Cherry-Picking The Data

Martin & Rose (2007: 263):

As with larger segments in written texts discussed above, formatting can be a useful starting point, but now it is the paragraphing that can help to indicate the phases in which the field unfolds. As paragraphing tends to coincide with the hierarchy of periodicity, we can adjust and expand the information that paragraphing gives us by looking at what is presented as hyperThemes and hyperNews. For example, what is presented first in each paragraph of the Inauguration Day recount are times that scaffold the activity sequence of the day’s events and of Mandela’s speech:

The day’s activity sequence is concluded in the hyperNew of the second last paragraph, with Finally..., and is then reoriented in the last paragraph, beginning with The day…

The global scaffolding resource here is sequence in time, expressed as external conjunctions and temporal circumstances.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, 'field' refers to the ideational dimension of the culture modelled as a semiotic system. Here Martin & Rose unwittingly use it to refer to the ideational semantics of a text as it unfolds in logogenesis.

[2] To be clear, as previously explained, Martin's hyperTheme and hyperNew are his rebrandings of topic sentence (of a paragraph) and paragraph summary from the field of writing pedagogy. Writing pedagogy is concerned with proposals on how to write, whereas linguistic theory is concerned with propositions that model language.

[3] To be clear, what is actually presented first in each paragraph of the Inauguration Day recount are:

10 May
The ceremonies
On that lovely autumn day
Today
We who were outlaws not so long ago
We
Never, never, and never again
Let freedom
A few moments later
The day

That is, Martin & Rose have cherry-picked the six instances that support their analysis, and ignored the four instances that do not.

[4] See, for example, Activity Sequences: A Cornucopia Of Theoretical Inconsistencies.

[5] To be clear, this is inconsistent with both the source meaning of hyperNew as paragraph summary, and with the authors' notion of hyperNew distilling what had preceded it (p195-6), since this clause realises meaning that had not previously been mentioned:

Finally a chevron of impala jets left a smoke trail of the black, red, green, blue and gold of the new South African flag.

[6] Trivially, none of the six temporal Themes are conjunctions, and two — the first and last — are participants, not circumstances.

Packaging Discourse Through Explicit And Implicit "Scaffolding" And "Grammaticalising" Periodicity As Clause Complexing

Martin & Rose (2007: 215):

As we’ve seen, discourse gets packaged in various ways. Explicit scaffolding involves the erection of a hierarchy of periodicity beyond the clause, with layers of Theme and News telling us where we’re coming from and where we’re going to. With serial expansion there’s a change of gears from one discourse phase to the next, without any explicit scaffolding of the change. In some kinds of discourse, such as legislation, explicitness is in a sense pushed to its limits by (i) grammaticalising as much hierarchy as possible within very complex sentences and/or (ii) naming sections of the text numerically and/or alphabetically, and/or providing them with headings. Many texts involve some combination of all these resources for phasing information into digestible chunks.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] As we've seen, the authors' 'hierarchy of periodicity' is writing pedagogy masquerading as linguistic theory; it does not apply to any texts that don't conform these proposals for how to write, or to any texts that are spoken or signed. Moreover, the model falsely assumes that New information is never thematic, and confuses textual status (Theme, New) with textual transitions made through (implicit) appositive and summative elaboration ("predicting" and "distilling").

[2] As we've seen, in terms of SFL Theory, the authors' 'serial expansion' is concerned with textual transitions made through (implicit) relations other than elaboration (extension or enhancement).

[3] As we've seen, Martin & Rose misrepresent grammaticalisation — a shift in function from lexical to grammatical — as a shift in function from the discourse semantic stratum to the grammatical stratum. To be clear, whatever has a discourse semantic function also has a grammatical function, since strata are levels of symbolic abstraction, so the notion of a function shifting from one stratum to another is nonsensical. Moreover, the authors' claim is that their 'hierarchy of periodicity' (textual semantics) and clause complexing (logical grammar) perform the same function (since the latter is said to replace the former in some texts).

