Modelling interfaces with context in SFL

Abstract

This is a study of the tools for describing language-in-context in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and specifically, the way in which dynamic time can be added to this description. Of central importance in this exploration are the concepts of stratification and instantiation and their interaction, and the way in which this interaction is ‘achieved’ metafunctionally and dynamically through the construction of relevant contexts spanning various time scales. The article proposes a new theorization of context in SFL, in which context is regarded as an interplay of different interfacing semiotic strata, and a meshing of multiple complementary and interacting processes of mediation which are at work at different scales of semogenesis.