Blurring The Distinction Between Semantics And Context

Martin & Rose (2007: 1):

And it also means that we treat discourse as more than an incidental manifestation of social activity; we want to focus on the social as it is constructed through texts, on the constitutive role of meanings in social life. … and it is also an invitation to social theorists to reconsider social activity as meaning we negotiate in discourse.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear:

• not all social activity is realised in language, and 
• there is more to culture (context) than just social activity.

[2] The notion of 'the social being constructed through texts' affords two distinct interpretations.  On the one hand, it could be said to be concerned with the theoretical claim embodied in the stratification hierarchy that language (text) and context (situation) are construed together during logogenesis.  On the other hand, it could be said to be concerned with the semantic construal of social activities within texts, as in the plot-lines of novels.

The reason this distinction is worth highlighting here is that, in the work that this publication 'takes as its point of departure', English Text (Martin 1992), events in texts and events in the environments of texts are largely not distinguished; see, for example, the evidence here.

[3] To be clear, the meaning we negotiate in discourse is the meaning of language: semantics.  Language and context are distinct levels of symbolic abstraction, such that language realises context.  In SFL, 'context' refers to the culture as a semiotic system that has language as its expression plane.

The reason this distinction is worth highlighting here is that, in the work that this publication 'takes as its point of departure', English Text (Martin 1992), 'meaning' is misattributed to all strata, as a direct result of mistaking a statement about semogenesis — 'all strata make meaning' — for the principle of stratification; see, for example, the evidence here.