Hjelmslev’s Glossematics: A source of inspiration to Systemic Functional Linguistics?

Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2010) 2562–2578

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Hjelmslev’s Glossematics: A source of inspiration to Systemic Functional Linguistics? Carl Bache Institute of Language & Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 22 April 2009 Received in revised form 31 October 2009 Accepted 11 March 2010

Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) often pays tribute to one of the great 20th century figures in European Linguistics, Louis Hjelmslev, and his theory of Glossematics. This is surprising because Glossematics is a formally oriented, strictly immanent approach to language while SFL is a functional theory focusing on language as a social semiotic. This paper offers an examination of both theories and attempts to trace similarities and differences on a number of issues with which they share a theoretical concern: the role of paradigmatic relations, the notions of function, text, stratification and immanence, and the overall descriptive goals in linguistics. The paper concludes that except for the basic recognition of the primacy of paradigmatic relations and the abstract idea of the stratification of the content plane, there is little or no similarity between Glossematics and SFL. In fact, many of the references to Glossematics in SFL writings may give the reader an inaccurate impression of Hjelmslev. More generally, while accepting that finding inspiration in a theory does not necessarily involve an obligation to remain faithful to that theory, the paper argues that we all still owe it to earlier generations of scholars to recognize their work for what it really was. ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Hjelmslev, Glossematics Halliday, Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) History of linguistics Paradigmatic relations, Stratification, Function, System, Text, Immanence Source of inspiration, Research ethics

1. Introduction In Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) it is customary to pay tribute to one of the great 20th century figures in European Linguistics, the Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev and his theory of Glossematics. For example, in Language as a Social Semiotic from 1978, Halliday mentions Hjelmslev along with the Prague school, Firth, Lamb and also Pike as important forefathers (Halliday, 1978:39, from the Parret interview): First let me say that I adopt the general perspective on the linguistic system you find in Hjelmslev, in the Prague school, with Firth in the London school, with Lamb, and to a certain extent with Pike [. . .] And in his widely appraised An Introduction to Functional Grammar from 1994 (2nd edition; 1st edition 1985), Halliday again refers to Hjelmslev as a source of inspiration (Halliday, 1994:xxvi): The theory on which this description is based, systemic theory, follows in the European functional tradition. It is largely based on Firth’s system-structure theory, but derives more abstract principles from Hjelmslev and owes many ideas to the Prague school.

E-mail address: [email protected]. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.03.005

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As we shall see, these quotes are far from exceptional in SFL. The reader will find similar, and even more specific, formulations regarding the Hjelmslevian impact on SFL in Hasan (1987), Martin (1992), Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) and a number of papers by Halliday. It is perhaps hardly surprising that Hjelmslev should be thought of as having influenced the development of European linguistics in the last century. In Denmark, Glossematics is often regarded as one of the most original and important national contributions to the humanities (cf. Bredsdorff, 1967:59), but Hjelmslev’s impact has also been recognized more internationally, cf. Anderson’s discussion of Glossematics in his book on phonology in the 20th century (1985:141): Hjelmslev has [. . .] generally been regarded with considerable respect, and a citation (at least in passing) of his name and of the theory of glossematics has long been a near-obligatory part of any discussion of fundamental views on the nature of language and linguistic theory. The international interest in Hjelmslev is not restricted to narrow linguistic circles but is also, and perhaps especially, due to his contribution to semiotic theory more generally (see section 3.8). However, as a post-Hjelmslevian Danish linguist with a strong interest in SFL,1 I must admit that I am deeply puzzled by the suggestion that Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar – a modern functional approach to language usage – should owe anything at all to Hjelmslev’s formally oriented theory of Glossematics, as presented in Prolegomena to a Theory of Language – the work which made Hjelmslev’s fame internationally, and which is generally thought of as the standard work of Glossematics to be referred to (despite its strictly preliminary nature).2 That I am not alone in being somewhat confused about the recognition of Hjelmslev as an possible source of inspiration to modern linguists becomes clear a few lines later in Anderson’s discussion: [. . .] there is very little evidence that the actual practice of linguists [. . .] has ever been significantly influenced by specifically Hjelmslevian ideas. Indeed, much of the praise to be found has the character of lip service. (1985:141) In this paper I would like to take a closer look at the alleged influence of Hjelmslev and Glossematics on SFL and try to determine whether this celebrated bond, too, is a case of lip service or in fact makes good theoretical or practical sense. I am aware, of course, that finding inspiration in a theory does not necessarily involve a commitment or an obligation to remain faithful to that theory. One set of ideas may spark off new ideas in all directions and thus indirectly cause innovative developments within completely different frameworks. There is nothing wrong with science progressing in this way. However, at the same time we owe it to earlier generations of scholars and scientists to recognize their work for what it really was. Their contribution, as well as the precise nature of their status as sources of inspiration, should be as clear and unambiguous as possible to future generations. In what follows, I assume that the reader has at least a passing knowledge of SFL but will of course offer a brief introduction to a number of central tenets that may serve as a point of departure for my critical comparison of the two theories. Glossematics is nowadays less well-known and much more difficult to read up on,3 so I shall offer a more detailed introduction to this theory, focussing on the themes that may have had an impact on SFL. I shall then proceed to a more detailed discussion of a number of references to Hjelmslev and Glossematics found in systemic functional writings. 2. Systemic Functional Linguistics: a brief characterization A good way to begin is to explain why SFL4 is called ‘systemic’, and why it is called ‘functional’. Well, SFL is called ‘systemic’ because descriptive priority is explicitly given to the paradigmatic dimension of language, i.e. to the ‘vertical’, ‘either-or’ relations (often referred to in SFL as ‘choice relations’) at any particular point in a sequence, or text. For example, the choice between definiteness (realized by e.g. the definite article) and indefiniteness (realized by e.g. the indefinite article) in a sentence like I gave her _ book (either a book or the book) is an example of a paradigmatic relation, and so is the choice between present and past in a sentence like He likes/liked her a lot (either likes or liked). In SFL choice relations are posited not only at the micro level of individual grammatical categories such as definiteness or tense, but also at higher levels involving whole clauses (as in e.g. grammar of speech functions) and beyond. By contrast, syntagmatic relations are ‘horizontal’ or ‘linear’ and can be defined as ‘both-and’ relations resulting in chains or sequences.5 Thus the relationship between article and head noun in the direct object noun phrase in I gave her the book is a syntagmatic relation (both the and book). Syntagmatic relations significantly include relations more commonly referred to simply as ‘syntactic’. Despite Saussure’s emphasis on 1 Few Danish linguists escape Glossematic influence (cf. Fischer-Jørgensen, 1975:142f; 1991:188f); see also Christensen (2004) for a comparison of Hjelmslev’s and my own approach to grammatical categories. My interest in SFL led me to become a co-organiser of the 2007 International Systemic Functional Congress in Odense, Denmark, and to write a book on the systemic functional approach to tense and aspect in English (cf. Bache, 2008). 2 Prolegomena of a Theory of Language is a translation by Francis Whitfield of the Danish original Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlæggelse (often referred to simply as OSG). OSG was published in 1943. The English translation appeared in 1953 and was revised in 1961, cf. section 3.1. 3 As Lamb remarks: ‘‘Prolegomena is not designed for bedtime reading.’’ (1966:556). 4 The theory characterized in this section is more specifically what is sometimes referred to as the standard ‘Sydney school’ of Systemic Functional Linguistics (in contrast mainly to the ‘Cardiff school’ approach, cf. Fawcett, 2000, 2008), see also note 7. 5 The definitions of paradigmatic relations as ‘either-or’ relations and of syntagmatic relations as ‘both-and’ relations are in fact Hjelmslev’s (1943:33).