Confusing Textual Highlighting With Logic-Semantic Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 201-3):

Here’s the whole text, analysed for its generic staging. This is a story genre known as a recount, with the typical recount stages:

orientation ^ record of events ^ reorientation

We can also show how recount is organised with layers of hyperThemes and hyperNews (in bold):

There are five hyperThemes here that organise Mandela’s recount of his growing desire for freedom (its ‘method of development’). We’ll use an '=' sign to indicate the way in which the higher level Themes and News paraphrase the information they predict or distil. Halliday 1994 refers to these kinds of relation as elaboration:

1 I was not born with a hunger to be free

= …

2 It was only when I began to learn that my boyhood freedom was an illusion... that I began to hunger for it.

= …

3 But then I slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free.

= …

4 It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black.

= …

5 When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both 

= …

And three hyperNews that distil his conclusions about the struggle for freedom (its ‘point’):

3 ... = Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.

4 ... = The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

5 ... = The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

Beyond the hyperThemes and hyperNews in each phase, the Orientation functions as its macroTheme and its Reorientation as its macroNew. And with respect to Mandela’s book as a whole, this recount functions as a higher level macroNew, both summarising his journey and distilling the meaning of his life. The key point here is that texts expand, and that this expansion may or may not be explicitly scaffolded by layers of Themes and News. In most texts we find a mix of scaffolding through periodicity, and serial expansion that is not so clearly scaffolded, since these are simply two complementary strategies through which texts grow.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Trivially, it is the stage names that are in bold, not the hyperThemes and hyperNews.

[2] Non-trivially, here Martin & Rose acknowledge that what they have identified as the function of higher level Themes and News, prediction and distillation, are actually logico-semantic relations (elaboration) between portions of text. That is, their model confuses textual highlighting (Theme, New) with textual transitions (implicit conjunctive relations).

[3] To be clear, applying SFL Theory, it follows from this that the 'record of events' and 'reorientation' function as the macroRheme of the recount as macromessage, and that the 'orientation' and 'record of events' function as the macroGiven of the recount as macro-information unit.

[4] Again, applying SFL Theory, it follows from this that the rest of Mandela's book functions as a higher level macroGiven in the text as higher level macro-information unit.

[5] To be clear, as previously demonstrated, in terms of SFL Theory, these "two complementary strategies", periodicity and serial expansion, are, in this aspect, complementary expansion relations — elaboration (periodicity) and extension or enhancement (serial expansion) — that obtain between portions of text. In terms of SFL Theory, they could be interpreted as resources of cohesive conjunction (textual lexicogrammar). In terms of Martin's model, to be theoretically consistent, they should have been interpreted as resources of conjunction (logical discourse semantics).

Serial Expansion

Martin & Rose (2007: 199):

The strategy of predicting phases of discourse with macroThemes and hyperThemes constructs a ‘hierarchy’ of periodicity of smaller units of discourse ‘scaffolded’ within larger units. But there are alternative ways of constructing unfolding discourse so it is sensible to the reader. One way to highlight this is to compare hierarchy with an alternative strategy for expanding text, which is the strategy Tutu uses to build up his argument. We can call this ‘serial expansion’. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously demonstrated, it is not possible to predict what follows introductory paragraphs (macroThemes) and topic sentences (hyperThemes), except with the benefit of hindsight. Instead, in writing that conforms with these pedagogical principles, these "Themes" are elaborated by what follows. That is, Martin & Rose have confused textual transitions (conjunctive relations) with textual statuses (thematic prominence).

[2] The unacknowledged source of the notion of a ‘hierarchy of periodicity' is Halliday (1981).

[3] To be clear, Martin & Rose have not identified the units of which these higher level Themes are elements, nor discussed their complementary elements: higher level Rhemes.

[4] To be clear, these 'alternative ways' are the non-structural resources of the textual metafunction: conjunction, reference, ellipsis-&-substitution, and lexical cohesion.

[5] As will be seen, this alternative strategy of 'serial expansion' is cohesive conjunction, the textual resource that Martin & Rose have already unwittingly drawn on in describing their higher level Themes and News (see [1] above).

A Summary Of The Layered Wave Patterns Of Periodicity

Martin & Rose (2007: 198-9):

Figure 6.1 summarises the wave patterns we’ve been reviewing here. The diagram suggests that layers of Theme construct the method of development of a text, and that this development is particularly sensitive to the staging of the genre in question. Layers of New on the other hand develop the point of a text, focusing in particular on expanding the ideational meanings around a text’s field.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, no arguments have been provided in support of this model; it has merely been asserted. As previously demonstrated, the model makes several false claims:

• that New never conflates with Theme,
• that Themes predict what follows (as New!), and
• that News distil/accumulate what precedes.

