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).

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 [2]

Martin & Rose (2007: 198):

To this description we have added the title of Tutu’s Chapter 4, What about justice?, as an even higher level macroTheme (beyond this of course are the Table of Contents for his chapters, his acknowledgments, the title of the book as a whole, and the comments on the jacket cover - all higher level Themes, and the Postscript and Index of the book as its culminating higher level News):

 

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, there is no supporting argument here. This is merely an exercise in rebranding parts of the layout of a book as higher level Themes (Chapter title, Table of Contents, acknowledgements, book title, jacket comments) and higher level News (Postscript, Index). Moreover, there is the false assumption throughout that News are always separate from Themes. But most importantly, rebranding the layout features of a book does not constitute a model of language. People do not structure their speech in terms of tables of content and indexes, for example.

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.

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.