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syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations as two equal descriptive dimensions of language,6 much of the 20th century linguistic scene was dominated by an interest in syntax (often in explicit opposition to the preoccupation with morphological paradigms in traditional Latin-based grammar). This is especially true of Chomsky’s generative tradition, but also typological linguistics, cognitive linguistics and many functional approaches have actually focussed primarily on syntagmatic relations or on issues beyond the distinction (for more detailed discussion, see Bache, 2002). SFL is an important exception to this tendency, along with Jakobson’s and Trubetzkoy’s Prague School, Hjelmslev’s Glossematics, Pike’s Tagmemics, Lamb’s Stratificational Grammar, and more recently Harder’s Functional Semantics (cf. Harder, 1996). In SFL, paradigms are called ‘systems’. In other words, articles, tenses and other paradigmatically related forms and constructions are regarded as realizations of options in systems (a system of definiteness, a system of tense, and so on). On close inspection, many of the systems of a language turn out to be closely interrelated, i.e. they form complex ‘networks’. For example, the choice of indefiniteness realized by the indefinite article a/an in English implies the choice also of the singular in the number system, whereas the choice of definiteness realized by the definite article the is compatible with both the singular and the plural. Similarly, the English tense system is related to a superordinate mood system which offers a choice between imperative and indicative, tense being dependent on the prior choice of indicative (cf. Matthiessen, 1983:377). SFL is ‘systemic’ because describing the paradigmatic relations in a language in terms of system networks is a major ambition. In fact, a language is basically regarded as a system of systems (cf. e.g. Halliday, 1981:14), including their realizations. The syntagmatic relations of a language are by no means ignored in SFL but are viewed as derived or mapped from the system networks by means of realization rules: each choice in a system network is given a realization statement which specifies the formal and structural consequences of that choice (such as the relative position of the form chosen, e.g. the definite article before the head noun). Sorting out all the systems and their interrelations is time-consuming and challenging. The more complex the networks, and the more detail that is uncovered, the more ‘delicate’ the analysis is said to be. Systemic delicacy turns out to be a scale on a continuum with grammar and vocabulary as the two poles. There is no precise cutting-off point between grammatical and lexical choices, and for that reason the description of system networks is usually referred to as ‘lexicogrammar’ – for discussion of lexis as most delicate grammar, see Halliday (1961:267, 1978:43) and Hasan (1987). Let’s turn now to the second part of the name to be explained: ‘functional’. SFL is called ‘functional’ for a number of related reasons. First of all, Halliday was strongly influenced by his teacher J.R. Firth, Professor of General Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and through him by the social anthropologist Bronislaw K. Malinowski. In their way of thinking, language must be seen in its social and cultural contexts: not only is language an important integrated part of the larger context in which it is used, context is reflected and shaped in language in important ways. So language is always in context, and context is always in language (see e.g. Eggins, 1994:7ff). This is why language tends to be considered a ‘social semiotic’ in SFL (cf. especially Halliday, 1978; Halliday and Hasan, 1985) and why language is defined more specifically as purposeful social behaviour, i.e. as a means to achieve certain communicative goals (cf. Eggins, 1994:4, 29). There is thus a strong affinity between SFL and European functionalism more generally, including Bu¨hler and the Prague School linguists (for a brief account of this tradition, see Halliday, 1976, 1978:47f; see also Garvin, 1969 for an introduction to the Prague School more generally). One of Halliday’s in my view brilliant insights is that there is a direct relationship between the grammatical systems of a language and the functional aspects associated with language and its use in context. Within this framework, systems and their possible realizations are seen as ‘resources’ that the speaker or writer draws on in communication. To account for the close relationship between systems and functions, Halliday operates with three so-called ‘metafunctions’, which are ‘‘highly generalized semantic components which shape paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships’’ (Martin, 1996:39), i.e. they organize language resources for the implementation of certain major communicative purposes. In standard SFL there are three metafunctions7: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual (the ideational being subdivided into the experiential and the logical). Ideational resources allow interlocutors to construe reality (and thus have a strong representational function), interpersonal resources allow interlocutors to interact communicatively (and thus have a distinct social function), and textual resources allow an effective organization of (spoken or written) texts (and thus have the function of ‘enabling’ ‘‘the semiotic reality which comes into being by way of construing interpersonal and ideational meaning’’ (Martin, 1996:39). By enabling the enactment and construal of interpersonal and ideational meanings in texts, the textual metafunction is of a different kind and could almost be viewed as a ‘metametafunction’, but Halliday insists that no metafunction is more important than the others, or on a different level (cf. Halliday, 1978:49f). The metafunctions serve as a link between grammatical systems on the one hand and the context of situation and the context of culture on the other. Thus, the grammatical system of TRANSITIVITY8 (which structures the clause in terms of processes and participants) expresses ideational, more specifically experiential, meaning; the MOOD system (which structures the clause in terms of Mood and Residue) expresses interpersonal meanings (such as e.g. asking or offering information or goods&-services); and the THEME system (which structures the clause in terms of Theme and Rheme) expresses textual meanings.

6

Saussure did not call them paradigmatic relations but ‘associative’ ones. The Cardiff School of SFL, with Robin Fawcett as one of the prominent figures, operates with a larger number of metafunctions, or ‘strands of meaning’ as they call them, than recognized by the standard ‘Sydney School’ of SFL (cf. Fawcett, 2000, 2008; for a brief overview of the Cardiff School, see Butler, 2003a,b; Bache, 2008:65–80). 8 Small capitals are conventionally used for systems in SFL. 7

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The clause is thus viewed grammatically – and structurally – from three different perspectives: as representation, as exchange (or action) and as message. Through the metafunctions these grammatical resources are related to three specific ‘register variables’ representing a broad, functionally determined organization of the context of situation: field (which is linked to TRANSITIVITY through the ideational metafunction), tenor (which is linked to MOOD through the interpersonal metafunction) and mode (which is linked to THEME through the textual metafunction). The three register variables form the basis for a genre characterization of the text (cf. Martin, 1992), and eventually a specification of its ideology (cf. Kress and Hodge, 1981; Threadgold et al., 1986; Eggins, 1994:10f). SFL is thus a theory of very close relationships: grammar, semantics and pragmatics are not studied separately but are seen as closely interrelated and as forming an integrated whole: grammar and ideology go hand in hand, as it were, and are interlocked in texts and discourse. Other important characteristics of SFL can be extracted from the description of the three metafunctions. The keyword in connection with experiential meaning under the heading of the ideational metafunction is ‘construe’: according to Halliday, language does not represent the world directly but construes it, or rather, we construe the world through language. The world ‘as such’ – independent of language – is in principle unknowable, he argues. SFL is thus not ‘only’ a theory of language in a narrow sense but a theory also of cognition (see especially Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999). But while other cognitive linguistic theories tend to see semantics as an integrated part of a more general cognitive faculty, including our encyclopaedic knowledge, SFL regards the semantics of construing the world as ‘immanent’, i.e. as a language-internal capacity. One might say that while cognitive linguistics more generally tends to make language a part of something grander and more comprehensive (viz. human cognition), and to see how this affects language (the discussion of image schemas and metaphors is a good example of that), SFL makes language grand and comprehensive enough to subsume everything else and focuses on how language guides, or provides resources for, our organization of experience. In other words, language provides us with an overall ‘ideation base’, and experience is taken to be a matter of meaning rather than a matter of knowing (cf. Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999:1ff, 29, 66ff, 602ff). The keyword in connection with the interpersonal metafunction is ‘communicative interaction’ or ‘exchange’. SFL is interested in language as ‘purposeful behaviour’, i.e. as it is used, or ‘enacted’ in a social context of speakers and hearers, and of writers and readers. SFL is a usage-based linguistic theory which, unlike formal linguistic theories such as Transformational Generative Grammar, acknowledges the importance of language performance rather than ‘just’ competence. It is important to note, however, that SFL has a keen interest also in the meaning potential of language and in its meaning-creating, or ‘semogenic’, capacity. More specifically, the system networks and all the options comprised are said to represent this meaning potential. The terminology is here somewhat reminiscent of Transformational Generative Grammar with its focus on the possible sentences of a language and linguistic creativity, but while generative linguists were primarily concerned with a fairly static model of syntactic competence (despite its emphasis on ‘transformations’ and sentence ‘generation’), systemicists focus on dynamic semantic performance (semiosis). To them, language in use is not just regarded as a fixed medium but as an active unfolding social semiotic, and there is no contrast between knowing language and knowing how to use language. Halliday therefore dispenses altogether with the competence/performance distinction, and indeed with Saussure’s langue/parole distinction (cf. Halliday, 1991:30). The keyword in connection with the textual metafunction is text in a technical sense. Text is not just written text but also spoken (or signed) text, as in e.g. an exchange of greetings, a telephone conversation, or a heated political debate. According to Halliday, a clause is structured not only in terms of ideational and interpersonal meaning but also in terms of textual meaning (with the division of the clause into Theme and Rheme, and Given and New at the rank of tone group in phonology). Textual meaning has structural repercussions for the clause as a unit of linguistic analysis. But although the clause, or rather the clause complex (which is the systemic term for ‘sentence’) is accepted as the maximal unit of grammar in a narrow sense, a systemic functional description does not stop with the clause complex as text. Systemicists are interested in how entire texts are produced and understood as discourse. Essentially this means that a text is regarded as a semantic or functional unit, not a formal one. A text is thus not to be thought of as composed of sentences but as a discourse unit that may be encoded in sentences (cf. Halliday, 1978:109, 135f). There is hence focus on macro-strategies of contextual and generic ‘coherence’ (cf. Eggins, 1994:87ff) and on the specific relationships between clause complexes, as well as on the pressures on the grammar of clause complexes in terms of ‘cohesion’ (cf. Halliday and Hasan, 1976, 1985). In other words, the SFL occupation with textual meaning is not restricted to the traditional sentence as a unit but is prompted by a genuine interest in a real text level above the sentence, including characteristic differences between the spoken and the written mode. The final characteristic of SFL that I am going to mention for the purposes of my comparison of this theory with Glossematics is ‘stratification’ (for much more detailed discussion of this topic in both theories, see Taverniers, forthcoming). In SFL, language is viewed as a complex stratified semiotic system. The basic stratal distinction is the traditional structural linguistic one between ‘expression’ and ‘content’: (spoken) language is thus an interface between sound and meaning. But there is more to it than that: the ‘expression plane’ of spoken language is further stratified into phonetics and phonology, and, even more significantly, the ‘content plane’ is further stratified into lexicogrammar and semantics. Both semantics and phonetics have an interfacing function: semantics interfaces with experience (including interpersonal relationships) and transforms it into meaning while phonetics interfaces with the human body’s capacity for sound production and hearing. By contrast, lexicogrammar and phonology have an organizing function, in that they turn meaning and sound, respectively, into formal systems and structures (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004:24–25). Moreover, the close link between

