The Horizontal Textual Organisation Of Layout: Given/New

Martin & Rose (2007: 323, 328):

In the horizontal triptych on pages 202-3, the photo of the boy is Given and that of the inauguration is New.  The photos are more salient than the texts by virtue of their colour intensity and Given-New positions, with the inauguration image by far most salient. Our eye is attracted first to this large picture, then back to the photo of the boy, and then to the texts to explain the images for us. Within the left-hand vertical triptych, the image of the boy is more salient than the marginal texts above and below him, due to its size, colour and centrality. As a result we expect these texts to expand on the meaning of the photograph, and indeed they do, with enhancement.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin & Rose provide no argument here for the applicability of Halliday's information unit to images and page layout. The authors merely accept its use by Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) without question. Moreover, there is no argument for treating the unmarked sequence, Given^New, as the only possible ordering. For information units, the structure may be:

• Given^New
• Given^New^Given
• New^Given
• New

Here the left image is claimed to be Given information merely because it is positioned to the left of the other image, which is claimed to be (the focus of) New information merely because it is positioned to the right of the other image. Martin & Rose provide no argument as to why a photograph of a boy in the crowd (who is not mentioned in the text) should be Given information relative to the photograph of the flag in the same crowd. It might be argued that the new South African flag is presented as New, but Martin & Rose do not make that argument.

[2] To be clear, here Martin & Rose have (unwittingly) switched their attention from the content plane to the expression plane, confusing salience of expression (size, colour, layout position) with salience of content.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. While it is true that the photograph provides an instance of 'the dark-skinned peoples' mentioned in the texts, the texts above and below the photograph say nothing whatsoever about the meaning of the photograph:

See further in the following post. 

Image-Text Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 327-8, 333n):

Image-text relations include their logical relations, the boundaries between text and image, and identification. Logical relationships can be mapped in terms of expansion or projection, as we described for texts in macrogenres in Chapter 8. For example, images and texts can restate, specify or summarise each other (elaborating), they can be added to each other (extending), or explain or follow each other in time (enhancing). Images can also project wordings as thought or speech bubbles, and the reverse is also possible. Boundaries between image and text may be weak or strong: images may intrude into text, and text may overlap images, or there may be strong demarcation. And finally elements of images may be identified explicitly in accompanying texts (e.g. in captions), and elements of text or other images may be referred to in accompanying images, for example by vectors that point to them.⁸

⁸ Kress and van Leeuwen draw attention to vectors, which can be constructed through the gaze of participants or lines formed by the position of people and things. Whereas they interpret vectors in ideational terms, its seems to us that vectors are realisational strategies for ideational or textual functions.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Importantly, and not acknowledged here, these logical and identification relations obtain at the level of content, whereas the text-image boundary relations obtain at the level of expression.

[2] To be clear, the authors' model of logical discourse semantics, the system of conjunction (now rebranded 'connexion'), does not use the general category 'expansion', and 'projection' is entirely absent. This is because Martin's model is his rebranding of cohesive conjunction (Halliday & Hasan 1976), in which the general category of expansion had not yet been theorised by Halliday, and in which projection plays no cohesive function.

[3] To be clear, this would involve instances like he said <image>, and she thought <image>.

[4] To be clear, as previously demonstrated in the examination of Chapter 5, the authors' model of identification is a confusion of 'reference' in the textually cohesive sense, and 'reference' in the ideational sense of denotation. It will be seen that this misunderstanding is maintained in their discussion of image-text relations.

Problems With The System Of Interpersonal Meanings In Images

 Martin & Rose (2007: 326, 327):

In sum, the two photos illustrate options in attitude, engagement and graduation, set out in Figure 9.11.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, as demonstrated in previous posts, none of these applications of ATTITUDE features survives close scrutiny.

• The authors' application of affect misrepresented ideational construals of emotion as interpersonal assessments using emotion (affect). 
• The authors' application of appreciation confused ideational construals in a photograph with the appreciation of these by a viewer (the authors). 
• The authors' application of judgement involved reconstruing the boy in a photograph as a metaphor for Nelson Mandela, whom the authors judged as tenacious, and then incongruously transferring that judgement to the boy.

