Systemic Functional Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and Psycholinguistics Opportunities For Dialogue

Functions of Language 20(2) Christopher S.
Butler
SYSTEMIC LINGUISTICS, COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
This is NOT the final printed version of the article. The reference to the
printed version is as follows:
Butler, Christopher S. 2013. Systemic Functional Linguistics, Cognitive

Linguistics and psycholinguistics: opportunities for dialogue. Functions of
Language 20:2 (2013), 185–218. (doi 10.1075/fol.20.2.03but)
The article is under copyright and the publisher (John Benjamins) should
be contacted for permission to re-use or reprint the material in any form.
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Functions of Language 20(2) Christopher S. Butler
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Systemic Functional Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and

psycholinguistics: opportunities for dialogue
Christopher S. Butler
Swansea University, University of Huddersfield, University of Leeds
The overall aim of this article is to explain why researchers working in Systemic
Functional Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics would benefit from dialogue with
people working in psycholinguistics, and with each other. After a brief introduction, the
positions on cognition taken in the Sydney and Cardiff models of Systemic Functional
Linguistics are reviewed and critiqued. I then assess the extent to which Cognitive
Linguistics has honoured the ‘cognitive commitment’ which it claims to make. The
following section examines compatibilities between Systemic Functional and Cognitive
Linguistic approaches, first outlining existing work which combines Hallidayan and
cognitive perspectives, then discussing other potential areas of contact between the two,
and finally examining the Cardiff model in relation to Cognitive Linguistics. The final
section presents a collaborative view, suggesting that the ultimate aim of functionally-
oriented (including cognitive) linguistics should be to attempt to answer the question
‘How does the natural language user work?’, and pointing out that collaboration between
proponents of different linguistic models, and between linguists and researchers in other
disciplines which study language, is crucial to this enterprise. Suggestions are made for
ways in which dialogue across the areas of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Cognitive
Linguistics and psycholinguistics could contribute to such a project.
1. Introduction*
Many of us who work in linguistics operate within a single model, resolutely ploughing our
own theoretical furrow in order to pursue a particular and at times very restricted view of
language. This is in many ways understandable: a thorough grasp of a single model is hard
enough to achieve, without attempting to get to grips with others, and the politics and
sociology of the linguistic enterprise also exert powerful influences. It can also be argued,
however, that in order to comprehend the highly complex, multi-faceted phenomenon which
we call language we need to go beyond individual models, engaging in dialogue which will
help us to achieve a better understanding and integration of the many facets of human
linguistic ability. In this article, I will be opting for the latter perspective and, in particular,
showing how I believe practitioners of Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth SFL) and
Cognitive Linguistics1 (henceforth CL) could benefit from constructive dialogue with
psycholinguists as well as with each other.
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More than three decades ago, Michael Halliday distanced himself from psychological
modes of explanation in the following terms:
I am not really interested in the boundaries between disciplines, but if you pressed me
for one specific answer, I would have to say that for me linguistics is a branch of
sociology. Language is a part of the social system, and there is no need to interpose a
psychological level of interpretation. I am not saying this is not a relevant perspective,
but it is not a necessary one for the exploration of language. (Halliday 1978: 38–39)
In accordance with this, Fawcett (1993: 628), commenting on the “‘anti-psychological’
stance” of many SFL linguists, attributes to Halliday the statement “I stop at the skin”. In
recent years Halliday and his colleagues have shown more interest in relating their view of
language to discussions of brain functioning. They have, however, rejected the models put
forward by classical cognitive science, in favour of an approach which prioritises the
sociosemiotic nature of language and adopts a phenomenological view of cognition. Fawcett,
on the other hand, claims that his ‘Cardiff’ model of Systemic Functional Linguistics is
‘cognitive-interactive’. Neither ‘dialect’ of SFL has attempted to make strong links with that
set of approaches which claims to give priority to cognitive concerns, viz. CL, despite the fact
that in some respects SFL has greater affinities with cognitive approaches than with other
structural-functional theories such as Functional Discourse Grammar or Role and Reference
Grammar. Furthermore, SFL has paid little attention to work in psycholinguistics/the
psychology of language, and it can also be argued that present-day CL makes fewer links with
this work than it could.
In the present article I shall examine both SFL and CL in terms of their positions on
the relevance of psychological and psycholinguistic work. A major theme will be what it
might actually mean for an approach to be cognitive. Section 2 examines critically the
rejection of the classical cognitive science approach to cognition by scholars working within
the Sydney framework, and their espousal of a phenomenological, ‘post-cognitive’ approach.
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Section 3 then examines the Cardiff SFL claim to be a cognitive, as well as an interactive,
theory. Section 4 outlines the principles on which work in CL is based, focusing on the ways
in which, and extent to which, it can justifiably be said to be ‘cognitive’. Section 5 first
explores existing links between Hallidayan SFL and CL, then moves on to discuss points of
common interest which could provide launching sites for a fruitful interchange of views, not
only between these two approaches but also with psychologists and psycholinguists. We then
look at possibilities for the interaction of proponents of the Cardiff variant of SFL with
linguists working in CL. Section 6 proposes a collaborative enterprise, the aim of which is to
study ‘how the natural language user works’, and which would involve a range of disciplines
in which language is a focus of study. The advantages and problems of integrating linguistic
theories with work on psychological approaches to language are briefly reviewed. It is
suggested that SFL, CL and the psychology of language can all play an important part in this
enterprise, and that in this process existing relationships should be exploited further and new
potential relationships developed. Crucial to this endeavour will be the use of empirical
(including experimental) techniques of different kinds for investigating language and its use.
2. Hallidayan SFL and cognition
The following quotation from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy sets out the
main claims of the classical cognitive science approach:
The central hypothesis of cognitive science is that thinking can best be understood in
terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that
operate on those structures. While there is much disagreement about the nature of the
representations and computations that constitute thinking, the central hypothesis is
general enough to encompass the current range of thinking in cognitive science,
including connectionist theories which model thinking using artificial neural
networks. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/, accessed 31.5.2012)
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Classical cognitive science thus takes the view that the human mind/brain is a computational
device which manipulates symbolic representations of aspects of the world. Note that this
does not mean that the brain is literally the same kind of thing as a modern digital computer:
indeed, the nature of the mental ‘computer’ is a matter of debate in cognitive science. Rather,
the claim is that the brain manipulates symbolic representations of various types of
‘knowledge’ or ‘information’, just as a computer does, though not necessarily in the same
ways.
The assumption is that experimental techniques and modelling by means of computer
implementation will be important in the methodology of the enterprise. For instance, Harley
(2008: 9-19), in his introduction to modern psycholinguistics as an essentially experimental
science, writes about the measurement of reaction times, often in conjunction with priming
studies, and about neuroimaging methods such as electroencephalography, event-related
potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging, as well as observational techniques
such as the recording of speech errors in ‘normal’ speakers, or studies of the effects of brain
damage on linguistic performance.
The position taken by Halliday & Matthiessen, which contrasts strongly with that
represented in the characterisation of cognitive science given above, is succinctly summarised
in the following quotation:
It seems to us that our dialogue is relevant to current debates in cognitive science. In
one sense, we are offering it as an alternative to mainstream currents in this area,
since we are saying that cognition ‘is’ (that is, can most profitably be modelled as)
not thinking but meaning: the ‘mental’ map is in fact a semiotic map, and ‘cognition’
is just a way of talking about language. In modelling language as meaning, we are
treating it as a linguistic construct: hence, as something that is construed in the
lexicogrammar. Instead of explaining language by reference to cognitive processes,
we explain cognition by reference to linguistic processes. (Halliday & Matthiessen
1999 [2006]: ix-x)2
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This approach is further explained in the following:
… our own approach, both in theory and in method, is in contradistinction to that of
cognitive science: we treat ‘information’ as meaning rather than as knowledge and
interpret language as a semiotic system, and more specifically as a social semiotic,
rather than as a system of the human mind. This perspective leads us to place less
emphasis on the individual than would be typical of a cognitivist approach; unlike
thinking and knowing, at least as these are traditionally conceived, meaning is a
social, intersubjective process. If experience is interpreted as meaning, its construal
becomes an act of collaboration, sometimes of conflict, and always of negotiation.
(Halliday & Matthiessen 1999 [2006]: 2)
These statements make it clear that Halliday & Matthiessen intend their proposals as a
replacement for earlier cognitive science views of what cognition is, rather than
complementing them.
As is not surprising in view of the strongly ideological orientation of much work in
the Sydney model of SFL, and its links with Critical Discourse Analysis, the line taken by
Halliday & Matthiessen is basically to deconstruct the discourse of classical cognitive
science. Their strategy is to compare the construals of experience in the mental domain, firstly
in the ‘folk model’ employed in everyday talk and secondly in the discourse of cognitive
science. Through an analysis of grammatical metaphor in cognitive science texts, they
conclude that “while the domain of scientific theorizing about cognition is determined by the
grammar of processes of sensing, the model is depersonalized, and sensing is construed
metaphorically in terms of abstract ‘things’ such as knowledge, memory, concepts” (p. 595),
and that “[t]he ‘scientific model’ in mainstream cognitive science is centrally concerned with
information located in the individual’s mind” (p. 596, emphasis in original). They take this
as evidence that cognitive science is basically an extension of the folk model rather than a
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scientific alternative. Halliday & Matthiessen (p. 599) also reject what they see as an
emphasis on unconscious motivating factors in cognitive science, arguing that unconscious
processes are not mirrored in the system of process types in the grammar.
Halliday & Matthiessen’s angle on cognitive science is, then, to interpret the language
of cognitive science texts as indicating the way in which cognitive scientists see their own
discipline, and to imply that analysis in terms of reifications such as ‘information’,
‘representation’, and indeed ‘mind’ and ‘cognition’, is inferior to the folk model because it
effaces the Sensers (the human beings doing the thinking, knowing, understanding, caring,
and the like) and so is “remote from our everyday experience with sensing” (p. 599).
Central to Halliday & Matthiessen’s view is the idea of embodiment. They claim that
“[l]anguage is able to create meaning because it is related to our material being (ourselves,
and our environment) in three distinct and complementary ways”, these being that “the
processes of language take place in physiological (including neural) and physical space and
time”, that language “is a theory about the material world”, and that “language itself is a
metaphor for the material world”, in its stratified, multifunctional organisation (p. 602,
emphasis in original). When noting the concepts of ‘embodied mind’, ‘social mind’ and
‘discursive mind’ in the literature, Halliday & Matthiessen suggest that when mind is related
to biological, social or semiotic factors
... the mind itself tends to disappear; it is no longer necessary as a construct sui
generis. Instead of experience being construed by the mind, in the form of
knowledge, we can say that experience is construed by the grammar: to ‘know’
something is to have transformed some portion of experience into meaning. (p. 603).
The theme of embodiment is taken up by Thibault (2004). Introducing his book Brain, mind
and the signifying body: An ecosocial semiotic theory, Thibault too expresses his
dissatisfaction with what he sees as a disembodied view of mind:
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An increasing number of studies in recent years show the inadequacies of the view
that the brain is the seat of disembodied mental processes, or that cognitive and
meaning-making activities stop at the skin of the individual organism. Moreover, the
idea that the ‘inner’ mental life of the individual can be disjoined from our meaning-
making (semiotic) activity itself needs to be re-examined. (p. 3)
… the discourse of mind has remained silent about the larger-scale ecosocial systems
in which individuals and their activities are embedded and which mediate and link the
activities of individuals together as component subsystems which function in larger-
scale, systemically-organized wholes (p. 8)
In Thibault’s own account:
Rather than a constitutive separation of mind, body, and environment, the focus of the
present study will be on the ways in which individuals and their interactions with both
their inner and outer environments are mediated by higher-scalar systems of
interpretance and the social practices in and through which these systems of
interpretance are deployed in particular contexts. (p. 8)
Thibault concludes that “meaning-making is a distributed activity between body-brain
systems and their ecosocial semiotic environments on diverse scalar levels of spatio-temporal
and semiotic organization” (2004: 316).
Together with the emphasis on embodiment and integration with social practices goes
a reinterpretation of the nature of consciousness (Halliday 1995 [2003], 2004; Halliday &
Matthiessen 1999 [2006]: 607–610; Matthiessen 2004), predicated on the work of the
neuroscientist Gerald Edelman (1992; see also 2004) on the co-evolution of language and the
brain, which suggests a much more central role for language in the development of
consciousness than has usually been assumed, and proposes a theory in which ‘neuronal
group selection’ leads to the development of primary consciousness, consisting of the higher
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brain functions of perceptual categorisation, memory and learning. Higher-order
consciousness, however, is “based on the occurrence of direct awareness in a human being
who has language and a reportable subjective life” (Edelman 1992: 115). Halliday (1995
[2003]: 396)3 interprets Edelman’s work as showing that the evolutionary emergence of
language has been part of the history of mankind since the evolution of human beings, is
social in nature, and must be stratal in its organisation, with grammar appearing last of all in
the evolutionary sequence. Halliday sees all this as fully consistent with the SFL model of
language, and goes on to draw parallels between the ontogenetic development of language in
the child and the phylogenetic evolution of language in the human species, a topic which is
taken up again in some detail in Halliday (2004) and Matthiessen (2004). Halliday (1995
[2003]: 404) concludes that
… what we have learnt about the ontogenesis of language — how the individual child
develops the semiotic potential of the human species, in tandem with the development
of the biological potential — is not only compatible with, but mutually supportive of,
the theory of neuronal group selection as the neurological basis of consciousness,
specifically higher-level consciousness or ‘mind’.
Thibault (2004: Chapters 4–6), developing the ideas stated programmatically by Halliday &
Matthiessen, elaborates a semiotically-based account of consciousness in which Edelman’s
work is again frequently cited.
The accounts given by Halliday, Matthiessen and Thibault resonate strongly with
work in ‘discursive psychology’ (see e.g. Edwards 1997; Potter 1998, 2000) which is
sometimes, somewhat provocatively, branded as ‘post-cognitive psychology’ or ‘post-
