Misrepresenting "The Theoretical Map Within Which Halliday's Grammar Of English Has Been Proposed"

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 295, 298):

 

 

Our tour of the levels outlined in Table 9 is far from complete. Our main point here is to give some indication of the theoretical map within which Halliday's grammar of English has been proposed. As far as text analysis is concerned, every cell in the Table affords a glimpse of what is going on; and we have to take care in privileging one cell over another – for reasons of time, or interest, or familiarity with analysis of one kind or another. Halliday has given us a far richer grammar than any other grammarian of ours or any other time, and thus a sound foundation, and a resounding mandate, to push on.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is very misleading indeed. Table 9 presents Martin's misunderstandings (evidence here) of "the theoretical map within which Halliday's grammar of English has been proposed". The theoretical map that Halliday (2005 [1995]: 254, 255) proposes for his systemic theory of grammar is:

elaborated as:

[2] To be clear, as far as Halliday is concerned, text analysis is carried out using the grammar, including the systems of cohesion, which the authors have ignored and replaced with Martin's rebranding of them as discourse semantic systems. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 57, 731):

The description of English grammar presented here is not designed as a reference grammar. However, unlike the recent reference grammars — or all previous ones for that matter, this description has been designed as one that can be used in text analysis — a task that imposes quite stringent demands on the description. …

A text is meaningful because it is an actualisation of the potential that constitutes the linguistic system; it is for this reason that the study of discourse (‘text linguistics’) cannot properly be separated from the study of the grammar that lies behind it.

Some Of The Theoretical Inconsistencies In Modelling Genre As Realised By Register

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 296):

The other factor interacting with mode is genre staging, since one of the story's early stages is more abstract than the rest of the text. To explore this, we'll have to move from register (field, tenor and mode) to genre. Martin & Rose (2008) treat genre as a recurrent configuration of meanings, which phases field, mode and tenor variables together into stages which enact its social purpose.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, Martin's 'genre' conflates text type (register viewed from the instance pole), rhetorical mode (textual context) and semantic structure (of a text type that realises a rhetorical mode). This is why the authors relate (rhetorical) mode to genre staging (semantic structure).

[2] To be clear, Martin (1992: 390, 488) misunderstands the dimensions of SFL Theory as interacting modules:

6.1.3 Modularity and interaction

Each of the presentations of linguistic text forming resources considered above adopted a modular perspective. As far as English Text is concerned this has two main dimensions: stratification, and within strata, metafunction. …

The problem addressed is a fund[a]mental concern of modular models of semiosis — namely, once modules are distinguished, how do they interface? What is the nature of the conversation among components?

[3] To be clear, this is a non-sequitur, deriving from the previously noted confusion of mode, the role played by language in a situation, with the ideational abstraction in the text that realises a situation.

[4] To be clear, to put it most simply, Martin (1992) distinguishes functional varieties of language (register/text type) from language. This is analogous to distinguishing functional varieties of cattle (dairy vs beef) from cattle.

More technically, from the perspective of SFL Theory, Martin (1992) mistakes the two perspectives (register vs text type) on the midpoint of the cline of instantiation of language for two strata of the context that is realised by language. This also entails treating subpotentials (diatypic varieties) of language for full potentials (stratal systems).

In the case of register, Martin (1992) confused register with the configuration of field tenor and mode features of the situation type that the register realises. In the case of genre, Martin (1992) confused text type with the rhetorical mode of the situation type that the text type realises, and mistakes the semantic structure of such variants as genre structure (at the higher stratum of context).

If these theoretical confusions weren't enough, Martin (1992: 495) also identifies the instantial relation between culture and situation with the realisation relation between his strata of genre and register:

The tension between these two perspectives will be resolved in this chapter by including in the interp[r]etation of context two communication planes, genre (context of culture) and register (context of situation), with register functioning as the expression form of genre, at the same time as language functions as the expression form of register.

[5] To be clear, by stratifying context as genre and register, Martin (1992) incongruously models systems of genre (text type conflated with rhetorical mode) as a higher level of symbolic abstraction that is realised by his systems of register, which, in SFL Theory, are the contextual systems of (i) what the text is about (field), (ii) who is taking part (tenor), and (iii) the role played by language (mode).

