*Cracks neck. "Yeah, I'll play."*

Greta Thunberg was arrested under the Terrorism Act for displaying a sign that read: "I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS".

The police allege she was displaying support for a proscribed (banned) organization. However, a linguistic analysis reveals a critical distinction. The police are reading keywords; grammar dictates she was supporting people, not an organization.

Here is how Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)—a tool used to analyse how language functions in real contexts—deconstructs the sign to show why the arrest is linguistically flawed.

In English, when we group words together to name something (like "Red delicious apple" or "Palestine Action Prisoners"), there is always one word that anchors the meaning. We call this the Head or the Thing. Everything else is just decoration or categorization.

Let's look at Greta's object of support: "Palestine Action Prisoners"

The Head (The Thing): PRISONERS

This is the core reality of the sentence. The physical beings she is referencing are incarcerated people.

The Classifier: PALESTINE ACTION

In grammar, this functions as a Classifier. Its only job is to tell us which type of prisoners we are talking about. It restricts the category.

To prove this, we can swap the classifier for something else. This is called the commutation test.

If she wrote "I support [remand] prisoners," she is not saying she "supports remand" (keeping people in jail). She is supporting the people subject to that condition.

If a lawyer says "I defend [murder] suspects," they are not "defending murder." They are defending the suspects.

The police have conflated the Classifier (the label) with the Thing (the people). Linguistically, you cannot simply lift the modifier "Palestine Action" out of the phrase and claim it is the object of her support. It is glued to the word "Prisoners."

Linguists use a system called Transitivity to map "who does what to whom." It traces the energy of the verb.

The Actor (Doer): "I" (Greta)

The Process (Verb): "Support"

The Goal (Target): "Prisoners"

Imagine the sentence as an arrow. The arrow of "Support" is fired by Greta. It flies over the words "Palestine Action" and lands squarely on "Prisoners."

Grammatical Reading: Greta → Support → Prisoners (who happen to be associated with Palestine Action).

Police Reading: Greta → Support → Palestine Action (the organization).

By ignoring the word "Prisoners," the legal interpretation creates a new sentence that Greta did not write. She is validating the human rights of the individuals (the Goal), not the manifesto of the group (the Classifier).

Language doesn't happen in a vacuum. We must look at the second line of the sign to understand the first. This is called Appraisal Analysis—how we judge value and stance.

The sign reads:

"I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS"

"I OPPOSE GENOCIDE"

The second line acts as a "decoder key" for the first.

"Oppose Genocide" sets a moral framework. It is a statement about humanitarian law and saving lives.

Because the bottom line is about human rights (opposing death/genocide), the top line must be read in the same context.

She is not supporting "Palestine Action" because she loves their logo or their specific tactics; she is supporting the prisoners because she views them as victims of the same system she is critiquing in line two. The sign frames the prisoners as humanitarian subjects (people suffering), not political agents (people acting).
The Verdict

The arrest relies on "Keyword Searching"—seeing a banned word and acting on it. But grammar relies on structure.

Structurally: She supported Prisoners.

Semantically: She supported Human Rights.

By ignoring the grammar of the Noun Group, the authorities effectively erased the word "Prisoners" from her sign, changing her statement from a defence of human rights to an endorsement of a banned group. 1/2
#HumanRights
#FreeSpeech
#RightToProtest
#CivilLiberties
#UKLaw
#GretaThunberg
#PalestineAction
#Activism
#SocialJustice
#PoliticalPrisoners

#LanguageAndPower

Police arrested activist Greta Thunberg in London on Tuesday while she was participating in a protest supporting imprisoned hunger strikers linked to proscribed group Palestine Action. Images of the arrest show Thunberg seated on the ground at the protest holding a sign that reads, “I support Palestine Action prisoners” and “I oppose genocide.” Police confronted her as she joined…

Source

Police arrested activist Greta Thunberg in London on Tuesday while she was participating in a protest supporting imprisoned hunger strikers linked to proscribed group Palestine Action. Images of the arrest show Thunberg seated on the ground at the protest holding a sign that reads, “I support Palestine Action prisoners” and “I oppose genocide.” Police confronted her as she joined…

Source

2/2
If I hold a sign that says: "I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION; I DON'T SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION"

...do I support the proscribed group?

Under a basic "Keyword Search" approach (the method effectively used in the arrest), the answer is a confused "Yes and No." The machine sees the banned word count = 2.

But under Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this sentence creates a Logical Paradox that renders the statement legally unanswerable. Here is the logic sequence of why this sentence breaks the "Guilty" verdict.

If we read "Palestine Action" as a Proper Noun (The specific banned organization) in both halves of the sentence, the statement is nonsense.

Clause A: I support [The Group].

Clause B: I do not support [The Group].

This results in a logical nullity (A and Not-A). A court cannot rely on a statement that cancels itself out. To find meaning, the human brain, and the law, looks for a way to resolve the conflict.

To make the sentence make sense, we instinctively shift the meaning of one of the phrases. We stop reading it as a Name, and start reading it as a description.

This is called Nominalisation.

"Palestine Action" (Proper Noun): The corporate entity/group.

"Palestine Action" (Common Noun Phrase): The process of taking political action for Palestine.

Because "Action" is a word derived from a verb (to act), it is linguistically fluid. It can slide between being a "Thing" (the group) and a "Process" (the deed).

