This book is concerned with semantic variation, both from the perspective of variation between texts (what semiotic resources are used to do) and variation among speakers (how semiotic resources are used to negotiate community). This chapter develops the general theoretical framework informing this research. It begins by reviewing some of the key concepts developed by systemic functional linguistics for modelling system as a resource for meaning – axis, and the derived concepts of rank, metafunction and stratification. It then considers the complementary hierarchy of instantiation, which relates system to instances of use – recontextualising work on register and genre and introducing the concepts of coupling and commitment as tools for exploring language, paralanguage and related modalities of communication across multimodal texts. It then turns to the complementary hierarchy of individuation, which relates reservoirs of systems to repertoires of use – reviewing work on coding orientation and introducing the concepts of bonding and iconisation as tools for exploring affiliation. Finally it turns to genesis, concerned with semantic variation over time, reviewing work on phylogenesis (historical evolution of the system), ontogenesis (individual development of repertoires) and logogenesis (unfolding instances of use). As each chapter illustrates, the resources deployed, the texts through which they are instantiated and the identities these texts construe have to be all kept in focus as our social perspective on semiosis evolves. As ever in functional linguistics and semiotics, the key to wrestling with the edge of knowledge is to sustain a multi-perspectival stance in which theory deploys complementarities to illuminate our object of study – so we can observe the humanity of our communication processes, not just their form.

This chapter traces the development of SFL approaches to semantic variation and their ongoing interaction with sociological approach of code theory. In the first half of the chapter, we review the key influence of Bernstein’s code theory in terms of the differential orientations to meaning people display and the way this interacts with class. We then review Hasan and colleague’s seminal SFL examination of Bernstein’s code theory, their findings showing the presence of semantic variation across classes and the wide-ranging language features used to construct this. Finally, this discussion of Bernstein and Hasan will be interpreted in terms of the more recent concept of allocation in SFL – the distribution of meaning potential across society. In the second half of this chapter, this allocation model will be completed by a model of affiliation, concerned with how people come together to align, form community and share meanings across contexts. To understand this model, we will introduce the modern development of code theory known as Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and its concepts of cosmology and constellations. Cosmologies develop out of Bernstein’s coding orientations to explores sets of principles underpinning any particular social practice or community; constellations are the networks of meanings that cluster together in ways that ‘make sense’ to their community. As with the model of allocation, we will reinterpret this in terms of SFL’s recently developed model of ‘bond networks’ – shared couplings of ideational and interpersonal meaning in communities – and ‘mass’ and ‘presence’, concerning principles for the selection of meanings in terms of their complexity (mass) and context-dependence (presence). Together with chapter one, this chapter will put forward a firm theoretical grounding for the discussion of affiliation through the rest of the book and help readers toward SFL’s goal of understanding language in society.

This chapter explores the concept of affiliation – how social bonds are enacted in discourse – by considering how values are proposed and negotiated in language as couplings of ideation and attitude. It surveys recent social semiotic work on coupling and affiliation that has arisen out of Knight’s (2010) work on conversational humour. The affiliation framework is applied to a case study featuring a face-to-face multiparty conversation between mothers talking about their experience of ‘mom guilt’ in a video posted to YouTube. Coupling analysis is applied to the transcript of this verbal interaction in order to explore the unfolding negotiation of values. Throughout this analysis we will see that the mothers orchestrate a highly intricate, yet subtle, pattern of meanings to affiliate with each other. This involves curating a range of language features including NEGOTIATION, concerned with the organisation of dialogue, APPRAISAL, concerned with sourcing and evaluation of meanings, IDEATION, concerned with the organisation of ideational meanings, and INVOLVEMENT concerned with marking social solidarity and status. Together, this chapter will show just how much work goes into building community and the ways in which SFL analyses can bring out the highly intricate ways of speaking that enable it.

This chapter offers a multimodal perspective on affiliation, considering how body language supports the proposal and negotiation of ideation-attitude couplings in the face-to-face multiparty conversation introduced in the previous chapter. Developing Martin and Zappavigna’s previous work on how embodied identities are enacted in youth justice conferencing and drawing on the previous chapter’s coupling analysis undertaken on the verbal transcript, we explore how body language can illuminate which couplings are central to the social bonding so evidently going on in the video-recorded interaction. This will show just how much work our bodies do to help us affiliate with others and emphasise the vital importance for linguistics of engaging with this embodied form of meaning.

This chapter considers the difficult problem of interpreting how people forge alignments when they are not necessarily directly interacting, a key concern in interpreting online communication, particularly social media communication. It draws on Zappavigna’s recent work on ‘ambient affiliation’ in relation to Twitter and Instagram. The notion of coupling explained in chapter 3 is revisited in order to consider how particular couplings are pitched, promoted and finessed, a communing process referred to as ‘convocation’. The data considered is a corpus of Twitter and Instagram posts tagged #momguilt aimed at coordinating with the kind of discourse analysed in chapters 3 and 4.

In this book we argue that questions of identity can be usefully pursued from the perspective of affiliation – suggesting that persona have to be understood as repertoires of values which align speakers as members of social groups. It follows from this social perspective that most of us enact multiple persona by way of membering ourselves with one or another community ¬– where community is understood in general terms as involving two or more individuals, who share bonds, across a range of levels of affiliation (as couples, families, friends, tradies, colleagues, team mates, fans, believers, citizens, comrades, allies and so on). We developed this communal perspective on identity from two perspectives –allocation and alignment. The allocation perspective considers the distribution of the semiotic resources of a culture to one or another bond network, both in terms of what resource are made available and predispositions for using those that are ¬– semiotic repertoires. The affiliation perspective considers the constellations of bonds that align persona as members of communities – their belonging. Work on allocation in SFL has been ably pursued from a quantitative perspective, especially in the work of Hasan and her colleagues (who were inspired by Bernstein’s initiatives). We would encourage this work to continue, taking a wider range of discourse semantic variables into account and drawing on computational parsing tools as they evolve. Work on affiliation in SFL has tended to be pursued from a qualitative perspective, taking into account the range of variables in play in social interaction (a feature of our own work). We would also encourage this work to continue, taking into account a wider range of registers and the communities negotiated therein. In relation to both perspectives, further development of the concept of iconisation is urgently required – so that we can better anchor research in the totems communities rally around (their gurus, icons, flags, colours, sacred texts etc.) and the ceremonies through which they ritually commune.