[2] To be clear, as observed in previous posts, the authors here misrepresent 'engagement' in the sense of Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) as 'engagement' in the appraisal sense.

[3] To be clear, Martin & Rose have not demonstrated three levels of graduation in images. As demonstrated in previous posts

• in exemplifying the graduation of appreciation, the authors confused scalable ideational qualities with the degree of their appreciation of them, and mistook textual prominence for interpersonal graduation, and
• in exemplifying the graduation of judgement, the authors interpreted the hand shape of the boy in a photograph as intensifying the tenacity they attributed to Mandela; see [1] above.

Applying Appreciation, Graduation And Engagement To The Inauguration-Flag Photograph

Martin & Rose (2007: 326, 327):

On the other hand the inauguration-flag photo invokes positive appreciation, including aspects of reaction, composition and valuation. With respect to terms exemplified in Table 2.10, the inauguration crowd appears imposing, exciting and dramatic, as does the huge flag, whose composition is both complex and unified, and which carries values that are at once profound, innovative and enduring. These values are amplified by the size and centrality of the flag, and the intensity of its colours. With respect to engagement, the people are facing directly away from the viewer, so we are obliquely invited to enter the scene in the direction they are facing.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin & Rose are not identifying the meaning created by either the photographer or the boy in the photograph, but by specific viewers of the photograph (themselves). In doing so, they confuse ideational construals made by the photographer with interpersonal assessments made by the viewer.

[2] To be clear, here Martin & Rose confuse scalable aspects of the depicted flag with the degree (graduation) of their own appreciation. Moreover, to the extent that the foregrounding and centrality of the flag focuses attention on the flag, this is the "graduation" of textual meaning, not interpersonal meaning.

[3] To be clear, as previously observed, this is 'engagement' in the sense of Kress & van Leeuwen (1996), but misrepresented by Martin & Rose as 'engagement' in the appraisal sense.

Applying Judgement And Graduation To A Photograph

Martin & Rose (2007: 326):

In APPRAISAL terms, the photo of the boy invokes a positive judgement of tenacity that must be read in relation to the texts that surround him.  The protest against the regime construed by his raised fist reflects the tenacious resistance of Mandela and his comrades as recounted in the adjacent Freedom text.  The fist can then be read as amplifying his tenacity to the level of defiance (more so than if he had waved or saluted with an open hand).  This is a retrospective reading of his tenacity as defiance against the old regime;  on the other hand his tenacity can also be read prospectively as youthful determination in the nation’s hopes for the future. These are complementary readings as protest against the regime vs celebration of its overthrow, that are expanded by the texts above and below the photo — image-text relations that are discussed in the following section.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin & Rose are not identifying the meaning created by either the photographer or the boy in the photograph, but by specific viewers of the photograph (themselves); see further below.

[2] To be clear, if the meaning of the image depends on the accompanying text, then the meaning is made by both semiotic systems, not by the image alone.

[3] To be clear, here Martin & Rose construe three levels of meaning within the image:

• the tenacious resistance of Mandela and his comrades, realised by
• the protest against the regime, realised by
• his raised fist.

More specifically, the middle level of meaning, the protest against the regime, is metaphorically encoded by reference to the lowest level, his raised fist, and the highest level, the tenacious resistance of Mandela and his comrades, is metaphorically decoded by reference to the middle level, the protest against the regime.

That is, the judgement of tenacity in this image of a boy is made on Mandela and his comrades by Martin & Rose.

[4] To be clear, here Martin & Rose have become confused by their levels of abstraction and incongruously transferred their judgement of the tenacity from Mandela and his comrades to the boy ('his tenacity') in the photograph. This is analogous to transferring a judgement of a movie character to the actor playing the rôle. With this confusion, they claim, without supporting argument, that the shape of the boy's hand is an amplification of his tenacity to the level of defiance, despite the fact that 'tenacity' means persistence, whereas 'defiance' means resistance.