cognitivism’ (see also the important collection of articles in Calvo & Gomila 2008). Potter
(2000: 31), for example, criticises cognitivism “for failing to conceptualize practices in a way
that recognizes their action orientation and co-construction, and to appreciate how they are
given sense through people’s categories, formulations and orientations”; discursive
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psychology, on the other hand, “focuses on the productions of versions of reality and
cognition as parts of practices in natural settings” and “is offered as one potential successor to
cognitivism”.
A further clear affinity is with the work of Lucy (1992a, 1992b, 1996) on the
linguistic relativity hypothesis rooted in the work of Sapir and Whorf, which holds, with
varying degrees of strength, that the language we speak influences the way we think. Like
Halliday, whom he cites in his work, Lucy believes that any valid account of cognition must
take into account the privileged position of language within human semiotic systems:
… in the human case, it is important to ask whether the use of the semiotic form we
call language in and of itself fundamentally alters the vision of the world held by
humans in contrast to other species. We can call this the hypothesis of semiotic
relativity’. (Lucy 1996: 38–39, emphasis in original).
Lucy sees this as underpinning an essential difference between the human sciences and the
physical and life sciences: “the human sciences are fundamentally distinct from the physical
and life sciences precisely because they attempt to encompass a new order of regularity
closely associated with the use of the symbolic medium of natural language” (Lucy 1996: 39).
He also stresses the importance of the sociocultural functioning of language.
A detailed critical evaluation of the stance taken on cognition by SFL linguists such
as Halliday, Matthiessen and Thibault could easily occupy at least a whole paper by itself and
is clearly beyond the scope of the present article. In what follows, I shall confine myself to
discussion of a few points which seem to me to be particularly important.
Let us first remind ourselves of statements quoted at the beginning of this section, to
the effect that “‘cognition’ is just a way of talking about language” and that “[i]nstead of
explaining language by reference to cognitive processes, we explain cognition by reference to
linguistic processes” (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999 [2006]: x). Presumably, we are justified
in concluding that the authors believe that all aspects of cognition can, and should, be
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reinterpreted in terms of language. In such an extreme form, this claim is surely indefensible:
for instance, although there is work on vision which emphasises an action-oriented, embodied
approach similar to that advocated by Hallidayan linguists and discursive psychologists (see
e.g. Thompson 1995: xii), visual processing clearly is not identical with linguistic processing
and deserves to be recognised and studied in its own right, though with due attention to the
relationships between the two kinds of phenomenon (see, for instance, papers in McKevitt, Ó
Nualláin & Mulvihill 2002). Furthermore, the position taken by Halliday and his colleagues
undermines attempts to demonstrate basic general cognitive mechanisms which may underpin
both language and other cognitive systems such as vision.
A further problem with Halliday & Matthiessen’s account is their rejection of the
postulation of unconscious motivations in cognitive science, on the grounds that such
motivations are not borne out by how speakers of English use language relating to mental
processes. Firstly, this is surely an oversimplification of the situation. Although it is true that
(in English at least) there is no special class of processes concerned with unconscious mental
activity, speakers do indeed refer spontaneously to their unconscious knowledge and
processing, as in But I think I knew unconsciously that the supposed crime was twofold…
(British National Corpus, World Edition, CEE 424), an example which also incidentally
illustrates the use of interpersonal grammatical metaphor. But secondly, and more
fundamentally, the discounting of unconscious processes implies a rejection of any attempt to
account for how language processing actually occurs, despite that fact that both Halliday &
Matthiessen (2004: 24) and Thibault (2004: 173) recognise the unconscious nature of
processing. However, as Gibbs (2007a: 42), points out, “psychological studies, across a wide
range of subfields within the discipline, have long demonstrated that people actually have
very poor insights into the underlying cognitive processes at work when they perceive, learn,
solve problems, use language”.
So how do we find out about the kinds of cognitive process which are involved in the
use of language? There is no doubt that close analysis of actual usage, as revealed in naturally
occurring discourse, can provide a great deal of useful indirect information about cognitive
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processing, as is shown in the work of linguists who adopt a usage-based perspective. Bybee
(2010), for example, building on her own prior work and that of other usage-based linguists,
demonstrates very convincingly that analysing the detailed patterns of usage and of changes
in usage across time can give information on how language use affects the storage of
linguistic items in memory and how that storage is organised. Furthermore, analysis of
attested discourses is useful in revealing information about, for example, the pervasive use of
metaphorical and metonymic devices in expressing what speakers want to say (see e.g.
Deignan & Potter 2004: 1233). However, when analysing a phenomenon as complex as the
processing of language, we need to deploy as wide a range of techniques as possible. If we are
eventually to arrive at an accurate view of what language processing involves, we cannot
afford to brush aside what psycholinguists, psychologists and neurolinguists can tell us, using
their own very different, largely experimental techniques.
The emphasis in Hallidayan SFL on the social semiotic aspects of language, and the
concomitant lack of interest in the psycholinguistic mechanisms involved in language
processing, also have important implications for the concept of choice which is so central to
Halliday’s theorising about language. Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 24) make it clear that
choice, represented by the paradigmatic options formalised as systems linked in networks, is
not intended in the sense of the cognitive operations involved, but rather in terms of “analytic
steps in the grammar’s construal of meaning”, and they refer the reader to the work of Sydney
Lamb (1998) for “the relationship between semantic choice and what goes on in the brain”.
They thus evade the issue of how selections from the potential afforded by a language are
made and implemented at the cognitive level. However, language is both a social semiotic
system and a cognitively represented and implemented phenomenon, and we must ultimately
integrate these two kinds of perspective into any realistic model of how human beings
communicate using language.
A final point worthy of note is that although Edelman’s neuronal selection theory, on
which Halliday & Matthiessen’s account of consciousness draws heavily, clearly has its
supporters (for largely positive reviews, see e.g. Clancey 1991; Siegel 1993; Smythies 1996),
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it is certainly not without its critics. Johnson (1992), reviewing Edelman’s book Bright air,
brilliant fire shortly after its publication, is struck by just how much Edelman’s neural
Darwinism sounds like computing, despite his rejection of the view that the human nervous
system is hard-wired and so precise, in the same way as a digital computer. Indeed, Johnson
exposes this as a straw man argument: as he says, neurologists, psychologists and computer
scientists had even by the early 90s begun to see much of the brain as randomly connected,
and had put forward models in which orderly patterns of categorisation and generalisation
emerge from randomly-connected networks which simulate neurons, in a connectionist
architecture. Dennett (1992), himself a renowned researcher in the field of consciousness,
accuses Edelman of misunderstanding the fundamental philosophical issues, and like
Johnson, points out that the targets of Edelman’s criticism bore rather little resemblance to
theories which were serious contenders at the time. McCrone’s (2004) review of Edelman’s
later book, Wider than the sky: The phenomenal gift of consciousness (2005) again accuses
Edelman of failing to engage properly with other work in the field, and of not recognising that
a great deal of what he writes has already been presented and formalised by others.
It seems to me that Hallidayan systemicists are on much firmer ground with regard to
their espousal of an embodied approach to cognition, since this has become a major strand in
current cognitive science thinking. Again, however, there seems to be a reluctance to engage
with empirical psycholinguistic work which could be used to support the SFL view. Moore
(2008), in a paper which begins with a discussion of the relationship between SFL and
psychology, insists that before psychology can be taken seriously by SFL it must adopt a
more phenomenological perspective, with an emphasis on the experiencing subject, seen in
relation to the world in which s/he operates. But this is precisely what is offered by the
psycholinguist Ray Gibbs in his book Embodiment and Cognitive Science (2005). Gibbs
makes what he calls the ‘embodiment promise’, which he expresses as follows:
People’s subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action provide part of the
fundamental grounding for language and thought. Cognition is what occurs when the
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body engages the physical, cultural world and must be studied in terms of the
dynamical interactions between people and the environment. Human language and
thought emerge from recurring patterns of embodied activity that constrain ongoing
intelligent behavior. We must not assume cognition to be purely internal, symbolic,
computational, and disembodied, but seek out the gross and detailed ways that
language and thought are inextricably shaped by embodied action. (p. 9)
Throughout this book, Gibbs illustrates how this view can be supported through empirical
studies ranging across a wide spectrum of disciplines within what he sees as cognitive
science:
Fortunately, there is an accumulating body of empirical evidence showing how
embodied activities shape human cognition. In the spirit of cognitive science, this
“empirical” evidence includes data collected from controlled laboratory studies,
naturalistic field observations, neuropsychological case studies, linguistic research,
artificial intelligence (and artificial life) modeling, and various phenomenological
studies and reports. (Gibbs 2005: 10)
Gibbs (2005: ch6) provides an account of cognitive linguistic, psycholinguistic and
neurolinguistic evidence for embodiment in relation to language change, speech perception,
speech and gesture, body movements and discourse, word meaning, image schemas and
utterance interpretation, and embodied metaphor in the interpretation of figurative language.
A further important link between the SFL approach to cognition and that of Gibbs is that both
invoke dynamic, open, self-organising systems. Gibbs (2005: 11) is enthusiastic about the
dynamic systems approach because it “acknowledges the interaction of an agent’s physical
body (including its brain and nervous system), its experience of its body, and the structure of
the environment and social context to produce meaningful adaptive behavior”. 4 Similar ideas
motivate Thibault’s (2004: xiii) conviction that we need
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... a materialist ecosocial semiotics which is able to reconnect body-brain processes
and interactions both to the social and cultural practices which directly act upon and
affect human bodies, as well as to the ways in which bodily and brain processes
directly participate in and are a constitutively inseparable part of our meaning-making
activity.
and his characterisation of ecosocial systems as “stable, far-from-equilibrium dynamic open
systems” (p. 10). There are certainly differences of emphasis, and these are amply reflected in
the nature of the discussion in the two books and in the kinds of scholarly work referred to,
but there are equally clear indications that dialogue between the two approaches could prove
fruitful.
As an example of how engagement with Gibbs’ approach could enrich SFL accounts,
let us take the area of concepts and their categorisation. Categorisation is at the very heart of
SFL, in the shape of sets of systemic options made available by the language, but is seen
purely in social semiotic terms rather than as a cognitive phenomenon. Indeed, Halliday &
Matthiessen (1999 [2006]: 72) distance themselves from cognitive approaches to
categorisation, claiming that “from a systemic-functional point of view, the intellectual
context was rather different” and commenting that “[s]ystemic functional work on
‘categorization’ has ... not engaged with the philosophical tradition; nor has it tended to
proceed by experimental methods. Rather, it has been concerned with how meaning is
construed in naturally occurring text” (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999 [2006]: 72). They
mention (p. 72) work in the cognitive tradition on prototype theory, but clearly see this as
belonging to a way of thinking which they do not share, and so effectively dismiss it as
irrelevant to their work.
Gibbs is also critical of classical approaches to concepts and their categorisation, but
rather than simply rejecting notions such as that of prototype, he recontextualises them within
the framework of embodied cognition. He discusses problems with the traditional view in
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both psychology and philosophy, according to which “concepts are stored mental
representations that enable people to identify objects and events in the real world” (Gibbs
2005: 80). He goes on to argue “that significant aspects of both concrete and abstract concepts
arise from, and continued to be structured in terms of, pervasive patterns of embodied
activity” (p. 80). However, he does not dismiss the idea of prototypes, but rather reworks it in
the light of empirical evidence on the importance of embodiment in cognition: “Prototypes
are not summary abstractions based on a few defining attributes, but are rich, imagistic,
sensory, full-bodied mental events” (p. 83).
This brief example will, I hope, serve to demonstrate how work in psycholinguistics
and other areas of cognitive science can add a crucial dimension to SFL thinking.
Categorisation is not simply sociosemiotic in nature, but indisputably also involves cognitive
processes. There is, as I see it, no necessary contradiction between a social semiotic and a
cognitive view here: they are two equally important aspects of a complex phenomenon.
Closely related to the notion of categorisation, and also absolutely central to SFL, is that of
construal, and again this is interpreted as a social-semiotic phenomenon, considerable
attention being given to the (sociocultural, ideological) motivations for, and effects of,
particular construals of experience. However, construal is also a cognitive process which
occurs during language processing: indeed, there is a large literature on the various types of
cognitive operation, such as selective attention, figure/ground organisation and Gestalt
formation, which are central to how a situation is construed. And once again, Gibbs (2005:
200–201) reinterprets more traditional cognitive treatments of construal in terms of
embodiment, claiming that “people create meaningful construals by simulating how the
objects and actions depicted in language relate to embodied possibilities. Thus, people use
their embodied experiences to ‘soft-assemble’ meaning, rather than merely activate pre-
existing abstract, conceptual representations”. Once more, we need a dual perspective:
construal is both a cognitive and a socio-semiotic process.
3. The Cardiff ‘cognitive-interactive’ model
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Since the very beginning of work which gave rise to the Cardiff variant of SFL, Fawcett has
emphasised that his model is ‘cognitive-interactive’ in nature. In his early work, he sees the
model as “set within the familiar Chomskyan framework of regarding linguistics as in
principle a branch of cognitive psychology” (Fawcett 1980: 4), but also states “the cognitive
models that I am concerned with are models of INTERACTING minds” (Fawcett 1980: 6).
This dual orientation towards both the cognitive and the interactional is a major theme
of Fawcett’s more recent work. In setting out eight factors leading to the development of the
Cardiff model, Fawcett (2008: 19) draws attention to:
The steadily growing recognition that no account of language and its use can be
complete without being set within the framework of A COGNITIVE-INTERACTIVE
MODEL OF COMMUNICATION — such that the model does not ignore either (i)
the role of society and culture in understanding language and its use or (ii) the need
for the detailed modelling of how we plan and execute texts (e.g. for understanding
the meaning and use of concepts such as ‘Theme’ and ‘New’).
In a forthcoming book setting out his view of what the architecture of an adequate
model should be like, and contrasting the architecture of the Cardiff and Sydney models,
Fawcett again lays stress on the need for attention to both cognitive and interactive aspects of
language (Fawcett fc.: section 2.2.10):
But above all … there will be the demand on SFL — and no doubt on other theories
too — that it should provide an architecture of language and its uses which gets rid of
