These questions directly implicate SFL’s long-standing dialogue with the sociological framework of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT, Maton 2014). LCT conceptualises communities and social fields of practice as being organised through more-or-less tightly bound sets of positions called constellations of meaning. … The most important type of constellation for this chapter is that which centres on emotional, aesthetic, ethical, moral and political stances, which LCT calls axiological constellations.
This is the hinge where the chapter pivots from a loose, commonsense notion of “values” into a technical construct imported from sociology. The shift is subtle but decisive. “Values” are no longer treated as interpersonal meanings that can be modelled within SFL’s own semantics (e.g. appraisal). Instead, they are redescribed in LCT’s terms as “axiological constellations,” and SFL is tasked with mapping these constellations in text.
Two consequences follow. First, the boundary between context (social formations such as “constellations”) and semantics (the linguistic resources that construe them) begins to blur. What SFL traditionally models as context variables are here confused with semantic resources, flattening the stratal distinction that Halliday treated as foundational. Second, SFL categories are placed in a secondary, supportive role — tools for illustrating concepts defined externally in LCT. This creates the impression of synthesis, but the movement is actually rebranding: re-describing familiar SFL phenomena in imported terminology rather than developing SFL’s categories on their own terms.
More succinctly…
In this section, the chapter pivots decisively from the diffuse notion of “values” toward a more technical apparatus imported from sociology: LCT’s axiological constellations. Suddenly, what were previously interpersonal meanings within SFL are redescribed as elements of social formations, and SFL’s own categories are tasked with illustrating externally defined structures. The effect is subtle but profound: context and semantics begin to blur, and familiar appraisal resources are repositioned as secondary, supportive tools. The result is not synthesis, but a strategic rebranding, one that reframes longstanding SFL phenomena in borrowed terminology.
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