Friday 19 January 2018

Cosmogonic Myth Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [5]

Genesis (1:5):
5. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this symbolism from Abrahamic mythology can be interpreted as further construing the genesis of construing experience as meaning through language.

This fifth verse construes the stratification of linguistic content into two levels of symbolic abstraction: meaning and wording.

In the first clause, the creator of meaning verbally assigns a relation of symbolic identity that encodes the meaning the light by reference to the wording day:

God
called
the light
Day
Assigner
Process: identifying: symbol
Identified Value
Identifier Token

In the second clause, the creator of meaning verbally assigns a relation of symbolic identity that encodes the meaning the darkness by reference to the wording night:

and
the darkness
he
called
Night

Identified Value
Assigner
Process: identifying: symbol
Identifier Token

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