the old dichotomy between the ‘cognitive’ and the ‘interactive’ on the one hand and,
on the other, the ‘social’ and the ‘cultural’. 5
It is important, in understanding Fawcett’s conception of the cognitive orientation of his
approach to language, to realise that the Cardiff model was from a fairly early stage
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developed within the framework of a Natural Language Processing (NLP) project,
COMMUNAL, in which the aim was to construct a computer-based system for the production
(and later also understanding) of texts. The situation with the Sydney model is somewhat
different. Although the approach developed by Halliday and his colleagues has been put to
use in text generation by computer, in the PENMAN project (see e.g. Matthiessen & Bateman
1991) and later KPML (e.g. Bateman 1997), the basic claims and much of the detail of the
Sydney model were already in place by the time these projects began.
The last sentence of the quotation from Fawcett’s 1980 book given earlier makes it
clear in what respect he considers his model to be cognitive, viz. the fact that it models the
planning and execution of texts. For language generation, the current model includes a
general planner, an input, a discourse planner whose job is to structure the discourse as a
whole, and a sentence planner dedicated to the task of specifying the internal structure of text
sentences, which interact with a ‘belief system’ or ‘knowledge base’, and are discussed in
detail in Fawcett (fc.). Although the model clearly differs in many respects from other
approaches to NLP, Fawcett’s work is basically set within the same kind of framework of
overall assumptions about ‘cognitive modelling’ common to other scholars in the field.
Interestingly, he specifically highlights the difference in this respect between the
COMMUNAL approach and that of Matthiessen and his co-workers in the PENMAN project,
who carefully distanced themselves from the ‘cognitive’ orientation of most work in NLP, by
avoiding references to the minds of interacting individuals, referring to non-linguistic aspects
of their model simply as ‘the environment’.
The cognitive modelling done within the COMMUNAL project is intimately bound
up with the central concept of choice in SFL. Fawcett makes it clear that the locus of choice is
not the grammar itself, but the mind of the ‘performer’ of language:
... the planning cannot be carried out by the grammar itself – even though this is what
many systemic writings ... In reality, a grammar cannot ‘decide’ and a grammar
cannot ‘choose’. There must be either (i) someone or something that chooses between
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the features in a system network in a grammar, or (ii) someone or something that
makes a decision in a higher component which then causes the choices in
TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME etc. to be made. And, if that is true for a
computer model of how language works, it is reasonable to assume that it is also true
of any other model of how the features in system networks get chosen - including our
model of what happens in our heads when we use language. (Fawcett fc.: section
5.4.3)
This statement is particularly interesting because it implicitly recognises that ‘a computer
model of how language works’ is not necessarily the same thing as ‘our model of what
happens in our heads when we use language’. In other words, although the planners of the
COMMUNAL architecture are seen as products of a process of cognitive modelling, they
may well not represent what is really going on inside our heads. Later in his book, Fawcett
offers further clarification of this issue. In a section describing the components of the model
for generation, he claims that “some such components as these are also present, in some form,
in the mind of every human user of language”, but then goes on to say that
[t]he claim, of course, is only for an equivalent functionality — not for the details of
the procedure adopted for each step within each component. There is no claim, for
example, that the ‘grammar’ of the logical form or the system networks and
realization rules of language itself have a direct equivalent in the neural patternings in
the brain. The overall architecture presented here is far more complex than that
posited by Sydney Lamb (1998) in his Pathways of the Brain: the Neurological Basis
of Language, but it is not impossible, to put the claim at its lowest, that there is some
neurological equivalent to the procedures described here and the patternings of the
brain. That, however, is not my concern here. (footnote in Section 8.4)
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This is an important statement, and one which clearly marks NLP approaches off from
psycholinguistic approaches to cognitive modelling, such as connectionist models of language
processing and learning, which do indeed explicitly attempt to model the processes occurring
in the brain during processing. The paramount aim of a NLP generation system is to produce
texts which are as close as possible to being indistinguishable from naturally-occurring texts,
and the modelling of planning processes is a means to that end, rather than primarily based on
what we know of the cognitive processes of conceptualisation and construal which go on
inside our heads when we (mostly but not always subconsciously) make choices in the use of
language. Fawcett (pc.) believes that it is reasonable to assume that a computational model
which works well may give pointers towards what actually happens in the mind during
processing, but the link is not further explored.
Indeed, Fawcett seems somewhat sceptical of the relevance and value of
psycholinguistics to the construction of linguistic models. He comments (2008: 20) that
“‘broad-brush’ works on the psychology of language such as Clark and Clark 1977 (which
draws on work outside psycholinguistics and which, interestingly, is structured on Hallidayan
lines) provide a useful check for work in the computer modelling of language”, and then
states that the most significant development in psycholinguistics, from the viewpoint of the
Cardiff approach, was the work of George Miller in the 1950s. There is no mention whatever
of the large volume of work in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics produced during the
past 30 years. Some of this work is, however, highly relevant to the kind of model Fawcett
proposes.
For instance, the model set out in Fawcett (fc.) distinguishes between two kinds of
planning, occurring in sequence. Initially, a general planner and reasoner specifies the
initial input to generation as a string of Basic Logical Forms (BLFs) and a discourse
planner then decides on details of genre, exchange and rhetorical structure, leading to a
discourse structure representation of BLFs. There then follows a stage in which equivalences
between different BLFs are established, and a set of around a dozen microplanners operate
to create a set of Enriched Logical Forms which act as input for predetermination rules that
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specify choices from semantic system networks. This scheme is similar, in its overall
structure though not, of course, in detail, to Levelt’s (1989) postulation of staged operations
of macroplanning, which “involves the elaboration of some communicative goal into a series
of subgoals, and the retrieval of the information to be expressed in order to realize each of
these subgoals”, and microplanning, which “assigns the right propositional shape to each of
these ‘chunks’ of information, as well as the informational perspective (the particular topic
and focus) that will guide the addressee’s allocation of attention” (Levelt 1989: 11). Both of
these procedures precede the stage of formulation, which takes as input the structures
developed during the planning phases, and outputs a phonetic or articulatory plan. A
significant difference between the two accounts is that Levelt discusses empirical
psycholinguistic evidence for the distinction between macro- and micro-planning, as well as
for some of the individual processes involved in the two kinds of planning, whereas Fawcett,
as we have seen, simply hypothesises that there will be at least some degree of relationship
between his proposals and actual cognitive structures and procedures, without providing
empirical evidence to back up his claims. The evidence presented by Levelt would have been
useful in providing empirical psycholinguistic support for aspects of the overall planning
architecture in Fawcett’s model.
Let us, then, turn to a set of approaches which do make a firm commitment, at least in
theory, to making their models compatible with what is known empirically about the
cognitive processes occurring during processing.
4. Cognitive Linguistics and the ‘cognitive commitment’
CL arose, in the 1970s, as a reaction to the predominantly formalist, essentially Chomskyan,
linguistics which was so influential at the time, and indeed gave rise to what have been called
the ‘linguistic wars’. In their overview of the Cognitive Linguistics enterprise, Evans, Bergen
& Zinken (2007: 2) emphasise the close relationship between the development of CL and
work in other cognitive sciences, particularly cognitive psychology, this being particularly
evident in work on human categorisation. Particularly influential when the movement gained
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ground from the 1980s onwards were Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar (1987, 1991) and
work by Lakoff and his colleagues on the pervasiveness of metaphor in our everyday
language (e.g. Lakoff & Johnson 1980 [2003]) and on categorisation and Idealised Cognitive
Models (Lakoff 1987), though work by others such as Taylor, Talmy and Fauconnier was also
of great importance. During this period, the family of approaches known under the label of
Construction Grammars also began to develop. The model proposed by Fillmore and his
colleagues (Fillmore, Kay & O’Connor 1988 [2003]) did not take up the banner of
cognitivism, and this is still largely true of its modern incarnation in Sign-Based Construction
Grammar (see e.g. Michaelis 2009). The other major strands of Construction Grammar,
prominent among which are Goldberg’s (1995) model (recently developed into what she calls
Cognitive Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2006)), Croft’s (2001) Radical Construction
Grammar and Bergen’s Embodied Construction Grammar (see later discussion), are,
however, strongly cognitive in their orientation.
Crucially, these cognitively-oriented approaches are usage-based, in that they
emphasise the importance of usage in accounting for the properties of the linguistic system
and how it is acquired. They hold that a speaker’s grammar is distilled from the huge number
of usage events to which that speaker is exposed and in which s/he participates. For further
discussion of the term ‘usage-based’ see Gonzálvez-García & Butler (2006).
Langacker (1987: 5) regards it as “self-evident that meaning is a cognitive
phenomenon and must eventually be analyzed as such”, and indeed equates meaning with
conceptualisation. He comments (1987: 5) that “[g]iven its basic orientation, the framework
[Cognitive Grammar, CSB] shares many basic concerns with cognitive psychology and
artificial intelligence”. Although the origins of, and motivations for, Cognitive Grammar were
primarily linguistic, Langacker (1987: 6) believes that psychology and AI can provide “a
great many useful concepts and insights about language behavior and cognitive processes in
general” and that linguists “would be well advised to design their own models for maximal
compatibility with the findings of cognitive scientists”.
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This last point is taken up by Lakoff (1990), who puts forward two commitments
which he believes are fundamental to CL, this claim being echoed by Gibbs (1996: 27–28)
and in recent introductions to CL by Evans & Green (2006: 27ff) and Evans, Bergen &
Zinken (2007: 3–5). The generalisation commitment requires CL to develop general
principles which apply to all aspects of human language, while the cognitive commitment “is
a commitment to make one’s account of human language accord with what is generally
known about the mind and the brain, from other disciplines as well as our own” (Lakoff 1990:
40). Lakoff goes on to point out that this latter commitment obliges cognitive linguists to take
account of empirical findings in a number of disciplines, including cognitive psychology,
developmental psychology, anthropology and cognitive neuroscience.
The question which arises is to what extent CL has made good on the promise made
in the cognitive commitment. Langacker himself freely admits that many of the suggestions
made in his seminal book on Cognitive Grammar “can be regarded as an exercise in
speculative psychology” (Langacker 1987: 6), relying on psychological plausibility, and on
“seemingly indisputable cognitive abilities”. But this remains at a general level, rather than at
that of individual detailed proposals. It is certainly the case that the development of important
CL concepts such as radial category structure (Lakoff 1987) relied heavily on the work of
cognitive psychologists on categorisation, and particularly on the work of Rosch and her
colleagues on prototypes.6 Similarly, the concept of profiling which is central to Cognitive
Grammar was influenced by cognitive psychology work on attention. However, as CL began
to establish itself in its own right as a major current in linguistics, its reliance on cognitive
psychology began to diminish, and for some years CL developed its own lines of enquiry
which did not rely heavily on empirical methods. Peeters (1998: 226) was led to criticise
much of CL for not being cognitive in the sense of “the sort of linguistics that uses findings
from cognitive psychology and neurobiology and the like to explore how the human brain
produces and interprets language”. And although he later moderated this highly critical stance
to some degree, he continued to hold that “the connection between CL and cognitive science
remains weak” (Peeters 2001: 103). Even later than this, Dąbrowska (2004: 228) notes that
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among cognitive linguists, “only a few have begun to go beyond the traditional introspective
methods” and that “[a] firm empirical basis is indispensable for work that purports to be
psychologically realistic because … speakers’ knowledge about their language may be less
abstract than is commonly believed, and may differ considerably from one individual to the
next”.
Bergen (2007: 37), however, points out that the late 1990s witnessed the beginnings
of a new kind of rapprochement between CL and the empirical methods of cognitive
psychology, in that
rather than building linguistic theory on the basis of psychological evidence, the
cognitive linguistic theories had by now developed to such a point that they could
generate empirically testable claims, well suited to evaluation using the paradigms of
cognitive psychology and computational modeling.
It is worth mentioning two particularly important influences on empirical studies in CL. One
is the work of Gibbs who, for instance, has studied experimentally the processing of idioms
(for an overview see Gibbs 2007b), though Bergen also cites work from other scholars. Gibbs
himself has argued persuasively for the need for more empirical work in CL (Gibbs 2007a,
see also the interview with Gibbs in Bergen 2008), as has Geeraerts, who notes, however, that
“Cognitive Linguistics has not yet fully realized the breakthrough towards the massive use of
empirical methods”. (Geeraerts 2006: 23). The other major influence is from work which
synthesises corpus analysis with ideas from CL (see e.g. Gries & Stefanowitsch 2006).
Important and welcome as these new developments certainly are, testing hypotheses
derived from CL using empirical methods is not the same thing as incorporating insights from
the work of cognitive psychologists, psycholinguists and neurolinguists themselves. In my
view, both approaches are necessary in order that CL can fully honour the cognitive
commitment made by Lakoff in 1990.
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One fruitful area for the interaction of CL with the work of other areas of cognitive
science is that of embodied cognition. The concept of embodiment was central in the work of
Lakoff and his colleagues (see especially the pioneering proposals in Lakoff 1987). An
important theoretical construct in this work is that of image schemas, which, as the label
suggests are schematic versions of images, these being representations of particular,
embodied experiences. As noted by Croft & Cruse (2004: 44), image schemas “represent
schematic patterns arising from domains, such as containers, paths, links, forces, and balance
that recur in a variety of embodied domains and structure our bodily experience”. They also
structure our non-bodily experience through the operation of metaphorical devices. In recent
years, the concept of embodiment has become incorporated into a constructionist approach
under the label Embodied Construction Grammar, developed in the context of a simulation-
based model of language understanding (see Bergen, Chang & Narayan 2004; Bergen &
Chang 2005). A theory which forms the putative neural basis of embodied meanings as
formalised in Embodied Construction Grammar is outlined in Feldman & Narayan (2004).
Also very much concerned with embodiment is the Fluid Construction Grammar of Luc
Steels and his colleagues, which is a computational formalism for handling open-ended
grounded dialogue, that is “dialogue between or with autonomous embodied agents about the
world as experienced through their sensory-motor apparatus” (Steels & De Beule 2006: 73).
Clearly, these CL approaches to embodied cognition could benefit from close attention to the
empirical evidence adduced by psycholinguists and others, which, as we have seen, is
discussed in Gibbs (2005).
5. Compatibilities between Systemic Functional Linguistics and Cognitive

