Writing Into Being in Risk, A Lesson From Halliday

The kinesthetics of writing is about much more than just the action of moving text on a page or screen. Something special happens when we write. Language comes alive, as does the symbolism embedded in it when thought becomes text.

We need to understand text as more than just letters, words and grammar. Halliday was brilliant is his work in how he demonstrated that language doesn’t mimic meaning, it creates it. This has huge implications for the myth of the binary work-as-imagined (WAI) and work-as-done (WAD) myth created in the new view safety. More on that later.

People are text, because we are known through and by, our various ways of communicating. Our appearance, gestures, actions, verbal noises, movements, words, signs and symbols all tell who we are and what we mean. This is called semiosis.

When I tell what I dream, I am also speaking of unconscious text, the symbols of Mind and mind. The same when I communicate what I imagine. The idea that there is some binary separation between the unconscious and conscious, the subjective and objective, the rational and aRational, the imagined and the real or, thinking and emotions, is nonsense. It is a false dichotomy based on an undisclosed philosophy of the person that hides a binary understanding of human ‘being’. This is the scam of the WAI vs the WAD myth.

1. A. K. Halliday (1925 – 2018) described language as a semiotic system, not just in signs and symbols but more importantly in semiosis (meaning). His idea of language was called ‘systemic functional grammar’.

Just as we know that Prof. K. E. Weick called organising ‘grammar’, so too Halliday. The use of the participle is critical. For the same reason, in SPoR we talk about following-leading not, followership or leadership (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/following-leading-risk/).

Halliday didn’t speak of language as a static thing but spoke of the semiosis of language as ‘languaging’.

In a similar way Weick didn’t understand organising as static (https://safetyrisk.net/?s=Weick ). Weick’s understanding of High Reliability Organising should be better called ‘HROing’.

In both scholars the emphasis is on the active participle and the organising of language, that we structure through grammar.

I remember when I was in school that we studied a subject called ‘Grammar’. Similarly, when I studied languages in school the emphasis was on the structure of grammar. In Halliday, this all shifted. Halliday was much more interested in how language was used to represent meaning. You can read Halliday’s work (Language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning) here: https://archive.org/details/languageassocial0000hall

What do we learn from Halliday’s work?

We learn from Halliday’s work that language is completely integrated into who we are as beings. Language is not just words but the very social fabric of who we are and how we communicate. Similarly, the interpretation of text is critical for critical thinking.

There is no binary split between the use of language or the meaning of language. There is no binary split between how we imagine and how we work. We imagine in our work just as we imagine from dreams and lucid dreaming. In some ways, our faculty to imagine helps us envision (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/envisioning-risk-seeing-vision-and-meaning-in-risk/) much more than what we think we see.

Pitching imagination against doing is a nonsense binary division and relies on an immature understanding of personhood.

Yet, this is what safety loves to do. It creates binary-dichotomies that don’t exist so it can sell products that are not needed.

Human being is: inter-affected, inter-corporeal, inter-subjective, inter-embodied and inter-connected. This is essential to understand the ethical nature of personhood.

Fuchs (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306570122_Intercorporeality_and_Interaffectivityz0 mapped it as follows:

The same applies if one tries to separate out the nature of the brain, gut, heart, body, nervous system, respiratory system, circulatory system or skin into some binary understanding. Everyway in which we are oriented and disposed as persons is embodied (https://www.bodiesoflearning.org/notesfromthefield/dispositions-are-embodied). Trying to separate any part of human being from another is simplistic, immature and deceptive.

This is why creating binary narratives in risk and safety are unhelpful. There is no WAI/WAD division just as there is no S1/S2. The creation of these false binary narratives is based on an undisclosed ethic and the creation of marketing strategy. Such a binary division in personhood is like saying that words written and words spoken are somehow disconnected from each other or that one needs some special system to understand the difference. Even as you write words or speak them much much more is going on that is unseen and unconscious.

The lesson we learn from scholars like Halliday and Weick, is that human personhood is not divided. Similarly, there is no body/mind division or conscious/unconscious division. We are much better served in forming moral meaning, ethical conduct and understanding risk by being holistic. Some of these might be helpful:

• https://safetyrisk.net/holistic-well-being-in-risk-differently/
• https://safetyrisk.net/holistic-ergonomics-and-affordances/
• https://safetyrisk.net/holistic-responses-to-mental-health/
• https://safetyrisk.net/holistic-ergonomics/
• https://safetyrisk.net/the-safety-problem-with-mindlessness/

If I imagine as I work and work in imagination, there is no binary division. Similarly, if I exist as text, then all forms of language and being are essential for understanding how and why persons risk.