On the other hand, the formulation by Martin & Rose (2008) 

genre as a recurrent configuration of meanings, which phases field, mode and tenor variables together into stages which enact its social purpose

does not distinguish genre and register as different levels of symbolic abstraction. Instead, they present genre, field, mode, tenor, semantic structure and social purpose (rhetorical mode) as being of the same level of symbolic abstraction, wherein genre "phases" register into semantic structures which "enact" social purpose (rhetorical mode).

Confusing The Context Plane With The Content And Expression Planes

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 295):

Mode deals with the role language is playing in relation to other modalities of communication and the concreteness of its rendering of the field. As we have seen, the text is an inter-modal one, with explicit exophoric connections between verbiage and image early on. In addition, there are many experiential connections between the beachside lexis of the verbiage and the image of people on the beach. Blue colour cohesion also ties the graphology explicitly to the ambience of the image.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, mode is the textual metafunction applied to the cultural context of language and its instantiations as situations. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 33-4) specify the dimensions of mode:

mode – what role is being played by language and other semiotic systems in the situation: 

(i) the division of labour between semiotic activities and social ones (ranging from semiotic activities as constitutive of the situation to semiotic activities as facilitating); 
(ii) the division of labour between linguistic activities and other semiotic activities; 
(iii) rhetorical mode: the orientation of the text towards field (e.g. informative, didactic, explanatory, explicatory) or tenor (e.g. persuasive, exhortatory, hortatory, polemic); 
(iv) turn: dialogic or monologic; 
(v) medium: written or spoken; 
(vi) channel: phonic or graphic.

Here the authors are following Martin (1992) in misunderstanding mode (along with tenor and field) as a system of a stratum of register, a functional (diatypic) variety of language. It will also be seen that the authors follow Martin (1992) in misunderstanding rhetorical mode as a system ('social purpose') of a stratum of genre.

[2] To be clear, this confuses context with lexicogrammar: the systems of reference ('exophoric') and lexical cohesion ('experiential connections between the lexis and the image '). 

[3] To be clear, on the one hand, this confuses the context plane (mode) with the expression plane (blue ink). On the other hand, it repeats the earlier (p293) the bare assertion, again unsupported by evidence, that blue ink coheres the representation of author to the representation of the sky: 

Blue colour cohesion resonates across the landscape sky and the portrait (loud saturated blue in the landscape, more muted in the portrait). Inter-modally, the blue of the portrait is picked up typographically by Peter FitzSimons' name in the Kicker

Confusing Ideational Context (Field) With Ideational Content (Language) [1]

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 294):

Field focuses our attention on the institutional context of a text – including domestic, work and leisure activities. A field can be defined as a set of activity sequences defining participation in a specific walk of life – for example doing the rounds, writing stories, attending staff meetings, reading newspapers, viewing current affairs programs on TV etc. as a print media journalist. Each step in each of these activity sequences consists of configurations of participants, processes and circumstances. And each participating entity, human or non-human, abstract or concrete, is organised within each field into distinctive taxonomies – of both subclassification ('is a kind of ') and composition ('is a part of').

Blogger Comments:

[1] This metaphor is potentially misleading. Field does not "focus our attention". Field is the ideational dimension of culture that is both realised and intellectually constructed (construed) by language and parallel semiotic systems.

[2] To be clear, for Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 320), 'field' means 

the field of activity and subject matter with which the text is concerned ('what's going on, and what is it about?' … The field is thus the culturally recognised repertoires of social practices and concerns …

expressed by Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 33) as:

what’s going on in the situation: (i) the nature of the social and semiotic activity; and (ii) the domain of experience this activity relates to (the ‘subject matter’ or ‘topic’)

[3] As previously mentioned, Martin has variously located 'activity sequences' at the level of context in field (Martin 1992) and at the level of discourse semantics in his experiential system of IDEATION (Martin & Rose 2007). This reflects Martin's inability to distinguish cultural context from language and its varieties (register, text type), which follows from his inability to understand stratification as levels of symbolic abstraction, rather than as interacting modules (Martin 1992: 390, 488). 

