Martin & Rose (2007: 81):
Taxonomic relations between lexical items are interpreted in terms of the field, as the reader or listener understands it. For example, a reader who is familiar with South African history would recognise the co-class relation between an Englishman and the ‘Boer’ Afrikaners, and interpret it in terms of the historical conflict between these ethnic groups. It is with this expectation of ethnic conflict that the reader interprets as remarkable the popularity of Helena’s English lover even with the ‘Boer’ Afrikaners. So taxonomic relations help construe a field of experience as a text unfolds, by building on the expectancy opened up by each lexical item, or by countering such expectancy.
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[1] This claim is falsified by the examples of taxonomic relations provided by Martin & Rose on the same page:
- repetition: marry – married – marriage
- synonyms: marriage – wedding
- antonyms: marriage – divorce
- converses: wife – husband
- scales: hot – warm – tepid – cold
- cycles: Sunday – Monday – Tuesday …
- class-member: relationship – marriage
- co-class: marriage – friendship
- whole-part: body – arms – hands
- co-part: face – hands – eyes – throat – head – brain.
Clearly, these relations are not "interpreted in terms of the field" of the text under discussion; they are, as Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 643) put it, 'inherent in the organisation of lexis'.
[2] Here again the term 'field' is mistakenly used for 'domain', the semantic counterpart of a contextual field.
[3] To be clear, the "co-class relation" between the lexical items Englishman and Boer or Afrikaner is given in the words themselves, and so, is recognisable to English speakers in general, rather than just to the subset who are familiar with South African history.
The counter-expectancy, on the other hand, is available to the reader in the actual text (misquoted by Martin & Rose):
Even if he was an Englishman, he was popular with all the ‘Boer’ Afrikaners.
The logico-semantic relation between the two attributive clauses is concessive condition, whose meaning is if P then contrary to expectation Q:
If: he was an Englishman
then contrary to expectation: he was popular with all the ‘Boer’ Afrikaners
[4] As demonstrated above, this causal-conditional conjunctive relation (so) is unwarranted. The conclusion does not follow from the preceding argument.
[5] To be clear, in SFL theory, what "taxonomic relations" actually do — since they are a rebranding of the textual system of lexical cohesion — is contribute to the texture of a text.
[6] In terms of SFL theory, the expression "field of experience" confuses the ideational dimension of a culture (field) with the non-semiotic realm (experience) which language transforms into meaning.
This is compounded by the fact that Martin & Rose misconstrue field as a dimension of register, itself misconstrued as context, and compounded further still, by the fact what they refer to as field is actually, in SFL terms, the ideational domain (semantics) that realises a field (context).
[7] As demonstrated above (in [3]), the counter-expectancy that Martin & Rose attribute to taxonomic relations was actually realised in the logico-semantic relation between two clauses.
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