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.

Seriously Misunderstanding Instantiation, Stratification, Ontogenesis & Phylogenesis

Martin & Rose (2007: 317-8, 333n):

The play of genres and their recontextualisations around issues draws attention to the crucial role of change in ideological analysis. For the distribution of power in a culture is never more than metastable; in order for power relations to remain stable over time, they must continually adapt to change: there has to be both inertia and change for life to carry on. Halliday and Matthiessen (Halliday 1992, 1993; Halliday and Matthiessen 1999) have developed a comprehensive outline of social semiotic change which is highly relevant here. For relatively short time frames such as that involved in the unfolding of a text, they suggest the term ‘logogenesis’ (the perspective we've been foregrounding in this book); for the longer time frame of the development of language in the individual, they use the term ‘ontogenesis' (Painter 1984, 1998); and for maximum time depth, ‘phylogenesis’ (as in Halliday’s reading of the history of scientific English in Halliday and Martin (1993)). A good example is Mandela’s Meaning of Freedom recount, which unfolds in a spiral texture that maps out his development as a political leader (ontogenesis) in the context of major cultural shifts in post-colonial history (phylogenesis). This trinocular framework is summarised as follows.

⁶ The term ‘instantiation’ refers to texts as instances of the semiotic system of a culture, i.e. the language system is instantiated in texts.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, on the authors' model, genres cannot be recontextualised, because genre is the highest level of context. That is, genre is a context without a context.

[2] To be clear, here the authors continue their previous confusion of power with ideology — the latter being neither defined nor exemplified.

[3] To be clear, Halliday's model is concerned with socio-semiotic systems; that is, semiotic systems that are social, as opposed to, for example, somatic. Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 18):

These are the three major processes of semohistory, by which meanings at continually created, transmitted, recreated, extended and changed. Each one provides the environment within which the 'next' takes place, in the order in which we have presented them; and, conversely, each one provides the material out of which the previous one is constructed: see Figure 1-6.

[4] To be clear, logogenesis, ontogenesis and phylogenesis refer specifically to semogenic processes, not to other processes whose duration coincides with these three time frames.

[5] To be clear, this seriously misunderstands the three semogenic processes, confusing them with the ideational content of a text. In this particular case, logogenesis describes the unfolding of Mandela's text; ontogenesis would describe the development of the languages, Xhosa and English, in Mandela himself; and phylogenesis would describe the evolution of Mandela's languages, Xhosa and English, in the human species.

[6] To be clear, this is potentially misleading. Ontogenesis is the development of a semiotic system in the individual, and phylogenesis is the evolution of a semiotic system in the species.

[7] To be clear, this misunderstands instantiation and stratification. Texts are instances of language, not culture. In SFL Theory, culture is modelled as a semiotic system that is realised by language. That is, culture and language are different levels of symbolic abstraction. An instance of the culture is a situation; that is, culture is instantiated as situations, not texts. The confusion of culture with language pervades Martin's model, as demonstrated by his modelling varieties of language, register/genre, as culture instead of language.

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.

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…

Mode: Misconstruing Culture As The Authors' Register Instead Of The Authors' Genre

Martin & Rose (2007: 302):

So cutting across genres then, we have the question of the role language is playing, i.e. mode. And we can explore the effect of technologies of communication on texture with respect to two clines: degrees of abstraction (action/reflection) and degrees of interactivity (monologue/dialogue). This is an area that needs a lot more research, but there are hints of progress in Halliday and Martin (1993), Martin and Veel (1998), Martin (2001a) and Christie (2002).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, mode is a system of the cultural context. However, Martin & Rose misunderstand context as register, and so misconstrue mode as a system of register.

Adding to the confusion, as previously explained, the SFL notion of mode, the rôle language is playing, corresponds to the authors' notion of the purpose of a genre. So by construing mode as a system of register, instead of genre, Martin & Rose are inconsistent even in terms of their own modelling.

To be clear, in SFL Theory, register is a sub-potential of language, not a system of context, and 'genre', in the sense of text type, is register viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation.

[2] To be clear, once again, the unacknowledged sources of these ideas are Hasan (1989 [1985]: 58-9) and Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 354).

[3] To be clear, 'language in action' and 'language in reflection' do not differ in terms of abstraction. Both are construed as the same level of abstraction, but are opposite poles on a cline representing the degree to which discourse contributes to the total activity.

Misunderstanding Ideational Metaphor

Martin & Rose (2007: 299-300):

Once this step into ideational metaphor is taken then the entire world of uncommon sense discourse is opened up including all of humanities, social science and science and their applications as bureaucracy and technology. The power of this discourse is not simply to generalise across experience, but to organise it and reflect on it at a high level of abstraction which can be instantiated in variable ways, sometimes with a view to enabling behaviours:

ACT — To provide for the investigation and the establishment of as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights committed during the period from 1 March 1960 to the cut-off date contemplated in the Constitution, within or outside the Republic, emanating from the conflicts of the past, and the fate or whereabouts of the victims of such violations

Blogger Comments:

Reminder: the authors' discussion of ideational metaphor has been limited to elemental metaphor, largely processes realised as things. Moreover, their model of discourse semantics undermines the study of metaphor, since it does not provide the means — e.g. semantic units: sequence, figure, element — of contrasting congruent vs metaphorical grammatical realisations, which is itself necessary for unpacking metaphor.