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Fig. 1. Stratification.

context and language is also reflected directly in the systemic stratificational scheme by having language embedded in context. Stratification in SFL is usually represented by means of cotangent circles, as in Fig. 1 (from Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004:25).9 The relationship between the strata is one of ‘realization’: context is realized through semantics, semantics is realized through lexicogrammar, and so forth10: context & semantics & lexicogrammar & phonology & phonetics However, the interfacing between the strata is acknowledged to be more complex in that it has progressive scope: context is realized not just through semantics but through the sum of the other interfaces. Similarly, semantics is realized through the sum of the lower-level strata. In other words, realization is not a one-to-one relationship between strata but accumulative (for this way of representing the relations and for more discussion, see Taverniers, forthcoming): context & (semantics & (lexicogrammar & (phonology & phonetics))) This is sometimes described technically in terms of ‘metaredundancy’ (Lemke, 1984). The concept of realization should be kept distinct from another important type of relation recognized in SFL: that of ‘instantiation’. Instantiation is the link between language as a macro-system (a system of systems) representing the underlying potential of language and (spoken or written) texts. Texts are viewed as actual instantiations of the macro-system via the specific paths chosen through the networks in any particular case. On the basis of this brief selective introduction to SFL, I can now list the themes which must be examined more closely in order to determine the nature of Hjelmslev’s Glossematics as a source of inspiration to SFL:      

the priority given to paradigmatic/systemic relations; the notion of function (and of functionalism); the notion of text; stratification; immanent semantics and the concept of construal; and, more generally, the overall descriptive goals of the analysis.

Readers who are interested in a more detailed and comprehensive introduction to SFL are referred to the following excellent introductions: Butt et al. (2000), Eggins (1994), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), and Thompson (1997). Those interested in the

9 Halliday and Matthiessen (1999:4) operate with a simpler, three-level stratification in which expression is simply phonology or graphology, and content is internally stratified into lexicogrammar and semantics. The model in Fig. 1 is basically the same with respect to expression and content but is elaborated to include also context and phonetics. 10 In SFL, realization is conventionally shown with an arrow slanting downwards to the right.

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Cardiff school approach to systemic linguistics (cf. notes 4 and 7), should consult Fawcett (2000, 2008). Butler (2003a,b) offers a detailed comparative discussion of both the Sydney and the Cardiff version of SFL. 3. Hjelmslev: an introduction to Glossematics 3.1. Some biographical facts11 Let me first give you a few biographical facts. Hjelmslev was born in 1899 and died in 1965. He was thoroughly schooled in the Indo-European comparative linguistic tradition. Already as a young man he proved to have a special talent in this field: in 1920 he wrote a prize essay on Oscan inscriptions and in 1923 he got his MA in Indo-European Comparative Linguistics. He published his first major work, Principes de Grammaire Ge´ne´rale, in 1928 and completed his doctoral thesis E´tudes Baltiques in 1932. He also edited Rasmus Rask’s works – one of his own great sources of inspiration – and wrote a 400-page commentary on them (1932–1935). He pursued his academic career not only in Copenhagen, but also in Lithuania (1921), Prague (1923) and Paris (1926–1927). In 1931 he founded the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle (sometimes referred to as the ‘Copenhagen school of linguistics’ on a par with the London school and the Prague school, but Hjelmslev did not think of the circle as a school). In 1939 he and Viggo Brøndal, who was the professor of Romance languages and literature at Copenhagen University, founded the journal Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, which is still a respectable international journal. Hjelmslev took over Holger Pedersen’s chair of comparative linguistics at Copenhagen University in 1937, after the publication of another important work La Cate´gorie de Cas I-II (1935, 1937). By this time Hjelmslev and Hans Jørgen Uldall had already begun the work which would receive most attention internationally: a new comprehensive linguistic theory called Glossematics (at Uldall’s suggestion; from Greek glossa = language). Uldall (1907–1957), a student of both Daniel Jones and Franz Boas, had returned from America in 1933 with field experience in the description of Amerindian languages and with a number of papers on phonetics to his credit. At the Congress of Phonetics in London in 1935, he and Hjelmslev presented a theory of ‘phonematics’, which was inspired by Sapir’s definition of phonemes based on their possible combinations and alternations, and which thus differed from the Prague school approach to the phoneme. The next step was to introduce the distinction between phonematics and ‘cenematics’ (as they chose to call it; from Greek ceneme = empty unit), which was a purely formal discipline. By combining cenematics with ‘plerematics’ (again an unusual term; from Greek plereme = full unit) – the formal study of content – the contours of a full-fledged linguistic theory emerged for the principled and rigorous description of both linguistic expression and linguistic content. Hjelmslev and Uldall worked hard to present their new theory at the international Linguistics Congress in Copenhagen in 1936, but all they managed to produce was a few sample pages entitled An Outline of Glossematics (Hjelmslev and Uldall, 1936), in which they promised to publish a full treaty later in the same year. However, the grand work of their combined efforts (Part I to be written by Uldall and Part II to be written by Hjelmslev) was never completed. During and after World War II, Hjelmslev and Uldall were separated (Uldall working in Greece, Argentina, Scotland, and Nigeria, with a brief period in Copenhagen in 1951–1952), and as a result, their ideas for Glossematics began to develop in different directions. Shortly before his untimely death after a sinus operation in Nigeria in 1957, Uldall finally published what he considered to be his part of the venture Outline of Glossematics I: General Theory. The manuscript was finished already in 1952, but Hjelmslev never quite came to terms with it and found it difficult to proceed to the second part. He effectively blocked its publication for several years. Ironically, the most influential, and internationally acknowledged, work on Glossematics is therefore a small book in Danish of little more than a hundred pages which Hjelmslev published in 1943 as a preliminary introduction. It was entitled Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlæggelse (often referred to simply as OSG). OSG was translated into English by Francis Whitfield ten years later and was entitled Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. This translation was published in 1953 as Memoir 7 of the International Journal of American Linguistics (Hjelmslev, 1953). Whitfield, who was in close contact with Hjelmslev, published a second, revised edition in 1961, and it is this work that has generated lasting international attention.12 In addition to Rasmus Rask and other comparative linguists, notably von Schlegel, Hjelmslev’s own main source of inspiration was, not surprisingly, Saussure, especially in Sechehaye’s version with a strict separation of form from substance in addition to the distinction between content and expression. But Hjelmslev was also influenced in important ways by a number of other scholars, notably von Humboldt (who maintained a distinction between two different kinds of form: content form and expression form), Sapir (whose definition of the phoneme, as already mentioned, was based on collocation and alternation), the Russian formalists and Carnap (with their emphasis on formal definitions, logic and mathematical precision). Closer to home, Hjelmslev found inspiration in Wivel, and in a much more general way, Otto Jespersen, some of whose works he reviewed (Hjelmslev, 1923, 1935a,b,c). 3.2. The Glossematic quest for an exact, autonomous and immanent linguistic science Hjelmslev’s major ambition was to establish linguistics as an exact, autonomous and immanent science. He rejected what he called ‘transcendent’, substance-oriented approaches to language, i.e. approaches which treated language as a means to 11 12

This section is largely based on Fischer-Jørgensen (1975:114–143) and Gregersen (1991). However, for reviews of the first edition from 1953 (see Garvin, 1954; Haugen, 1954).