Linguistics
5.1 Existing work which combines ideas from Hallidayan SFL and CL
Interesting links between SFL and CL have already been made by scholars working in
Belgium. Particularly important here, as recognised by Matthiessen (2007: 835), are linguists
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associated with the University of Leuven and Ghent University. Members of the Functional
Linguistics Leuven group (see http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/fll/index.html or
http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/ling/fest/) are concerned with describing linguistic categories in
terms of form-function relations, and explicitly attempt to integrate functional and cognitive
perspectives, using corpora as data sources and adopting a usage-based orientation. Much of
the earlier work of Kristin Davidse, in particular, was strongly rooted in SFL (see e.g.
Davidse 1991 [1999]). Much of it was concerned with the semantic analysis of construction
types (transitive/ergative alternations, ditransitive, middle, cleft, etc.) in a way which
increasingly combined insights from SFL and other approaches, including CL. As just one
example, Laffut & Davidse’s (2000) study of ‘caused NP-PrepP’ relations in locative, image
impression and material/product alternations proposes a constructional approach in which
both Halliday’s descriptions of transitivity and circumstantial relations and Langacker’s work
on the profiling of conceptual substructures are invoked, as well as Levin’s (1993)
characterisation of verbal alternations. Davidse’s work on transitive and ergative modes of
patterning has been developed by Lemmens. In Lemmens (1997), he presents a ‘cognitive
lexical-paradigmatic’ account of the middle construction in English, drawing on Davidse’s
SFL-based account but extending it through consideration of Langacker’s Cognitive
Grammar account of the same construction, and giving more weight to lexically-based
constraints. This work is also reported in Lemmens (1998: 71–85), a monograph in which he
combines insights from SFL, Cognitive Grammar and Government and Binding Theory to
give a corpus-based account of lexical causatives which again develops Davidse’s earlier
work on transitive and ergative patterning.
Davidse’s work, and that of the group as a whole, has also investigated a number of
aspects of interpersonal meaning, again drawing not only on Hallidayan SFL but also on
Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar. For instance, Davidse (1997, 1998) in a discussion of the
distinction between categories such as agent, patient and dative, on the one hand, and subject,
object and indirect object on the other, draws on Langacker’s concept of ‘type instantiation’,
but reinterprets this in terms of Halliday’s interpersonal approach to the subject-object layer
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of organisation. Also highly relevant here is the work of Miriam Taverniers, based in Ghent,
which builds on that of Davidse and argues that each of the four types of property which have
been ascribed to the subject category (predication, mood, voice/diathesis and theme) can be
accounted for in terms of the Cognitive Grammar concept of instantiation (Taverniers 2005).
A further area in which there has been fruitful interpenetration of Hallidayan SFL and
Cognitive Grammar is that of grammatical metaphor. Here again, the work of Taverniers
(2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2012) is central in linking this key concept of Hallidayan SFL to
Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar through the notion of double scoping and double grounding.
Likewise, Liesbet Heyvaert’s work on nominalisation as a particular type of grammatical
metaphor is strongly functional-cognitive in nature (see e.g. Heyvaert 2003a, 2003b). Holme
(2003), working in the UK rather than in Belgium, also makes links between SFL and CL in
this area. He notes that the two approaches differ considerably in that CL is concerned with
the conceptualisations underlying metaphors, while SFL focuses on the social aspects of
meaning. He nevertheless proposes that grammatical metaphor may be seen both as a way in
which language responds to contextual pressure and as an instantiation of conceptualisations
derived from image schemata.
5.2 Other areas of common interest between Hallidayan SFL and CL
As has emerged from the preceding discussion, the most obvious areas of common interest
between SFL and CL are categorisation and construal, on the one hand, and embodiment, on
the other. As far as categorisation and construal are concerned, we have seen that SFL has
been interested primarily in the ways in which meanings are constructed in naturally
occurring text, rather than in the cognitive processes involved. CL, as might be expected, has
developed accounts which are claimed to be psychologically plausible, though we have seen
that there has been less reliance on testing of these claims than might have been expected. The
orientations of the two approaches are thus to some extent complementary. We have also seen
that embodiment is now a major theme not only in SFL but in CL and in cognitive science
more generally, and that earlier interpretations of categorisation and construal on the basis of
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classical cognitive science models are now being reinterpreted in terms of models which build
in embodiment as a central notion, and which receive strong empirical support from
psycholinguistics and other disciplines within cognitive science. There would seem to be
considerable scope here for productive dialogue.
Other common properties of SFL and CL are highlighted by the work of Gonzálvez-
García & Butler (2006), who compare a range of eleven models covering a wide spectrum of
functional and cognitive approaches, over a set of 36 features relating to various aspects of
linguistic modelling. The overall conclusion is that “the topographical space occupied by
approaches variously characterized as ‘functionalist’, “cognitivist”, “constructionist” and
“usage-based” is a complex one, defined by a fairly large number of parameters” (Gonzálvez-
García and Butler 2006: 83). Within this space, a number of regions can be recognised.
Around half the features show a high degree of homogeneity across models. Two further sets
of features differentiate clearly between a group of models (Emergent Grammar, Cognitive
Grammar, Goldberg’s version of Construction Grammar, Radical Construction Grammar)
which have a strong cognitive orientation, and another group (Functional Grammar,
Functional Discourse Grammar. Role and Reference Grammar) which do not, being
essentially functionalist in nature. Interestingly, SFL associates with the cognitively oriented
models, rather than the typically functionalist ones, on several of the features in one set,
though it differs from them with respect to the other set. More concretely, SFL shares with
CL not only a concern with construal and categorisation (though seen in different ways in the
two approaches, as we have seen), but also the importance of the relationship between
structure and instance, and the postulation of a continuum between grammatical and lexical
phenomena. It is worth looking at these last two features in a little more detail.
CL is ‘usage-based’, in the sense that the grammar of a language is seen as arising by
a process of abstraction from the huge number of actual textual instances to which the
language learner is exposed. In Hallidayan SFL, the system of a language as a whole, in the
sense of “its potential as a meaning resource” (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 26), is related to
specific textual instances by the cline of instantiation. Furthermore, “the system is the
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potential that is itself built up as an abstraction from different instances, and which defines
what is a ‘repetition’ of ‘the same’ semiotic act” (Halliday 2004: 35). There is a very clear
parallel here with the usage-based approach of CL, and again this is something which it
would be interesting to explore.
SFL, unlike other structural-functional theories such as Functional Discourse
Grammar and Role and Reference Grammar, does not have a lexicon separate from the
grammar. Rather, “grammar and vocabulary are not different strata; they are two poles of a
single continuum, properly called lexicogrammar” (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 24).
Likewise, cognitive approaches such as Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar, Goldberg’s
Cognitive Construction Grammar and Croft’s Radical Construction Grammar postulate a
continuum between grammatical and lexical phenomena (see e.g. Croft 2001: 17; Goldberg
1995: 7; Langacker 1987: 3). 7 As expected from the different orientations of SFL and the
cognitive theories, they present this continuum in rather different terms. For SFL, grammar
and lexis are seen as realisations of less delicate and more delicate options, respectively, in
lexicogrammatical system networks. For cognitive theories, the discussion is couched in
terms of constructions, in the specific sense of a pairing of a form with a meaning. But the
overall idea is much the same, and both approaches cite as evidence the occurrence of
patterns which lie somewhere between abstract structures and individual lexical items or
combinations of these, and which have been extensively studied under the heading of
phraseology, formulaic language, and the like.
5.3 Cardiff SFL and CL
I currently see no indication that proponents of the Cardiff model see any advantage in
integrating ideas from CL into their work. However, since semantic categorisation is at the
generative heart of the Cardiff model, it seems to me that insights from CL would indeed be
useful here. In his early work, Fawcett (1980: 57) states that he sees “no reason in principle
why the notion of the system network should not be extended to handle the ‘fuzzy-categorial’
approach”, and later in the same work (p. 66), he suggests that the way in which this could be
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done might be to attach to choices in system networks the probability that a particular feature
will be chosen in a particular context. Probabilities of this kind are now a standard feature of
the Cardiff proposals. However, this does not address at all the fundamental issue of the
fuzziness of the categories which those features themselves represent. Despite the progress
which has been made in our knowledge of the cognitive aspects of human categorisation in
the past 30 years, the meanings of the Cardiff grammar remain, in the words of (Leech 1974:
28f) ‘bony-structured’, as in the original model (Fawcett 1980: 219), and it is here that work
in CL would be very helpful. That said, Fawcett’s work recognised early on the cognitive
effect of facilitation, i.e. the tendency for frequently repeated items and structures to become
entrenched in the linguistic system (Fawcett 1980: 65), though this has not become built in as
a major feature of the modern theory.
6. Towards a collaborative view: SFL, CL and the psychology of language in modelling

