James D. Benson

Semiosis in bridge: Doing and happening, having and being, saying, and thinking

Abstract In his plenary to ISC-17, “Language on language: the grammar of semiosis” Matthiessen (1990) shows how the central domain of the ideational area of clause grammar is expanded from human consciousness processing to include semiotic processing. This expanded central domain can be generalized linguistically as symbolic processing, i.e. ‘general semiosis, involving any kind of symbol source as the most nuclear participant’. But symbolic processing expands further, since it ‘is also construed by the grammar as doing and happening on the one hand and as being on the other’. In this paper we examine the ‘fit’ between the theory of semiosis embodied in the ideational metafunction and the recurring instances of signing in a highly restricted semiotic environment, the conduct of a game of bridge according to its rules.