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gaining knowledge about phenomena outside language itself, and which hence focused on the manifestations or uses of language (‘language’ here to be understood in a very narrow sense, as an ‘underlying’ formal system). Hjelmslev considered studies of language undertaken as part of philology, history, psychology, logic, physics, physiology, culture and literature to be transcendent in this sense and hence irrelevant to linguistics as a science, despite the traditional association of language with these disciplines (cf. Hjelmslev, 1943:6–8; 1961:5–7). He was especially critical of the philological and psychological bias often encountered in the study of language. More specifically, in his view linguistics should be completely independent of physical and physiological aspects of expression and of both the psychological and ontological ‘real-world’ aspects of content. In short, he wanted linguists to focus on language form, not language substance. In linguistics proper, he argued, language should be viewed as an object of description in its own right: ‘‘a self-sufficient totality, a structure sui generis’’ (Hjelmslev, 1943:7; 1961:6). Put in terms of the disciplines often associated with linguistics nowadays, there was no place in Glossematics for phonetics (expression substance) and semantics (content substance) in a traditional sense, or for what we today call sociolinguistics, social semiotics, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics and usage-based functional linguistics, which all consider language primarily in relation to its actual manifestations, i.e. substance. In Hjelmslev’s view, the only legitimate object of description in linguistics, at least in the initial stages of establishing linguistics as a science, was language form.13 Already at this point, we should begin to wonder about the alleged bond between Glossematics and SFL. But wait, there’s more ... Instead of leaning on other sciences, or contextualizing language in terms of them, Hjelmslev pursued the following three main interrelated objectives: (a) to determine the ‘system’ behind the ‘process’ (or more specifically: to determine the ‘language’ behind the ‘text’ or ‘texts’) and to describe it in terms of a limited number of elements and their possible combinations; (b) to provide a calculus of possible language systems (or rather, the possible macro-systems that we commonly refer to as languages); (c) to provide the descriptive tools and terminology necessary for comprehending and describing texts and language. The first objective is Hjelmslev’s overall descriptive goal, the second objective reveals his ambition to provide a universal grammar, and the third objective is of a more instrumental, metalinguistic nature (related to the desired autonomy and immanence of linguistics). From the first objective it is clear that Hjelmslev recognized the primacy of paradigmatic relations (which make up the ‘system’, see below) – and here at least there is an important similarity to SFL. It is crucial, however, to understand Hjelmslev’s use of the terms ‘process’ and ‘text’, the latter being a more specific linguistic version of the former general phenomenon. He did not primarily associate process with the temporal extension of actual movement, or text with a particular unit of discourse – a problem which I will return to below. Rather, he defined process and text in terms of the logical conjunction ‘both – and’. By contrast, the paradigmatic relations of the system behind the text were defined in terms of the logical disjunction ‘either – or’. Text is thus to be thought of as a substance dimension and a necessary point of departure. The elements x and y are in a textual relation if both are selected, or can be selected, but they are in a paradigmatic relation if the choice of one excludes the choice of the other. Hjelmslev was in fact the one who suggested the term ‘paradigmatic’ instead of Saussure’s ‘associative’ for such disjunctive choice relations. In relation to the first Glossematic objective, it is also crucial to note that the descriptive aim was to arrive at a limited number of elements. There was thus a strong reductive orientation in the Glossematic approach to language – an aspect which I will comment on in more detail below, and which will turn out to be important in the final analysis of the alleged bond between Glossematics and SFL. From the second Glossematic objective (to provide a calculus of possible languages, or language systems), it is clear that Hjelmslev recognized the importance in linguistics of determining the common, inherent, defining features of human language. He thus in principle envisaged a kind of Universal Grammar not unlike the one we nowadays associate with generative linguistics. As a precondition for formulating a universal calculus, he allowed a preliminary comparative investigation of different languages to establish common characteristics. But at the same time he insisted that the calculus itself should be thought of as independent of experience. He considered empirical validation of the theory to be irrelevant. Instead, the theory should be evaluated on strictly internal criteria relating to the procedure adopted. Language should be approached through a principled analysis of the ‘unanalysed text’ – hence text as a point of departure. This analysis should proceed in a logical manner, each step being licensed by, or presupposing, the preceding step, and with the end result following strictly from its premises. Above all, as specified in the third Glossematic objective, all terms and procedures in the analysis should be defined in specifically linguistic terms except for a few generally applicable epistemological concepts. Although Hjelmslev’s intentions were no doubt commendable from the point of view of his attempt to establish linguistics as an autonomous science, his terminological practice had an unfortunate side effect: Glossematics became infamous for its many new terms and idiosyncratic use of old well-established terms. Many people rightly consider Glossematics a terminological nightmare. In order to determine the adequacy of a linguistic theory, Hjelmslev proposed a principle that he curiously termed the empirical principle despite the fact that it has little or nothing to do with empirical validation or data orientation (for discussion and criticism of Hjelmslev’s use of this term, see Lamb, 1966:537). According to this principle, a theory should be (a) self-consistent (i.e. free of contradiction), (b) exhaustive, and (c) as simple as possible. These criteria are strictly ordered in 13

But see comments on substance as an object of scientific description in section 3.8.

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terms of precedence and importance: self-consistency is ranked above exhaustiveness, which in turn is ranked above simplicity. As we shall see, simplicity is understood in two different ways in Glossematics: there is analytic (or procedural) simplicity and there is quantitative simplicity of the end result of the investigation, i.e. of the inventory of linguistic elements arrived at in the text analysis. In other words, a good theory is an internally consistent, exhaustive and simple calculus or algebra providing a descriptive procedure for the analysis of texts (rather than a set of hypotheses). The fact that the theory is independent of empirical validation (i.e. cannot be proved or falsified by experience) makes it ‘arbitrary’ in Hjelmslev’s terminology. However, to the extent that the theory can actually be applied to data, it is said to be ‘appropriate’. The fact that the calculus is initially based on a comparison of languages ensures a certain degree of appropriateness. But once the theory is formulated, Hjelmslev maintains a strict distinction between ‘validation’ and ‘applicability’, only the latter being a relevant issue in relation to data. While the theory itself cannot be verified empirically, it allows for the formulation of hypotheses which can, and should, be subjected to empirical tests. 3.3. Glossematic stratification: content versus expression and form versus substance As already mentioned, Hjelmslev adopted the important structuralist dichotomies of content versus expression and form versus substance. But unlike mainstream Saussurean structuralism, he followed von Humboldt in freely combining the members of these dichotomies in expression form, expression substance, content form and content substance, where the greatest surprise is the recognition of not just expression form but also content form. Hjelmslev thus in effect arranged the two dichotomies in a matrix, cf. Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The two dichotomies of content/expression and form/substance.

Now, there are several points to make in connection with this matrix. First of all, the matrix represents a two-dimensional stratification of language. Second, as mentioned in section 3.2, Hjelmslev defined the primary (and initially exclusive) object of linguistic description as form rather than substance (referring to Saussure’s definition of language as form, not substance, cf. Hjelmslev, 1943:22; 1961:23).14 This means that the two-dimensional stratification involved in Hjelmslev’s combination of dichotomies served the purpose of focusing our descriptive attention on content form and expression form to the (initial) exclusion of content substance and expression substance. In other words, some strata are of more central theoretical interest than others. To understand Hjelmslev’s concept of ‘substance’, it is important to consider also the related concept of ‘purport’. Purport, in Hjelmslev’s sense, is the unformed substance (phonetic and semantic) which is potentially formed as substance in language. An example of expression purport would be all possible vowel sounds, only a small subset of which are actually employed (i.e. ‘formed’) in any given language. An example of content purport would be the colour spectrum, which is cut up (i.e. ‘formed’) differently by different sets of colour terms in different languages. Hjelmslev thus spoke of purport as a generallinguistic potential and as an amorphous mass on which language-specific form projects its particular structure. Hjelmslev here used the image of a net (language form) casting its shadow on an undivided surface (purport), cf. Hjelmslev (1943:52, 1961:57). By definition, then, substance is language-specifically formed purport. The relationship between form and substance in Hjelmslev’s model is one of ‘manifestation’. Note here that in Hjelmslev’s view, substance presupposes form, but not vice versa. This means that substance has no independent existence but comes into being through form (cf. Hjelmslev, 1943:46, 1961:50). It also means that, in principle, it is possible to have a form system without any substance or process (see also Hjelmslev, 1943:36; 1961:39) – an issue which has been discussed intensively by Fischer-Jørgensen (1975:124f). As Fischer-Jørgensen points out, this relationship between form and substance does not actually imply ‘‘that form is independent of substance, but that it is independent of any specific substance’’ (1975:124). But what exactly did Hjelmslev mean by ‘form’? He argued that in the step-wise, logically progressing Glossematic procedure aimed at identifying content form and expression form, the point is not simply to divide the text into parts. The aim is more specifically to provide an account of the relationships or dependencies between the parts, and between the parts and the whole. According to Hjelmslev, the parts of an object exist only through the relationships and dependencies between them (cf. Hjelmslev, 1943:21ff; 1961:22ff). As he puts it: ‘‘a totality does not consist of things but of relationships [...] and only its internal and external relationships have scientific existence’’ (1943:22; 1961:23). This leads to an interesting 14 Substance later becomes a legitimate object of study in a higher-level semiotic discipline, viz. the so-called ‘metasemiology’ of linguistics, cf. section 3.8. In an important paper from 1954, entitled ‘La Stratification du Langage’, Hjelmslev operates with expression form, expression substance, content form and content substance as the four strata of language. But his insistence on the primacy of form, as described in OSG, remained unchanged (cf. Fischer-Jørgensen, 1966:10f, 17ff).

