Misconstruing The Distinction Between Logical Complexing And Textual Cohesion As The Distinction Between External And Internal Conjunction

Martin & Rose (2007: 115):

Section 4.1 outlines four general dimensions of conjunction: the difference between conjunctions that relate activities and those that organise texts; the role of conjunctions in what we expect to happen in a text; the four main types of conjunction (adding, comparing, time and consequence); and three types of dependency between clauses (paratactic, hypotactic and cohesive).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL theory, "conjunctions that relate activities" are 'external' conjunctions, whether they do so logically and structurally (in clause complexes) or textually and non-structurally (cohesive relations between messages).  On the other hand, "conjunctions that organise texts" are those that function textually and non-structurally — not logically and structurally — whether externally (relating experiential functions) or internally (relating interpersonal functions).

In other words, in this chapter, Martin & Rose misconstrue the distinction between logical structure and textual cohesion as the distinction between external and internal expansion relations.

[2] To be clear, "what we expect to happen in a text" is concerned with the mental projections of readers, whereas text analysis is concerned with the verbal projections of speakers.

[3] To be clear, in the original textual grammatical model (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 242-3) that Martin & Rose here rebrand as logical discourse semantics, the main types of conjunctive relation were identified as:

• additive
• adversative
• causal
• temporal

However, these were later reinterpreted (Halliday 1985) as more delicate types within the three most general types of expansion — elaboration, extension and enhancement — that are manifested throughout the grammar.  In these terms, the authors'

• 'adding' is a subtype of extension, whereas
• 'comparing', 'time' and 'consequence' are all subtypes of enhancement.

Moreover, Martin & Rose, just like the source of "their" ideas, Halliday & Hasan, omit all types of elaboration (and projection) from their model.

[4] To be clear, here Martin & Rose misconstrue non-structural cohesive relations as a type of structural (inter)dependency relation.