[5] To be clear, here again Martin & Rose misattribute the tenacity they have ascribed to Mandela and his comrades to the boy ('his tenacity') in the photograph, and decode his tenacity by reference to youthful determination in the nation's hope for the future.

[6] To be clear, Halliday (1985: xvii) comments on discourse analysis seem apposite here:

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.

[7] To be clear, as can be seen below, the texts above and below the photograph of the boy (p324) do not expand the meanings of the photograph, as interpreted by Martin & Rose:

'regimes' above photo of young boy

On the day of the inauguration I was overwhelmed with a sense of history. In the first decade of the twentieth century, a few years after the bitter Anglo-Boer war and before my own birth, the white-skinned peoples of South Africa patched up their differences and erected a system of racial domination against the dark-skinned peoples of their own land.

'effects' below photo of young boy

The structure they created formed the basis of one of the harshest, most inhumane, societies the world has ever known. Now, in the last decade of the twentieth century, and my own eighth decade as a man, that system has been overturned forever and replaced by one that recognised the rights and freedoms of all peoples regardless of the colour of their skin. (Mandela 1996: 202)

Confusing Material And Semiotic Phenomena In Misunderstanding Context

Martin & Rose (2007: 321-2):

In our discussion of mode above we talked about the way in which the exophoric references in Vincent Lingiari’s speech made it ‘context dependent’ — dependent on our being there or on reading images of what was going on. Another way of putting this would be to say that more than one modality was involved, using the term modality here in the sense of a modality of communication such as language, music, image or action. To understand Lingiari, in other words, we need to process language in relation to image, or language in relation to action. There are two modalities co-articulating what is going on. In register terms what this suggests is that we need to expand our conception of mode to embrace multimodal discourse analysis (hereafter MDA). This entails moving beyond linguistics into social semiotics and taking into account as many modalities of communication as we can systematically describe.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin & Rose model context as register and genre (varieties of language), but here contradict their own model by using 'context' to mean both the first-order material setting ("being there") and the second-order co-text (images).

[2] To be clear, by 'action' here, Martin & Rose mean the material setting. That is, they misconstrue first-order material experience (phenomena) as second-order semiotic experience (metaphenomena). Meanings projected from the material setting are another matter.

[3] To be clear, despite conventional opinion, music itself — unlike musical theory, notation and lyrics — is not a semiotic system. If it were, it would have long been possible to construct system networks of the meaning contrasts realised by sound contrasts. Instead, as a perceptual phenomenon, music potentially induces mental processes of emotion, desire and cognition.

[4] To be clear, inconsistent with the opening sentence, here Martin & Rose return to their own model of context, which misconstrues culture as functional varieties of language (registers).

[5] Trivially, SFL Theory models language as a social semiotic system. That is, the linguistics deployed by Martin & Rose is already within social semiotics.

Misconstruing The Relation Between Semogenesis And Language As Projection

 Martin & Rose (2007: 320-21):

Along these lines, configuring language, register and genre as system amounts to mapping the reservoir of meanings available to interlocutors within discourse formations. Systems of language, register and genre are immanent as a result of the meanings that have been or could have been made by interlocutors in the past and are still relevant. Of these meanings, repertoires are distributed across subjects according to their socialisation. And of these meanings, arrays of choices are negotiated through unfolding text. This notion of time giving value to meaning is outlined in Figure 9.8. … Halliday’s (1994) ⍺ ’ꞵ notation for the projecting relation between clauses has been borrowed to represent the idea of time giving value to meaning. This represents one of the senses in which history (i.e. semogenesis) gives meaning to synchronic (albeit always changing) semiosis, since where we are in all three kinds of time is what sets the relevant valeur — the ways in which meanings are opposed to one another and thus have value in the system.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, 'along these lines' refers to the authors' (quite bizarre) misunderstanding that semogenesis projects "language, register and genre"; see the clarifying critiques in the immediately preceding post.