As previously explained, the model confuses textual highlighting (Theme and New) with textual transitions involving elaboration. That is, in the texts that were examined, what follows a "higher level Theme" elaborates it through exemplification or exposition, and a "higher level New" elaborates what precedes through summation. This last point is hardly surprising, given that Martin's hyperNew is his rebranding of paragraph summary, and his macroNew is his rebranding of text summary.

[2] To be clear, it is the selection of Theme that constitutes the method of development of a text (Fries 1981). The higher level Themes of Martin & Rose do not model language, but are a confusion of writing pedagogy (introductory paragraph, topic sentence) and book layout (title, table of contents etc.). In SFL Theory, method of development is understood as a pattern of instantiation in the logogenesis of a text.

[3] To be clear, this confuses textual highlighting (Theme) with the meaning (e.g. experiential) that is highlighted. If texts really did conform with this model, the textual highlighting would be common to the texts of all text types (genres); what would be "sensitive to genre" would be what is highlighted as thematic.

[4] To be clear, it is the selection of New that constitutes the point of a text (Fries 1981). The higher level News of Martin & Rose do not model language, but are a confusion of writing pedagogy (paragraph summary, text summary) and book layout (e.g. index). In SFL Theory, point is understood as a pattern of instantiation in the logogenesis of a text.

[5] To be clear, this confuses textual highlighting (New) with the meaning (ideational) that is highlighted. If texts really did conform with this model, the textual highlighting would be common to texts realising all fields (ideational context); what would vary with field would be the ideational meaning that is highlighted as New.

The Argument For MacroTheme And MacroNew [1]

Martin & Rose (2007: 197):

In many written texts, waves of Theme and New extend well beyond clauses and paragraphs to much larger phases of discourse. We have already introduced the higher level Theme and New introducing and closing Helena’s narrative, and the still higher level Theme linking Tutu’s exposition to her story. Beyond this we know that Tutu’s exposition was itself introduced with an even higher level Theme: his question about the cost of justice. So Helena’s description of her husband’s anguish is just a wave of ripples in a more expansive hierarchy:

We can refer to higher level Themes predicting hyperThemes as macro-Themes, and higher level News distilling hyperNews as macroNews.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, Theme is the peak of textual prominence in a clause, and New is the peak of prominence in an information unit. These two waves thus extend through an entire text.

[2] As previously explained, these higher level Themes and New — hyperTheme (topic sentence) and hyperNew (paragraph summary) — are principles of writing pedagogy, not linguistic theory.

[3] As previously explained, Themes do not predict what follows, they provide a textually relevant point of departure for what follows. In the quoted text, it can be seen that the macro-Theme (the first instance of bolded text) does not predict any of the lower level Themes (bolded) that follow.

[4] As previously explained, News do not distil what precedes, they are the textually highlighting of information as new. In the quoted text, it can be seen that the macro-New — I end with a few lines… — does not distil anything that has preceded, let alone the preceding lower level News, none of which are identified in the text by Martin & Rose.

Misconstruing Logico-Semantic Elaboration As Textual 'Prediction' And 'Distillation'

Martin & Rose (2007: 196-7):

The following examples of history writing display a similar kind of sandwich structure, with hyperThemes predicting what’s to come, and hyperNews distilling what’s been said (the ‘you tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and tell them what you’ve said’ rhetoric noted above). For both of these texts note just how precisely the hyperTheme predicts the pattern of Themes which follow (underlined), and the hyperNew consolidates the pattern of News which precede it:

The Second World War further encouraged the restructuring of the Australian economy towards a manufacturing basis.

Between 1937 and 1945 the value of industrial production almost doubled. This increase was faster than otherwise would have occurred. The momentum was maintained in the post-war years and by 1954-5 the value of manufacturing output was three times that of 1944-5. The enlargement of Australia's steel-makinq capacity, and of chemicals, rubber, metal goods and motor vehicles all owed something to the demands of war.

The war had acted as something of a hot-house for technological progress and economic change.

For one thousand years, whales have been of commercial interest for meat, oil, meal and whalebone.

