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.