[2] To be clear, this purports to characterise the authors' misunderstanding that phylogenesis projects "language, register and genre" (Figure 9.8). Instead, it identifies the authors' misunderstanding of phylogenesis with their misunderstanding of language — more specifically: it decodes their misunderstanding of language by reference to their misunderstanding of phylogenesis:

[3] To be clear, this misunderstands the meaning of the term 'immanent' in linguistics, where it refers to the epistemological assumption that meaning is 'something that is constructed in, and so is part of, language itself' (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 416).

[4] To be clear, this purports to characterise the authors' misunderstanding that ontogenesis projects "language, register and genre" (Figure 9.8). Instead, it merely makes the observation that the ontogenesis of meaning varies according to social factors.

[5] To be clear, this purports to characterise the authors' misunderstanding that logogenesis projects "language, register and genre" (Figure 9.8). Instead, it misconstrues the instantiation of potential in text (logogenesis) as the negotiation of meaning in text (Martin's interpersonal discourse semantics).

[6] To be clear, this purports to characterise the authors' general misunderstanding that semogenesis projects "language, register and genre" (Figure 9.8). Instead, it confuses the process of semogenesis with the temporal dimension along which the process unfolds, and misconstrues the temporal dimension as assigning "value" to meaning ("language, register and genre"):

[7] Trivially, it is not where we are in time that sets the "relevant valeur". Time is the dimension along which the logogenesis, ontogenesis and phylogenesis of the system of meaning contrasts unfolds.

[8] As the gloss of 'projection' as 'means' in Figure 9.8 demonstrates, Martin & Rose confuse projection with verbal (and identifying) Processes.

Reductive Glosses Of Semogenesis

Martin & Rose (2007: 319):

Read from the perspective of critical theory, phylogenesis might be glossed in terms of a concern with the evolution of discourse formations (as explored in Fairclough (1995)), ontogenesis with the development of social subjectivities (e.g. Walkerdine and Lucey (1989)) and logogenesis with the de/naturalisation of reading positions (e.g. Cranny-Francis (1996)). Glossing with respect to Bernstein (1996), phylogenesis is concerned with changes in a culture’s reservoir of meanings, ontogenesis with the development of individual repertoires (i.e. coding orientations); logogenesis is concerned with what in SFL is referred to as the instantiation of system in text (or 'process’ for a more dynamic perspective). These perspectives are illustrated in Figure 9.7.

 Blogger Comments:

To be clear, in SFL Theory, 'phylogenesis' refers to the evolution of the system in the species, 'ontogenesis' refers to the development of the system in the individual, and 'logogenesis' refers to the instantiation of the system in the text (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 17-8).

[1] This reduces (the phylogenesis of) language to (the phylogenesis of) an aspect of the semantic stratum of language.

[Foucault's] term discursive formation identifies and describes written and spoken statements with semantic relations that produce discourses.

[2] This reduces (the ontogenesis of) language to (the ontogenesis of) one metafunction: the interpersonal enactment of intersubjective relations.

[3] This confuses the logogenesis of texts with critiques of the meanings of texts.

[4] To be clear, this wording invites the confusion of language with culture that pervades the work of Martin & Rose (e.g. confusing language variants, register and genre, with culture).

[5] This reduces (the ontogenesis of) language to (the ontogenesis of) socially-correlated variants.

[6] To be clear, the instantiation of the system is a dynamic process.

Misunderstanding Semogenesis, Confusing Culture With Language, And Confusing Social With Sociosemiotic

Martin & Rose (2007: 318):

In a model of this kind, phylogenesis provides the environment for ontogenesis which in turn provides the environment for logogenesis. In other words, where a culture has arrived in its evolution provides the social context for the linguistic development of the individual, and the point an individual is at in their development provides resources for the instantiation of unfolding texts, illustrated in Figure 9.6. 

Conversely, logogenesis provides the material (i.e. semiotic goods) for ontogenesis, which in turn provides the material for phylogenesis; in other words, texts provide the means through which individuals interact to learn the system. And it is through the heteroglossic aggregation of individual systems (that are always already social systems), through the changing voices of us all, that the semiotic trajectory of a culture evolves. Language change in this model is read in terms of an expanding meaning potential, a key feature of semiotic systems as they adapt to new discursive and material environments.

