Positive Discourse Analysis

Martin & Rose (2007: 315, 333n):

Research which concentrates on describing coding orientations is of course complementary to action research projects which aim to redistribute access to meaning. You can’t redistribute what you don’t understand, and intervention is what motivates a research interest in language and ideology in the first place. Where CDA has tended to concentrate on the analysis of discourse which sustains inequalities, SFL is equally concerned with redressing inequality. And we think this means looking at the texts through which people make the world a better place alongside those which naturalise power relations we don’t accept. It’s partly for this reason that we were drawn to the writing of leaders such as Tutu and Mandela who enact reconciliation — who make peace not war. One way of putting this would be to argue that we need to balance critique with Positive Discourse Analysis (or ‘PDA’), so that our interventions have good news to learn from as well as bad news to overthrow (Martin 2002, 2003, 2004a, b, 2006; Martin and Stenglin 2006).

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is manifestly untrue. On the one hand, a text on Quantum Mechanics can be redistributed by people whether they understand it or not. On the other hand, as this blog demonstrates, Martin & Rose have shown that they can "redistribute" SFL Theory, despite being unable to understand its fundamental architecture.

[2] This is misleading, because it falsely implies that CDA is not "equally concerned with redressing inequality".

[3] To be clear, consistent with the authors' advice, this blog looks at one text, Working With Discourse, which attempts to "naturalise power relations we do not accept". See, for example:

• On Martin's "Communion With Nelson Mandela In So Many Respects"
• Martin & Rose "Attempting To Construe A Sliver Of Equality" With Their Readers

[4] To be clear, one function of using texts of Tutu and Mandela is that doing so garners the admiration of readers who are naïve to the authors' motives. By bathing in reflected glory, Martin & Rose frame any critique of their theorising as opposing the values espoused by Tutu and Mandela.

[5] To be clear, consistent with the authors' advice, this blog "balances critique with PDA" in as much as its "interventions have good news to learn from" (explications of SFL Theory) "as well as bad news to overthrow" (misunderstandings of SFL Theory).

∞

To free a person from error is to give, 

and not to take away.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

To kill an error is as good a service as, 

and sometimes even better than, 

the establishing of a new truth or fact.

— Charles Darwin

Critical Discourse Analysis, Ideology And Power

Martin & Rose (2007: 314):

Where CDA [critical discourse analysis] has tended to focus on semiosis in the service of power, and even to define its concern with language and ideology in such terms (e.g. Fairclough 1995), SFL has tended to take a wider view which takes ideology as permeating linguistic and other semiotic systems (as we suggested in Chapter 1). 

On the one hand this is suggesting that every choice for meaning is ideologically motivated; on the other it focuses attention on the distribution of meaning in a culture. Which meanings are shared across the community and which are not, how is access to meaning distributed, and what kinds of principles are there for distributing access? 

In our discussion of tenor above we considered the principle of social status in relation to generation, gender, ethnicity, incapacity and class, and this is critical to making generalisations about reciprocity of choice across genres. But beyond this, generation, gender, ethnicity, incapacity and class are major parameters along which all meaning is distributed and every social subject is positioned. In Bernstein’s terms these parameters predispose our generalised orientations to meaning, or ‘coding orientations’, which distinguish one social subjectivity from another. This makes every text an interested one (acting on someone’s interests); from this perspective there is no meaning outside of power.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, these are not mutually exclusive positions. Focusing on semiosis in the service of power does not exclude the view that ideology permeates linguistic and other semiotic systems.

[2] This is manifestly untrue. What is the ideological motivation for saying Is that a fern tree? What is the ideological motivation for saying Was that thunder? What is the ideological motivation for writing a² + b² = c² ?

[3] See the earlier post: Misunderstanding Bernstein.

[4] This is manifestly untrue. Whose interests does Lewis Carroll's text Jabberwocky act on?

[5] To be clear, if power is all that you are interested in, power is all that you will see.

