🌿 Fractals in SFL Terms: A Translation

Fractals are typically defined by recursive patterns, self-similarity across scales, and emergent complexity from simple rules. Let's reframe each of these within the SFL ontology of meaning potential, instantiation, and stratification.

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1. Recursive Patterns → Systemic Recursivity in Meaning Potential

In fractals:

A simple generative rule is applied repeatedly to generate increasingly complex shapes.

In SFL:

We don’t use “rules” in a generative grammar sense, but we do have systems of options that become more delicate (finely discriminated) as we move down the system network.

➡️ The recursivity in SFL lies in how systems are nested and contextually re-entered at multiple ranks and metafunctions. For instance, theme-rheme structures can be recursively embedded (e.g., thematised clauses within clauses), as can ideational structures like processes within participants.

In other words, the meaning potential of language is systemically recursive, not formally recursive. Each choice opens further networks of choice—like a branching fractal.

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2. Self-Similarity Across Scales → Functional Resonance Across Ranks

In fractals:

Zooming in reveals structures that resemble the whole. The structure is scale-invariant.

In SFL:

There’s no literal scale-invariance, but there is functional resonance across ranks—clause, group/phrase, word—each expressing aspects of the three metafunctions.

For example:

• Experiential meaning is construed both in the clause (through transitivity) and in the nominal group (through things like classification and epithet).

• Interpersonal meaning appears in the mood system (clause) but also in modality (group/phrase, adverbials).

• The textual metafunction governs theme–rheme at the clause level and information structure.

➡️ This is like self-similarity of function: at each level of symbolic abstraction and rank scale, we’re realising the same metafunctional meanings, just differently articulated.

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3. Emergent Complexity from Simple Potential → Stratified Instantiation

In fractals:

Start with a simple shape, apply iterative transformation → complex patterns emerge.

In SFL:

Start with a meaning potential (system network), and through instantiation (text), realise a rich, context-specific expression of meaning.

And here's the fractal-like part:

• An instantial system (a specific text or genre) itself becomes part of a higher-order potential—a potential for cultural memory, or for symbolic evolution.

• So meaning potential is both cumulative and recursive: texts feed back into the system as genres, styles, or discourses—just as in a fractal, the iteration of the form reshapes the total image.

➡️ This captures emergent symbolic complexity: each instantiation is both product and participant in the evolution of the system—like a fractal iteration generating the next image.

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4. Poet-Shaman as Fractal Constrainer → Meaning-Maker at the Liminal Edge

In the metaphor:

The poet-shaman is a boundary-walker, invoking new symbolic resonances that ripple through the whole.

In SFL:

This figure operates at the edge of the collective meaning potential, crafting new instantiations that reorganise systems—introducing novel couplings of ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings.

They become:

• Agents of metasystemic evolution—not just expressing meanings, but reshaping what kinds of meanings are available.

• Conduits for re-stratification: their texts invite new mappings between experience and meaning, new grammatical metaphors, and new symbolic orders.

In this sense, the poet-shaman is not so much generating fractals as sculpting the attractors that shape the evolving fractal of collective semiosis.

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Summary