Blurb:

This chapter traces the development of SFL approaches to semantic variation and their ongoing interaction with sociological approach of code theory. In the first half of the chapter, we review the key influence of Bernstein’s code theory in terms of the differential orientations to meaning people display and the way this interacts with class. We then review Hasan and colleague’s seminal SFL examination of Bernstein’s code theory, their findings showing the presence of semantic variation across classes and the wide-ranging language features used to construct this. Finally, this discussion of Bernstein and Hasan will be interpreted in terms of the more recent concept of allocation in SFL – the distribution of meaning potential across society. In the second half of this chapter, this allocation model will be completed by a model of affiliation, concerned with how people come together to align, form community and share meanings across contexts. To understand this model, we will introduce the modern development of code theory known as Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and its concepts of cosmology and constellations. Cosmologies develop out of Bernstein’s coding orientations to explores sets of principles underpinning any particular social practice or community; constellations are the networks of meanings that cluster together in ways that ‘make sense’ to their community. As with the model of allocation, we will reinterpret this in terms of SFL’s recently developed model of ‘bond networks’ – shared couplings of ideational and interpersonal meaning in communities – and ‘mass’ and ‘presence’, concerning principles for the selection of meanings in terms of their complexity (mass) and context-dependence (presence). Together with chapter one, this chapter will put forward a firm theoretical grounding for the discussion of affiliation through the rest of the book and help readers toward SFL’s goal of understanding language in society.