Confusing Context And Language In Misunderstanding The Cline Of Instantiation

Martin & Rose (2007: 312-3):

To make all this a little more concrete, at the level of instance we’ve read the mix of spoken and written discourse in Mandela’s Meaning of Freedom recount as a novel pattern, a kind of fusion of written discourse like Tutu’s exposition, with spoken discourse like Lingiari's hand-over speech. This fusion was designed especially by Mandela in his autobiography to drive his message home. 

At the level of text type we'd be looking for this kind of pattern to recur across a set of recounts (or other genres) and it might be worth exploring spoken texts as well as written ones, especially those written to be spoken aloud on public occasions. 

At the level of register, after a lot more analysis of a lot more discourse, we might be tempted to propose a new mode, blending features we’ve traditionally associated with either spoken and written text (cf. Halliday 1985). This may be something that’s been evolving all along in the rhetoric of certain kinds of religious and political discourse. 

Eventually, along this imaginary evolutionary journey, we might discover that the system itself had changed, that the systemic probabilities associated with negation, concession and elaboration for example just weren’t the same anymore. We’d be living in a different world, where speaking and writing weren’t just complementary fashions of meaning, where there was something in the seam, engendered through expanding electronic modalities of communication perhaps. Who knows? 

Our point here is only to illustrate a range of vantage points on data, the way in which instances can impact on systemic change and the monumental cost of doing as much discourse analysis as we’d like.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this extract is meant to explain points on the cline of instantiation, from instance to system. But see below.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, instantiation is the process of selecting features and activating realisation statements in systems. An instance of language, a text, thus comprises the selected features and activated realisation statements from the systems of content: semantics and lexicogrammar. This is clearly not understood by Martin & Rose, who instead discuss the mode of a text. Mode is a system of context, not language, both in the authors' stratified model and in SFL Theory. From the perspective of SFL Theory, Martin & Rose are here actually concerned with an instance of context: a situation.

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, text type is register viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation. Here again Martin & Rose misunderstand "patterns" of mode, context, as linguistic features shared by texts of a text type. From the perspective of SFL Theory, Martin & Rose are here actually concerned with situation type.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, register is text type viewed from the system pole of the cline of instantiation. On the one hand, here again Martin & Rose misunderstand features of mode, context, as linguistic features shared by texts of a register. From the perspective of SFL Theory, Martin & Rose are here actually concerned with subculture.

On the other hand, any proposed new mode is modelled by the networking of features at the system pole of the cline of instantiation, culture, not subculture (the authors' register). Since a subculture (or register) is a sub-potential of the overall system, it is nonsensical to claim that features are networked in the sub-potential but not the overall potential (of which it is a variety).

[5] To be clear, here Martin & Rose are concerned with the phylogenesis of the language system, rather than instantiation (or mode).

∞

Cf Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384):

Misleading The Reader On Discourse Analysis And 'Meaning Beyond The Clause'

 Martin & Rose (2007: 312):

That being said, of course we want to know things about text types, registers and systems as well. … The main thing we’d like to argue for here is not to mistake a lot of clause analysis for discourse analysis. It doesn’t matter how many clauses we analyse, it’s only once we analyse meaning beyond the clause that we’ll be analysing discourse. And we need to analyse discourse right along the instantiation cline if we want to make sense of the semiotic weather we experience in the ecosocial climate of our times.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, text type and register are the same point of variation on the cline of instantiation, but viewed from different poles of the cline. Martin incongruously models these as both 

• different points of variation on the cline of instantiation of language, and
• systems of context, not language, with text type (genre) realised by register.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, it is not possible to analyse texts without a model of the system of which the texts are an instance. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 731):

A text is meaningful because it is an actualisation of the potential that constitutes the linguistic system; it is for this reason that the study of discourse (‘text linguistics’) cannot properly be separated from the study of the grammar that lies behind it.

[3] This is misleading, because clause analysis is discourse (text) analysis — at one rank, on the stratum of lexicogrammar. To be clear, the central importance of the clause — and of lexicogrammar, in general — for text analysis is explained by Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 10, 22):

The clause is the central processing unit in the lexicogrammar – in the specific sense that it is in the clause that meanings of different kinds are mapped into an integrated grammatical structure. … Grammar is the central processing unit of language, the powerhouse where meanings are created …

Moreover, as Halliday (1985: xvi-xvii) explained:

The current preoccupation is with discourse analysis, or 'text linguistics'; and it has sometimes been assumed that this can be carried on without grammar — or even that it is somehow an alternative to grammar.  But this is an illusion.  A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all, but simply a running commentary on a text … the exercise remains a private one in which one explanation is as good or as bad as another.