 
Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is a restatement of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18):

[2] To be clear, this misunderstands the previous sentence (Halliday's model), once again confusing culture with language. As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18) explain:

Following the downward arrow, the system of the language (the meaning potential of the species) provides the environment in which the individual's meaning emerges;

[3] To be clear, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18) add the missing elements from the authors' gloss:

… the meaning potential of the individual provides the environment within which the meaning of the text emerges.

[4] To be clear, ontogenesis is the coming into being of the meaning potential of the individual; that is, the coming into being of the individual as meaner. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18):

the individual's (transfinite) meaning potential is constructed out of (finite) instances of text;

[5] To be clear, this confuses two misunderstandings. On the one hand, yet again Martin & Rose confuse language with culture: the model is concerned with the phylogenesis of language. On the other hand, phylogenesis is fed by the instances of meaners, not by "the aggregation of individual systems", since systems are potential, not actual. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18):

the (transfinite) meaning potential of the species is constructed out of (finite) instances of individual 'meaners'.

[6] To be clear, here Martin & Rose confuse semiotic systems, of the subtype 'social', with social systems. In SFL Theory, social systems do not involve the exchange of symbolic value, and so are not semiotic systems. Social systems include those social insect colonies where the values exchanged, as through pheromones, are not symbolic. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

A biological system is a physical system with the added component of "life"; it is a living physical system. In comparable terms, a social system is a biological system with the added component of "value" …. A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of "meaning". Meaning can be thought of (and was thought of by Saussure) as just a kind of social value; but it is value in a significantly different sense — value that is construed symbolically. … Semiotic systems are social systems where value has been further transformed into meaning.

[7] Cf Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18):

These are the three major processes of semohistory, by which meanings are continually created, transmitted, recreated, extended and changed.

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):

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.

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…

Misconstruing Ideational Semantics As Ideational Context (Field)

Martin & Rose (2007: 307):

Distinctive sequences implicate distinctive events, linked by expectations derived from participation in a field:

They posed for pictures together

signed autographs

compared callouses on their fingertips

Vincent Lingiari, a Gurindji elder, led his people off the cattle station

They subsequently sent a petition to the Governor-General

And events implicate distinct participants, arranged in relation to one another according to the classifications and compositions of a given field, for example, blues guitarists and their songs ...

blues guitarists

Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan

SRV set list (partial)

Texas Flood, Pride and Joy, Riviera Paradise, Crossfire, Couldn't Stand the Weather, Goin' Down, Voodoo Chile, Sweet Home Chicago

... vs prospective mates bearing gifts:

mates

the prime minister Gough Whitlam/Vincent Lingiari

important White men/us Aboriginals

White men, White/Aboriginals, Black

gifts

land, country; cattle, horses, bores, axes, wire

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, here Martin & Rose misconstrue the stratum of semantics as the stratum of context, mistaking ideational meaning (sequence and figures) of a text for its cultural field.

In terms of the authors' own model, Martin & Rose misconstrue their stratum of discourse semantics as their stratum of register, mistaking experiential language (activity sequences) for ideational context (field).

[2] And again, in terms of SFL Theory, here Martin & Rose misconstrue the stratum of semantics as the stratum of context, mistaking ideational meaning (participants) of a text for its cultural field.

And again, in terms of the authors' own model, Martin & Rose misconstrue their stratum of discourse semantics as their stratum of register, mistaking experiential language (participant taxonomies) for ideational context (field).

Misanalysing Textual Reference And Confusing It With Ideational Denotation

Martin & Rose (2007: 305-6):

Where cultural difference comes into play, contracted realisation can be particularly excluding. We can take a moment to resolve the exophoric reference in Lingiari’s speech:

But this simply introduces a pulse of homophoric reference that many (but not all) Australians and few others can resolve.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, using SFL Theory, the exophoric reference items in this extract are the demonstratives:

• the (important white men)
• this (land)
• here (Wattle Creek)

and the endophoric reference items are:

• they (anaphoric to the important white men)
• it (anaphoric to this land)
• it (anaphoric to this land)
• the (anaphoric to the important white men)
• it (anaphoric to this land)
• the (cataphoric to us Aboriginals all around here)

That is, neither important white men nor us nor land nor today are textual references.

