"Frequency (Often Described As Probability In SFL)"

Fontaine (2017: 5-6):

According to Hasan (2009:169), “instantiation is the relationship between a potential and its instance, context of culture is the potential, i.e. the system, while context of situation is an instance of that potential”. The role of frequency (often described as probability in SFL) is important to the understanding of system and instantiation since it has a mediating role between system and instance. In theory, every instance perturbs the system to some degree or another, however (in)significant this may be. Plum (1998:31) states that the premise that “the realisation of context in text is probabilistic provides not only the key to making the hypothesis of the functional determination of text by its context testable but also provides a way of accounting for the variability found in text”. This is a now common view within SFL but it leads to viewing lexis or at least lexicogrammatical structure as deterministic. It is at some level difficult to reconcile this view with Halliday’s (1991:282) claim that “text and situation come into being together; so whatever kind of order we set up between them, it must be such that we can start from either end”. One way to view this relationship is to consider, as suggested by Tucker (2006:960), that “the full potential of language is reduced under the influence of the context of culture and the context of situation”, which maintains the relationship between meaning potential and instance.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. To be clear, in SFL Theory, there is an important difference between probability and frequency. Probability quantifies the features of potential, whereas frequency quantifies the features of an instance. Frequencies of features instantiated as text eventually have the effect of changing their systemic probability of being instantiated.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. On the one hand, probabilistic instantiation is not deterministic, because it introduces a degree of uncertainty — and so indeterminacy — into the system–&–process. On the other hand, there is no deterministic relation between context and language, because the relation between them is realisation (elaborating identification), not cause (enhancing identification).

[3] To be clear, the Tucker quote is potentially misleading, because the "full potential of language" is not reduced under the influence of the context of culture, since the context of culture is the "full potential" of context which is realised by the "full potential" of language.

What is true is that less and less of the "full potential" (of culture and language) is instantiated as our perspective descends the cline of instantiation. That is, the potential of a register is less than the overall potential of a language, and the potential instantiated as text is less than the potential of its register.

However, contrary to Fontaine's claim, the Tucker quote has no bearing whatsoever on any supposed determinism in instantiation or lexis or grammatical structure.