the language user
The stance taken by linguists in relation to work on the processing of language depends on
their view of what a linguistic theory should be intended to account for. There are of course
many points along the spectrum of views here. Some linguists are interested only in the
structure of language at its various levels of description, and not at all with the ways in which
language is actually used. Others, particularly those of a functional persuasion, are (at least in
theory) committed to the study of language in use as well, but only from a strictly linguistic
point of view which does not include the actual processing of language, regarded as the
province of psycholinguistics and psychology rather than linguistics. Yet others believe that it
is high time that such divisions were abandoned, and advocate the integration of work on the
description of linguistic structures with the study of how those structures come into being and
function within the processing mechanisms of the brain. In my own recent work (see e.g.
Butler 2008, 2009), I have advocated the last of these positions, on the grounds that the
ultimate goal of functional linguistics should be an account of how people communicate using
language, so that the question we should be asking ourselves is one which Dik (1997: 1)
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proposed was at the centre of functional approaches: ‘How does the natural language user
work?’8. Dik himself shied away from attempting a full investigation of this question, but I
believe we should take it literally and work towards an answer in collaboration with
colleagues from the full range of disciplines concerned with the scientific study of language.
This need for collaboration across disciplines is also articulated by Weninger & Andres and
by Agha:
Is it the case that the various perspectives that are taken toward the study of language,
each perspective with its attendant theories, methodologies, terminology, and research
agendas, are inherently divergent pathways that have no relevance to one another? Or
is it possible that, for any number of reasons, we have become so narrowly and
inwardly focused on singular perspectives and approaches that we wind up in a series
of little boxes, each box full of people who diligently work away at putting together a
small set of the pieces of the language puzzle, but who seldom venture out of the
boxes to see how the various pieces might fit together? The second scenario for the
discipline seemed more aptly to describe the situation as it now stands. (Weninger &
Andres 2007: 211–212)
The most important challenges for linguistics in the coming years involve making better
contact with colleagues, with other frameworks and subdisciplines within linguistics, with
theories of meaning and conceptualization, with psycholinguistics, with theories of other
domains of cognition, with neuroscience, and with education. (Agha 2007: 232)
Goldberg (in Gonzálvez García 2008: 357) also stresses the importance of “building
bridges between linguistics and other disciplines”. Likewise, Ewa Dąbrowska, discussing the
‘separatist’ stance of many linguists, comments:
This approach has resulted in a proliferation of linguistic theories, many of which
appeal to constructs which are extremely implausible both psychologically and
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biologically, and an estrangement from other disciplines studying the human capacity
for language. It is becoming increasingly clear to many linguists that in order to make
further progress in the study of language, we need to constrain linguistic theorising in
some way. Since human language resides in the human mind, the most promising
source of constraints on theories of language is properties of the human mind/brain.
(Dąbrowska 2004: 1)
Although Hallidayans and post-cognitivists would object to the bald characterisation of
language as residing in the human mind, the general point about the need for collaboration
between linguists and those working in the psychological and neurological aspects of
language is a crucial one.
With regard to the psychology of language/psycholinguistics in particular, both Nuyts
and Jackendoff argue for synthesis with what has been seen as ‘linguistics proper’. Nuyts
(1992: 13–21) points to a number of parallels between the two types of approach, and
concludes that the integration of linguistic and psychological models “could only be
advantageous for each of them and for the science of language in general” (p. 17). Jackendoff
fully endorses this view:
We need to integrate linguistics with psycholinguistics. Psycholinguists complain that
linguistic theory offers little insight into how processing could work. Linguists often
respond by hiding behind the competence-performance distinction: “We’re describing
the speaker’s linguistic knowledge. It’s a different and somewhat mysterious question
how that knowledge is put to use in real time in performance.” (Jackendoff 2007:
256–257)
There are, however, some further considerations which make many linguists reluctant
to engage with psychological and psycholinguistic work. One important factor is
dissatisfaction with the kinds of methods used in psycholinguistics and also in the cognitive
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neuroscience of language. There are perhaps two strands involved here. Firstly, the
methodology may be seen as dehumanising. At its most general this attitude may be applied
to any kind of experimental technique which appears to reduce the level of human beings to
that of other animals used, for example, in earlier behaviourist studies. A more sophisticated
version is the one held by Hallidayans and post-cognitive psychologists, namely that studying
only what goes on in the head leaves out of account the crucial sociocultural dimension of the
ways in which human beings act in their everyday lives using language as well as other
semiotic codes. This is indeed a valid point, but as pointed out earlier, it by no means entails
that psycholinguistic studies are worthless or unnecessary: rather, such studies are providing
important evidence for the embodied nature of cognition.
A further important criticism of psycholinguistic work is that the conditions under
which observations are made are artificial, and that because of this the results may have little
relevance to what happens under more natural conditions of language use. 9 However, the
isolation of particular variables for study, by keeping other variables constant, is essential in
scientific work, in order to make it as likely as possible that the effects observed are indeed
due to whatever factor is the focus of study. Indeed, we operate with a version of this
principle whenever we are trying to model a particular aspect of language: we focus on one
part of the system, trying to keep other things equal as far as possible. It is, of course,
essential that models of parts of the system are eventually integrated into the system as a
whole. Once we have isolated particular factors, we then need to go on to investigate their
interaction, and this is true in both ‘linguistics proper’ and psycholinguistics. 10 Fortunately,
cognitive scientists are aware of the problems of ‘ecological validity’, and are devising ever
more ingenious methodologies, some of which enable measurements to be made in more
naturalistic conditions. An example from the field of visual processing studies is the work of
Droll & Hayhoe (2008), who argue that observations on natural visual tasks can provide
information on general principles behind cognitive processes, and make suggestions for how
such work can be reconciled with more traditional experimental approaches to vision. 11
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I believe that SFL, in both its Sydney and Cardiff versions, can and should play an
important role in the admittedly very ambitious enterprise I have advocated above, viz. to
attempt as full as possible an answer to the question ‘How does the natural language user
work?’ The Cardiff approach clearly shows the compatibility of the extensive common
ground between the Cardiff and Sydney models, on the one hand, and attempts to model what
is going on in the mind, on the other, while also recognising that the use of language involves
the interaction of different minds. The Sydney approach, on the other hand, relates primarily
to language as an embodied, primarily sociocultural phenomenon, and so favours a ‘post-
cognitive’ view of language in relation to the mind/brain. However, the continuing usefulness
of ideas from more classical cognitive science is demonstrated by the work of Monika
Bednarek (e.g. 2009a, 2009b), in which she compares linguistic and cognitive/psychological
approaches to the portrayal and creation of emotion in language, and combines SFL appraisal
theory (see e.g. Martin & White 2005) with an application of the theory of frames and
schemas from cognitive science:
Both perspectives are … needed when examining language and emotion: the
cognitive and the discursive. Research on emotion schemata can provide underlying
explanatory power and a grid for classifying affective language, whereas adopting the
discursive perspective can show us important social functions of emotion talk.
(Bednarek 2009a: 405–406)
Also noteworthy is the collaborative work involving a group of systemicists including James
Benson, William Greaves, Paul Thibault, Michael O’Donnell and Peter Fries, and a group of
primatologists/psychologists/biologists among whom are Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Jared
Taglialatela (see Benson & Greaves 2005 and the brief account given in Benson & Thibault
2009). The four chapters of the 2005 book are based on analysis of interactions between
Savage-Rumbaugh and two bonobo apes, Kanzi and Panbanisha, in which the bonobos
communicated using vocalisations, actions or graphic symbols called lexigrams. Evidence is
provided for the ability of both apes to manipulate interpersonal discourse semantics in a
34
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complex interaction. The data provided in Savage-Rumbaugh et al. (1993) are reinterpreted in
terms of ideational lexicogrammar, and some evidence is obtained for a degree of higher
order consciousness. Kanzi’s vocalisations are also interpreted in terms of allophones of
English phonemes, by investigating the way in which contributions are made to meaning.
Work of this kind, capitalising on both the sociocultural tradition of Hallidayan SFL and the
insights afforded by classic work in cognitive science and animal communication studies,
represents one important way in which SFL can contribute to a more comprehensive
programme whose aim is to study the workings of the language user. Another route would be
to explore more fully the potential for links between SFL and CL, especially in view of the
real increasing emphasis on empirical methods in CL. Semiotic factors are one area in which
SFL could contribute to the dynamics of meaning construction in CL, including Construction
Grammars. The study of categorisation and construal, and also of metaphor, both lexical and
grammatical, are clearly areas where substantial further progress could be made, and the
concept of usage-based grammar and the postulation of a continuum between the grammatical
and the lexical constitute additional points of contact which could be exploited. The
Embodied Construction Grammar of Bergen & Chang, also the Fluid Construction Grammar
of Steels, might provide further scope for the exploration of overlapping interests.
However, any serious attempt to model the natural language user must also honour
fully the cognitive commitment made by Lakoff two decades ago, by taking on board the
findings of modern approaches to the psychology of language, and ensuring that linguistic
theories are fully compatible with the architectures revealed by such studies. This coming
together of linguistics and psychology was adumbrated by Tomasello in the introduction to
his edited book on ‘the new psychology of language’: “In a utopian future, linguists and
psychologists will work together to investigate the actual psychological processes by means
of which human beings comprehend, produce, and acquire a natural language” (Tomasello
2003: 13). As Gibbs (2007a: 54–55) points out, this does not necessarily mean that linguists
should themselves necessarily become experimental cognitive scientists. It does, however,
require a willingness to become familiar with the major developments in other disciplines
35
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
which study language. What is needed is for researchers in those disciplines, in turn, to help
in this endeavour by attempting to explain their discoveries in ways which linguists can
readily understand and react to. It is also important that linguists with knowledge of
psychological and/or neurological areas, and psychologists and neurologists with a good
understanding of linguistics act as ‘interpreters’, explaining the major findings in ways which
both sides can understand and build on.
There is evidence that progress is being made in bringing linguists and
psychologists/neurologists together through conferences, research seminars, summer schools
and the like. A recent example is the summer school for postgraduates run in 2012 by LOT,
the National Graduate School of Linguistics, in the Netherlands, in which the presentations
covered a wide range of areas in both linguistics and cognitive science, including
neurobiology (see http://www.lotschool.nl/files/schools/2012_Zomerschool_Utrecht/). Also
worthy of mention is the series of biennial conferences Language, Culture and Mind, run
since 2004, which aims to
articulate and discuss approaches to human natural language and to diverse genres of
language activity which aim to integrate its cultural, social, cognitive, affective and
bodily foundations. We call for contributions from scholars and scientists in
anthropology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, semiotics, semantics,
discourse analysis, cognitive and neuroscience, who wish both to share their insights
and findings, and learn from other disciplines. (http://www.salc-sssk.org/lcm/)
Attached to the conferences is a workshop for young researchers. Dialogue of this kind is
clearly essential if we are to step outside the confines of individual theories and disciplines,
and if the present paper leads to the further development of such interaction, it will have
served its purpose.
Received 11 June 2012.