[2] To be clear, the concern with these glosses is 'reference' in the sense of ideational denotation, not reference in the textual sense. As previously demonstrated, this basic confusion permeates and undermines Martin's IDENTIFICATION, his textual system of his discourse semantic stratum.

Misunderstanding "The Complementary Monologue Through Dialogue Cline"

Martin & Rose (2007: 300-1):

The other dimension of mode analysis we need to consider here is the complementary monologue through dialogue cline. This scale is sensitive to the effects of various technologies of communication on the kind of interactivity that is facilitated in spoken vs written discourse, and across a range of electronic channels such as short wave radio, intercom, telephone, fax, e-mail, chat rooms, websites, radio, audio tape, CD/MD, television, DVD/VCD, video and film. The key material factors here have to do with whether interlocutors can hear and see one another (aural and visual feedback) and the imminence of a response (immediate or delayed).

Obviously our written data is not ideal for illustrating this cline here. But technologies facilitate textures; they don’t absolutely determine them. And in any case a technology such as writing affords various degrees of interactivity along the continuum. There’s the possibility of writing dialogue for one thing (scripts of various kinds) and projection can always be used to import dialogue, as it was in Mandela’s exemplum for the imagined repartee:

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, yet again, the unacknowledged source here is Hasan (1989 [1985]: 58):

[2] To be clear, here Martin & Rose confuse context (the mode distinction between monologue and dialogue) with language (dialogue and projection in texts).

[3] To be clear, here Martin & Rose misrepresent the Mandela text (p259) as a script, for the purposes of their argument:

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".

Problems With The Authors' Notion Of Context-Independency

Martin & Rose (2007: 298-9):

Mandela’s construction of his childhood on the other hand is not context dependent in this way. Everything presumed is provided for in the co-text. We know what’s going on simply by reading, not by being there:

I was born free — free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother's hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow-moving bulls. As long as I obeyed my father and abided by the customs of my tribe, I was not troubled by the laws of man or God.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, because Martin & Rose misconstrue context as register, the unwitting claim here is that Mandela's text is not dependent on register. The reason why this is nonsensical is that, on the authors' stratified model, register is construed by the language that realises it; but see [2].

[2] To be clear, as demonstrated in the previous post, what Martin & Rose actually mean by 'context dependent' is that the resolution of exophoric reference requires a reader's access to the material setting of the speech event. If this is applied consistently to Mandela's text, then 'context dependency' would mean that the resolution of exophoric reference requires a reader's access to the material setting in which Mandela wrote his text.

However, by 'context' in this instance, the authors do not mean the material setting in which the text was written, but the ideational meaning of the text: Mandela's construal of his own childhood, thereby adding yet another dimension of misunderstanding to their exposition of mode. This is the confusion that pervades the work of Martin & Rose: misconstruing the ideational meaning of language as the ideational dimension of context (field); see [3].

[3] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, this nicely exemplifies the authors' confusion of field ('what's going on') — Mandela writing about his childhood — with the ideational meaning of his text (what we learn from reading it).

Problems With The Authors' Notion Of Context-Dependency

Martin & Rose (2007: 298):

Let’s start with the orientation to goings on. In Vincent Lingiari’s speech (Lingiari 1986), for example, there are several exophoric references to people, places and things which are materially present at the hand-over ceremony: chains initiated by the important white men (Whites), us (Aboriginals), this land, today and arguably here (if not taken as anaphoric to this land). Texts of this kind can be characterised as context dependent, since we can’t process the participant identification without information from the situation (things we see from being there or that we read through images later on):

The important White men are giving us this land ceremonially, ceremonially they are giving it to us. It belonged to the Whites, but today it is in the hands of us Aboriginals all around here. Let us live happily together as mates, let us not make it hard for each other.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, for Martin & Rose, 'orientation to goings on' (orientation to field) is a system of mode, which is the textual dimension of their register. In SFL Theory, however, mode is a system of culture not register, and 'orientation to field' corresponds to the authors' model of genre, not register; Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 34):

(iii) rhetorical mode: the orientation of the text towards field (e.g. informative, didactic, explanatory, explicatory) or tenor (e.g. persuasive, exhortatory, hortatory, polemic);

[2] To be clear, exophoric references in a text relate second-order experience (the metaphenomenal domain of language) to first-order experience (the phenomenal domain within which speakers project language). 