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neutralization of a traditional dichotomy in linguistics, that between form and function. While distinguishing rigorously between form and substance and between content and expression, Hjelmslev seems to reject the traditional conception of form as distinct from function. He regards the (paradigmatic and syntagmatic) relationships identified in the analysis of the text as ‘functions’ and the parts involved as ‘functives’. In short, language form is function. 3.4. Glossematic semiotics I Having discussed the Glossematic view of stratification and function, we can now proceed to Hjelmslev’s conception of the linguistic ‘sign’ and of language as a semiotic system. Hjelmslev defines the sign as biplanar, the two planes being content form and expression form. He argues that these two planes are parallel, solidary and interdependent and that together they serve as functives of the ‘sign function’ (1943:44ff; 1961:47ff). There are an infinite number of signs, and there are signs at all levels in the analysis of the text. In fact, even a whole text is a sign to be divided into content form and expression form. At the lowest levels of the analysis, the number of signs identified in the analysis is more limited, and at a certain point, the inventory of signs allows no further reduction or division into signs at a lower level. At that point, Hjelmslev argues, it turns out that although the two planes are solidary and parallel, they are differently structured below sign level, i.e. they are not strictly isomorphic. At this lowest level of signs, each sign is composed of a number of non-signs, the so-called ‘figuræ’, or ‘figures’. Significantly, there are a limited number of figures, and figures differ from signs in not being biplanar, i.e. in not having both content and expression. Examples of this (cf. Fischer-Jørgensen, 1975:119) are the English lexical item ram and some of the occurrences of the Latin suffix –us. The English noun ram has three expression figures in either speech or writing (‘r’ + ‘a’ + ‘m’) but only two content figures (‘male’ + ‘sheep’), neither of which is specifically related to any of the expression figures. In Latin, the suffix -us is composed of two expression figures only (‘u’ + ‘s’) but (in some of its uses) has the three content figures: ‘masculine’, ‘singular’ and ‘nominative’, again with no sign relation between expression and content. According to Hjelmslev, it is the existence of this subordinate level that characterizes languages as genuine semiotic systems. Sign systems with signs rather than figures at the lowest level of analysis are symbol systems, not semiotic systems. 3.5. Commutation, permutation, mutation and substitution On all levels in the analysis of a text, the sign relation between expression and content is verified by means of the commutation test. This test is a procedure which involves replacement of both expression and content. The practical outcome of carrying out this procedure is to verify relevant inventories of parts or elements. More specifically, if a change of expression at any given point in the analysis leads to a change also of content, i.e. if the commutation test is positive, the result is the identification of invariables in Hjelmslev’s terminology. For example, this is how we establish the phonemes of a language, where, say, /p/, /b/, /s/, /f/, /r/ and others are identified as different phonemes, or invariables, in minimal pairs like /pæt/ – /bæt/ – /sæt/ – /fæt/ – /ræt/. A change of expression here leads to a change of content. Hjelmslev’s other examples of inventories verified on the basis of commutation include the categories of tense and number, as well as colour terms (cf. Hjelmslev, 1943:67; 1961:74). If, on the other hand, a change of expression leads to no change of content, i.e. if the commutation test is negative, the result is the identification of variants, either bound variants (called varieties) or free variants (called variations). An example of this would be the different variations of English /i:/ in e.g. tea, with or without slight diphthongization. While the commutation test is used to verify inventories of paradigmatically related elements, the permutation test involves shifts in the chain (i.e. the sequential order of elements in a text) to identify syntagmatic relations. Hjelmslev suggests that words may be the smallest permutable signs. The term mutation is the common denominator of commutation and permutation: commutation is the mutation of paradigmatically related elements and permutation is the mutation of syntagmatically related elements. Substitution is defined as lack of mutation and is thus the opposite of mutation (1943:67, 1961:74). Using this terminology, the difference between invariables and variants is that invariables are the result of commutation while variants are the result of substitution (cf. Hjelmslev, 1943:66; 1961:74). If there is neither commutation nor substitution between elements, they belong to different paradigms. The examples Hjelmslev offers are vowels and consonants, and /h/ and /ŋ/ in English (which are in complementary distribution, /h/ being always in syllable-initial position and /ŋ/ being always in syllable-final position). The commutation test is applied in the analysis of a text with the aim of identifying the smallest number of elements at the lowest levels of commutation. At this level, the elements identified are called taxemes. Roughly speaking (or grosso modo, as Hjelmslev would say), expression taxemes correspond to phonemes (in the spoken mode) but Hjelmslev emphasizes that the phonemic analysis he offers is very different from other phonemic analyses. The end point is not to establish the inventory of taxemes but to identify the universal parameters according to which the taxemes may be arranged in two-, three- or multidimensional systems. For example an inventory of 9 taxemes may be arranged in a two-dimensional system of 3  3 according to some universal criteria. Each dimension here consists of three ‘members’, i.e. there is a total of six members in the system, and this inventory of members thus represents a simplification over the inventory of nine taxemes. Hjelmslev calls the members in such systems glossemes, hence the name of the theory: glossematics.15 15 Hjelmslev does not go into much detail about glossemes or offer any examples in OSG/Prolegomena. Interested readers may get more information and illustration in Fischer-Jørgensen (1975:138ff).

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3.6. Text, text analysis and function As we have seen, Hjelmslev proposed a descriptive procedure starting with the unanalysed text and ending with the inventory of glossemes at the lowest level. In other words, the procedure involves a top-down division of the text into parts, and the parts into yet smaller parts, and so on. Hjelmslev calls this progressive top-down analysis deductive. The opposite approach – to begin with the smallest units of language and focus on how they combine to form larger units, and on how these larger units in turn enter yet larger constructions – Hjelmslev calls inductive. The ‘realism’ associated with this approach is unfortunate in Hjelmslev’s view, and it makes generalization across languages impossible (cf. 1943:12f; 1961:12f). The notion of text is open-ended: not only does Hjelmslev include any actual text in any actual language, he includes any possible text in any possible language, even if in actual practice the linguist has to take his descriptive point of departure in a limited set of actual texts. Hjelmslev even suggests that everything that has ever been written and spoken in Danish may be considered ‘a text’ (1943:87; 1961:98). More technically Hjelmslev defines a text as ‘‘a syntagmatic whose chains, if expanded indefinitely, are manifested by all purports’’ (1943:97; 1961:109). One clearly gets the sense that he did not want to exclude any kind of linguistic manifestation from the notion of text. On the other hand, he did not discuss the nature or character of individual texts, or the mechanisms involved in text production or interpretation. The concept of text simply remained a theoretical notion – a point of departure for the Glossematic procedure and search for glossemes. Glossematics is a far cry from modern discourse analysis and stylistics. The first step in the deductive analysis is the division of the text into the content plane and the expression plane, after which follows a further separate analysis of these planes. At each level, the object of the analysis is called a ‘class’ and the parts resulting from the division are called ‘components’. Except at the lowest level of analysis, components become classes, i.e. the object of further analysis, so that the analysis results in a hierarchy of classes. There are two different kinds of hierarchies, those to do with process, or text, and those to do with systems. Hjelmslev called the former chains and the latter paradigms (1943:28; 1961:29f). An analysis of a chain is a partition into parts and an analysis of a system is an articulation of members. However, it should be emphasized once again (cf. section 3.3), that the aim of the analysis is not the identification of parts and members as such, but of their role as functives of a function. The real object of attention is linguistic form, not substance, and, as noted in section 3.3, form is here closely associated with function, so closely in fact that the traditional dichotomy between form and function is neutralized. Hjelmslev operates with the following three functions: (a) interdependence (where functive x presupposes functive y, and vice versa); (b) determination (where e.g. functive x presupposes functive y, but not vice versa); and (c) constellation (where neither functive presupposes the other functive). In truly Glossematic spirit, Hjelmslev distinguished between functions in a chain (relations) and functions in a paradigm (correlations) and offered more specific distinct terms for all three functions in chains and paradigms (cf. 1943:37; 1961:41). As will be abundantly clear from this presentation, Hjelmslev was keen to establish a detailed and precise linguistic metalanguage (although not particularly keen to offer illustrative examples). But even more important, it is clear that Hjelmslev’s approach to ‘function’ and ‘functions’ is strictly immanent. In Glossematics, ‘function’ is a purely logical concept, used to distinguish a very small set of possible relations between components. Being the very essence of what Hjelmslev meant by ‘form’, ‘function’ has a fundamental role in Glossematics, and the theory can certainly be called a ‘functional theory’, but it is crucial to remember that ‘function’ is defined in very narrow formal terms and has nothing to do with the use of the term to refer to something done with a particular purpose. As Hjelmslev says: ‘‘The grammatical rules of a language are independent of any scale of values, logical æsthetic, or ethical; and, in general, a language is independent of any specific purpose.’’ (1943:99; 1961:110). 3.7. Descriptive goals As we have seen, a Glossematic text analysis is deductive, in Hjelmslev’s special sense, in that it moves from the top level of the text (where the text as a whole is divided into the content plane and the expression plane) down through the various levels of components to the bottom level of taxemes and glossemes. This descriptive procedure is governed by two important principles derived from the third requirement of the empirical principle: the requirement of simplicity. The two derived principles are the principle of economy and the principle of reduction. According to the principle of economy: [t]he procedure shall be so arranged that the result is the simplest possible and shall be suspended if it does not lead to further simplification. (1943:55; 1961:61) And according to the principle of reduction: [e]ach operation in the procedure shall be continued or repeated until the description is exhausted, and shall at each stage lead to the registration of the lowest possible number of objects. (1943:55; 1961:61) This means that the unambiguous goal of Glossematics is to arrive at the simplest possible description with the smallest possible number of components, i.e. the expression and content glossemes of a language.