About 1000 A.D., whaling started with the Basques using sailing vessels and row boats. They concentrated on the slow-moving Right whales. As whaling spread to other countries, whaling shifted to Humpbacks, Greys, Sperms and Bowheads. By 1500, they were whaling off Greenland; by the 1700s, off Atlantic America; and by the 1800s, in the south Pacific, Antarctic and Bering Sea. Early in this century, the Norwegians introduced explosive harpoons, fired from guns on catcher boats, and whaling shifted to the larger and faster baleen whales. The introduction of factory ships by Japan and the USSR intensified whaling still further.

The global picture, then, was a mining operation moving progressively with increasing efficiency to new species and new areas. Whaling reached a peak during the present century.

Both hyperNews include evaluative metaphors, a not untypical feature of higher level News in writing of this kind. Patterns of clause Themes have been described as constructing a text’s ‘method of development’; patterns of News establish its ‘point’ (Fries 1981).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the topic sentences (hyperThemes) in these two texts do not predict 'what's to come'. The reader is invited to predict 'what's to come' only on the basis of the topic sentences, without the benefit of hindsight. What is true is that the bodies of these two texts elaborate the meaning of their respective topic sentences, the first through exemplification, the second through exposition. Martin & Rose here mistake logico-semantic relations in textual transitions for textual statuses.

[2] To be clear, the relation of the paragraph summaries (hyperNews) to the bodies of their respective texts is elaboration through summation. Martin & Rose here again mistake logico-semantic relations in textual transitions for textual status.

[3] To be clear, misanalyses of Theme are marked in red. Those that are underlined are Subjects that have been displaced from Theme by Adjuncts (marked Themes), and so feature in the Rheme, not Theme. Those that are not underlined are Themes that Martin & Rose missed in their analysis.

[4] To be clear, the pattern of New information is not indicated. As previously demonstrated, Martin & Rose mistake Rheme for New information. New information can occur in both Theme or Rheme, or neither.

[5] This is true. It was Fries (1981), not Martin (1992), who first theorised 'method of development' and 'point'. In SFL Theory, these are now seen as logogenetic patterns of instantiation.

Surfing Through Waves Of HyperTheme And HyperNew

Martin & Rose (2007: 195-6):

As a general rule, writing looks forward more often than it looks back. So hyperThemes are more common than hyperNews; there’s more ‘prospect’ than ‘retrospect’. But examples of higher level News are not hard to find. Here are two examples from Mandela’s summary of his life at the end of his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (we’ll return to this text in Chapter 8). Both examples include a hyperTheme, complementing the consolidating hyperNew (in bold):

But then I slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free, I saw that it was not just my freedom that was curtailed, but the freedom of everyone who looked like I did.

That is when I joined the African National Congress, and that is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people. It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk. I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free.

Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that this is not the case.

The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

In general terms, the hyperTheme is paraphrased by the body of the paragraph, which is in turn paraphrased by the hyperNew. But the hyperNew is never an exact paraphrase of the hyperTheme, nor is it simply a summary of the wave’s trough; it takes the text to a new point, which we could only get to by surfing through the waves.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, if this bare assertion is true, it merely means that writers who conform to these pedagogical principles use topic sentences (hyperThemes) more than paragraph summaries (hyperNews).

[2] To be clear, paragraph summaries (hyperNews) are "hard to find" in spoken language. The reader is invited to falsify this claim.

[3] To be clear, if a topic sentence (hyperTheme) is paraphrased by the body of the paragraph and this is paraphrased the paragraph summary (hyperNew), then there is no meaningful distinction between the three in terms of thematicity or newness. But, in any case, an examination of the two texts demonstrates that the three segments in each case are not paraphrases of each other.

More importantly, this has less to do with textual prominence than textual transitions through logico-semantic relations. For example, on this description, the body of a paragraph elaborates the topic sentence (hyperTheme) through (appositive) exemplification, while the paragraph summary (hyperNew) elaborates the body of the paragraph through (clarifying) summation; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 612-6). 

[4] To be clear, anyone trying to surf through waves has misunderstood the notion of surfing, also.

