Abstract
Mathematics and language appear from one angle very alike. They seem to have similar structures and maintain similar grammars. However, they are regularly used in different situations to achieve different goals. This suggests that they have quite distinct functionalities. This paper explores this tension between the similarity and difference of language and mathematics by focusing on mathematics’ intrinsic functionality as conceptualzsed through metafunction in Systemic Functional Semiotics and Social Semiotics. Unlike many studies in these traditions, however, it does not assume the metafunctions developed for language will unproblematically transfer over to mathematics. Rather, it derives the metafunctional organization of mathematics from its paradigmatic and syntagmatic organization. This method illustrates that although metafunction is a productive category for understanding mathematics, its metafunctional organization is not the same as that for language. In particular, mathematics displays an expanded logical component, while giving no evidence for an autonomous interpersonal component. In addition to allowing a principled comparison of mathematics and language in terms of their intrinsic functionality, this method suggests that if Systemic Functional and Social Semiotic studies wish to understand the functions of various semiotic resources, they cannot unquestioningly assume metafunctions will occur across all semiosis.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Genome as (hyper)text: From metaphor to theory
- The work of Peirce’s Dicisign in representationalizing early deictic events
- The double function of the interpretant in Peirce’s theory of signs
- Integration mechanism and transcendental semiosis
- The communicative wheel: Symptom, signal, and model in multimodal communication
- Discursive representation: Semiotics, theory, and method
- Translation as sign exploration: A semiotic approach based on Peirce
- When does the ritual of mythic symbolic type start and when does it end?
- Iconoclasms of Emmett Till and his killers in Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle: A new generation of historiographic metafiction
- A dialogical semiosis of traveling narratives for self-interpretation: Towards activity-semiotics
- Entre éthologie et sémiotique : Mondes animaux, compétences et accommodation
- A pentadic model of semiotic analysis
- Linguistic violence and the “body to come”: The performativity of hate speech in J. Derrida and J. Butler
- Cultural tourism as pilgrimage
- A simple traffic-light semiotic model for tagmemic theory
- From resistance to reconciliation and back again: A semiotic analysis of the Charlie Hebdo cover following the January 2015 events
- Bilingual and intersemiotic representation of distance(s) in Chinese landscape painting: from yi (‘meaning’) to yi (‘freedom’)
- Power-organizing and Ethic-thinking as two paralleled praxes in the historical existence of mankind: A semiotic analysis of their functional segregation
- Semiosic translation
- Construction of new epistemological fields: Interpretation, translation, transmutation
- A biosemiotic reading of Michel Onfray’s Cosmos: Rethinking the essence of communication from an ecocentric and scientific perspective
- Coherence and truthfulness in communication: Intracommunicational and extracommunicational indexicality
- Poetic logic and sensus communis
- Intrinsic functionality of mathematics, metafunctions in Systemic Functional Semiotics
- Ciudadanos: The myth of neutrality
- Multilingualism and sameness versus otherness in a semiotic context
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Genome as (hyper)text: From metaphor to theory
- The work of Peirce’s Dicisign in representationalizing early deictic events
- The double function of the interpretant in Peirce’s theory of signs
- Integration mechanism and transcendental semiosis
- The communicative wheel: Symptom, signal, and model in multimodal communication
- Discursive representation: Semiotics, theory, and method
- Translation as sign exploration: A semiotic approach based on Peirce
- When does the ritual of mythic symbolic type start and when does it end?
- Iconoclasms of Emmett Till and his killers in Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle: A new generation of historiographic metafiction
- A dialogical semiosis of traveling narratives for self-interpretation: Towards activity-semiotics
- Entre éthologie et sémiotique : Mondes animaux, compétences et accommodation
- A pentadic model of semiotic analysis
- Linguistic violence and the “body to come”: The performativity of hate speech in J. Derrida and J. Butler
- Cultural tourism as pilgrimage
- A simple traffic-light semiotic model for tagmemic theory
- From resistance to reconciliation and back again: A semiotic analysis of the Charlie Hebdo cover following the January 2015 events
- Bilingual and intersemiotic representation of distance(s) in Chinese landscape painting: from yi (‘meaning’) to yi (‘freedom’)
- Power-organizing and Ethic-thinking as two paralleled praxes in the historical existence of mankind: A semiotic analysis of their functional segregation
- Semiosic translation
- Construction of new epistemological fields: Interpretation, translation, transmutation
- A biosemiotic reading of Michel Onfray’s Cosmos: Rethinking the essence of communication from an ecocentric and scientific perspective
- Coherence and truthfulness in communication: Intracommunicational and extracommunicational indexicality
- Poetic logic and sensus communis
- Intrinsic functionality of mathematics, metafunctions in Systemic Functional Semiotics
- Ciudadanos: The myth of neutrality
- Multilingualism and sameness versus otherness in a semiotic context