Problems With The System Of Image Textual Organisation

Martin & Rose (2007: 329, 333n):

In sum, images and layouts are organised by their left-right, top-down and centre-margin axes, and by the relative salience of their elements. … These options in textual organisation are set out in Figure 9.13. … ⁹

 

⁹ Kress and van Leeuwen’s terms Given and New derive from Halliday’s description of the linguistic system of INFORMATION (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). We have generalised their Given-New, Ideal-Real and Centre-Margin contrasts as options in INFORMATION DISTRIBUTION. 

The term ‘salience’ is used by Kress and van Leeuwen, but the SALIENCE values of high/neutral/low are our own. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this confuses the spatial dimensions of images with textual organisation: the relative textual highlighting of information in images. In doing so, it omits the depth dimension: from foreground to background, and misconstrues the centre-margin relation as an axis.

[2] To be clear, the validity of the network can be challenged on two grounds: its features and its wiring. 

With regard to its features, as previously observed, the 'horizontal' system makes the unwarranted assumption that Given always precedes New, whereas in the source model, New may precede Given, Given may be absent, or "surround" the New. 

With regard to the 'vertical' system, the features 'ideal' and 'real' are categories of ideational meaning, not categories of textual highlighting. 

With regard to the 'central' system, the centre of an image is not always the textual focus, as previously demonstrated for the case of maps. 

And with regard, to the 'SALIENCE' system, Martin & Rose have not demonstrated three levels of salience in their analyses.

With regard to the wiring of the network, it allows for the contradictory combinations of textual highlighting (New, Central) with low SALIENCE, and textual downplaying (Given, Marginal) with high SALIENCE.

[3] To be clear, this footnote at the end of the chapter acknowledges the intellectual source of the their model, and identifies their own contribution as a system name and feature scaling.

The Vertical Textual Organisation Of Layout: Ideal/Real

 Martin & Rose (2007: 323, 328):

The semantic contrast between the top and bottom texts is between the historical origins of apartheid (Ideal) and their outcomes in the recent past and present (Real);  the text above deals with both the inauguration of a new republic and erection of the former apartheid regime; the text below notes the effects on people, first of the old regime (harsh and inhumane), and then of the new (respect for the rights and freedoms of all peoples). The photo of the boy mediates this temporal succession: the top-bottom layout construes the apartheid regime as preceding the boy’s protest, and its overturning as following his protest. The relatively high salience of the image has the effect of emphasising the causative role of the people’s defiance, represented by the boy, in overturning the inhumane regime. This is a reading of the texts enhancing the image, but as we discussed above for appraisal, the boy’s tenacity can also be read as determination for the future, which is elaborated by the words in the text below (overturned forever).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, "the top and bottom texts" are one text, or more properly, an excerpt of one text, interrupted by the photograph of a boy in the crowd at Mandela's inauguration as President.

[2] The authors' claim here is that Mandela is presenting the erection of the Apartheid system as ideal, and that 'ideal' is textual meaning, rather than ideational meaning.

[3] The authors' claim here is that Mandela is presenting the overthrow of the Apartheid system as not ideal, and that 'real' is textual meaning, rather than ideational meaning.

[4] To be clear, this is the authors' interpretation of the ideational meaning of the text above and below the photograph. Martin & Rose present this as an analysis of the textual meaning of the layout.

[5] To be clear, this is absolute nonsense. The photograph simply depicts a boy celebrating — not protesting — at the inauguration of Mandela as President. That is, it depicts the Range of the opening thematic circumstance of the text: On the day of the inauguration.

[6] On the one hand, the relatively high salience of the image is in terms of its (iconic) expression, relative to the (symbolic) expression of language. Whether this salience translates to its content needs to be established by reasoned argument. 

On the other hand, as previously explained, the authors' claim that the depicted boy is expressing defiance derives from their interpretation of him as metaphorical for Mandela, and then transferring the defiance they attribute to Mandela onto the boy himself. The photograph simply depicts a boy celebrating the inauguration of Mandela as President.

[7] To be clear, as demonstrated above, neither of the authors' claims regarding enhancement, time [5] or causation [6], withstand close scrutiny.