A text is a semantic unit, not a grammatical one.  But meanings are realised through wordings; and without a theory of wordings — that is, a grammar — there is no way of making explicit one's interpretation of the meaning of a text. Thus the present interest in discourse analysis is in fact providing a context within which grammar has a central place.

[4] On the one hand, this is a bare assertion, unsupported by reasoned argument. On the other hand, it is misleading, because it is untrue. In SFL Theory, "meaning beyond the clause" is realised by the lexicogrammatical systems of textual cohesion. Text analysis that merely examines the instances of cohesion fails to account for all the meanings that are realised structurally: interpersonal, experiential, logical and textual.

For Martin & Rose, however, "meaning beyond the clause" specifically refers to Martin's discourse semantic systems, so this bare assertion is actually an attempt to bully the reader into using Martin's systems. But, as demonstrated in great detail here, here, and on this blog, Martin's discourse semantics is largely a confusion of Halliday's semantic system of SPEECH FUNCTION (rebranded as Martin's NEGOTIATION), and Halliday & Hasan's lexicogrammatical systems of COHESION (rebranded as Martin's IDENTIFICATION, IDEATION, and CONNEXION/CONJUNCTION), as well as a rebranding of writing pedagogy (the authors' PERIODICITY) misrepresented as linguistic theory.

[5] To be clear, this seriously misunderstands the cline of instantiation. Discourse can only be analysed at the instance pole of the cline, because discourse analysis is the analysis of instances (texts). Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 660):

A text is thus a unit of meaning – more accurately, a unit in the flow of meaning that is always taking place at the instance pole of the cline of instantiation.

Moving up the cline is a move away from analysing data to theorising language. 

[6] To be clear, this seriously misunderstands the cline of instantiation. The cline of instantiation of which text ("semiotic weather") is an instance is a scale of perspectives on language. The "ecosocial climate of our times", on the other hand, is not language, but culture (context as system), at the current state of its phylogenesis.

Inadvertently Arguing Against Their Own Model

 Martin & Rose (2007: 312):

What this all means is that we have to be very clear how we position ourselves on the instantiation cline when collecting data and analysing it. 

In contrast to some views on analysing discourse, we do believe it is important to analyse instances in individual texts. 

What is unique about a specific text may be just what matters; we don’t want to lose what’s special by only valuing generalisations across a text corpus. 

Beyond this, as discourse analysts generalise, the tendency at this stage of our work is to lose sight of how texture is construed as a text unfolds, through its particular logogenetic contingencies. 

We can tend to lose sight in other words of the very kinds of analysis we’ve been promoting in this book. 

So the text and reading end of the instantiation cline is an important one, however reluctant journal editors may be about publishing analyses of a single text, as if they believe climate is all that matters and weather doesn’t count.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, it is language (and other semiotic systems) that is on the cline of instantiation, and data is at the instance pole of the cline.

[2] To be clear, analysing discourse — individual texts — is analysing instances.

[3] This is an instance of the logical fallacy known as attacking a straw man, the 'straw man' here being the unattributed claim that only generalisations across a text corpus are valued. To be clear, a specific text (the instance pole) and "generalisations across a a text corpus" (above the instance pole) are not in competition but are complementary perspectives on language.

But here, also, Martin & Rose are confusing two different perspectives on the instance, text vs discourse, which Halliday (2008: 78) explains as follows:

I do make a distinction between these two; but it is a difference in point of view, between different angles of vision on the phenomena, not in the phenomena themselves. So we can use either to define the other: “discourse” is text that is being viewed in its sociocultural context, while “text” is discourse that is being viewed as a process of language.

That is, Martin & Rose are interested in text in its socio-cultural context (discourse), and the view they are arguing against is simply the complementary perspective of discourse as a process of language (text).