The chief source of his confusion seems to be between field in the sense of what the text is about, in terms of social concerns, and the ideational content of the text itself. As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 407) diplomatically put it:

[Martin's] "field" corresponds to what has been discussed here in terms of ideational semantic networks in the ideation base.

[4] To be clear, this nicely demonstrates Martin's confusion between field (e.g. the social practice that the newspaper columnist Peter FitzSimons is engaged in) and the ideational content of a text (participants, processes and circumstances in the newspaper article).

Misconstruing Social Context As Language Varieties

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 294):

Martin & Rose (2003) interface with grammar on the discourse semantic side, and we've illustrated how to move from ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning in grammar to the discourse structuring resources which they realise. Working with Discourse in turn interfaces with models of social context, specifically the model of register (field, tenor and mode) outlined in Martin (1992) and the work on genre consolidated in Martin & Rose (2008).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this claim is based on the sub-headings 2.1 Theme and information flow, 2.2 Clause complexing and conjunction, 2.3 Transitivity and ideation, and 2.4 Nominal Groups, ideation and identification. See the relevant previous posts for the theoretical problems with each of these "illustrations":

• Misrepresenting Theme
• Misrepresenting Rhematic And Ellipsed Subjects As Theme [1]
• Misrepresenting Rhematic And Ellipsed Subjects As Theme [2]
• Misrepresenting Rhematic And Ellipsed Subjects As Theme [3]
• Misrepresenting Rhematic And Ellipsed Subjects As Theme [4]
• Misrepresenting The General Thematic Pattern Of A Text
• The Problem With Hyper-Theme As Linguistic Theory
• The Problems With Hyper-Theme And Hyper-New As Linguistic Theory
• The Problem With Macro-Theme As Linguistic Theory
• Misrepresenting IFG On Temporal Relations
• Misrepresenting Temporal Relations In A Text
• Misrepresenting IFG And Mistaking Continuity For Internal Conjunction
• Failing To Distinguish Continuity From Conjunction
• Misrepresenting Internal Relations
• Confusing Two Distinct Texts
• Misrepresenting Ellipsed Subjects As Unmarked Themes
• Misrepresenting The Ergative Model As The Transitive Model
• The Difference Between Martin's 'Activity Sequence' And Halliday's 'Sequence'
• Confusing Nominal Group Structure With Lexical Cohesion
• The Discourse Semantic System Of Participant Identification
• Misconstruing Reference As Tracking And Confusing Reference With Lexical Cohesion
• Identity Chains As The Confusion Of Reference And Lexical Cohesion [1]
• Problems With 'Tracking' And 'Esphora'
• Identity Chains As The Confusion Of Reference And Lexical Cohesion [2]
• Misrepresenting Writing Pedagogy As Linguistic Theory
• Misrepresenting Text Reference

[2] To be clear, Martin ± Rose (1992, 2003, 2007, 2008) confuse the social context (field, tenor, mode) realised in language with functional varieties of language (registers/text types), with the term 'genre' confusing text type with contextual mode ('purpose') and non-metafunctional semantic structure ('stages').

Problems With Key Resources For Text Analysis (By Strata And Metafunction)

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 293, 295):

In this chapter we've tried to build some bridges from the grammar analyses developed in Chapters 2-6 towards the analysis of discourse. An outline of these and related resources is presented in Table 7.9 below, which aligns columns by metafunction and rows by levels of abstraction (stratification).

 Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, it is the grammar that is the resource for discourse analysis. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 57):

The description of English grammar presented here is not designed as a reference grammar. However, unlike the recent reference grammars — or all previous ones for that matter, this description has been designed as one that can be used in text analysis — a task that imposes quite stringent demands on the description.

The grammar includes the systems of COHESION which the authors have ignored to make way for Martin's discourse semantics. 

[2] To be clear, there are many theoretical inconsistencies in Table 7.9.

a. Martin's stratum of genre confuses text type, rhetorical mode ('purpose') and semantic structure ('stages'), and contrary to the implication made by including structure types in the table, does not include the metafunctions in the model. See the evidence here (Martin 1992) and here (Martin & Rose 2007).

b. Martin's stratum of register confuses diatypic variation in language with the cultural context that language realises. See the evidence here (Martin 1992) and here (Martin & Rose 2007).

