Functionalism has also played a role in linguistics and semiotics, most recently under the influence of Michael Halliday,1who distinguishes two related kinds of function:
(1) ‘function in structure’, and (2) ‘function in society’ (or ‘use of language’). The term ‘structure’ in ‘function in structure’ refers to syntactic structure, which in mainstream twentieth century linguistics had usually been a matter of formal rules of ‘well- formedness’ or ‘correctness’. Linguists like Halliday reinterpreted them in functional terms. So here, the ‘whole’ was not ‘society’ but the ‘clause’, or the ‘text’, and the ‘parts’ were not ‘individuals’ or ‘groups’ within society but the elements of clause or text structure. Here is an example:
[Nguyen Ngoc Loan] [shot] [the Vietcong suspect]
Each of the parts of this clause – as indicated by the brackets– not only has a partic- ular position in the clause (initial, medial, final) but also a functional role with respect to the whole. The verb form ‘shot’ functions as the process, as that what is done or happens. The role of the nominal group ‘Nguyen Ngoc Loan’ is that of ‘actor’, or ‘doer’ of the action, and the role of the nominal group ‘the Vietcong suspect’ is that of the ‘goal’, the ‘entity to which the action is done’. Each part contributes to the construction of the whole, the represented action, just as, in sociological function- alism, each part of society contributes to the ‘social organism’. As Halliday put it:
[grammar] construes all the bits of a language – its clauses, phrases and so on – as organic configurations of functions. In other words, each part is interpreted as functional with respect to the whole.
(1985: xiii) The idea of the ‘function in structure’ has carried over into social semiotics, for instance in Kress and Van Leeuwen’s systemic-functional grammar of visual design
(1996). In figure 4.1 the vector formed by Loan’s outstretched arm and gun functions as ‘process’, and the two main volumes, Loan and the Vietcong suspect, have the roles of actor and goal, respectively. In other words, different semiotic modes can realize the same roles by different means, through different observable forms.
The other aspect of Halliday’s linguistic functionalism, ‘function in society’, relates to the function of the whole for the parts. Like functionalist sociology, Halliday’s account of the function of language in society stresses that the basic needs of indi- viduals are fulfilled by the ‘whole’ that unites individuals, in this case language: ‘Language has evolved to satisfy human needs, and the way it is organised is func- tional with respect to those needs’ (1985: xiii). The relation between ‘function in structure’ and ‘function in society’ is most clearly articulated in Halliday’s account of child language acquisition (op. cit.), which I will therefore describe in a little more detail.
Between the age of 6 and 18 months approximately, says Halliday, children may not yet be learning language but they are already learning the functions of language, using their vocal resources to explore what you can do with language, and discov- ering, in this order, and always in the context of actual interactions with the mother or other carers:
1 The instrumental function of language, the fact that you can use language to express what you want.
2 The regulative function of language, the fact that you can use it to get people to do things for you.
3 The interactive function of language, the fact that you can use it to interact, for example, to greet or express your pleasure at seeing someone.
4 The personal function of language, the fact that you can use it to express your feelings, for example, your pleasure or disgust at something.
5 The heuristic function of language, the fact that you can use it to find out about things.
6 The imaginative use of language, the fact that you can use it to pretend, and 7 The informative use of language, the fact that you can use it to impart information.
To explore these functions children develop a repertoire of some 50-odd vocal noises which may be inventions or imitations of words they have heard, for example, nanananana for ‘I want that thing now’. Only the mother and perhaps one or two others will understand this ‘protolanguage’, but it does serve its purpose of communi- cation and it does demonstrate to the child not only that you can, for instance, regu- late other people’s behaviour but also that you can use language to do it.
At about 18 months, the child gradually begins to understand that these communi- cative functions coincide with the functions of the elements of language – for instance the regulative function with the imperative mood. This signals the beginning of its ‘move into the adult language’. As in architectural functionalism, ‘form follows func- tion’ – language is only adopted once the child has come to understand the needs it fulfils and the functions it can serve.
Later the child generalizes the seven ‘protofunctions’ into two ‘metafunctions’: ‘(1) to understand the environment (the ideational function), and (2) to act on the others in it (the interpersonal function)’ (Halliday, 1985: xiii). To these a third metafunctional component will be added, the ‘textual’, ‘which breathes relevance into the other two’, and marshals combined representations-cum-interactions into the kind of coherent wholes that we recognize as specific kinds of texts or communicative events (ibid.). Halliday stresses that language always fulfils these three functions simultaneously, and that there is no particular hierarchy among them – all three are equally impor- tant. The metafunctions have also played a key role in the development of social semiotic extensions of Halliday’s linguistic theory. In developing their grammar of visual design, for instance, Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) began their research by assuming that all semiotic systems will be able to fulfil all three of Halliday’s metafunctions, and by asking how the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual function are fulfilled in visual communication.
