Episode 33 The Grammar Matrix

M.A.K. Halliday has this (and a whole lot more) to say about grammar:

Grammar is the central processing processing unit of language, the powerhouse where meanings are created. (2014, p. 22).

In this episode I take the CPU metaphor to new extremes. I claim I’m able to converse with society because I’m just like one of those computer hackers from The Matrix. (‘I don’t even see the code.’) The characters and scenes in The Matrix were formed out of bits of computer code – can we also imagine the characters and scenes of the social world to be made out of bits of grammar? We’d have to imagine grammar as a system, the way Halliday does, and at each level of complexity, a choice is made. Yes or no. One or zero. There are 10 types of people in the world, and at Girl Scout Camp, I became one of the ones who knows binary.

Out of all these choices, out of all these possible systemic systemic construals, one gets chosen at each point. Selves get made from sets of choices. Society personifies itself as a character in a context.

And then it identifies with that character.

And it can’t think outside itself itself.

Until something disrupts it. And it has to face itself – as an other – and new possibilities of social structure emerge.