the ISFC39 Proceedings - International Systemic-Functional ...

Papers from the 39th ISFCif psychological theories of reading tell us that we do not hear the text when we read, wemust still look for a realisation in written English that is independent of an imagined or realpattern of intonation. More traditional studies of the psychology of reading have oscillatedbetween theories that do not require the text to be heard, by proposing a direct route from thewritten word to meaning (e.g. Dehaene et al., 2005), and those that require some form ofdetour through a phonological level of processing (Lukatela et al., 2001), resulting insuggestions that both ‘routes’ operate simultaneously (Perfetti and Bolger, 2004).However, recent advances in psychological theory cast serious doubt on theseperspectives because they view cognitive processes as modular – a view now considered“indefensible” (Edelman, 2004). An embodied, grounded approach to cognition demands thatwe view all the senses employed in learning as being redeployed in recall (Barsalou, 2008).For instance, hearing speech probably deploys the same cognitive processes used forproducing speech, up to the motivation of the physical system (D’Ausilio et al., 2009). Thus,reading is not the ‘receiving’ of a writer’s words (as presumed by earlier psychologicalparadigms), but the interactive making of meaning. In cognitive space, there may be no realdifference between reading and listening, as they both entail the motivation of speaking andwriting processes.Significantly, however, even if we ‘hear’ what we read, we do not need to draw breathwhen reading silently, and so the written information unit is constrained not by the limitationsof the physical respiratory system as in speech, but by the cognitive visual system. This againsupports the view that New information should be positioned where it is easily identified bythe eye, but also implies that written information units are likely to be distinct from spokenunits. Evidence for such differences can be found in academic or legal texts that areextremely difficult to read aloud but present little challenge to the silent reader, highlightingagain that written language performs different functions to spoken language (Halliday, 1989).2.3 Intonation in NeuroanatomyThe independence of prosodic features and syntax is recognised in most formal grammaticaltheories (Jackendoff, 2002). However, Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) specify theseparation of the (con)textual extent of the message from its interpersonal intent andideational content through periodic, field and constitutional grammatical patterns,respectively. Evidence is emerging to suggest that the division between these semioticmetafunctions can be traced to brain structure and function, providing further evidence for anindependent realisation for Information Structure in both speech and writing.Whatever localisation or divisions in the brain that may be proposed for linguisticfunctions, these are no more than a bias and are “neither universal nor irreversible” (Deacon,1997, p.310). What has been identified, however, is a role for the two hemispheres to separateprosodic from constituent data in the stream of linguistic input:language production and analysis effectively require that we implement two different modes ofphonetic analysis and vocal control simultaneously: prosodic and phonemic processes... themonitoring of prosodic information tends to operate against a foreground attention to specific wordsand phrases. (Deacon, 1997 p.314).That is, we identify prosodic and phonemic information simultaneously (Friederici and Alter,2004). Although this insight has not yet been researched in the context of continuous reading,I would propose that in a saccade the same process is taking place: the hemispheres of thebrain function to simultaneously recognise textual features of the visual signal, such as spacesand punctuation marks, while processing the signal for ideational meaning.197