Here 'activity sequences' are located in field, contradicting their location in experiential discourse semantics in Martin & Rose (2007). For evidence of such contradictions, see here (Martin 1992) and here (Martin & Rose 2007).

c. Martin's stratum of discourse semantics confuses, misunderstands, and renames lexicogrammatical cohesion (Halliday & Hasan 1976) and Halliday's semantic system of speech function. See the evidence here (Martin 1992) and here (Martin & Rose 2007).

Here external conjunction is classified as ideational and internal conjunction as textual despite both being classified as logical in both Martin (1992) and Martin & Rose (2007). This reflects Martin's confusion of the external vs internal distinction with the structural (logical) vs cohesive (textual) distinction in the grammatical realisation of the semantic system of enhancement. See the evidence here Martin (1992) and here Martin & Rose (2007).

Problems With The Experiential Analysis Of The Image

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 292-3):

As far as experiential meaning is concerned, the FitzSimons’ portrait is what Kress & van Leeuwen call conceptual (as opposed to narrative). He is bald, with a full beard, closely trimmed, and an open necked shirt; there is no circumstantiation. If we needed reminding, the portrait confirms that this is in fact the Peter FitzSimons, a well known sports journalist and pay TV commentator, who played rugby for Australia in his sporting prime.

The beach landscape conversely has little attribution, since individual participants are barely distinguishable; but there is rich circumstantiation for the sky (with feathery clouds), the sea (small surf and a few bathers), the beach (with many sunbathers) and the buildings on the border between land and sky. The orientation of the people and blankets on the beach along with the north of the beach and suburbs compose release vectors (lower left to upper right); these are counter-balanced by hold vectors (lower right to upper left) construed by the sea and feathery clouds in the sky¹⁵. From a narrative perspective, the vectors thus oppose man and nature, more specifically people's urge to get into the water contained by the sea's incursion into the curving sand.

¹⁵ The notion of hold and release vectors is taken from Arnheim 1982.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, 'with a full beard, closely trimmed, and an open necked shirt' is circumstantiation. But this is a verbal description of the image. No argument is provided as to what does, or does not, constitute circumstantiation in a modality without a lexicogrammatical stratum.

[2] To be clear, the grey-scale portrait photograph (Token) identifies, and is identified by, the grey-scale text Peter FitzSimons (Value).

[3] Again, no argument is provided as to what does, or does not, constitute circumstantiation in a modality without a lexicogrammatical stratum. Wording that describes the photograph can include or exclude circumstantiation, as the describer wishes.

[4] To be clear, the notion of 'vector' is a way of modelling the expression plane of images. The content plane meanings that a vector realises are direction and magnitude.

[5] To be clear, these meanings attributed to the expression plane 'vectors' are entirely arbitrary, since few (if any) people could come up with this specialised interpretation independently. As such, it lies closer to the field of art appreciation than semiotics. It is analogous to speculating on the 'meaning' of the absence of the letter 'e' or capitalisation or punctuation in a poem.

Misrepresenting Halliday On Grammar And Confusing Strata

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 272):

Functional grammar analysis of the kind supported by this workbook enables a rich semantically oriented reading of clause, group and phrase structure. This is a critical step in text analysis since, as Halliday comments in his introduction to the 2nd edition, ‘A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all, but simply a running commentary on a text...’ By the same token, an analysis based solely on grammar, however rich, is not a complete analysis, since relationships between sentences (between clause complexes) still have to be accounted for. To interpret these relations beyond the clause, we need a model of text structure, and a model of social context. In this chapter we will take grammar as the point of departure and demonstrate how it can be extended in the direction of text structure¹ and context, drawing specifically on Martin & Rose's Working with Discourse (2nd edition, 2007) and Genre Relations (2008) to do so.

¹ For an alternative extension see Halliday & Hasan's 1976 Cohesion in English, which elaborates Chapter 9 of IFG (3rd edition).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is very misleading indeed. The grammar includes the systems of cohesion, which are concerned with relations that obtain within and beyond clause complexes.