[8] Again, the authors' claim that the depicted boy is expressing tenacity derives from their interpretation of him as metaphorical for Mandela, and then transferring the tenacity they attribute to Mandela onto the boy himself.

[9] On the one hand, experientially, the authors' claim here is that determination for the future is encoded by reference to the words "overturned forever":

On the other hand, logically, the authors' claim is that the words "overturned forever" either restates or exemplifies or specifies in greater detail determination for the future.

∞

Procrustean Bed: a scheme or pattern into which someone or something is arbitrarily forced

Problems With The Model Of Textual Organisation Of Images

Martin & Rose (2007: 326-7):

To interpret the semantic relations of images to texts in the layout of pages 202-3, we need to introduce several dimensions of textual organisation and image-text relations. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) suggest two forms of textual organisation for images, ‘polarised’ and ‘centred’. On the one hand there is polarisation along horizontal and/or vertical axes. For images that are horizontally polarised, the lefthand side is glossed as Given and the right as New — organisation comparable to that outlined by Halliday for the English clause, as introduced in Chapter 6 above. For vertically polarised images Kress and van Leeuwen suggest the terms Ideal and Real, where Ideal may be characterised as a more general or abstract category, and Real as more specific or concrete. Alternatively, images may be organised around a Centre and Margin principle, with Centre the nucleus of information on which marginal elements depend. These axes are schematised in Figure 9.12.

A further textual dimension is the relative salience of elements in an image or page layout that draws readers’ attention to one element before another. Salience may be indicated by a number of factors, including size, colour intensity or the strength of vectors, as well as centre-margin, left-right, top-down positions.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, for Halliday, Given and New are elements of the information unit, not the clause.

[2] To be clear, 'ideal' and 'real' are ideational categories, not textual categories. That is, Martin & Rose follow Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) in mistaking a claim about ideational organisation for textual organisation.

[3] To be clear, the functionality of this problematic model can be tested by applying it to the following image:

The claim then is that this pictographic image construes the following textual distinctions:

• the 'New World' (western hemisphere) is Given, whereas the 'Old World' (eastern hemisphere) is New;
• the northern hemisphere as Ideal, whereas the southern hemisphere is Real; and
• the Mediterranean region is Centre, whereas all else is Margin.

Or more specifically:

• North America is Given and Ideal;
• South America is Given and Real;
• Eurasia is New and Ideal;
• Australasia is New and Real;
• Africa is Marginal and neither Given nor New.

[4] To be clear, Martin & Rose have just previously interpreted these factors as resources for interpersonal graduation but here reinterpret them as resources for textual salience.

Problems With The System Of Interpersonal Meanings In Images

 Martin & Rose (2007: 326, 327):

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

Blogger Comments:

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

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

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

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

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

Problems With The System Network Of Ideational Meanings In Images

 Martin & Rose (2007: 325):

A very general outline of options for ideational meanings in images is given in Figure 9.10.

Blogger Comments:

As previously demonstrated, these systems model textual meaning, not ideational meaning. On the one hand, it is the textual metafunction that focuses on phenomena, and on the other hand, it is the textual metafunction at the level of context, mode, that is distinguishes the channel of 'construal'. That is, the authors' network is theoretically inconsistent in terms of both metafunction and plane of symbolic abstraction.

With regard to the wiring of the network, the claim is that entity-focused images either classify entities (e.g. 'boy') or present them as composed of parts (eg. 'head', 'fist' etc.), but not both.

With regard to the argument on which the network is based, as previously demonstrated, Martin & Rose have not provided an instance of a complex activity, and have not provided a consistent theoretical argument for their inclusion of the term 'indexical'.

The Authors' Inconsistent Use Of Peirce's 'Iconic', 'Indexical' And 'Symbolic'

Martin & Rose (2007: 325, 333n):

Beyond this is the manner in which they are construed. Photos and realistic drawings can depict entities and activities iconically; there is a direct visual relation between the image and the category it construes. In contrast, images such as flags or diagrams construe their categories symbolically; the viewer must know the symbol to recognise its meaning. 