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3.8. Glossematic semiotics II In the last part of OSG/Prolegomena, Hjelmslev elaborated his views on language as a semiotic system in interesting ways. He defined a semiotic more generally as: [...] a hierarchy, any of whose components admits of a further analysis into classes defined by mutual relation, so that any of these classes admits of an analysis into derivates defined by mutual mutation. (1943:94; 1961:106)16 He called the science of semiotic systems semiology (thus adopting Saussure’s term) and argued that semiology must be established on a strictly immanent basis. He also noted that language has a special place among semiotic systems, in that all other semiotic systems can be translated into language, but not vice versa. Language is also special, he argued, in having a complex sign-figure structure and in the lack of conformity at the level of figures (cf. section 3.4). As we have seen, he made this lack of conformity criterial for the distinction between semiotics and symbol systems (where there is a complete one-to-one correspondence between content and expression at all levels). Linguistics is thus an important part of semiology, but semiology includes other systems than ‘natural language’. Hjelmslev wrote the following on the role of the linguist in semiology: The linguist can and should concentrate on ‘‘natural’’ languages in his research work and leave to others, who have better preparation than he, mainly to logicians, the investigation of other semiotic structures. But the linguist cannot with impunity study language without the wider horizon that ensures his proper orientation towards these analogous structures. (1943:95; 1961:107) Hjelmslev then went on to establish an impressive model of relations and distinctions pertaining to the study of semiotics. As an initial, deliberately simplistic measure he defined the object of a linguistic theory as a denotative semiotic, by which he meant a semiotic neither of whose planes is itself a semiotic, i.e. a semiotic where neither the expression plane nor the content plane itself can be described in terms of both expression and content (1943:101; 1961:114). By contrast, a metasemiotic (or a metalanguage) is a semiotic whose content plane is itself a semiotic. Linguistics is a core example of a metasemiotic. Conversely, a connotative semiotic is a semiotic whose expression plane is itself a semiotic. This kind of semiotic is relevant in the analysis of the so-called connotators of a text. These are all the markers of heterogeneity in a text, such as individual stylistic forms, dialects, genres, modes, idioms, etc., which serve as symbols (i.e. with a sign relation) in the superordinate expression plane of the text (1943:102; 1961:115). For example, a dialect is in this sense a ‘symbol’ of a particular geographical region. A further distinction, Hjelmslev suggests, can be drawn between scientific and non-scientific semiotics: metasemiotics are scientific semiotics, while denotative and connotative semiotics are non-scientific. A semiology can now be defined more specifically as a metasemiotic whose ‘object semiotic’ is a non-scientific (denotative or connotative) semiotic, and a metasemiology can be defined as a meta-[scientific semiotic] whose object semiotics are semiologies. An attempt to capture this fairly complex model is offered in Fig. 3 (see also p. XVIII in Whitfield’s introduction to Hjelmslev, 1975), in which the arrow means ‘taking the semiotic pointed at as its object semiotic’.

Fig. 3. An attempt to capture Hjelmslev’s semiotic model.

According to Hjelmslev, one inevitable consequence of this multiply stratified semiotic model is that linguistic substance again becomes a legitimate object of linguistic description, although at a different level. The reason for this is that the metasemiology of linguistics (which is itself a semiology) must deal with the irreducible units of linguistics, and in practice that includes the very substance of expression and content. Another interesting related feature of the model is that it subsumes all other sciences (as semiologies and metasemiologies), and what is more, it gives language (and linguistics) a central role in all science. As Hjelmslev says, rather pompously, in the concluding paragraph of OSG/Prolegomena: In a higher sense than in linguistics till now, language has again become a key-position in knowledge. Instead of hindering transcendence, immanence has given it a new and better basis; immanence and transcendence are joined in a higher unity on the basis of immanence. Linguistic theory is led by an inner necessity to recognize not merely the linguistic 16 Interestingly, Whitfield here uses the term ‘semiotic’ for the original Danish ‘sprog’ (which literally means ‘language’). In the Danish original, however, Hjelmslev goes on to make the point that the definition covers any structure (i.e. any ‘semiotic’) that is analogous to language (1943:94f; 1961:106f). Whitfield’s translation of ‘sprog’ as ‘semiotic’ is therefore appropriate.

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system, in its schema and in its usage, in its totality and in its individuality, but also man and human society behind language, and all man’s sphere of knowledge through language. At that point linguistic theory has reached its prescribed goal: humanitas et universitas. (1943:112; 1961:127) So there is a sense in which OSG/Prolegomena provides a brief introduction to the theory about everything. But it is important to remember, I think, that Hjelmslev never actually wavered with respect to the methodology to be adopted for the description of everything. Despite the grand transcendent perspectives outlined in the concluding paragraphs, his methodology remained strictly Glossematic, immanent, and functional in a very narrow sense. 3.9. Hjelmslev: a formal linguist Before looking more closely at the tribute systemic functional linguists, notably Halliday, pay to Hjelmslev and Glossematics, let me briefly conclude my presentation by saying that there is a sense in which Hjelmslev can be considered a formal rather than a functional linguist. By that I do not mean to place him unambiguously in one of the two very different camps on the present linguistic scene, or in any way as part of the strong opposition between modern formalism and functionalism – the relations are much more complex – but to point to features of Glossematics which are clearly more formal in character than functional. As a formally oriented linguist, Hjelmslev anticipated the generative tradition in several respects. His aim was to provide a ‘calculus’ for human language (subsuming not just existing languages, but in fact all potential languages), a kind of universal grammar not unlike Chomsky’s UG in spirit. And his reductive approach to expression (aimed at establishing the inventory of expression glossemes, rather than simply expression taxemes) is, again in spirit, very similar to Chomsky and Halle’s rather abstract, ‘underlying’ morphophonemic approach to phonological representation. Although the notion of ‘function’ plays a central role in Glossematics, being the very essence of Hjelmslev’s conception of ‘form’ in contrast to ‘substance’, it is a purely logical, abstract, immanent notion, which should not be confused with the other very common understanding of function, prevalent in modern functional grammar, as ‘something serving a communicative purpose’. There is thus no contradiction in saying that Hjelmslev was a formal linguist who considered function to be the key property of language. On the other hand, having argued this point, I think it is important also to remember that Hjelmslev, unlike many modern formalists, but like Halliday and other functionalists, focussed more sharply on the notion of text than on the notion of sentence, and that he included content form as a primary object of linguistic description. Although Hjelmslev operated with a stratified view of language, it is essential to note that his stratification was twodimensional (i.e. a matrix consisting of a form-substance dimension and a content-expression dimension) rather than onedimensional and multiple-level, and that it served to exclude certain levels from the initial deductive analysis of texts, viz. content substance and expression substance. Stratification in Glossematics thus served a reductive purpose. In practice it meant that Hjelmslev considered language usage irrelevant at a semiological level, i.e. in linguistics as a metasemiotic. It also meant that texts were considered ‘processes’ (understood as ‘both-and’ relations) in substance deriving from language as system. Texts were viewed as distinct from language. Thus the primacy of systemic, paradigmatic relations in Glossematics was part and parcel of the reductive stratification. Finally, it is worth noting that Hjelmslev had surprisingly little to say about content form, i.e. the kind of ‘immanent semantics’ proposed in Glossematics. But it is clear from OSG/Prolegomena that the analysis of the content plane of signs at all levels was considered to be parallel to the analysis of the expression plane, and that the principles of economy and reduction applied to both planes. The descriptive goal thus remained the same: to identify the smallest number of units (expression glossemes and content glossemes) at the lowest level of analysis (i.e. the level of figures below the level of signs). In practice, we can regard Hjelmslev’s treatment of content form in OSG/Prolegomena as an outline of a theory of morphology in a fairly narrow sense. Readers who are interested in knowing more about Glossematics and its contemporary reception should consult *Bredsdorff, 1967; Fischer-Jørgensen *1943, 1966, 1975, 1991; Garvin, 1954; *Gregersen, 1991; Haugen, 1954; Lamb, 1966; Malmberg, 1964; *Rasmussen, 1992; Whitfield, 1956, 1969 (unfortunately, the works marked with an asterisk are available only in Danish). Hjelmslev himself wrote a small, more accessible book about language entitled Sproget (= Language) (Hjelmslev, *1963) and a large number of articles on individual topics within Glossematics (cf. the two collections of ‘Essais’, Hjelmslev, 1959, 1973). 4. Hjelmslev in systemic functional linguistics We are now in a good position to examine more closely the tribute Halliday and other systemicists pay to Hjelmslev. Has SFL been influenced in any real sense by Glossematics, or are the many references and acknowledgements a case of lip service to an old master? In what sense is Hjelmslev a source of inspiration to SFL? Let us begin with the two quotes offered in the introductory section of this paper – repeated here for your convenience: First let me say that I adopt the general perspective on the linguistic system you find in Hjelmslev, in the Prague school, with Firth in the London school, with Lamb, and to a certain extent with Pike [. . .] (from the Parret interview, Halliday, 1978:39)

