Problems With The Logical Discourse Semantic System Of Conjunction

Martin & Rose (2007: 17):

Conjunction looks at inter-connections between activities — reformulating them, adding to them, sequencing them, explaining them and so on. These are also ideational types of meanings, but of the subtype logical’. Logical meanings are used to form temporal, causal and other kinds of connectivity.

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The system of conjunction (& continuity) — aptly glossed as 'the logic of English Text' — is Martin's (1992) logical system on his stratum of discourse semantics. As demonstrated at considerable length here, it is a confusion of the non-structural system of conjunction (textual metafunction) and the structural system of expansion relations between clauses (logical metafunction).

The most general expansion categories, elaboration, extension and enhancement, do not feature in the model, and instead, more delicate categories are used, but repeatedly misapplied.  Because it is an attempted rebranding of Halliday's cohesive conjunction, the logical relation of projection does not figure at all in Martin's logical discourse system.

Martin's model makes much of the distinction of internal vs external conjunction, as a way of differentiating it from Halliday's model — but without understanding the distinction.  In SFL, external conjunction is an expansion relation between processes, whereas internal conjunction is a relation between propositions, that is, the relation is 'internal to the speech event'.  As Martin's chapter develops, the distinction generally comes to mean the distinction between cohesive conjunction (misconstrued as internal) and the logical expansion of clauses (misconstrued as external), though not consistently.

A serious consequence of creating a model of logical discourse semantics that is inconsistent with the model of logical grammar is that ideational metaphor can no longer be systematically (or coherently!) explored, since there is no longer any basis for the distinction between congruent and incongruent realisations of the discourse system in the lexicogrammar.

Problems With The Experiential Discourse Semantic System Of Ideation

Martin & Rose (2007: 17):

Ideation focuses on the content of a discourse — what kinds of activities are undertaken, and how participants undertaking these activities are described and classified. These are ideational kinds of meaning, that realise the field of a text.

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[1] The system of ideation, 'the company words keep', despite the name and subtitle, is Martin's (1992) experiential system on his stratum of discourse semantics; cf the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999).  As demonstrated at considerable length here, Martin (1992) misconstrues experiential semantics as a mixture of lexical cohesion (textual grammar) — confused with lexis as most delicate grammar (delicacy) — and as misapplied expansion relations between clause elements (logical grammar), and further misconstrues some experiential semantics as field (context).  See especially The Avoidance Of Experiential Meaning In Discourse Semantics.

[2] To be clear, in SFL theory, the term 'content' refers to the content plane of language, both semantics and lexicogrammar, and to all metafunctions, not just the experiential.

[3] To be clear, in SFL theory, experiential meaning covers all process types, not just those of doing–&–happening ("activities").  These others include processes of being–&–having, sensing and saying.

[4]  To be clear, in SFL theory, the field of a text is the ideational dimension of a context of situation, whereas for Martin (1992) and Martin & Rose (2007), field is misconstrued as the ideational dimension of register as a stratal system.

Misconstruing Rhetorical Mode As Social Purpose

Martin & Rose (2007: 12):

An exposition consists of the basic stages Thesis and supporting Arguments. Its social purpose is to persuade an audience to the writer’s point of view, the ‘thesis’. Expositions contrast with the argument genre known as ‘discussion’, in which two or more points of view are presented and one argued for over the others.

Blogger Comments:

In SFL theory, the function of language in a situation (type) is termed (rhetorical) mode, the theoretical projection of the textual metafunction onto the stratum of context (the culture modelled as a semiotic system).

The discussion here misconstrues semiotic function as social purpose and blurs the stratal distinction between context (mode) and semantics (text structure) — of a text type (genre).  Text types are located on the cline of instantiation between system and instance, not at the system pole, and they are varieties of language, not context.

Two Contradictory Claims About Genre

Martin & Rose (2007: 10):

The stages of a genre are relatively stable components of its organisation, that we can recognise in some form in instance after instance of the genre, such as the Orientation, Incident and Interpretation stages of an exemplum. These stages are some of the basic resources of the culture for organising discourse at the level of the text; we use initial capitals to label them.

Blogger Comments:

[1] On Martin's model of genre as context, an instance of a genre is an instance of context, not language.  On the previously given gloss of genre as text type, an instance of a genre is a text, that is: language, not context.  This self-contradiction is sufficient to invalidate the modelling of genre as a stratum of context.

[2] The use of the word 'level' here identifies 'text' as the highest unit of the semantic stratum (as opposed to 'text' as an instance of system potential).  That is, the stages of a genre are here located on the semantic stratum (consistent with SFL theory), thereby contradicting the authors' claim throughout that these are located on a stratum of context (inconsistent with SFL theory).

Misconstruing Semantic Structure As Social Purpose

Martin & Rose (2007: 9):

Her tale then unfolds as a story genre known as an ‘exemplum’, a kind of moral tale related to fables, parables and gossip. Its social purpose is to present a problematic incident and then interpret it for the audience, commenting on the behaviour of the people involved. This story type contrasts with the ‘narrative’ story type that typically presents a problem which is then resolved by the lead characters. An exemplum consists of the basic stages Orientation, Incident and Interpretation.

Blogger Comments:

This misconstrues a semantic structure of a text type — what Hasan (1985) termed a Generic Structure Potential — as a "social purpose".  This misunderstanding follows from misconstruing text types (genres) as social context instead of language.