation further, we can combine the hierarchy of
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 Trinocular views of register 9

stratification and the cline of instantiation, and locate register two-dimensionally

using a stratification-instantiation matrix (e.g. Halliday 1991, 2002; Matthiessen
2007, 2015c). This makes it possible to locate register variation in relation to
other kinds of linguistic variation, viz. codal variation and dialectal variation (e.g.
Hasan 1973; Halliday 1978), as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Register variation in relation to other kinds of variation in language

In terms of the cline of instantiation, registerial variation is located in the mid

regions between the potential pole of the cline and the instance pole. It contrasts
with codal variation and with dialectal variation, both of which are located higher
up along the cline, closer to the potential pole. (On the challenge of locating codal
variation along the cline, see Halliday 2007 [1994]: 236–237.) At the potential pole,
dialectal variation may serve as the origin of differentiation into different lan-
guages, and dialects may evolve over time into increasingly distinct languages.
In terms of the hierarchy of stratification, register variation is located within
the content plane of language – within the semantic stratum in the first instance.
Thus register variation is semantic variation in the first instance, but since the
relationship between semantics and lexicogrammar is a natural one, this semantic
variation is also manifested through realisation as lexicogrammatical variation
(and, by another step, registers may also vary prosodically).
Register variation is like codal variation in that the variation is located within
the semantic stratum in the first instance: both are kinds of semantic variation,
unlike dialectal variation. But register variation differs from codal variation in its
relationship to context: it is variation adapting to variation in context, so it is varia-
tion “according to use” (cf. Halliday et al. 1964; Halliday 1978), whereas codal vari-
ation is variation “according to user”, just like dialect variation. Codal variation is
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10 Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

variation in the deployment of semantic strategies by different users (characteris-

able in terms of subcultures such as those of class and caste) in the same contexts (or
rather in comparable contexts), as Hasan (e.g. 1989) has shown very clearly.
In contrast with both register variation and codal variation, dialect variation
is “low level”; it is in the first instance low-ranking grammatical and lexical vari-
ation and phonological variation, which is why it has often been characterised as
“different ways of saying the same thing”. It is variation against a contextual con-
stant, and it is variation “according to user” – different groups of users in terms
of geographical, temporal and social provenance. But the identities of users con-
structed by dialect variation and codal variation are different.
Now, the picture presented in Figure 1 is a theoretical one involving degrees of
analytical separation of the different kinds of variation. Analytically, we can inter-
pret and explain the three kinds of variation by treating them as independent; but
in “real life”, they are, of course, often related; there are likely to be combinations
characteristic of particular language users, or groups of users, and this is brought
out when norms change, as when the BBC opened the way for their news reg-
isters to be presented not only in RP but also in (modified) versions of regional
dialects (or really accents), or when actors like Michael Caine (who’d grown up
with Cockney in the Elephant and Castle) were allowed to continue using their
accents as protagonists in the registers of mainstream films.
In reference to the intersection of instantiation and stratification shown in
Figure 1, we can thus emphasise that register variation is a region in the two-
dimensional semiotic space defined by this intersection. This region has inde-
terminate borders; and it can be viewed from the different angles defined by
trinocular vision: e.g. from above along the cline of instantiation as subsystemic
patterns or from below as emergent types of instances. Methodologically, this
means that there are different angles of approach in the investigation of register
variation and of particular registers.
This methodological point is important to the long-term programme of reg-
isterial cartography, which I will turn to soon. But let me make one more point
about the three different kinds of variation. They were explored, theorised and
described initially in terms of language, but as we widen our focus to include
other semiotic systems, and to include combinations of semiotic systems working
together in a complementary fashion in the making of meaning in context, it is
important to consider the question of how – and to what extent – these three
types of variation are manifested in semiotic systems other than language. For
example, are there dialects of pictorial semiotic systems – and codes and registers?
I think the answer is very clearly yes (and examples could be drawn from the cur-
rent interest in identity construction), but I will focus on register variation.
The pioneering descriptions of semiotic systems other than language or of
semiotic systems working together with language have arguably not tended to
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 Trinocular views of register 11

foreground register variation. Naturally, some aspects of differentiation according

to register present themselves immediately: in particular, those associated with
the mode parameter of context, and within mode, channel is obviously crucial;
gestures accompany spoken language in face-to-face interaction (at least in the
exchange of meanings involving both speaker and addressee; most of us also ges-
ture when speaking on the phone) but charts accompany written language.
But what I have in mind is the general principle of registerial adaptation
according to context of use, something I explore in Matthiessen (2009). In the
case of language, registers are very clearly contextual adaptations of the general
meaning potential, but is the same true of registers in other semiotic systems?
For example, are flow charts (used in enabling contexts of instruction) and pic-
ture book illustrations (used in recreating contexts of narration) registerial vari-
ants of one pictorial system, or registerially distinct pictorial systems? It seems to
me that this is a fertile area for further research, including corpus-based research
(of the kind undertaken by Giovanni Parodi and his colleagues). The emphasis
on genre – which is really another way of talking about register4 – in the “GeM”
model developed by Bateman (2008) provides us with a framework for exploring
these issues (cf. also Bateman et al. 2017; and empirical corpus-based studies, e.g.
Hiippala 2015; Zhang 2018).