Revised version 20 September 2012.
36
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Notes
* I am grateful to Carl Bache, Monika Bednarek, Margaret Berry, Francisco Gonzálvez

García, Lachlan Mackenzie and Gordon Tucker for their valuable comments on earlier drafts
of this article, which have contributed significantly to the final version. I also wish to express
my gratitude for support from projects funded by the Xunta de Galicia (XUGA, INCITE09
204 155PR) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2010–19380).
1. Following Taylor (2002: 3–5), I use the term ‘Cognitive Linguistics’, with initial
capitals, to refer to the set of approaches which encompasses the work of scholars such as
Langacker, Lakoff, Talmy, Taylor and many others. This is narrower than ‘cognitive
linguistics’, without capitalisation, which can be taken to refer to any theory (including
Chomskyan linguistics) which recognises language as a mental phenomenon. However, in
accordance with common practice, I will use the term ‘cognitive linguists’ to refer to
practitioners of Cognitive Linguistics in the narrower sense.
2. All references to this work are to the original 1999 printing.
3. Page references to this work are to the 2003 reprint.
4. See also Ellis & Robinson (2008: 6), who emphasise the links between Dynamic
Systems Theory and the concerns of Cognitive Linguistics.
5. Quotations from An integrative architecture of language and its use for Systemic
Functional Linguistics and other theories of language are taken from the version kindly
provided to me by Robin Fawcett, who has given me permission to quote from the text.
6. For detailed description of Cognitive Linguistics work on categorisation see Taylor