[1] To be clear, one of the unacknowledged sources here is Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 646):

As we have seen, grammatical metaphor of the ideational kind is primarily a strategy enabling us to transform our experience of the world: the model of experience construed in the congruent mode is reconstrued in the metaphorical mode, creating a model that is further removed from our everyday experience – but which has made modern science possible. At the same time, there are also textual and interpersonal consequences of this metaphorical realignment in the grammar: ideational metaphor can be a powerful textual resource for managing the creation of text, creating new mappings between the ideational and textual quanta of information; and it can also be a powerful interpersonal resource for organising the ongoing negotiation of meaning, creating new mappings between the ideational and interpersonal propositions/proposals.

[2] This misunderstands ideational metaphor. To be clear, ideational metaphor does not "generalise across experience". Ideational metaphor is the reconstrual of the meanings of congruent mode, with the result that lexicogrammatical choices construe two meanings at once: that of both the metaphorical and congruent realisations.

[3] This misunderstands ideational metaphor. To be clear, ideational metaphor does not organise experience; it "reorganises" the meanings construed of experience in congruent mode.

[4]  This misunderstands ideational metaphor. To be clear, semantically, metaphorical meanings are of a lower level of symbolic abstraction (Token) than their congruent counterparts (Value). Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 289):

[5]  This misunderstands ideational metaphor. To be clear, ideational metaphor does not involve a "higher level of abstraction which can be instantiated in variable ways". As potential, ideational metaphor is an incongruent relation between semantic and grammatical choices. Variable instantiations of ideational metaphor are instances of different incongruent relations between semantic and grammatical choices.

[6] The notion of ideational metaphor "enabling behaviours" is a puzzling one, given that

• Martin & Rose are concerned with processes realised as things,
• none of their highlighted words realise behavioural processes, and
• 9 of the 14 highlighted words — nature, causes, extent, rights, period, constitution, Republic, fate, whereabouts — do not even realise processes.

Problems With The Authors' Notion That Grammatical Metaphor Unties Texts From Situations

Martin & Rose (2007: 299, 332n):

Taking this a step further, the key resource which unties texts from situations is grammatical metaphor because of its power to reconstrue activities as things and thus break the iconic connections between linguistic and material activity.¹ This transforms social action into another realm of discourse in which abstractions enter into relations of various kinds with one another.

¹ By iconic we mean matching relations between the world as we perceive it and ideation, i.e. between people and things as nouns, actions as verbs and so on.

Blogger Comments:

Reminder: This is purportedly a discussion of mode, the textual dimension of context — 'culture' in SFL Theory, but misunderstood as 'register' by Martin ± Rose. In SFL Theory, 'situation' is the term for an instance of culture, but since Martin & Rose have replaced culture (field, tenor, mode) with register, and regard 'text' as an instance of their context, the term 'situation' can not mean an instance of context. In the preceding posts, Martin & Rose have used 'situation' to mean, on the one hand, the material environment of the speech/writing event, and on the other hand, the ideational meaning of the text, which they usually confuse with field instead. It is against this background of complicated theoretical misunderstandings — along the dimensions of stratification, instantiation and orders of experience — that the untangling of the confusions in the excerpt above is attempted below.

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, the notion that a text can be "untied" from a situation is nonsensical, because it is the text that construes the situation.

[2] To be clear, this seriously misunderstands grammatical metaphor. Grammatical metaphor is not a "non-iconic" relation between "linguistic and material activity", but an incongruent relation — within language — between semantics and grammar. Moreover, this characterisation reduces grammatical metaphor to ideational metaphor, and reduces ideational metaphor to elemental metaphor (processes incongruently realised as things). Importantly, grammatical metaphor is semantically junctional. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 243):

When this happens, it is a signal that a phenomenon of this other kind — quality, or process — is being treated as if it was a thing. The grammar has constructed an imaginary or fictitious object, called shakiness, by transcategorising the quality shaky; similarly by transcategorising the process develop it has created a pseudo-thing called development. What is the status of such fictitious objects or pseudo-things? Unlike the other elements, which lose their original status in being transcategorised (for example, shaker is no longer a process, even though it derives from shake), these elements do not; shakiness is still a quality, development is still a process — only they have been construed into things. They are thus a fusion, or 'junction', of two semantic elemental categories: shakiness is a 'quality thing', development is a 'process thing'. All such junctional elements involve grammatical metaphor.

[3] To be clear, as explained above, this is a nonsensical claim. Elemental ideational grammatical metaphor does not "transform social action" into anything. Instead, it reconstrues the congruent model of experience into a metaphorical model which is further removed from everyday experience. Cf Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 646):

As we have seen, grammatical metaphor of the ideational kind is primarily a strategy enabling us to transform our experience of the world: the model of experience construed in the congruent mode is reconstrued in the metaphorical mode, creating a model that is further removed from our everyday experience – but which has made modern science possible.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, "the world as we perceive it" is the construal of experience as ideational meaning. In these terms, the authors' nonsensical claim becomes:

• By iconic we mean matching relations between ideational meaning and ideation

where 'ideation' is Martin's discourse semantic system, which, as demonstrated here, is his misunderstanding of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) lexical cohesion (textual lexicogrammar) rebranded as his experiential semantics.

[5] To be clear, the relation here is the stratal relation within language between meaning (people, things, actions) and grammatical form (nouns, verbs). As such, it does not exemplify a relation between "the world as we perceive it" and Martin's experiential discourse semantic system of ideation.