Roman Jakobson’s account of the functions of language (1960) has been even more widely used in semiotics. Jakobson recognized six functions, and related them to the elements of communication: (1) the referential function is oriented towards the context referred to in the act of communication, to what the message is about, (2) the emotive function is oriented towards the addresser, and ‘aims at a direct expression of the speaker’s attitude toward what he is speaking about’ (1960: 354), and (3) the conative function is oriented towards the addressee, and similar to Halliday’s ‘regula- tive’ protofunction: language in its function of doing things to, for or with the
addressee. These first three functions correspond to those of Bühler (1934), who related them to the system of ‘person’, the emotive function to ‘I’, the first person, the conative function to ‘you’, the second person, and the referential function to ‘he, she, it, they’, the third person.
But Jakobson added three further functions: (4) the phatic function –this term came from Malinowski – which is oriented towards the channel, or, more precisely, towards ‘keeping the channel open’, and ‘displayed by a profuse exchange of ritualised formulas, or by entire dialogues with the mere purport of prolonging communication’. In other words, it is communication for the sake of communication, communication to avoid awkward silences (1960: 355); (5) the metalingual function, oriented towards the code, and coming to the fore ‘whenever the addresser and/or the addressee need to check up whether they use the same code’, whether, for instance they mean the same thing by a given word, as in ‘Do you know what I mean?’ or ‘I don’t quite follow you’, and (6) the poetic function, which focuses on the message itself, and brings in an aesthetic element, not just in poetry but also in everyday language:
‘Why do you always say Joan and Margery, yet never Margery and Joan? Do you prefer Joan to her twin sister?’ ‘Not at all, it just sounds smoother.’…A girl used to talk about ‘the horrible Harry’. ‘Why horrible?’, ‘Because I hate him’. ‘But why not dreadful, terrible, frightful, disgusting?’ ‘I don’t know, but horrible fits him better.’ Without realizing it, she clung to the poetic device of paronomasia.
(Jakobson, 1960: 356–7) Two of the differences between these two accounts are worth looking at more closely.
The balance between the social and the individual
Halliday recognizes neither an ‘emotive’, nor a ‘poetic’ function, even though some- thing like the former does exist in the child’s protolanguage – the ‘personal’ function. His arguments for this are linguistic: these functions ‘are not distinguished in the linguistic system’ (quoted in Parret, 1974: 95). But Jakobson also motivates his func- tions by relating them to specific linguistic expressions, it is just that he draws the line between what does and what does not belong to the linguistic system a little differently and more inclusively. For Jakobson, the emotive function is expressed by overall or ‘prosodic’ features that cannot be tied to specific elements, for instance by features of voice quality or of attitudinal style, in short by the features that ‘flavour all our utter- ances, on their phonic, grammatical and lexical level’ (1960: 354). And the poetic function is expressed by poetic systems such as rhyme, alliteration and metric struc- ture. The net result is, of course, that there is more space for expressiveness and aesthetic pleasure in Jakobson’s version of linguistic functionalism.
Hierarchical and non-hierarchical relations between functions
Both Halliday and Jakobson see all their functions as always all present in every utterance. But while Halliday says that all three functions are always equally impor- tant (1978: 50), Jakobson says that any given function can dominate the others in specific contexts. The poetic function for instance ‘is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant, determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as a subsidiary, accessory constituent’ (1960: 356). This principle can be extended to other functions. In an advertisement, for instance, the ‘conative’ function will be in the foreground, in a news report the ‘referential’ function, at least on the level of ‘manifest’ functions.
Halliday’s functional linguistics, and the functional approaches to semiotics it has inspired, have been widely used as research and development tools in pragmatic enter- prises such as the teaching of writing and the design of documents, and they have also been influential in critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis, because they are useful for bringing out the functions of socially important texts, such as political speeches, media texts, etc. But they have also been critiqued for being too producer- oriented and assuming that the act of interpretation is structurally determined, and for not allowing space for expressiveness and creativity. Such critiques have not always been fully acknowledged or convincingly countered. Some functional linguists and semioticians have just ignored them or rejected them flat out, others have dressed up functional social semiotics in postmodern wrappings without essentially changing the theory, much as architects have hidden functional structures behind postmodern façades, and postmodern social theorists have allowed functionalism in by the backdoor (see for example, Mouzelis’ (1995) critique of Giddens).
Here I want to explore these issues by looking at specific examples of designed objects, and investigate three issues, (1) ‘function in structure’, inbuilt functionality, (2) ‘function in society’, and (3) the degree to which users are either structurally determined by the way the object is designed and the rules of use that surround it, or free to use it as they want. While I will not pretend that I can solve issues that have been debated throughout the twenthieth century with a single example, I do hope my example will help make the issues a little clearer and the theory a little less abstract. The example will also serve as a recapitulation of the themes of the previous chapters, as I first construct the inventory of a semiotic resource, then investigate the discourses that regulate it, and finally look at the way this resource is actually used.