In between are images that are neither iconic nor symbolic, but indicate categories by one or more criteria; an example is the relation between the crowd, the dignitaries on the stage, and the flag, which indicate the categories of the people, their leaders and the nation by their relative positions — bottom, top and middle. In Peirce’s 1955 terms, this kind of visual construal is indexical.⁷ 

⁷ Previous efforts to interpret ideational and interpersonal meanings in visual images have been based on analogies with grammatical categories of process types, mood and modality (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen 1996, O’Toole 1994, Unsworth 2001) rather than discourse semantics. In keeping with the discourse oriented approach here, and to keep labels manageable, we have used the same terms as for verbal texts wherever possible. For example, where Kress and van Leeuwen use the cryptic terms ‘overt/covert’, we use ‘explicit/implicit’; and where they use polysemous terms ‘concrete/abstract’, we have found the semiotic terms ‘iconic/indexical/symbolic’ less ambiguous.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, "the manner in which they are construed" is modelled as channel, a system within MODE, the textual dimension of the context (culture); see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 34). It will be seen in the following post that Martin & Rose misconstrue this as an ideational system at the level of discourse semantics.

[2] To put this in terms of SFL Theory, for such images, whose graphic channels might be subcategorised as photographic and pictographic, there is a natural (non-arbitrary) relation between their content and expression.

[3] To put this in terms of SFL Theory, for such images, whose graphic channel might be subcategorised as ideographic, there is a non-natural (conventional) relation between their content and expression.

[4] To put this in terms of SFL Theory, unlike the preceding characterisations of 'iconic' and 'symbolic' images, this characterisation of 'indexical' images is not concerned with a relation between content and expression, but with a relation between levels of symbolic abstraction within the content of the image:

That is, Martin & Rose reconstrue the meanings that are 'iconically' realised in the image as metaphorical symbols of a higher level, more congruent meaning.

To be clear, in order to be theoretically consistent with their characterisation of 'iconic' and 'symbolic' images, the authors need to demonstrate an indexical relation between the content of the image (its meanings) and the expression of the image (its ink patterns).

[5] To be clear, all the terms — iconic, symbolic and indexical — derive from the semiotics of Peirce, a model that is epistemologically inconsistent with SFL Theory. Peirce (1955: 102-3):

According to the second trichotomy, a Sign may be termed an Icon, an Index, or a Symbol. 

An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own, and which it possesses, just the same, whether any such Object actually exists or not. It is true that unless there really is such an Object, the Icon does not act as a sign ; but this has nothing to do with its character as a sign. Anything whatever, be it quality, existent individual, or law, is an Icon of anything, in so far as it is like that thing and used as a sign of it. 

An Index is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object. It cannot, therefore, be a Qualisign, because qualities are whatever they are independently of anything else. In so far as the Index is affected by the Object, it necessarily has some Quality in common with the Object, and it is in respect to these that it refers to the Object. It does, therefore, involve a sort of Icon, although an Icon of a peculiar kind ; and it is not the mere resemblance of its Object, even in these respects which makes it a sign, but it is the actual modification of it by the Object. 

A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the Symbol to be interpreted as referring to that Object. It is thus itself a general type or law, that is, is a Legisign. As such it acts through a Replica. Not only is it general itself, but the Object to which it refers is of a general nature. Now that which is general has its being in the instances which it will determine. There must, therefore, be existent instances of what the Symbol denotes, although we must here understand by " existent," existent in the possibly imaginary universe to which the Symbol refers. The Symbol will indirectly, through the association or other law, be affected by those instances ; and thus the Symbol will involve a sort of Index, although an Index of a peculiar kind. It will not, however, be by any means true that the slight effect upon the Symbol of those instances accounts for the significant character of the Symbol.

[6] Firstly, the content plane of images is not stratified into semantics and grammar, so the discourse semantic vs grammatical distinction does not apply. Crucially, if images did have a grammar, it would be possible to read them aloud — to verbally project locutions — as is possible for written texts.