(2003), and for a discussion of prototype theory within a Cognitive Linguistics framework,
with references to the original work of Rosch and others, Geeraerts (1989 [2006]).
7. Note, however, that Goldberg has spoken more recently of a ‘soft’ dividing line between
grammar and lexicon (see Gonzálvez-García 2008: 356).
8. Hudson (2008: 91) even goes so far as to claim that “by the end of the [twentieth]
century the focus had shifted from the language system to the individual speaker’s cognitive
system”.
9. Clearly, this argument could again be seen as part of the movement towards an account
of ‘embodied cognition’.
10. This point was made over 30 years ago by Talmy Givón (1979: 23–25) in a lucid
explanation of the concept of the controlled experiment in biochemistry and in linguistics.
37
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
11. It is also worth noting that studies in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics are
essentially quantitative in nature and often involve the use of quite sophisticated statistical
techniques with which most linguists, especially those from humanities backgrounds, are
unfamiliar and even uncomfortable, a fact which points to a serious need for university
curricula in language-related studies to include such techniques. Furthermore, engagement
with a discipline that is not one’s own clearly takes a great deal of time and effort, and many
academics may feel that there is already more than enough to become acquainted with within
their own areas of linguistics.
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Systemic Functional Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and Psycholinguistics Opportunities For Dialogue