Misrepresenting HyperTheme And Misunderstanding Field

Martin & Rose (2007: 194):

In many registers, hyperThemes tend to involve evaluation, so that the following text justifies the appraisal, at the same time as it gives us more detail about the field of the hyperTheme (its ‘topic’).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, in almost all registers of language, hyperThemes do not feature at all. The only texts that feature hyperThemes are those that conform to 'topic sentence' principle of writing pedagogy.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, 'field' refers to the ideational dimension of the culture as semiotic system. When Martin & Rose use the term 'field', they are usually — as here — referring to the ideational dimension of semantics, even though they misunderstand field as a dimension of register (a sub-potential of language) which they, in turn, misunderstand as context, as documented in great detail here.

HyperTheme: Writing Pedagogy Misrepresented As Linguistic Theory

Martin & Rose (2007: 194):

As noted at the beginning of this chapter Helena introduces the phase of discourse we’ve just been considering as ‘living hell’, and she does so with a marked Theme

After about three years with the special forces, our hell began.

Her evaluation of their life as our hell functions as a kind of ‘topic sentence' for the events which follow as she spells out what hell is. From a linguistic perspective we can treat this ‘topic sentence’ as a kind of higher level Theme: a hyperTheme. In doing so we’re saying that its relation to the text which follows is like the relation of a clause Theme to the rest of its clause. In both contexts the Theme gives us an orientation to what is to come: our frame of reference as it were. Beyond this, the hyperTheme is predictive; it establishes expectations about how the text will unfold.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, like the term 'topic sentence' itself, this is writing pedagogy, not linguistic theory, because it is a proposal about how to write, not a proposition about how to model language.

[2] To be clear, the term 'hypertheme' is from Daneš (1974), where it refers to the first appearance of a repeated Theme ('hyper' in the sense of 'above' the second appearance). For clarifying critiques of Martin's use of 'hypertheme', see the series of posts here.

Periodicity

Martin & Rose (2007: 187):

Periodicity is concerned with information flow — with the way in which meanings are packaged to make it easier to take them in.

Following a general introduction, section 6.2 looks at information flow in clauses, introducing the concepts of Theme and New. Section 6.3 pushes this up a level to paragraphs, considering how information can be predicted by a hyperTheme (aka topic sentence) and summarised as hyperNew. Then in section 6.4 extensions of this patterning in longer carefully edited texts are explored (macroTheme and macroNew).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in Martin (1992: 392-3), the concepts described in this chapter are modelled as types of interaction pattern, described as a 'systematic interaction between discoursal, grammatical and phonological structures'. For a thorough examination of that model, see the clarifying critiques here. In the present work, Martin & Rose have totally re-theorised these interaction patterns as textual systems of Martin's discourse semantic stratum, and named the systems, not 'from above', in terms of the meanings that are expressed, but 'from below' in terms of the type of structure that expresses the meaning. In a functional theory, such as SFL Theory, the view 'from above' takes priority.

[2] To be clear, the systems of theme and information assign different textual statuses to grammatical elements as a means of relating a text to its environment. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 528): 

The “textual” metafunction is the name we give to the systematic resources a language must have for creating discourse: for ensuring that each instance of text makes contact with its environment. The “environment” includes both the context of situation and other instances of text.

[3] To be clear, Theme is an element of clause structure, but New is an element of information unit structure, not clause structure. Clause and information unit are grammatical systems, not (discourse) semantic systems. In Martin (1992: 384, 393, 401), information is misunderstood as a phonological system.

[4] To be clear, 'paragraph' is a graphological unit, and thus only applies to the written mode of language. Because spontaneous speech is not organised in paragraphs, the model does not apply to language as a whole. As will be seen, much of what is presented in this chapter is not linguistic theory, but writing pedagogy rebranded and misrepresented as linguistic theory.

[5] These are rebranded terms from writing pedagogy, misrepresented as linguistic theory:

• 'hyperTheme' is Martin's rebranding of 'topic sentence' (as acknowledged above);
• 'hyperNew' is Martin's rebranding of 'paragraph summary';
• 'macroTheme' is Martin's rebranding of 'introductory paragraph'; and
• 'macroNew' is Martin's rebranding of 'text summary'.

The inverted use of 'hyper-' and 'macro-' derives from Martin's misunderstanding of the source of the term 'hyperTheme' (Daneš 1974), where 'hyper-' means 'above', since it refers to the first instance of a repeated Theme; see Problems With The Argument For Hyper-Theme.