Moreover, since the authors' model of genre is itself an example of generalising across a text corpus, in this instance they are actually arguing against the approach they themselves have taken.

[4] Again, this misconstrues complementary perspectives as competing alternatives; see [3]. Amusingly, the authors' claim can applied to their own model through the following paraphrase:

as we generalise texts into genres, the tendency at this stage of our work is to lose sight of how texture is construed as a text unfolds, through its particular logogenetic contingencies.

[5] To be clear, this confuses the totality of metafunctional systems on Martin's discourse semantic stratum with texture, which is created through the textual systems on the lexicogrammatical stratum, namely: those of theme, information and cohesion.

[6] As previously demonstrated, the authors' notion of reading as a pole of the cline of instantiation is invalidated by their misunderstanding of both instantiation and reading, the latter being confused with attitudinal stances towards texts, and with textual responses to texts.

[7] To be clear, relating a specific text to the systems it instantiates is viewing language as both weather (instance) and climate (system). But, in any case, Halliday cautions against restricting our angle of vision to one pole on the cline of instantiation. Halliday (2008: 85, 126, 192):

… whichever of these rôles [grammarian or discourse analyst] we are adopting, we need to observe from both ends. The grammarian, however system-oriented he may be, has to monitor instances of discourse; the discourse analyst, however text-oriented, has to keep an eye on the overall potential. The complementarity means that, unless you shift your angle, you will distort the picture: you cannot know all that is going on if you keep to just one observational perspective.  …

To revisit my earlier analogy of climate and weather: the power of weather to influence our daily lives, through storms and floods and droughts and all the rest, derives from the fact that it is the instantiation of something we call “climate” — because it is climate that has shaped our evolution and so determines the effect on us, and indeed on all of nature, of all the fluctuating processes and forces that we call “weather”. In the same way the power of the text resides in the system, because it is the system that determines the meaning and the significance of the ongoing choices made by writers and speakers. It is a mistake to restrict our angle of vision to just one perspective or the other, or to treat the discourse analyst and grammarian as if they inhabited two different realms of intellectual being. …

The system and the text are not two different phenomena: what we call the “system” of a language is equivalent to its “text potential”. Analysing discourse means, first and foremost, relating the text to the potential that lies behind it. There are perhaps three areas of discourse analysis that have figured prominently in systemic-functional research: literary-æsthetic, technical-scientific, and sociopolitical. In the first of these, the text carries value in its own right; when you analyse texts of this kind, you are aiming to explain not only why and how the text means what it does but also why it carries the value that it does. […] In analysing scientific and technical texts, the linguist is likely to be foregrounding the special properties that distinguish these texts from other varieties of written and spoken language, such that they are able to play a central part in the creation and transmission of knowledge. Scientific theories evolve from the conjunction of material and semiotic processes, and the advancement of science is powered by linguistic as well as technical resources. […] On the socio-political side, the researcher is investigating how discourse creates, maintains and transmits the social order (and hence may also be used to subvert it).

Problems With The Authors' Notion Of Shunting Back And Forth Between ‘Texts’ And ‘Readings’

Martin & Rose (2007: 312):

Introducing readings as a final step in the instantiation cline of course begs the question of how we determine what those readings are.  

And there is no doubt in our mind that we need to explore compliant, resistant and tactical responses on the basis of how those readings are materialised in texts, whatever the modalities involved. 

And this means looking at the readings the texts themselves afford, shunting back and forth between ‘texts’ and ‘readings’, until we feel we’ve said enough about the negotiation of meanings among them, as diverse social subjectivities engage.  

This produces in effect a kind of recursive loop at the end of the instantiation cline; but that is just what we want here: readings feeding back into texts, texts feeding back into text types, text types into registers and so on.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, 'to beg the question' is a technical term for a type of circular reasoning (logical fallacy) in which the conclusion of an argument is smuggled into its premisses.

[2] Amusingly, the two authors admit to having only one mind between them.

[3] To be clear, here Martin & Rose again confuse readings of texts (mental projections) with responses to texts (verbal projections). Importantly, a verbal response to a text is another text — another instance — not something further down the cline of instantiation than a text.

