A critique of individualistic semiotics through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics
C.S. Peirce gave us a powerful rethinking of the sign—not just as a link between form and meaning, but as a dynamic triad: sign, object, interpretant. In his hands, semiosis becomes a process: the sign refers to an object through the mediation of an interpretant. This model, deeply embedded in logic and pragmatism, is flexible enough to encompass everything from road signs to quantum equations.
But for all its reach, Peirce’s semiotics is haunted by a blind spot: language. Not as a system of symbols, but as a social semiotic—structured, stratified, and shared. Where Peirce begins with individual thought, Halliday begins with collective meaning. If Peirce’s model elevates mental interpretation, Halliday’s insists that meaning arises from dialogue, from context, from the grammar of interaction. This post explores why Peirce’s model—while foundational—is not enough, and why it needs Halliday to address the semiotic complexities of human language.
1. From Mental Triads to Social Systems
Peirce's model is designed to model inference, not dialogue. It starts with an interpreter—whether human or divine—and works outward: how does a sign point to its object via the mediation of a meaning process (the interpretant)? Semiosis is recursive, infinite, and individual.
Halliday, in contrast, doesn’t start with inference but with interaction. Language, in his view, is a resource for meaning, shaped by social function. His model is not built from logic but from context, use, and the need to negotiate roles, relations, and realities. The unit of analysis is not the sign, but the clause. And meaning is not interpreted in the mind, but instantiated in texts.
2. Interpretants vs. Instantiations
Peirce’s interpretant is often cast as a mental effect: the sign creates an idea in the mind of the interpreter. But what kind of idea? A feeling? An action? A thought? The ambiguity is intentional, but it anchors meaning in the individual.
Halliday avoids this ambiguity by treating meaning as stratified: semantics (meaning), lexicogrammar (wording), and phonology/graphology (sounding/writing). These levels are linked by realisation, and meaning unfolds over time through instantiation. A text is an instance of the system; interpretation is the process of recreating the potential from the instance.
Where Peirce sees meaning as cognitive mediation, Halliday sees it as semantic actualisation. Meaning isn’t in the head—it’s in the system, and it’s realised through patterned social behaviour.
3. Peirce’s Object Problem
One of the slipperiest aspects of Peirce’s model is the “Object.” It can be anything: a physical object, an abstract concept, a hypothetical law of nature. But the object is always treated as something prior to the sign—as if meaning is about referring back to something that already exists.
This ontology flattens distinctions between perception and conception, between observed phenomena and constructed ideas. Worse, it ignores the role of language in constructing objects in the first place.
Halliday’s approach foregrounds this role. Objects are not pre-given—they are construed in discourse. Language doesn’t just name the world; it builds worlds. Peirce wants to explain how signs refer to objects. Halliday wants to explain how we construe objects as meaning.
4. Stratification vs. Collapse
Peirce’s model is elegantly recursive, but it lacks stratification. There’s no clear account of how signs differ in rank or layer. Everything is a sign, and every sign becomes the object of another sign in an endless regress.
Halliday introduces a necessary hierarchy. Language is not a flat play of signs but a system of strata:
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Context: the social situation
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Semantics: meaning potential
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Lexicogrammar: wording as system
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Phonology/Graphology: sounding or writing
Each stratum constrains and enables the others. A clause realises meaning, but that meaning is shaped by context. This prevents the infinite regress of Peirce’s interpretants by anchoring semiosis in structured, functional systems.
5. Sign vs. Clause
For Peirce, the sign is the atomic unit of semiosis. But signs, in his model, are isolated acts of interpretation. Halliday sees the clause—not the sign—as the minimal unit of meaning, because the clause is where the metafunctions of language converge:
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Ideational (construing experience)
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Interpersonal (enacting social relations)
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Textual (organising discourse)
Signs, in Peirce’s world, do not enact. They refer, infer, suggest. But they don’t do. Halliday’s clause, by contrast, is the place where doing, meaning, and relating are integrated.
6. The Meaning of Meaning
Peirce’s semiotics is a model of interpretation. Halliday’s is a model of production and interaction. For Peirce, meaning is the result of a mental process triggered by a sign. For Halliday, meaning is potential realised through selection and structured through grammar.
Peirce’s model is powerful when dealing with thought, logic, and inference. But it begins to falter when confronted with language as a social phenomenon. It cannot explain how children learn language, how cultures shape discourse, or how ideologies are encoded in grammar. It cannot explain why a poem means differently to different readers—not because of different interpretants, but because of different social positions and linguistic resources.
Conclusion: A Semiotic of the Mind vs. a Semiotic of the World
Peirce gave us a semiotic of logic—a model of thought as sign-mediated interpretation. But Halliday gives us a semiotic of language—a model of meaning as social action. Peirce wants to know how signs refer; Halliday wants to know how we make meaning together.
If Peirce helps us understand how minds interpret, Halliday helps us understand how societies mean. To study language through Peirce is to study meaning as inference. To study language through Halliday is to study meaning as interaction.
It’s not that Peirce is wrong—only that his model is too small. It needs stratification, system, and sociality. It needs to get out of the head and into the world.
It needs Halliday.
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