Not Acknowledging Halliday As The Source Of "Their" Ideas

Martin & Rose (2007: 74-5):

Grammatical descriptions such as those in Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), and Caffarel et al. (2004), have richly elaborated this construal of experience within the clause, in various dimensions. They describe grammatical patterns that:

• distinguish types of processes - doing, happening, thinking, saying, being, having
• expand processes - in dimensions such as time, manner, cause
• differentiate roles of people and things participating in a process - for example as the Medium, Range or Agent of the process
• modify these participants - classifying, describing and counting them, their parts, possessions, facets and so on
• distinguish types of circumstances associated with activities - such as places, times and qualities.

As rich as these grammatical resources are for specifying aspects of experience, they still comprise only a part of the strategies that language provides us for construing experience. Two complementary sets of ideational patterns are equally necessary. One is the conjunctive relations that logically relate one clause to the next, so construing experience as unfolding series of activities. We outline these resources in Chapter 4 on CONJUNCTION. The other is lexical relations, that is semantic relations between the particular people, things, processes, places and qualities that build the field of a text. These relations between lexical elements comprise the system of IDEATION.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, these are two ways of saying the same thing, except that the second version substitutes 'associated with' for 'expand', and 'activities' for 'processes'.  But more importantly:

• expansion is not the only relation that obtains, since Matter and Angle involve projection, and
• the logico-semantic relation actually obtains between the circumstance and 'the configuration of process + participants' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 314).

[2] This is very misleading indeed. Here Martin & Rose strategically neglect to mention previous work on the logical component in the construal of experience, as discussed for lexicogrammar in Introduction to Functional Grammar (Halliday ± Matthiessen), and for semantics in Construing Experience through Meaning (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999).  The false implication here is that Martin & Rose are filling a gap in previous theorising.

[3] Here Martin & Rose confuse structural relations between clauses (logical metafunction) with non-structural conjunctive relations between messages (textual metafunction).  More importantly, in neglecting to acknowledge Halliday as the source of these ideas, they again give the false impression that this work is entirely their own.

[4] It will be seen that Martin & Rose model 'unfolding series of activities' as both experiential (this chapter) and logical (Chapter 4), with the latter confusing logical complexing with cohesive conjunction, both of which are lexicogrammatical, but relocated by them to their stratum of discourse semantics.

[5] It will be seen that these lexical relations are those of Halliday's (& Hasan's) lexical cohesion, a resource of the textual metafunction, misunderstood by Martin & Rose as experiential in metafunction, and relocated to their stratum of discourse semantics.

[6] Here Martin & Rose confuse the textual function of cohesive relations between lexical items with the ideational functions that lexical items serve in grammatical structures — the latter of which it is that construes the field of the situation realised by a text.

[7] It will be seen in the course of this chapter review, that Martin & Rose confuse lexis with grammar, and ignore the difference in symbolic abstraction between lexicogrammar and semantics.

Taking Halliday's Notions Of 'Figure' And 'Nuclearity' And Passing Them Off As Their Own

Martin & Rose (2007: 74, 75):

From a grammatical perspective, the clause is a structure of words and word groups, but from a discourse semantic perspective the clause construes an activity involving people and things. The core elements of such a figure are the process and the people and things that are directly involved in it, while other elements such as places and qualities may be more peripheral. This nuclear model of experience is diagrammed in Figure 3.1. The ‘doer-doing’ nucleus is represented as a revolving yin/yang complementarity, with ‘place’ and ‘quality’ in peripheral orbits.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands and misrepresents the clause by reducing it to the syntagmatic axis (structure) and by confusing structure with constituency (the rankscale).  Systemically, the clause is a level on the rankscale that serves as the entry condition to the systems of THEME, MOOD and TRANSITIVITY. Structurally, as a construal of experience, the clause is a configuration of functions (process, participant, circumstance).

[2] This misunderstands and misrepresents a semantic counterpart of the clause (the figure) by reducing all process types to "activities" and reducing all participants to "people and things".  The latter also confuses orders of phenomena (figure with element); see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 56ff).

