Confusing Levels Of Complexity With Types Of Behaviour

Martin & Zappavigna (2019: 5-6):

As far as somasis is concerned we have found it useful to draw on Halliday’s proposals for an evolutionary typology of systems (Halliday 1996: 388, Halliday 2005: 67–68). He recognises four orders of complexity, with semiotic systems evolving out of social systems, social systems out of biological ones and biological ones out of physical ones. We have adapted this framework in our classification of somatic behaviour, distinguishing physical activity, biological behaviour and social communion.

Blogger Comments:

This is a very serious misunderstanding. Here the authors map levels of emergent complexity onto types of behaviour:

		systems	types of non-semiotic behaviour
levels of  emergent  complexity	physical	sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules etc.	activity (walking, running etc.)
	biological	anatomy and physiology of organisms	behaviour (sneezing, coughing etc.)
	social	eusocial insect colonies	communion (hugging, mating etc)

On the authors' model, in the history of the universe, activities like walking and running etc. eventually complexified to the point where a new level of organisation emerged, behaviours like sneezing and coughing etc., which eventually complexified to a point where a further new level of organisation emerged, communion through hugging and mating etc.

To be clear, the authors have simply taken the names of the three levels of complexity that are not semiotic systems and used them to label their types of non-semiotic behaviour, without regard to the meanings of the source model or the implications when applied to behaviour.

In SFL theory, types of behaviour are construed by the ideational metafunction, and transitivity analyses of clauses, identifying the dimensions that differentiate subtypes of behavioural processes, would constitute evidence in support of any proposed categories.