[2] This is misleading. Relations 'beyond the clause' are lexicogrammatical, and therefore require a lexicogrammatical model (cohesion). Text structure, on the other hand, is a semantic model, and 'social context', in SFL Theory, is a model of the culture as a semiotic system.

[3] For the serious theoretical inconsistencies in Working With Discourse (Martin & Rose 2007), see  the close examination of the publication here.

[4] For the theoretical confusions in Martin's model of genre, see here (Martin 1992) and here (Martin & Rose 2007).

[5] This is misleading. Halliday & Hasan's 1976 Cohesion in English is the intellectual source of both Chapter 9 of IFG (3rd edition) and the "extension" of it as discourse semantics (Martin 1992); see here.

Misrepresenting The Embodiment Of The Textual Metafunction In The Verbal Group

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 172):

(iii) textual: a verbal group presents the interpersonal and ideational meanings as part of a message – it provides the resources (i) for indicating contrastive meanings in the environment of continuous meanings, as in those birds fly across the sky every day around sunset, but these don’t [ ], and (ii) for selecting some element of the verbal group as having newsworthiness (often implying contrast), as in those birds are flying across the sky vs. those birds are not flying across the sky, where the marker of the polarity has been selected, or as in those birds are flying across the sky, where the event itself has been selected.

Blogger Comments:

[1] The focus here is on textual semantics of the verbal group rather than on how the textual metafunction is embodied in the systems and structures of the verbal group. The confusion is again stratal (see previous posts).

[2] To be clear, it is the system of INFORMATION that makes such selections of newsworthiness.

Misrepresenting The Embodiment Of The Interpersonal Metafunction In The Verbal Group

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 172):

(ii) interpersonal: a verbal group enacts polarity & modality – the experiential process is assessed in relation to the interpersonally defined speaking time, the ‘now’. For example, in those birds are flying across the sky, the time of the process of flying is assessed as being located temporally in relation to the actual now of speaking, whereas in those birds may be flying across the sky, the actualisation of the process is assessed as being located modally on a scale of probability: it is possible rather than actual in relation to the actual now of speaking. Other interpersonal variants include: those birds may not be flying across the sky, those birds must be flying across the sky, those birds may be required to fly across the sky.

Blogger Comments:

The focus here is on interpersonal semantics of the verbal group rather than on how the interpersonal metafunction is embodied in the systems and structures of the verbal group. The confusion is again stratal (see previous post).

Misrepresenting The Embodiment Of The Experiential Metafunction In The Verbal Group

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 172):

2.2.1 The three metafunctional contributions to the verbal group

Like a clause, a verbal group embodies all three metafunctions:

(i) experiential: a verbal group construes a process – an action, an activity, a happening, and so on. The verbal group provides the resources for construing a process as unfolding in time. Let’s consider a natural text example:

A: So when is this thing scheduled to produce results, Frank?

B: Oh, it’s been producing results for a long time.

Here the verbal group construes the process of unfolding in a series of three temporal relations. (1) It sets up a present time in relation to the now of speaking (has rather than had or will have), (2) it sets up a past time in relation to that present time (has been rather than is or is going to), and (3) it sets up a present time (the time of producing) in relation to that past time (been producing rather than had produced or been going to produce).

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, like a clause, a verbal group embodies all three metafunctions in the systems and structures of the verbal group. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 410) identify the systems as follows:

That is, the verbal group embodies the metafunctions in the systems of FINITENESS, ASPECT, DEICTICITY, VALUE, OUTER VALUE, TENSE, SECONDARY TENSE, POLARITY, VOICE, CONTRAST and ELLIPSIS, and in the structures that these systems specify. More specifically, as Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 411) explain:

The systems of the verbal group derive from different metafunctions:

(i) Textual: VOICE, CONTRAST, and ELLIPSIS;
(ii) Interpersonal: POLARITY, FINITENESS, and MODALITY;
(iii) Experiential: ASPECT and EVENT TYPE;
(iv) Logical: SECONDARY TENSE.

[2] To be clear, this is not how a verbal group embodies the experiential metafunction. Rather, this is semantics of a Process, an element at the level of semantics, as realised by the verbal group. See Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 213-7, 466-9). The confusion here is thus stratal.