Secondly, neither of the pretexts for relabelling Kress & van Leeuwen's original terms withstands close scrutiny. On the one hand, the original distinction 'overt/covert' is simpler, not more "cryptic", than 'explicit/implicit'. On the other hand, the original distinction 'concrete/abstract' is not ambiguous in this context, but, more importantly, it is consistent with SFL Theory, whereas Peirce's 'iconic/indexical/symbolic' distinctions are not.

Moreover, rebranding other people's work to get credit for their ideas is Martin's modus operandi, as demonstrated on this blog, as well as on other blogs here and here. For example, Martin (1992) rebrands Halliday's speech function as his negotiation, rebrands Halliday & Hasan's (1976) cohesion as his discourse semantics, rebranding their cohesive reference as his identification, their lexical cohesion as his ideation, and their cohesive conjunction as his conjunction (now 'connexion').

More recently, Martin and his colleagues have rebranded Cléirigh's model of gestural and postural semiosis as their model of paralanguage, incongruously rebranding linguistic body language as "sonovergent" paralanguage, and epilinguistic body language as "semovergent" paralanguage, on the pretext that the (wrongly conceived) meaning of these invented words is more transparent. Evidence here.

Mistaking Textual Meaning For Ideational Meaning

Martin & Rose (2007: 323-4):

In ideational terms developed in Chapter 3 above, the primary focus of a visual image is either on entities or on activities. Entity-focused images either classify them or compose their parts; activity-focused images construe either a single activity (simple) or an activity sequence (complex). As we discussed for genres in Chapter 8, images may also have secondary foci realised by their elements.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Here Martin & Rose mistake textual meaning for ideational meaning. To be clear, it is the textual metafunction, not the ideational metafunction, that is concerned with the focus of information, the highlighting of ideational (or interpersonal) meaning.

[2] To be clear, these are all bare assertions, unsupported by argument, and their validity will be assessed in the text analyses that follow. For the moment it can be noted that the authors make no acknowledgement of the distinction between content and expression, nor of how the textual focus on one type of ideational meaning, rather than another, is expressed.

[3] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, this misconstrues the relation between textual meaning ('foci') and ideational meaning ('elements') as realisation, despite the fact that both are of the same level of symbolic abstraction (meaning). (Realisation is the relation between different levels of symbolic abstraction.)

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.

Misanalysing Textual Reference And Confusing It With Ideational Denotation

Martin & Rose (2007: 305-6):

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

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

Blogger Comments:

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

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

and the endophoric reference items are:

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

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

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

Problems With The Authors' Example Of Grammatical Metaphor Untying A Text From A Situation

 Martin & Rose (2007: 299):

Note for example how Mandela reconstrues aircraft roaring over the Union buildings as symbols (a display and a demonstration) of precision, force and loyalty; in doing so he reworks evaluation of the event through affect and appreciation (in awe as a spectacular array ... in perfect formation ...), into evaluation through judgement (capacity, tenacity and propriety: pinpoint precision and military force, loyalty to democracy ... freely and fairly elected ...). 

The transformation enables the evaluation he wants for this event of the day:

A few moments later we all lifted our eyes in awe as a spectacular array of South African jets, helicopters and troop carriers roared in perfect formation over the Union Buildings. It was not only a display of pinpoint precision and military force, but a demonstration of the military's loyalty to democracy, to a new government that had been freely and fairly elected.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is purported to be an example of the use of grammatical metaphor to untie a text from a situation — as part of a discussion of the contextual system of mode. (See the previous post for some of the theoretical misunderstandings behind this nonsensical notion.)

It can be seen that the 'situation' here is ideational semantics within Mandela's text, rather than the material setting in which Mandela wrote his text — which was one of the authors' previous uses of the term 'situation'. In other words, Martin & Rose have trouble distinguishing different orders of experience: the phenomenal order of speakers/writers projecting language, and the metaphenomenal order of the language that speakers/writers project.

[2] To be clear, these evaluations, which are irrelevant to the issues being discussed, do not require the use of ideational metaphor, since they can also be made with less metaphorical construals, such as:

A few moments later we all looked up and felt awe as South African jets, helicopters and troop carriers roared over the Union Buildings in a spectacular, perfectly formed array. This not only displayed that the military could fly absolutely precisely and how forceful it is, but also demonstrated that they are loyal to democracy, to a new government that had been freely and fairly elected.

