Sunday 7 May 2017

Problems With The Textual Discourse Semantic System Of Identification

Martin & Rose (2007: 17):
Identification is concerned with tracking participants — with introducing people, places and things into a discourse and keeping track of them once there. These are textual resources, concerned with how discourse makes sense to the reader by keeping track of identities.

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The system of identification — 'reference as semantic choice' — is Martin's (1992) textual system on his stratum of discourse semantics.  In the first instance, it is a rebranding of Halliday's cohesive (non-structural) system of reference, relocated from lexicogrammar to Martin's stratum of discourse semantics.

However, as demonstrated in some detail here, it is actually a confusion of Halliday's systems of reference and lexical cohesion.  This is largely due to the fact that the system of referring is confused with the referent.  This is why the unit of identification is an ideational category, participant (Martin 1992: 385), rather than a textual category*, and also why Martin has trouble distinguishing reference chains from lexical strings (see here).


* Perhaps unsurprisingly, Martin's unit for his experiential system, ideation, is a textual category, message part (Martin 1992: 385), rather than an experiential category.

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