[3] Here Martin & Rose present the Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) notion of a 'figure' without acknowledging its source, thereby falsely presenting it as their own work.

plagiarism (noun)

the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. 

synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing, poaching, appropriation;

See also Jim Martin "Honouring" The Late Ruqaiya Hasan where Martin falsely accused the late Ruqaiya Hasan of plagiarism at a symposium organised to honour her.

[4] Strictly speaking, not all participants are directly involved in the process; those mediated by a minor Process are only indirectly involved.

[5] Here Martin & Rose present the Halliday (1985) notion of 'nuclearity' without acknowledging its source, thereby falsely presenting it as their own work.  In the second edition of IFG, Halliday (1994: 164) writes:

[6] Cf Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 174):

[6] This mistakes the 'doer-doing' relation in doing-&-happening figures with the 'medium-process' relation on which the notion of nuclearity is founded.  In grammatical terms, it confuses ergativity with transitivity, reducing a general ergative relation to one type of transitive relation.

[7] To be clear, consistent with their lack of meticulous scholarship, Martin & Rose have not even bothered to present the yin-yang representation the right way around — and the term 'revolving' serves no explanatory function here.

The "taichi symbol" (taijitu)

Misrepresenting Halliday (1994) Through Selective Omission

Martin & Rose (2007: 74):

The model of human experience at the heart of ideational meaning, in all languages, is of processes involving people, things, places and qualities. Halliday (1994: 106) proposes that this construal of experience lies behind the grammar of the clause:

The clause ... embodies a general principle for modelling experience - namely the principle that reality is made up of PROCESSES. Our most powerful impression of experience is that it consists of goings on - happening, doing, sensing, meaning, being and becoming. All these goings-on are sorted out in the grammar of the clause.

The grammar of the clause organises such ‘goings on’ as configurations of elements, such as a process, a person and a place:

In this interpretation of what is going on, there is doing, a doer, and a location where the doing takes place. This tripartite interpretation ... is what lies behind the grammatical distinction of word classes into verbs, nouns and the rest, a pattern that in some form or other is probably universal among human languages, (ibid.: 108)

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misrepresents Halliday (1994) through selective omission.  As Halliday (1994: 107) makes clear, the frame of reference for construing experience consists of process, participants and circumstances:

and this is the tripartite interpretation said to be behind group and word classes (op. cit.: 109):

This is not a minor quibble, since Martin & Rose here confuse strata (lexicogrammar and semantics) and, from a semantic perspective, orders of phenomena (figure and element); see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 49).  Moreover, such (motivated) misrepresentations are indicative of the lack of meticulous scholarship (and intellectual integrity) that permeates Martin & Rose's work, as the posts on this blog demonstrate.

[2] This misleads through selective omission.  As a way of supporting the (abovementioned) misrepresentation, it presents Halliday's discussion of one instance as the general model, as a fuller quote demonstrates.  Halliday (1994: 108):

Foreshadowing Misunderstandings Of Grammatical Metaphor

Martin & Rose (2007: 74):

The final section 3.6 discusses what happens when lexical meanings are expressed by atypical wordings, such as realising a process as a noun instead of a verb ('nominalisation'). This is known as grammatical metaphor, and a method is described for unpacking grammatical metaphors to help analyse activity sequences.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, grammatical metaphor is not an experiential discourse semantic system.

[1] The notion of grammatical metaphor involving "lexical meanings" betrays a misunderstanding, as will be demonstrated in future posts. To be clear, grammatical metaphor is not lexical, by definition.

[2] The notion of grammatical metaphor involving an "atypical" relation between strata betrays a misunderstanding, as will be demonstrated in future posts.  To be clear, the relation is incongruent, whether typical or atypical (which depends on instantiation probabilities, which vary for register).

[3] The characterisation of grammatical metaphor as a relation between function (process) and form (verb, noun) betrays a misunderstanding, as will be demonstrated in future posts.

[4] As the three misunderstandings above suggest, the promised method for unpacking grammatical metaphor is inconsistent with theory, as will be demonstrated in future posts.