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Functions of Language 20(2) Christopher S.

Butler, Christopher S. 2013. Systemic Functional Linguistics, Cognitive

Systemic Functional Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and

psycholinguists as well as with each other.

modes of explanation in the following terms:

psychological level of interpretation. I am not saying this is not a relevant perspective,

In accordance with this, Fawcett (1993: 628), commenting on the “‘anti-psychological’

forward by classical cognitive science, in favour of an approach which prioritises the

sociosemiotic nature of language and adopts a phenomenological view of cognition. Fawcett,

structural-functional theories such as Functional Discourse Grammar or Role and Reference

Grammar. Furthermore, SFL has paid little attention to work in psycholinguistics/the

this work than it could.

the Sydney framework, and their espousal of a phenomenological, ‘post-cognitive’ approach.

theories with work on psychological approaches to language are briefly reviewed. It is

2. Hallidayan SFL and cognition

main claims of the classical cognitive science approach:

terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that

representations and computations that constitute thinking, the central hypothesis is

general enough to encompass the current range of thinking in cognitive science,

including connectionist theories which model thinking using artificial neural

networks. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/, accessed 31.5.2012)

The assumption is that experimental techniques and modelling by means of computer

(2008: 9-19), in his introduction to modern psycholinguistics as an essentially experimental

studies, and about neuroimaging methods such as electroencephalography, event-related

potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging, as well as observational techniques

damage on linguistic performance.

represented in the characterisation of cognitive science given above, is succinctly summarised

in the following quotation:

It seems to us that our dialogue is relevant to current debates in cognitive science. In

one sense, we are offering it as an alternative to mainstream currents in this area,

is just a way of talking about language. In modelling language as meaning, we are

treating it as a linguistic construct: hence, as something that is construed in the

lexicogrammar. Instead of explaining language by reference to cognitive processes,

we explain cognition by reference to linguistic processes. (Halliday & Matthiessen

1999 [2006]: ix-x)2

This approach is further explained in the following:

… our own approach, both in theory and in method, is in contradistinction to that of

cognitive science: we treat ‘information’ as meaning rather than as knowledge and

interpret language as a semiotic system, and more specifically as a social semiotic,

emphasis on the individual than would be typical of a cognitivist approach; unlike

thinking and knowing, at least as these are traditionally conceived, meaning is a

social, intersubjective process. If experience is interpreted as meaning, its construal

becomes an act of collaboration, sometimes of conflict, and always of negotiation.

(Halliday & Matthiessen 1999 [2006]: 2)

As is not surprising in view of the strongly ideological orientation of much work in

Halliday & Matthiessen is basically to deconstruct the discourse of classical cognitive

science. Through an analysis of grammatical metaphor in cognitive science texts, they

grammar of processes of sensing, the model is depersonalized, and sensing is construed

emphasis on unconscious motivating factors in cognitive science, arguing that unconscious

discipline, and to imply that analysis in terms of reifications such as ‘information’,

to biological, social or semiotic factors

generis. Instead of experience being construed by the mind, in the form of

knowledge, we can say that experience is construed by the grammar: to ‘know’

dissatisfaction with what he sees as a disembodied view of mind:

making (semiotic) activity itself needs to be re-examined. (p. 3)

activities of individuals together as component subsystems which function in larger-

scale, systemically-organized wholes (p. 8)

In Thibault’s own account:

their inner and outer environments are mediated by higher-scalar systems of

interpretance are deployed in particular contexts. (p. 8)

Thibault concludes that “meaning-making is a distributed activity between body-brain

and semiotic organization” (2004: 316).

brain functions of perceptual categorisation, memory and learning. Higher-order