[4] To be clear, this is simply "shunting" between different texts at the instance pole of the cline of instantiation. There is no "recursive loop" between two different points on the cline of instantiation.

[5] To be clear, a genuine example of a reading "feeding back" into a text is the process of an editor reading and editing a written text.

[6] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the sense in which texts "feed back" into text types is that selection frequencies in each text potentially alter the selection frequencies of the text type of which they are instances.

[7] To be clear, in SFL Theory, text type and register are the same phenomenon viewed from opposite poles of the cline of instantiation: text type is register viewed from the instance pole, whereas register is text type viewed from the system pole.

Importantly, inconsistent both with SFL Theory and with the authors' own cline of instantiation, Martin & Rose model text type (genre) and register as systems of contextual strata, outside language.

Confusing Interpretations (Readings) With Textual Responses

Martin & Rose (2007: 311):

A more typical example of a tactical response would be the way in which fans use the Amazon.com website for their own purposes to construct community. In order to exemplify appreciation in Chapter 2 we used one of the in-house editorial reviews provided by Amazon for Stevie Ray Vaughan’s record Texas Flood. But following their ‘Editorial Reviews’ Amazon makes space for ‘Customer Reviews of the Day’, a continually updated flow-through corpus of responses from fans who take advantage of the site to rave on about their favourite star. Here’s a couple of these rave reviews:

Obviously Amazon is trying to sell CDs. There is a clear logic of consumption operating here: ‘if a fan (or even if not), you will like it, so buy it’. At the same time, the fans pursue another interest, namely that of expanding their community. Alongside the logic of consumption there’s a rhetoric of belonging: ‘if you buy it, you will like it, and so become a fan’. As Jay Lemke has pointed out to Jim, this is an exemplary tactical response to the global power of a post-Fordist ‘e-tail corporation'.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is meant to exemplify 'reading' — an interpretation of a text — as a point on the cline of instantiation beyond the instance pole. Instead, it describes responses to hearing music. Each of these responses is, of course, a text, an instance of the language as system.

[2] To be clear, the claim that fans rave about a musician and his music with the intention of expanding a community needs support from empirical evidence. On the relevant youtube site, the comments are turned off, which might be taken to suggest that any "community building" here was less than successful.

Confusing Interpretations (Readings) With Attitudinal Orientations

Martin & Rose (2007: 310-1):

We’ve added reading to the cline to take into account the fact that texts invariably afford a range of interpretations, which we can generalise provisionally under the three headings of ‘tactical', ‘resistant’ and ‘compliant’ (pace de Certeau 1984). 

Compliant readings take up the reading position which is naturalised by the overall trajectory of meanings in a text. We’ve worked very hard in this book to show how the co-articulation of meanings in a text naturalises a reading position: how Tutu works hard at getting us to agree with him, Helena works to get our sympathy for her man, and Mandela strives to guide us on side. 

Resistant readings work against the grain of this naturalisation process; we might want to argue that amnesty was a bad idea, for example, or that freedom with responsibilities is not really freedom at all. Resistant reading positions are generally associated on a culture-specific basis with non-mainstream readings. (In the west, these may include readings that don’t enact the discursive power of white, Anglo, middle class, mature, capable, social subjects.) 

Tactical readings are readings that take up some aspect of the meaning a text affords, and rework it obliquely in the direction of specific interests. For example, if we as linguists had taken Helena’s story out of context and analysed it simply as an exemplar of one or another linguistic system, then we would have been responding to both Tutu and Helena tactically; we would be neither complying with nor resisting their discourse but simply using it to further our own professional interests.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands the cline of instantiation, not least because it unwittingly misconstrues a text as a "reading type".

[2] To be clear, this confuses readers' interpretations of the meaning of a text with readers' attitudinal orientations towards the meaning of a text.

[3] This is potentially misleading, because here Martin & Rose frame the source of their ideas, de Certeau, as merely someone they disagree with.

[4] Amusingly, this might be read as an involuntary self-disclosure on the part of the authors, along the lines of:

We’ve worked very hard in this book at getting readers to agree with us, to get readers' sympathy for us, and to guide readers on side.

