First, Marxist philosophy of language
Although Marx and Engels did not elaborate on language theory, their exposition on this issue can be found in various works. In order to resist the mystification of language by Hegel's German idealism, Marx particularly emphasized the materiality of language, thinking that "spirit is unlucky from the beginning and is intertwined with matter". Matter is represented here as vibrating air layer and sound, in short, language. [4] Then Marx discussed the practicality, sociality and dialectics of language. He said, "Language and consciousness have the same long history. Language is a practical and realistic consciousness, which exists not only for others, but also for oneself. Language, like consciousness, is only produced because of necessity and the urgent need to communicate with others. " [4](34) Language is the product of human society, which means that social existence determines social consciousness (language). Language is inseparable from real life. As Marx said, "Philosophers can only realize that their own language is a distorted language of the real world by reducing their own language to a common language abstracted from it, and can understand that no matter what thoughts and languages are, they cannot form a special kingdom independently, but they are just expressions of real life." [5] The basic purpose of Marxist view of language is to "unmask"-unmask thoughts, solve ideological difficulties, and "cure"-treat "mental paranoia" caused by misunderstanding of language and life. [6] In short, the Marxist view of language emphasizes the materiality, practicality and dialectics of language, and understands language and thought from life practice and life form, thus eliminating the mystery and materiality of language and theoretically canceling the rationality of idealism.
Second, materialism, dialectics and practice embodied in systemic functional linguistics.
(A) the language view of social semiotics: the materialism of language
Based on different purposes and interests of language research, every linguist has his own unique view of language. Halliday cares about education, which is his first motivation for language research. As Halliday himself said [7], he wants to establish an "applied linguistics", so he studies language from a social perspective and thinks that linguistics is a social semiotics, which determines the materialistic basis of Halliday's view of language. It is embodied in the following two aspects: First, the study of linguistics belongs to semiotics. Halliday's semiotics is different from the traditional Stoicism and Saussure's semiotics. It is a study of symbolic system, meaning, rather than an isolated and static symbol. Language, as a symbol, is a potential resource of meaning and has a materialistic basis of material reality, because any symbol is a part of material reality and has an external form to express meaning. Dance, for example, is to express meaning in the external form of human body movements. Similarly, language as a symbol also has its objective external material form of expressing meaning, that is, sound. Secondly, language is social, and "social" contains two meanings. One meaning refers to the social system, namely culture; Halliday emphasized that "language is like this because it has to perform such a function" [8], which means that the function of language has its material basis and is determined by people's real life needs. The second meaning expresses the relationship between language and social structure, which is regarded as an aspect of social system. Social structure includes situational context, family level and social level. Social system and social structure are objective reality, that is, matter. Language is the product of maintaining social structure. The speaker reflects the objective social reality by using language or "anti-language" and reconstructs a subjective social system. In other words, all languages are in use, and context determines meaning, and social context is one of them. This means that language is the product of human society, which coincides with the Marxist view of language that social existence determines social consciousness (language). It can be seen that Halliday also believes that language has its material basis, which is an objective reflection of reality and fully embodies his materialistic view of language.
(B) Dialectics embodied in systemic functional linguistics
Dialectics in Systemic Functional Linguistics is embodied in the demonstration of "exchange function" of clauses, which is an elaboration of grammatical metaphor and a supplementary research method. 1. Dialectics embodied in the clause "exchange function" In daily communication, language, as a communication tool, inevitably involves the dialogue between language users. According to the communicative role of language users (giving or demanding) and the exchanged goods (or goods and services, or news), we can draw four speech functions (providing, declaring, ordering and asking questions). In the process of communication, the speaker himself plays a certain role, and at the same time imposes the opposite role on the listener (reader), that is to say, on the basis of understanding these speech functions, the speaker can make eight positive or negative reactions (offer-acceptance, return; Command-execute, refuse; Statement-approval, rejection; Ask questions-answer, refuse to answer). Speakers and listeners/readers are both antagonistic and interrelated, and sometimes their roles are transformed and unified in the process of "exchange" of clauses, which shows the essence and charm of Marxist dialectics. Second, dialectics in the interpretation of grammatical metaphor Although the concept of grammatical metaphor was first put forward by Halliday, this phenomenon has existed since ancient times. Halliday has a unique view on the essence, function, explanation and classification of grammatical metaphor [9]. He regards "metaphorical expression" and "consistent expression" as different expressions of unified meaning, but they are not absolutely equivalent, because in the view of systemic functional linguistics, the meanings expressed by "metaphorical expression" and "consistent expression" are only the same in some aspects, and the two expressions are different from each other and related/dependent. If an expression is metaphorical, then this metaphor is relative to other expressions. [10] We can't simply conclude that consistent expression is better and more common than metaphorical expression, so it is a norm/standard, because both of them are just fulfilling their differences.