4. Registerial cartography

4.1 The notion of semiotic cartography

Let me now pick up the thread of registerial cartography, which I introduced but
left hanging in the previous section. Quite a long time ago, I began what I thought
of as a long-term research programme of mapping out a wide range of registers
operating in different institutional settings. I wanted to achieve descriptive cov-
erage not only in terms of both variation in instantiation in terms of the overall
meaning potential in these institutional settings but also in terms of the hierarchy
of stratification – viz. description of the ranges of values of the contextual parame-
ters of field, tenor and mode, and of the semantic strategies associated with these
values (and by another step their lexicogrammatical realisations).
I started to use the analogy of producing maps of regions of our material
world in the 1980s as a way of talking about the expanding coverage of the lexi-
cogrammar of English in the “Nigel grammar” of the “Penman” text generation

4. This is, of course, an over-simplification, perhaps along the lines of Matthiessen (1993); cf.
Matthiessen (2015c).

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12 Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

system, since it seemed to me that we were mapping out part of semiotic space –
in this case, the lexicogrammatical region of that space (hence the term “lexi-
cogrammatical cartography”; cf. Matthiessen 1995). This analogy was helpful also
because it came with an invitation to recognise and adopt different projection sys-
tems: for example, if the projection system is grounded in the experiential mode
of the ideational metafunction, rank will move to the fore, but other metafunc-
tional projection systems would be likely to background it, compressing or tran-
scending the largely experientially-based rank scale.
Like material maps, semiotic maps are based on dimensions – not on longi-
tude and latitude, but rather on the semiotic dimensions discussed in Section 2.
The first such semiotic map was Halliday’s (e.g. 1970) function-rank matrix, a map
of the resources of lexicogrammar based on the intersection of rank and meta-
function. Since then, we have other semiotic maps in the form of matrices based
on the intersection of semiotic dimensions, e.g. the stratification-instantiation
matrix (cf. Halliday 2002; Halliday & Matthiessen 2014; Matthiessen 2007).

4.2 Registerial cartography

The cartographic analogy between semiotic and physical systems turned out to be
very helpful, even powerful, so I have continued to use semiotic cartography, and
the notion of registerial cartography is an extension of the commitment to produc-
ing comprehensive maps of semiotic space. There is, of course, a complementary
figure of speech based on geography – viz. the conception of “cultural geography”,
due in large part to the pioneering work by Carl O. Sauer (cf. Anderson et al.
2003; Anderson 2015); and Gu Yueguo has drawn on this tradition to develop the
approach of “discourse geography” (e.g. Gu 2002).
In pursuing registerial cartography, we focus on the mid-region of the cline
of instantiation, operating with a range from closer to the potential pole to closer
to the instance pole, as shown in Figure 2. This means specifying registers at dif-
ferent degrees of delicacy of focus, as pointed out by Halliday in his discussion of
scientific English:

A register is a cluster of associated features having a greater-than-random (or

rather, greater than predicted by their unconditioned probabilities) tendency to
co-occur; and, like a dialect, it can be identified at any delicacy of focus (cf. Hasan
1973). Whatever the focus, of course, there will always be mixed or borderline
cases; but by and large “scientific English” is a recognizable category, and any
speaker of English for whom it falls within the domain of experience knows it
when he sees it or hears it. (2004 [1988]: 141)

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 Trinocular views of register 13

In creating maps of registers, we can thus expect to range from generalised registers
such as scientific English to emergent text types.5 In terms of context, this means
ranging from institutions (cultural domains) to situation types. As Figure 2 shows,
registerial cartography means achieving stratal coverage: registers, as functional
varieties of language, are described semantically and lexicogrammatically (and ide-
ally also phonologically or graphologically); and their semiotic environments are
described contextually in terms of institutional settings and situation types.

Figure 2. Location of the research programme of mapping out registers in terms of the
cline of instantiation and the hierarchy of stratification

4.3 Adding another global semiotic dimension: The metafunctional

spectrum

As we develop registerial maps, the contextual and linguistic descriptions of reg-

isters need to cover the full metafunctional spectrum: field and ideational mean-
ing, tenor and interpersonal meaning, and mode and textual meaning. Here we
can move in from above, starting with context, or from below, starting with lexi-
cogrammatical and/or semantic patterns.
Since register variation is by nature functional variation in context, it does make
sense to move in from above, starting with field, tenor and mode. For example,

5. We can also choose to describe registers either (i) systemically as subpotentials of the overall
meaning potential of a language or (ii) systemically as standalone systems adapted to a particu-
lar institutional setting, as Halliday (1973) does with his example of maternal regulatory seman-
tics. Patten (1988) shows why the latter approach is motivated in a problem-solving framework.