[5] To be clear, Martin & Rose are "white, Anglo, middle class, mature, capable, social subjects".

[6] Amusingly, this too might be read as an involuntary self-disclosure on the part of the authors, along the lines of:

we as linguists have analysed Helena’s story as an exemplar of one or another linguistic system, using both Tutu and Helena tactically to further our own professional interests.

Seriously Misunderstanding The Cline Of Instantiation

Martin & Rose (2007: 310, 333n):

Halliday’s … cline of instantiation includes system (the generalised meaning potential of a language), register (sub-potentials of meaning characterised as registers and genres), text type⁴ (generalised instances, a set of texts that actualise the potential of the system), and finally text (the meanings actually afforded by an instance). And we could add at the end of the cline reading (the meaning taken from a text according to the subjectivity of the reader):

⁴ Halliday and Matthiessen in fact discuss registers as sub-potentials in relation to system, and text types as super-potentials in relation to text, at the same level of generality along the cline; we’ve taken the liberty of adding a rung here by making text type more specific than register.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the cline of instantiation does not just apply to language, but to context as well. The poles of the cline and its intermediate point of variation is given by Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 20) as

potential ~ subpotential/ instance type ~ instance

Applying the cline of instantiation to the SFL stratification hierarchy yields the following matrix: 

Applying the cline of instantiation to Martin's stratification hierarchy exposes its inconsistency with SFL Theory:

In Martin's model, sub-systems and instance types of language, registers and genres (text types) are misconstrued as systems of context. Moreover, Martin regards instances of his context as texts, despite the fact that texts are instances of language, not context. And of course, what would constitute sub-systems/instances types of genre and register is not explored in this work or in Martin (1992).

[2] This misrepresents Halliday's model. To be clear, genres are not sub-potentials of meaning, but instance types of meaning and wording. That is, genres are registers viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation.

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, a text type (genre) is not "generalised instances" but a type of which some instances are members on the basis of shared patterns of instantiation.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, texts are not "the meanings actually afforded by an instance", but the meanings and wordings of the system that are instantiated (selected) during logogenesis.

[5] This is a serious misunderstanding of the cline of instantiation. A reading of a text is an interpretation of an instance, not an instantiation of it.

[6] This misrepresents Halliday & Matthiessen. Text type is the view of of register from the instance pole, but in characterising text type in terms of potential, the authors have instead viewed it from the system pole. That is, Martin & Rose do not understand the difference between viewing from the system and instance poles.

[7] To be clear, Martin & Rose misunderstand the cline of instantiation as a scale from general to specific, as if it were a scale of delicacy. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 14):

Note that it is important to keep delicacy and instantiation distinct. In early work on semantic networks, they were sometimes neutralised. The difference is essentially that between being a type of x (delicacy) and being a token of x (instantiation). Both may be construed by intensive ascription.

[8] To be clear, this "liberty" has not been supported by argument. Moreover, it is a misunderstanding that derives from not understanding the different polar perspectives on the cline of instantiation, as demonstrated in [6] above.

Seriously Misunderstanding Halliday's Weather-Climate Analogy For Instantiation

Martin & Rose (2007: 310):

By way of opening this chapter we looked at the issue of what to analyse from the perspectives of genre and ideology. Here, by way of closing down, we’ll return to the problem with reference to what Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) refer to as the ‘cline of instantiation’.

Instantiation involves the way we observe metastability in social semiotic systems as apparent flux or as inertia or as something in between. Halliday’s analogy here is weather and climate; weather the capricious flux we experience day to day, climate the comforting inertia we try to use to plan. But as Halliday points out, weather and climate are actually the same phenomenon looked at in different ways. 

And we can argue that weather changes climate, in ways that matter (global warming) and ways that don’t (like today’s temperature being two degrees above average) or that climate determines weather (like when we say it always rains in a rival city because the climate is terrible there).

Halliday’s point is that text interacts with system as weather interacts with climate.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, the cline of instantiation is the perspectival scale from potential to instance:

• from language as potential (system) to language as instance (text);
• from context as potential (culture) to context as instance (situation).

[2] This is not misleading, because it is true.

