Misrepresenting IFG And Mistaking Continuity For Internal Conjunction

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 281):

A further limitation of the grammatical approach outlined in IFG 3rd edition is its backgrounding of the important distinction between what Halliday & Hasan (1976) call internal and external conjunction. External conjunctions construct logical relations between events in the field of discourse; internal relations construct rhetorical relations among phases of unfolding text. FitzSimons for example begins his text with And so, even though he hasn't mentioned any events which could be construed as causing people to be lying on the beach. The causal relation here is a rhetorical one, related to us settling down with text and image and starting to read because we have the feature in front of us.

And so there they lie, ||

happily sweltering in the summer sun on Australia's most famous beach, ||

just as they have for so many generations past. |||

It is such a wonderfully peaceful scene – of people and nature as a happy whole – [[that it is simply unimaginable [[that in a few seconds nature could ever rear up|| and savage the lot of them]].]] |||

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[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 542-3, 545-6):

Many temporal conjunctives have an ‘internal’ as well as an ‘external’ interpretation; that is, the time they refer to is the temporal unfolding of the discourse itself, not the temporal sequence of the processes referred to. In terms of the functional components of semantics, it is interpersonal not experiential time. Parallel to the ‘simple’ categories above we can recognise the simple internal ones set out in Table 9(6) above. These play an important role in argumentative passages in discourse.

Moreover, here the authors contradict their own former similarly false claim (p280n) that because this distinction is foregrounded, the distinction between simultaneous and successive relations is backgrounded:

Contrast IFG 3rd edition 542-3 which focuses grammatically on simple, complex and simple internal temporal relations, with several subdivisions within each of these; the opposition of successive to simultaneous events is not a major parameter.

Here the authors have ceased to provide a guide to IFG, and have switched to misrepresenting IFG in order to promote Martin's model (of Halliday & Hasan 1976) instead.

[2] This is misleading. Both external and internal conjunction are concerned with the logical relation of expansion. In the case of temporal relations, the distinction is between experiential time and the interpersonal time of the unfolding of the discourse.

[3] This is misleading, because the function served by And so is continuity, not conjunction, and as such, it does not construe a causal relation, internally or rhetorically. Its function is simply 'to signal that a new move is beginning' (Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 145).