Once we allow that shift, the sentence suddenly has a valid, non-criminal reading:

"I support [the political act of resistance]; I don't support [the proscribed group]."

Or, depending on which clause you assign the value to:

"I support [the group]; I don't support [the specific acts]."

The Result: Semantic Erosion By placing these identical phrases side-by-side with opposite polarity (Support vs. Don't Support), the text muddies the water. The capitalized letters lose their authority. You can no longer prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the speaker is referencing the group, because the sentence structure itself suggests they are distinguishing between the Entity and the Concept.
The Verdict

The police rely on Lexical Rigidity—assuming a word always means the same thing. This defence relies on Functional Ambiguity.

If a sign creates a "Zone of Indeterminacy"—where a legal reading is just as grammatically likely as an illegal one—the text cannot serve as a confession. The grammar itself provides the reasonable doubt.

So, if you feel bold, go get yourself a t-shirt reading "I DON'T SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION; I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION", and make the police fucking explain its meaning to you.

They won't be able to. They will still pick you up for "Reasonable Suspicion", but that is where the fun may begin.

You see, as we have illustrated, the "unreadability" creates a conundrum, where an offence may or may not have been committed, and they don't really know. The defence is already baked-in grammatically.

And the definition there is piss-weak:

"A person in a public place commits an offence if he wears an item of clothing... in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation."

It would be for a legal defence team to defend the position, but the ready baked in defence, perhaps, gives credence that any arrest would constitute Illegal Detainment, as:

The arresting officer lacked objective reasonable grounds to suspect I was a supporter of a proscribed group, because the text on my clothing explicitly contained a negation of that support ('I don't support...'). The officer relied on a selective reading of keywords rather than the full semantic context, rendering the suspicion irrational and the arrest unlawful.

#HumanRights
#FreeSpeech
#RightToProtest
#CivilLiberties
#UKLaw
#GretaThunberg
#PalestineAction
#Activism
#SocialJustice
#PoliticalPrisoners

*Cracks neck. "Yeah, I'll play."*

Greta Thunberg was arrested under the Terrorism Act for displaying a sign that read: "I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS".

The police allege she was displaying support for a proscribed (banned) organization. However, a linguistic analysis reveals a critical distinction. The police are reading keywords; grammar dictates she was supporting people, not an organization.

Here is how Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)—a tool used to analyse how language functions in real contexts—deconstructs the sign to show why the arrest is linguistically flawed.

In English, when we group words together to name something (like "Red delicious apple" or "Palestine Action Prisoners"), there is always one word that anchors the meaning. We call this the Head or the Thing. Everything else is just decoration or categorization.

Let's look at Greta's object of support: "Palestine Action Prisoners"

The Head (The Thing): PRISONERS

This is the core reality of the sentence. The physical beings she is referencing are incarcerated people.

The Classifier: PALESTINE ACTION

In grammar, this functions as a Classifier. Its only job is to tell us which type of prisoners we are talking about. It restricts the category.

To prove this, we can swap the classifier for something else. This is called the commutation test.

If she wrote "I support [remand] prisoners," she is not saying she "supports remand" (keeping people in jail). She is supporting the people subject to that condition.

If a lawyer says "I defend [murder] suspects," they are not "defending murder." They are defending the suspects.

The police have conflated the Classifier (the label) with the Thing (the people). Linguistically, you cannot simply lift the modifier "Palestine Action" out of the phrase and claim it is the object of her support. It is glued to the word "Prisoners."

Linguists use a system called Transitivity to map "who does what to whom." It traces the energy of the verb.

The Actor (Doer): "I" (Greta)

The Process (Verb): "Support"

The Goal (Target): "Prisoners"

Imagine the sentence as an arrow. The arrow of "Support" is fired by Greta. It flies over the words "Palestine Action" and lands squarely on "Prisoners."

Grammatical Reading: Greta → Support → Prisoners (who happen to be associated with Palestine Action).

Police Reading: Greta → Support → Palestine Action (the organization).

By ignoring the word "Prisoners," the legal interpretation creates a new sentence that Greta did not write. She is validating the human rights of the individuals (the Goal), not the manifesto of the group (the Classifier).

Language doesn't happen in a vacuum. We must look at the second line of the sign to understand the first. This is called Appraisal Analysis—how we judge value and stance.

The sign reads:

"I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS"

"I OPPOSE GENOCIDE"

The second line acts as a "decoder key" for the first.

"Oppose Genocide" sets a moral framework. It is a statement about humanitarian law and saving lives.

Because the bottom line is about human rights (opposing death/genocide), the top line must be read in the same context.

She is not supporting "Palestine Action" because she loves their logo or their specific tactics; she is supporting the prisoners because she views them as victims of the same system she is critiquing in line two. The sign frames the prisoners as humanitarian subjects (people suffering), not political agents (people acting).
The Verdict

The arrest relies on "Keyword Searching"—seeing a banned word and acting on it. But grammar relies on structure.

Structurally: She supported Prisoners.

Semantically: She supported Human Rights.

By ignoring the grammar of the Noun Group, the authorities effectively erased the word "Prisoners" from her sign, changing her statement from a defence of human rights to an endorsement of a banned group. 1/2
#HumanRights
#FreeSpeech
#RightToProtest
#CivilLiberties
#UKLaw
#GretaThunberg
#PalestineAction
#Activism
#SocialJustice
#PoliticalPrisoners

#LanguageAndPower