[3] To be clear, on Halliday's analogy, the climate is the potential that lies behind the weather (instances).

[4] To be clear, it is not that weather changes climate, because weather and climate are the same phenomenon viewed from different perspectives: instance vs potential. Instead, statistically significant changes in weather (instances) can alternatively be viewed as probabilistic changes in climate (potential).

[5] To be clear, a 2°C temperature difference in one day's weather (instance) is statistically unlikely to amount to a change in climate (potential).

[6] To be clear, it cannot be argued that climate determines weather, because climate and weather are two perspectives on the same phenomenon. This is analogous to claiming that the potential for car accidents determines actual car accidents (instances).

[7] To be clear, this is not an example of climate determining weather. It is an example of people talking about a weather pattern of a microclimate.

[8] This is misleading, but inadvertently true. It is misleading because Halliday does not claim that either that weather interacts with climate or that text interacts with system, not least because perspectives do not interact. It is inadvertently true because text interacts with system just as weather interacts with climate — not at all.

Misrepresenting Hasan's Model Of Generic Structure Potential

Martin & Rose (2007: 309):

Another perspective on the relationship between register and generic structure is proposed by Hasan and her colleagues, who model it on the ‘axial’ relationship between system and structure. In this model, obligatory elements of genre structure appear to be determined by field, and the presence of optional ones by tenor and mode. The question of relationships among genres is thus a question of the field, tenor and mode selections that genres do and do not share. 

This contrasts with the model developed by Martin (1992), where choices among genres form a system above and beyond field, tenor and mode networks at the level of register. 

Because field, tenor and mode remain relatively underspecified theoretical constructs in SFL, it is difficult to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of these modelling strategies (inter-stratal vs axial realisation) at this stage. 

Martin’s model has certainly been influenced by our work in educational linguistics where mapping relationships among genres across disciplines has been a central concern (Martin 2001a, 2002a, b; Martin and Plum 1997). For further discussion see Matth[ie]ssen (1993), Martin (1999c, 2001d), Hasan (1995, 1999), Martin and Rose (2005, 2007).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. Hasan's model of Generic Structure Potential (1985/9) is an unacknowledged source of Martin's model (1992). Without Hasan's prior work, Martin would have no model.

[2] This is misleading, because it misrepresents Hasan. Hasan's model is concerned with the relation between cultural context and semantics. More specifically, it proposes that potential semantic structures vary according to the contextual configurations of field, tenor and mode features that a genre (text type) realises.

[3] This is misleading, because it repeats the misunderstanding previously expressed in Martin (1992). Hasan does not relate the obligatoriness of elements to the metafunctional dimensions of context. For Hasan (1985/9: 62), the obligatory elements of text structure are the elements that define the genre (text type):

So, by implication, the obligatory elements define the genre to which a text belongs;

[4] To be clear, this only presents a contextual perspective on how genres (text types) are related in SFL Theory. From the perspective of language, text types (genres) are related to each other by the relative frequencies of selected semantic and lexicogrammatical features.

[5] For a detailed examination of the model of genre in Martin (1992), see the posts here.

[6] To be clear, the authors' genre system, which is not provided anywhere in this publication or Martin (1992), is a simple taxonomy of genre classifications — narrative, anecdote etc. — rather than a system network of conjunct and disjunct features that specify different genres. Moreover, on this model, genre choices are realised by field, tenor and mode choices, where, as previously demonstrated, field is confused with ideational semantics, and tenor is confused with social structure.

[7] To be clear, in SFL Theory, field, tenor and mode are specified as the metafunctional dimensions of the culture as a semiotic system. However, the degree of specification of these terms is not criterial in assessing the relative strengths of Hasan's model — properly understood — and Martin's model. Hasan's model is (largely) consistent with SFL Theory, whereas Martin's model is neither consistent with SFL Theory nor consistent with itself, as demonstrated in previous posts. Internal consistencies include modelling varieties of language (genre, register) as context, as opposed to language, and yet claiming that instances of context are instances of language (texts).

[8] To be clear, the work that Martin & Rose have done in educational linguistics is not evidence of the theoretical validity of Martin's model.