Which way to do the same job depends on many factors, such as context and register, which is a natural process. Moreover, an expression of meaning cannot be classified as absolute agreement or metaphor, and these two expressions of meaning are just a relative concept. These viewpoints fully embody the thought of Marxist dialectics. Yan Shiqing [3] discusses the contribution of Halliday's grammatical metaphor theory from the perspective of truth relativity, thus demonstrating the dialectics embodied in his grammatical metaphor theory. Thirdly, the dialectical, unified and complementary research methods and the mature theoretical system of systemic functional linguistics can solve various problems, which is a very practical language theory, which is not unrelated to its dialectical research methods. Halliday has repeatedly emphasized the complementarity between different linguistic schools or research positions. In addition, Halliday thoroughly carried out the complementary research route in the internal research of his theory, because human experience is so complicated that it is not enough to explain it from one angle. Complementarity is to change "disjunction" into "union". [1 1] holds that there are many complementarities within the language system: the complementarity between vocabulary and grammar; Language as a system and language as a text complement each other; Complementarity of speaking and writing. This fully embodies his dialectical thought. Vocabulary and grammar are complementary and different in the process of understanding reality, which are two aspects of lexical grammar in the hierarchical structure of systemic functional grammar; At the same time, the two are interrelated and form a continuum, and vocabulary and grammar meet at the same level as independence. It is the level of lexical grammar that enables us to understand the world around us in various ways in our daily life. The difference between vocabulary and grammar lies in the precision of expression, and their complementarity enables us to understand experience from two opposite angles: from the perspective of vocabulary, the phenomenon is individual; From the perspective of grammar, this phenomenon is holistic. These two perspectives are unified in understanding the same phenomenon. Discourse and system are two aspects of language phenomenon. The difference between system and discourse lies in their relationship with examples of meaning and whether meaning is regarded as potential or the result of examples. As a potential system, it is a system network with infinite possibilities; Discourse is the process and result of choosing from this overall potential. At the same time, the system and the text are interrelated, the text is an example of the system, and the system is the potential of the text. If we only look at language from any angle of system or discourse, the picture we get is distorted and incomplete. The research fields and perspectives of grammarians and linguists should be complementary. [11] (85) The difference between speaking and writing lies in the embodiment of meaning, and meaning is the process or the result. The complementarity of speaking and writing is not a simple exchange, not doing the same thing in different ways, but doing different things. These two forms have different strategies in organizational sense and different methods in controlling complexity, so we should choose one of them in different contexts to complement each other. The two different forms of speaking and writing are interrelated and unified in the embodiment of meaning. Halliday adopts the research method of unity of separation and combination in language research, and pays attention to the complementarity in language, which fully embodies his dialectical and unified research method. As Halliday said, "Of course, in order to understand language, we really need to decompose it. But language does not work partially, but works as a whole. "
(C) the theory of practice from the perspective of semantic generation
According to systemic functional linguistics, meaning is the product of the interaction between system and environment [12]. The basis of meaning is society, and meaning cannot be separated from the society where language exists. Halliday believes that semantic generation is a dynamic process, which can be divided into the evolution process of human language, the development process of language individuals and the development process of meaning behavior according to the time frame, that is, the generation of pedigree semantics, the generation of individual semantics and the generation of discourse semantics. [13] These three processes are an interactive relationship, which fully embodies the role of language in generating social people. At the same time, the generation of these three semantics can not be separated from the social environment and human social practice. Systemic functional linguistics clearly puts forward the theory of meaning evolution, which holds that language is created by human beings in primitive activities. At first, the material level and consciousness level of human experience happened at the same time, and human language was subject to direct context. With the continuous evolution of human practice of understanding and transforming the world, the appearance of grammatical level separates human language from the direct context and distinguishes it from other forms of animal communication. Semantic generation of human language is a process of social practice. Language is a means to achieve social goals, which is very important to him as a social person. The process of an individual acquiring a language is also the process of becoming a social person. In the process of learning a language, children should learn to use vocabulary and grammar to understand the outside world, communicate with people around them, and learn to make his expression relevant to his environment. These are Halliday's three metafunctions. The meaning of the text is also produced when people really participate in language communication. Discourse is the product of context and cannot be separated from concrete verbal communication. However, all kinds of meanings existing in the meaning potential can only be generated by social exchange through certain words. In a word, meaning is not personal and transcendental. The formation process of meaning is the result of the interaction between human consciousness and human experience. It is produced in human social activities, in the interaction between individuals and in the interconnection of texts. Language is social, that is, Bakhtin's communication and Marx's practicality.
Thirdly, systemic functional linguistics and Marxist language.
From the above discussion, we can see that there are similarities between systemic functional linguistics theory and Marxist philosophy of language, but there are still differences between them, because their research starting point, research object and research purpose are very different. The starting point of systemic functional linguistics research is sociality, and language is regarded as social behavior in order to solve the education and other related problems they care about. Halliday's aim is to establish an applicable linguistics. This is based on a detailed analysis of the language system and structure. Simply put, the research object and purpose of systemic functional linguistics are both languages, and the purpose and object are unified into one. For Marxist philosophy, the relationship between language and people, language and society is an unavoidable problem. It is a science that reveals the human world through language analysis, in which "language analysis" is only a means process, and "revealing the human world" is the real purpose of this discipline, and the language as the research object is separated from its research purpose. For Marx and Engels, the discourse on language is to cover up the disease and resist the language mystery caused by Hegel's German idealism.
Four. conclusion
Systemic functional linguistics theory is extensive and profound. By analyzing his philosophical thoughts, it is found that there are similarities between systemic functional linguistics theory and Marxist philosophy of language, which embodies materialism, dialectics and practice in Marxist view of language. However, systemic functional linguistics is different from Marxist philosophy of language, because the starting point, object and purpose of their research are very different.