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The theory on which this description is based, systemic theory, follows in the European functional tradition. It is largely based on Firth’s system-structure theory, but derives more abstract principles from Hjelmslev and owes many ideas to the Prague school. (Halliday, 1994:xxvi) In relation to the first quote I think it is safe to say that there is not in fact a consistent ‘‘general perspective on the linguistic system’’ shared by Hjelmslev and the other linguists mentioned, or by Halliday. On the contrary, Hjelmslev was in deliberate opposition to the Prague school (despite his cordial personal relations with Roman Jakobson). Hjelmslev did not conceive of the linguistic system (more specifically ‘language’) as a representation of a meaning potential (and as we shall see below, its relationship with text is very different in Glossematics than in SFL). It is furthermore difficult to read the second quote without getting the impression that Hjelmslev was part of ‘‘the European functional tradition’’. Even though Halliday prudently refers to Hjelmslev’s contribution as consisting of more ‘‘abstract principles’’, it must be emphasized that ‘function’ in a Glossematic context is a formal concept which has nothing to do with ‘function’ in the extrinsic, usage-related, social semiotic sense of SFL. Interestingly, when asked specifically about this in the Parret interview in Halliday, 1978, Halliday accepts that there is a difference but quickly goes on to say that his extrinsic functions are closely related to grammatical functions, and that the latter are in fact derivable from the former (1978:47). Hjelmslev’s use of the term receives no further comment, and the reader is left to wonder if it is covered by Halliday’s use of the term ‘grammatical function’ and thus derivable too from extrinsic functions or otherwise related. Let me be clear about this: Hjelmslev’s use of the term ‘function’ is very different from both Halliday’s extrinsic functions and his grammatical functions, and is not related to either in any obvious way. I therefore find the second quote above potentially confusing: readers may interpret it to mean that Hjelmslev is part of the European functional tradition, which he is not, and that Glossematics is functional in a way it is not. In the next passage offered for consideration, Halliday advocates – again with a comparative reference to Glossematics – the primacy of paradigmatic relations, a feature which in my view is actually shared by the two otherwise very different approaches to language: [. . .] in glossematics, and similarly in the ‘systemic’ version of system-structure theory, the syntagmatic concept of structure is embedded in a theory that is essentially paradigmatic. Here the description is based on system; and text is interpreted as the process of continuous movement through the system, a process which both expresses the higher orders of meaning that constitute the ‘social semiotic’, the meaning systems of the culture, and at the same time changes and modifies the system itself. (1978:137) In the first part of this quote, Halliday is obviously right in pointing to a similarity between SFL and Glossematics: in both theories paradigmatic relations are basic and syntagmatic relations are derived. But the reader should be careful not to assume any similarity between the two theories when Halliday goes on to talk more informally about text as ‘‘the process of continuous movement through the system’’ for ‘‘social semiotic’’ purposes. This is an adequate description of SFL, where the organization of text as purposeful behaviour and discourse is of central interest, but has nothing to do with Glossematics. As I have shown, although Hjelmslev uses the term ‘process’ for a general phenomenon of which text is a specific example, he very explicitly defines the syntagmatic dimension to which both belong in terms of the logical conjunction ‘both-and’. This concept does not necessarily involve movement or ‘process’ in the ordinary, informal sense of the word (as indeed we saw in the content analysis of ram in section 3.4, where two content figures (‘male’ + ‘sheep’) form a ‘both-and’ relation without being specifically related to any of the three sequentially ordered expression figures). What is more, text in Glossematics is a point of departure in the quest for the true formal nature of language, and is a matter of analytic principle for Hjelmslev rather than an actual descriptive goal. Glossematic description begins with the unanalysed text (any unanalysed text; in fact any conceivable unanalysed text) and aims – through a rigidly defined, principled analysis completely independent of any transcendent social semiotic considerations – to arrive at the smallest possible formal inventory of glossemes. Note finally that while Halliday assumes that the process ‘‘changes and modifies the system’’, Hjelmslev considered the system to be an ‘‘underlying constancy’’ and the text to be a ‘‘fluctuation’’ (1943:11; 1961:10; see also 1943:36; 1961:39). Reading the following passages I thus suspect that Halliday and Hasan may have misread Hjelmslev (even if I very much sympathize with their view about the relationship between text and system): The phenomenon that we call a language – or simply ‘language’, it makes no difference – is a semiotic resource that has evolved in the course of the evolution of human cultures; I have usually referred to it as a ‘meaning potential’. This meaning potential develops in the individual – no doubt reflecting its evolution in the species – simultaneously as system and as process, using these terms now in their Hjelmslevian sense: that is to say, the process of exchanging meanings engenders (brings into being) the system, and the system of meaning potential engenders (brings into play) the process. Language creates text, and simultaneously text creates language. (Halliday, 1981:14) The reason Malinowski, 1923, 1935 was able to turn Saussure’s relation of value and signification upside down (Hasan, 1985) was that ways of saying – parole within contexts – is creative of the langue. This is how I understand Hjelmslev’s comment that process determines system; a phenomenon cannot achieve the status of a process without systematicity. Value and signification are indeed two sides of the same coin. Looked at from the point of view of the system – the langue – we may claim that signification depends on value; looked at from the point of view of process – the parole – our claim would be that value depends upon what the speakers have consistently signified by sign – how it has meshed in with their structures of action and thought. (Hasan, 1987:208)

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Here the reader is again likely to get the wrong impression of Hjelmslev. We should not be confused by the fact that Hjelmslev says that the text determines the system (cf. 1943:36; 1961:39): ‘determine’ is here meant in a technical, Glossematic sense, as a functional label, to indicate that a text presupposes, or is dependent on, the system, but not vice versa (cf. the Glossematic definition of ‘determination’ in section 3.6), which fits exactly with his claim that the system is a constancy and the text is fluctuation, and his further claim that we can have form (system) without substance (text) but not substance without form (cf. section 3.3). Hjelmslev’s use of ‘determine’ is a good example of his tendency to use familiar terms in a very different, and therefore confusing way. Halliday’s and Hasan’s position on the relationship between text and system, as expressed in these quotes and elsewhere, has little to do with Glossematics. But there are more crucial differences between SFL and Glossematics. One of them is the organization of the linguistic model into strata. Although stratification is of central importance in both theories, and thus in principle a common feature like the primacy of paradigmatic relations, both the actual organization of the strata and their role in the linguistic description are very different. Halliday and Matthiessen introduce their basic stratificational scheme in this way (see also section 2): We might refer to the Hjelmslevian notion of the ‘‘content plane’’ as incorporating both a grammar and a semantics (e.g. Hjelmslev, 1943). Grammar and semantics are the two strata or levels of content in the three-level systemic theory of language, and they are related in a natural, non-arbitrary way. The third level is the level of expression, either phonology or graphology. (1999:4) A crucial point in both theories is the ‘internal’ stratification of the content plane (as also correctly pointed out in Martin, 1992:13ff). But Halliday and Matthiessen could here easily be interpreted to mean that the grammar in SFL, i.e. lexicogrammar, is somehow similar to, or corresponds to, Hjelmslev’s content form, and that SFL semantics (including the metafunctions) is like Hjelmslev’s content substance, or more simply that the relationship between the two strata is similar in the two models.17 I find the formulation potentially misleading. Hjelmslev’s stratification is two-dimensional (cf. section 3.3) while SFL stratification is one-dimensional. In both theories the organizational principle makes sense and reflects deliberate descriptive priorities. But the principles and priorities are very different. Hjelmslev’s stratification serves the purpose of limiting the primary object of linguistic investigation to form, not substance, while maintaining a distinction between content and expression. By contrast, Halliday’s stratification serves the purpose of embracing all strata and paying special attention to the relationship between them, thus in spirit rather resembling Lamb’s multiply stratified system (cf. Lamb’s 1966 criticism of Hjelmslev’s stratification). Moreover, Hjelmslev’s content form and Halliday’s lexicogrammar are clearly distinct. The difference is both one of scope (where content form is aimed at a morphological analysis and thus conceived of in much narrower terms than lexicogrammar) and, perhaps even more clearly, one of descriptive role. Hjelmslev intended a reductive analysis of content form parallel to that of expression form, i.e. in principle an attempt to arrive at the smallest possible number of items at the lowest level of analysis. He just never got round to it, and therefore never realized that the end result would have been different (or maybe it was the realization of this that prevented him from carrying out this part of a comprehensive Glossematic description). While Hjelmslev’s explicit ambition was to establish minimal inventories of glossemes according to the principles of reduction and economy, Halliday’s aim is to offer a delicate description of the resources for expressing all sorts of meanings in actual communication. One could say that Hjelmslev wanted to arrive at the strongest possible generalization (because this would allow for cross-linguistic insights) while Halliday wants the best possible detailed specification of (language-specific) resources for communicative purposes. In short, Halliday’s semantics, including the metafunctions, is excluded from Hjelmslev’s primary linguistic investigation while it is of central descriptive concern in SFL, and the other systemic functional stratum, lexicogrammar, has very little or nothing to do with content form. Halliday’s interpretation of Hjelmslev’s stratification is – in my view – also problematic in the following quotation: With the very young child, the uses of language seem to be rather discrete; and each has its own ‘grammar’, or ‘protogrammar’ since it has no stratal organization. [...] But adult use of language is such that, with minor exceptions, each utterance has to be multifunctional – while at the same time having an integrated structure. There must therefore be a level of organization of meaning; a semantic level, or in Lamb’s terms ‘semological stratum’. In Hjelmslevian terms, the ‘content purport’ has to be separated from, and organized into a ‘content substance’ as a precondition of its encoding in ‘content form’. What we are calling the functions of language may be regarded as the generalized categories of ‘content substance’ that the adult use of language requires. (1976:30–31) The last paragraph here very explicitly describes functions (more specifically the metafunctions of adult language) in SFL as a matter of Hjelmslevian content substance. But it is at least debatable whether the metafunctions in fact belong to content substance or to purport. The very general (and presumably cross-linguistic) nature of the metafunctions makes them more purport-like than substance-like. But in either case, ironically, it means that the functions so central to Halliday and SFL (and