Context, on the other hand, whether understood as culture (SFL Theory) or misunderstood as register (Martin & Rose), is second-order experience, since it is construed by language. 

That is, here Martin & Rose confuse two distinct orders of experience: the phenomenal domain of speakers, with the metaphenomenal domain (context) that is realised in language. This is a very serious misunderstanding indeed.

[3] To be clear, since Martin & Rose misconstrue context as register, their unwitting claim here is that such texts are register-dependent, despite the fact that they model language as the realisation of register.

[4] To be clear, the authors' reason for unwittingly claiming that such texts are register-dependent is that the resolution of exophoric reference depends on the first-order material setting of the text, which they misconstrue as the second-order semiotic situation, even though they have previously replaced this SFL model of context with their register.

In short, these complex multidimensional misunderstandings arise because Martin & Rose confuse three different meanings of context:

• context as register (their model),
• context as culture construed by language (SFL Theory), and
• context as material setting of the speech event.

The Authors' Notion Of Register As A Resource For Generalising Across Genres

Martin & Rose (2007: 297-8):

As far as genre is concerned we can think of field, tenor and mode as resources for generalising across genres from the differentiated perspectives of ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning. 

In other words, taking tenor as an example, we need to take account of recurrent patterns of domination and deference as we move from one genre to another; we don’t want to have to stop and describe the same thing over and over again each time. 

Similarly for mode, the move from more concrete to more abstract metaphorical discourse takes place in explanations, expositions, historical recounts and reports (as we have seen); register allows us to generalise these shifts in abstraction as a resource that can be deployed in many genres.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is neither warranted by, nor consistent with, the authors' own model. Martin & Rose model their register (field, tenor and mode) and their genre as two levels of symbolic abstraction (strata) related by realisation. To understand the absurdity of the claim that a lower stratum generalises across a higher stratum, it is only necessary to consider other strata, such as phonology and lexicogrammar, where the claim would be that phonology "generalises across lexicogrammars".

The theoretical inconsistencies of the claim become multidimensional when considered in terms of SFL Theory, where

• 'context' refers to the culture — not varieties of language — as a semiotic system,
• 'register' and 'genre' (text type) refer to varieties of language, not context, and to different perspectives on the same point on the cline of instantiation, with 'register' the view from the system pole, and 'text type' the view from the instance pole.

[2] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, this confuses the interpersonal dimension of context, tenor, with the interpersonal meanings of language ("recurrent patterns of domination and deference") that realise a given set of tenor features.

[3] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, any "recurrent patterns" of meaning across text types (genres) are modelled as a move up the cline of instantiation from text type towards the system pole, since these are patterns of instantiation that are common to different text types.

[4] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, this confuses the textual dimension of context, mode, with the language ("abstract metaphorical discourse") that realises a given set of mode features.

[5] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, "the move" that "takes place" — "shift in abstraction" — is a change in the pattern of instantiation during logogenesis, the unfolding of text.

[6] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, these are modelled in terms of mode, whereas for Martin & Rose, they are categories (purposes) of genre. Given that the authors treat mode as a dimension of register, treating them as genre creates a theoretical inconsistency within their own model.

[7] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, the potential ("resource") of moving from instantiating congruent wordings to instantiating metaphorical wordings during the logogenesis of text is a property of the language system itself.

On this basis, in terms of SFL Theory, the notion that register "allows us to generalise" this process "as a resource that can be deployed in many genres" is, at best, nonsensical.