Problems With The Authors' Notion Of Texts "Freeing Themselves From Situations"

Martin & Rose (2007: 299):

Beyond this we have texts which free themselves from situations by generalising across them, as with Mandela’s generalised exemplum about the experiences of an indefinite number of South African families:

It was as simple and yet as incomprehensible as the moment a small child asks her father, 'Why can you not be with us?' And the father must utter the terrible words: 'There are other children like you, a great many of them .…' and then one's voice trails off.

Blogger Comments:

Here the challenge for a theoretically-informed reader is to determine what Martin & Rose mean by 'situation' in this instance, given that

1. in SFL Theory, 'situation' is an instance of culture (context), which is realised by an instance of language (text), but
2. Martin & Rose have replaced culture with register and genre (varieties of language), and
3. Martin & Rose regard text, not situation, as an instance of context.

However, despite this discussion ostensibly being concerned with the contextual system of mode, 'situations' here refers to the ideational meaning within Mandela's text — situations in South Africa — which Martin & Rose claim that Mandela "generalises across". (More usually the authors confuse ideational meaning with field.)

However, this claim just adds to the multiple levels of confusion here. Mandela does not "generalise across situations" in South Africa. Instead, he provides a specific scenario that illustrates the general "situation".