The Relation Between Levels

  Martin & Rose (2007: 308-9):

Note however that the relation between levels is realisational, not a hierarchy of control; genre does not determine register variables, any more than register determines linguistic choices. Rather a genre is construed, enacted, presented as a dynamic configuration of field, tenor and mode; which are in turn construed, enacted, presented as unfolding discourse semantic patterns. Relations among genre, register, discourse and grammar are to some extent predictable for members of a culture, but at the same time they are independently variable; these complementary characteristics give language and culture the capacity for both stability and change.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This requires a minor qualification. In SFL Theory, some features on a higher stratum may 'preselect' features on a lower stratum in the sense that the selection of the former also entails the selection of the latter. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 375):

More specifically, inter-stratal realisation is specified by means of inter-stratal preselection: contextual features are realised by preselection within the semantic system, semantic features are realised by preselection within the lexicogrammatical system, and lexicogrammatical features are realised by preselection within the phonological/ graphological system. This type of preselection may take different forms between different strata! boundaries, but the principle is quite general.

[2] To be clear, on the authors' model, genre is realised by register, and register by discourse semantics. On this model, it is register that construes genre, not the reverse, and discourse semantics that construes register, not the reverse. The terms 'enacted' and 'presented' are not synonyms for 'realised', since neither term expresses a relation between two levels of symbolic abstraction.

In terms of SFL Theory, on the other hand, field, tenor and mode are the metafunctional dimensions of the culture as a semiotic system, and genre (text type) and register are two perspectives on functional variants of language — rather than systems of context — and modelled as a point of variation on the cline of instantiation. Different configurations of field, tenor and mode system features are realised by different registers/text types, which means different selection probabilities/frequencies on the strata of semantics and lexicogrammar.

[3] To be clear, on the authors' model, the relation between adjacent pairs of these four strata is invariably one of realisation. However, from the perspective of SFL Theory, what Martin & Rose might be trying to articulate here, without understanding instantiation, is that selections across strata are probabilistically linked, and that members of a culture — in their model: members of genre and register (!) — are implicitly aware of those probabilities, but that probabilities in the system can nevertheless be altered by changing selection frequencies in instances, thereby providing both system stability and change. If this is the intended meaning, then such change is merely changes in the probabilities of feature selection in existing systems, not the expansion of the systems themselves.

Misunderstanding Metaredundancy And Confusing It With Instantiation

 Martin & Rose (2007: 308-9):

Following Lemke (1995), the relationship between levels in diagrams of this kind can be thought of as ‘metaredundancy’, the idea of patterns at one level redounding with patterns at the next level. Thus genre is a pattern of register patterns, just as register variables are a pattern of linguistic ones.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is not following Lemke — it is misunderstanding Lemke. As Halliday (1992: 23-5) explains, realisation is itself a redundancy relation, and metaredundancy is the redundancy in a series of redundancies:

But realisation is not a causal relation; it is a redundancy relation, so that x redounds with the redundancy of y with z. To put it in more familiar terms, it is not that (i) meaning is realised by wording and wording is realised by sound, but that (ii) meaning is realised by the realisation of wording in sound.  We can of course reverse the direction, and say that sounding realises the realisation of meaning in wording.

[2] To be clear, in addition to all the theoretical inconsistencies in this stratified model that were identified in the previous post, this confuses stratification ("metaredundancy") with instantiation ("patterns"). Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 593, 659):

System and text form a cline rather than a dichotomy, because between these two poles there is a semiotic region of intermediate patterns (conceived of as instance types – as text types, or as subsystems – as registers). 

… in the course of unfolding of text, lexicogrammatical selections create logogenetic patterns at all ranks. This is patterning in the text that has nothing to do with composition or size: instead of composition (the relationship between a whole and its parts), the patterning is based on instantiation (the relationship between an instance and a generalised instance type). The patterning represents a slight move up this cline from the single instance to a pattern of instances, as in a news report where one projecting verbal clause after another is selected until this emerges as a favourite clause type. The logogenetic patterns that emerge as a text unfolds form a transient system that is specific to that text; but from repeated patterns over many such transient systems may, in turn, emerge a generalised system characteristic of a certain type of text or register…