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14 Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

Halliday (2004 [1988]: 140) characterises scientific English in terms of its semiotic
environment in terms of these three contextual parameters:

The term “scientific English” is a useful label for a generalized functional variety,
or register, of the modern English language. To label it in this way is not to
imply that it is either stationary or homogeneous. The term can be taken to
denote a semiotic space within which there is a great deal of variability at any
one time, as well as continuing diachronic evolution. The diatypic variation can
be summarized in terms of field, tenor and mode: in field, extending, transmit-
ting or exploring knowledge in the physical, biological or social sciences; in tenor,
addressed to specialists, to learners or to laymen, from within the same group
(e.g. specialist to specialist) or across groups (e.g. lecturer to students); and in
mode, phonic or graphic channel, most congruent (e.g. formal ‘written language’
with graphic channel) or less so (e.g. formal with phonic channel), and with vari-
ation in rhetorical function – expository, hortatory, polemic, imaginative and so
on. So for example in the research programme in the Linguistic Properties of Sci-
entific English carried out at University College London during the 1960s the grid
used was one of field by tenor, with three subject areas (biology, chemistry and
physics) by three ‘brows’, high, middle and low (learned journals, college text-
books, and magazines for the general public).

Having located a register contextually, we can then go on to investigate its lin-

guistic properties, as Halliday (2004 [1988]) does in his study of the evolution of
scientific English and Huddleston et al. (1968) do in the study of the linguistic
properties of scientific English mentioned by Halliday. Alternatively, we can move
in from below, searching for lexicogrammatical patterns in corpora of texts. This
is a natural approach if we want to base the account on automated analysis using
various corpus tools such as SketchEngine or Wmatrix, and it is part of the
methodology worked out by Douglas Biber since the 1980s – his Multidimen-
sional Analysis (e.g. Biber 1988). But by relying on automated analysis, we are of
course limiting ourselves to fairly “low-level” patterns; we cannot yet reveal the
semantic patterns characteristic of a given register – thus we may fail to bring out
the nature of a given register as a strategic semantic resource.

4.4 Further semiotic dimensions: axis and rank

Stratally and metafunctionally, register maps should thus ideally be comprehen-

sive even if they start with a low delicacy of focus. But they also need to be com-
prehensive in terms of the local semiotic dimensions of rank and axis.
In terms of rank, they need to cover the scale from macro to micro. In gram-
mar, this means from clause to word or morpheme (depending on the nature of
the language); and in semantics, this means from text to the smallest semantic

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 Trinocular views of register 15

units. There is still no consensus about the nature of the semantic rank scale
in SFL – or rather, rank scales, since I think semantic compositional scales are
likely to vary both across metafunctions and from one register to another. And
in fact, we need to recognise patterns “above” the text since registers are likely
to engender macro-texts. Such macro-texts may be registerially heterogeneous,
being composed of texts that complement one another but serve rather differ-
ent uses. For example, a textbook in physics is likely to include experimental
procedures, recounts of experiments, classifications and explanations of physi-
cal phenomena, and perhaps also arguments about different theories like the dif-
ferent theories of the atom. Thus in his analysis of Newton’s Opticks, Halliday
(2004 [1988]) found differences in the extent to which Newton used grammatical
metaphor between recounts of experiments (fairly low) and construction of the-
ory (fairly high).
In terms of axis, register maps need to cover both paradigmatic and syntag-
matic patterns. Paradigmatically, they need to show the systemic terms “at risk”
and also include register-specific probabilities; and syntagmatically, they need to
include the semantic structures engendered by these systemic terms.
In SFL, the paradigmatic description is, of course, primary; but the explicit
recognition of systemic organisation could also be of value in other approaches
to the description of register. McEnery & Hardie (2012: 113) express the concern
that the features that Biber (e.g. 1988) uses in his Multidimensional Analysis are
not chosen systematically: “Biber’s procedure for choosing linguistics features” “is
fundamentally ad hoc”. They put forward an alternative (p. 114):

So we might argue that the MD methodology could be more solidly founded if

based on a selection of features which is both principled and exhaustive – a stan-
dard which Biber’s feature-lists approach but do not reach. How might such a
fully motivated list of lexicogrammatical features be derived? At this point we
move into the realm of hypothesis. However, one possible approach is to con-
sider the functions of a language as a feature tree. This could start at the very high
level of nominal components versus verbal components (since the noun – verb
distinction is one of the most universal features of language structure), and then
diversify from there, with attention to contrasting linguistic options and category
alternatives at each branch in the tree.

