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.

 

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[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.