17 For a thorough discussion of stratification in Glossematics and SFL, and an interesting attempt to (re)align the two approaches, see Taverniers (forthcoming).

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quite legitimately so) belong to a stratum that Hjelmslev considered transcendent and wanted to exclude from primary linguistic investigation. By contrast, Glossematic functions are immanent and independent of any purpose, communicative or otherwise (cf. section 3.6). From the quote above it also seems that Halliday departs from Glossematic thinking when he says that ‘‘[i]n Hjelmslevian terms, the ‘content purport’ has to be separated from, and organized into a ‘content substance’ as a precondition of its encoding in ‘content form’’’ (my emphasis). According to Hjelmslev, substance is language-specifically formed purport and thus clearly dependent on form. It is therefore hard to think of as something that must be separated from purport and organized prior to, or as a precondition of, its encoding in form. It seems that Halliday here changes the analytic direction that Hjelmslev argues for. While Hjelmslev considers substance to be the result of a projection of form on purport (which implies a direction from form to substance via purport), Halliday here seems to advocate a direction from purport via substance to form. That Halliday is serious about this opposite analytic direction is clear from the following passage which describes his metafunctions: It is the demands posed by the service of these functions which have moulded the shape of language and fixed the course of its evolution. These functions are built into the semantic system of language, and they form the basis of the grammatical organization, since the task of grammar is to encode the meanings deriving from these various functions into articulated structures. Not only are these functions served by all languages, at least in their adult form; they have also determined the way human language has evolved. (Halliday, 1978:22). This strikes me as a very purport-like description of the metafunctions and a very strong anti-Glossematic claim about the relationship between the various strata. In a later publication, Construing Experience through Meaning from 1999, Halliday and Matthiessen more explicitly argue for an analytic direction which is much more in line with Hjelmslev’s: The view we are adopting is a constructivist one, familiar from European linguistics in the work of Hjelmslev and Firth. According to this view, it is the grammar itself that construes experience, that constructs for us our world of events and objects. As Hjelmslev (1943) said, reality is unknowable; the only things that are known are our construals of it – that is, meanings. Meanings do not ‘exist’ before the wordings that realize them. They are formed out of the impact between our consciousness and its environment. (1999:17) Here the separation of substance from purport is not described as a precondition of the encoding of substance in content form but as the result of wordings, i.e. some sort of form. But once again it is important to remember that meanings, whether referred to as construals or as substance, have a very different status in the two approaches to language: in SFL they have a crucial interfacing role considered worthy of descriptive attention (and in my view rightly so), while in Glossematics they are excluded from the primary descriptive domain because Hjelmslev wanted to establish linguistics as an immanent science. Towards the end of their 1999 book, Halliday and Matthiessen attempt to meet Hjelmslev’s demand for immanence: . . . our interpretation of meaning is immanent, so that meaning is inside language, not some separate, higher domain of human experience . . . The central meaning-making resource in language – its ‘‘content plane’’ . . . is stratified into two systems: that of lexicogrammar, and that of semantics. The semantic system is the ‘outer’ layer, the interface where experience is transformed into meaning. (1999:603f) In other words, while Hjelmslev quite explicitly treats content substance as transcendent, Halliday and Matthiessen here argue that meanings (which they themselves regard as corresponding to Hjelmslev’s content substance) are immanent. As shown in section 3.8, one (quite deliberate) consequence of Hjelmslev’s multiply stratified semiotic model is that linguistic substance again becomes a legitimate object of description in the metasemiology of linguistics because this metasemiology must deal with the irreducible units of linguistics, including the very substance of both expression and content. At the end of OSG (1943:112; 1961:127) Hjelmslev therefore in fact joins immanence and transcendence in a close bond (‘‘a higher unity’’), but it is important to notice that he does so on the basis of immanence: he clearly envisaged a description of substance on the basis of the principles which he had already outlined for the description of form in his immanent linguistics, i.e. a very narrowly focused description in terms of a small number of logically defined functions. Halliday and Matthiessen in my view do the exact opposite: in their Construing Experience through Meaning, an ‘immanent’ semantics is defined which includes all our knowledge and experience of the world (cf. my discussion of Halliday and Matthiessen’s ‘ideation base’ in section 2). The world is thus in a sense invited into language, and ‘immanence’ is no longer in clear contrast to Hjelmslevian transcendence. I don’t think Hjelmslev would have accepted that kind of ‘immanence’ as immanent. Like Hjelmslev, Halliday and Matthiessen attempt to join immanence and transcendence in a close bond, but unlike Hjelmslev they do so on the basis of what Hjelmslev regarded as transcendence, and the result is therefore very, very different. 5. Conclusion Except for the recognition of the primacy of paradigmatic relations and the abstract idea of the stratification of the content plane, there is little or no similarity between Glossematics and SFL. In fact, Hjelmslev would have objected as

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strongly to SFL as he did to the Prague School and other ‘transcendent’ approaches to language. Hjelmslev carried immanent linguistics to its logical extreme but, somewhat ironically, he found that by abstracting from substance his theory became generally applicable, even applicable to all kinds of substance, and in fact to all other sciences. The important point here is that, according to Hjelmslev, the method to be adopted in this metasemiological description of everything should remain strictly immanent and Glossematic. However, as long as we do not expect Hjelmslev to sit in his immanent heaven – all form, no substance – and smile benignly and approvingly down at what we are doing, we are of course free to find inspiration in Glossematics and to adapt all the exciting concepts and challenging terminology to our own transcendent purposes, and I suspect this is in part what has happened in SFL. The aim of this paper is therefore not to point the accusing finger at systemicists, even if their references and comparisons strike me as occasionally too casual and potentially misleading. There is evidence that Halliday had a good grasp of Hjelmslev, especially in his early writings. But readers less well versed in Glossematics may well get the wrong idea about this particular source of inspiration. In research there is always an element of subjective interpretation, and we are probably all guilty of subconsciously aligning or adjusting other scholars’ ideas to suit our own descriptive purposes and theoretical framework. The problem is that we risk giving younger generations of linguists an inaccurate or wrong impression of our great forefathers and the nature of their ideas and contributions to linguistics. I have met young systemicists (and a few older ones too) who I suspect admire Hjelmslev for all the wrong reasons. My hope is that this paper will help set the record straight, and that Hjelmslev will be admired for all the right reasons – even if we have all moved on. Acknowledgements I would like to thank a number of people for offering constructive criticism or for discussing central issues with me: Thomas Hestbæk Andersen, Philip Bell, Chris Butler, Frans Gregersen, Peter Harder, Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen, Steffen Nordahl Lund, Cindie Aaen Maagaard, Uwe Kjær Nissen, Nina Nørgaard, Uwe Helm Petersen, Flemming Smedegaard, Miriam Taverniers. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the editor of Journal of Pragmatics, Jacob Mey, who gave me detailed comments on the paper, to my two anonymous referees for their suggestions, and to Jim Martin, who prompted me to take up this project in the first place by inviting me to give a paper on Hjelmslev at a conference in Sydney. References Anderson, S.R., 1985. Phonology in the Twentieth Century. 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