Two Reasons Why Martin's Model Of Genre Is Inconsistent With SFL Theory

Martin & Rose (2007: 260-1):

We can be confident that these are the genres we are looking at by asking a few probing questions. 

First is the global structure one of activities unfolding in time, or of phenomena described out of time? This criterion distinguishes the first and third sections, which are sequenced in time, from the second section, which describes and reflects on the struggle and its protagonists, but is not sequenced in time. 

Secondly, is the sequence of activities about specific people and events or about generic participants? This distinguishes stories from explanations and histories in the natural and social sciences. 

Thirdly is the story structured around a major disruption to the course of events or does it simply recount a series of events? This distinguishes narratives, anecdotes and exemplums (which involve a significant disruption) from recounts (whose series of events may or may not be problematic). 

And finally is it a recount of events in an episode of experience, as in the first recount, or of stages in a person’s life, as in the last? These and other generic criteria are discussed in detail in Martin and Rose (20076).

Blogger Comments:

As these generic criteria demonstrate, Martin & Rose classify genres (text types) according to their ideational semantic structure. That is, the authors classify text types in terms of just one metafunction, the ideational, and by taking the view 'from below': structural realisation.

This is seriously inconsistent with SFL Theory on two counts. Firstly, the authors ignore the other two metafunctions, the interpersonal and textual, and secondly, the perspective taken in SFL Theory is 'from above': that is, in terms of what is being expressed, not in terms of the expression.

In SFL Theory, therefore, in terms of stratification, different text types (genres) realise different combinations of contextual features of field, tenor and mode (Hasan's 'contextual configurations'), and it is these contextual differences that account for the different patterns of instantiation, of linguistic systems, that distinguish one text type from another.

See also Jim Martin Misunderstanding SFL Methodology.