They illustrate their notion of “a feature tree” with verbal and nominal features
(p. 114). But this is of course precisely the kind of information that system net-
works in SFL have represented since Halliday introduced them in the 1960s. By
referencing system networks in our descriptions of registers we can ensure that
they are both “principled and exhaustive”.

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16 Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

4.5 Aggregates of registers

By theorising register variation in terms of the cline of instantiation, as in Figure 1,

we can bring out the point that a language is nothing but an aggregate or assem-
blage of registers (cf. Halliday 1978; Matthiessen 1993). This is important when
we try to theorise and investigate the evolution of any given language: an impor-
tant aspect of its evolution is the changing make-up of its range of registers; this
enables languages to adapt to changing contextual conditions, and of course also
to influence them through emergent patterns of meaning. Many registers gradu-
ally emerge and then disappear over time, obvious examples having to do with the
technology of channels within the mode parameter of context.
At the same time, within a language there will be recurrent aggregates of reg-
isters – for example, the registers needed to “do physics” or the registers needed
to deliver healthcare to patients in an emergency department of a hospital. Such
aggregates can be located within professional institutional settings; and they are
likely to cover disparate but complementary situations types (as in a patient’s jour-
ney through an emergency department of a hospital; cf. Matthiessen 2013).
But registers may be selected and aggregated for other reasons, ones that may
cut across institutions. Thus ideological formations can be interpreted as regis-
terial aggregates. Here it is important to recognise that ideologies can be inter-
preted both linguistically and contextually – contextually as sub-cultural patterns
within the overall context of culture of a given community. Contextually, ideolo-
gies are alternative and competing world views (field), alternative and competing
value systems and protocols for interaction (tenor), and alternative and compet-
ing deployments of language and other semiotic systems (mode). So they marshal
different aggregates of registers.
If we now switch from the ideologies of groups to the individual styles of per-
sons as meaning-makers, we can see that the notion of registerial aggregates is still
important. As we develop as meaning-making persons – as meaners, we extend
and revise our personal meaning potentials by adding to our own registerial reper-
toires. As we take on new roles associated with new activities, we gradually mas-
ter the registers associated with these roles and activities; to echo Firth (1957), we
learn new lines.

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 Trinocular views of register 17

5. Conclusion

In this paper, I have continued my engagement with register by foregrounding the

way in which systemic functional theory empowers us to view the phenomenon
of functional variation in language (and in other semiotic systems) from different
angles – adopting Halliday’s principle of trinocular vision, and the related princi-
ple of shunting.
When I first started reading about register in the 1970s (e.g. Halliday 1973,
1978), most theoretical insights and descriptive contributions were coming from
systemic functional linguistics (for a note on parallel developments, cf. Ure & Ellis
1974; cf. also other strands of insight, like the work on and with sublanguages
in machine translation since the late 1970s, e.g. Grishman & Kittredge 1986, or
indeed the interest in text typology in translation studies). SFL is still a central
contributor, as the third Halliday-Hasan Forum reflects; but functional variation
is now being explored in other frameworks and traditions as well – as is demon-
strated by the articles in the first issue of the new journal Register Studies, pub-
lished in April 2019 by Benjamins. So while phenomena related to functional
variation have long also been explored under headings such as text typology, sub-
language (in machine translation) and language for special purposes, there are
new journals – prominently, Language, Context and Text and Register Studies –
where researchers coming from different backgrounds can read each other and
compare notes.
So adopting trinocular vision – which equips us with complementary theoret-
ical “lenses”, we can now take one step further and try to construe the different
approaches illuminating the phenomenon of functional variation in semiotic sys-
tems trinocularly. In passing, I have suggested that these different approaches may
foreground different angles of vision. For example, if we construe functional varia-
tion systemic functionally as semantic variation according to context of use, then we
simply must include manual text analysis in order to get at the higher-level patterns
of variation in the semantics; but if we come from a tradition oriented towards the
use of automatic analysis of large volumes of text in the form of corpora, then we are
bound to view functional variation “from below” in the first instance.
Here trinocular vision can help us adopt a two-pronged approach, one that
involves both manual text analysis (of small samples) oriented towards higher-
ranking lexicogrammar and automated analysis of corpora of (large samples of )
texts oriented towards “low-level” analysis.

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18 Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Geoff Williams for his comments on an earlier version of this paper, and
to him and other participants in the Halliday-Hasan Forum in November 2018 for discussion
and comments.

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Address for correspondence

Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Faculty of Humanities
Dept. of English
Hung Hom, Kowloon
Hong Kong
cmatthie@mac.com

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