No Gods and precious few heroes: SFL and evolutionary linguistics

In this paper I consider the concept of linguistic dynamism from a materialist and evolutionary perspective. The paper begins with a description of the evolved human traits that account for the variability of response within specific contexts and the degree to which such variability is effective in safeguarding the integrity of the system while allowing for emergence and uptake of adaptive behaviour. From here, the paper draws on the architecture of Systemic Functional Linguistics and the recursive mechanisms of redundancy and articulation to outline how this evolved variability of response can account for the emergence of: (i) higher orders of extension and abstraction in the language system; and (ii) an increase in the meaning potential of the system at each level of abstraction. These two processes are seen as naturally occurring and mutually reinforcing and hence as the beginnings of a materialist account of creativity in language