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.

Confusing Context With Register (And Mode With Genre)

Martin & Rose (2007: 296-7):

Alongside genre, the main construct used by functional linguists to model context is known as register. In SFL, register analysis is organised by metafunction into field, tenor and mode. The dimension concerned with relationships between interactants is known as tenor; that concerned with their social activity is known as field; and that concerned with the role of language is known as mode. Halliday has characterised these three dimensions of a situation as follows:

Field refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place: what it is that the participants are engaged in, in which language figures as some essential component.

Tenor refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles: what kinds of role relationship obtain, including permanent and temporary relationships of one kind or another, both the types of speech roles they are taking on in the dialogue and the whole duster of socially significant relationships in which they are involved.

Mode refers to what part language is playing, what it is that the participants are expecting language to do for them in the situation: the symbolic organisation of the text, the status that it has, and its function in the context. (Halliday and Hasan 1985: 12)

As language realises its social contexts, so each dimension of a social context is realised by a particular metafunction of language, as follows:

Taken together the tenor, field and mode of a situation constitute the register of a text. As its register varies, so too do the kinds of meanings we find in a text. Because they vary systematically, we will refer to tenor, field and mode as register variables. This model of language in social context is illustrated in Figure 9.1.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is very misleading indeed. In SFL Theory, register is not a means of modelling context. Register is a functional variety of language, modelled as a point of sub-potential variation on the cline of instantiation from language system to language instance. 

Context, on the other hand, is the culture modelled as a semiotic system that is realised in language. Field, tenor and mode are the metafunctional dimensions of context, but not of register. Different configurations of field, tenor and mode features (Hasan) are realised by different registers of language.

This misunderstanding occurs in Martin (1992), and proliferates through the subsequent publications of Martin, his one-time students, and the less theoretically competent members of the SFL community.

[2] This is misleading, because, in the case of mode, Martin & Rose have selectively omitted the section of the quote that contradicts their model. Cf Halliday & Hasan (1985: 12):

The MODE of discourse refers to what part language is playing, what it is that the participants are expecting language to do for them in the situation: the symbolic organisation of the text, the status that it has, and its function in the context, including the channel (is it spoken or written or some combination of the two?) and also the rhetorical mode, what is being achieved by the text in terms of such categories as persuasive, expository, didactic, and the like.

That is, in SFL Theory, what Martin & Rose model as the purpose of a genre is modelled as a system of mode, the textual dimension of the culture as semiotic system.

[3] This is misleading, because it is not true. What is true is that SFL Theory maps the metafunctional dimensions of language — ideational, interpersonal and textual — onto the stratum of context as field, tenor and mode, respectively. What is not true is that each metafunctional dimension of context is simply realised by its metafunctional counterpart in language. For example, the cultural field of science is realised by interpersonal propositions as much as it is realised by ideational sequences of figures, and their structural elements are given various textual statuses in terms of theme and information.

[4] This is misleading, because it is not true. Moreover, it is a misunderstanding of Halliday & Hasan (1976: 22):

The linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features — field, mode and tenor — constitute a REGISTER.

That is, it is not the contextual features of field, tenor and mode that constitute a register, but the features of language that are typically associated with a configuration of them.

In SFL Theory, the field, tenor and mode (features) of a situation characterise the instance of context (situation) that is realised by an instance of language: (text). Here again, Martin & Rose confuse different planes: context vs language, and different points on the cline of instantiation, in this case: register vs text.

To be clear, in SFL Theory, field, tenor and mode are not register variables; they are the dimensions of the culture, whereas registers are functional sub-potentials of language.

Why Martin & Rose Have Focussed On Discourse Semantics Rather Than Lexicogrammar

Martin & Rose (2007: 295-6):

As noted in our Introduction, we have had to make some decisions about what regions of the language system to focus on in this book. Language is an immensely complex phenomenon, no less than the contexts of social life that it realises, and discourse analysis is a very large and growing field of practice, so our focus has been on providing the tools that analysts can use to start exploring these domains. To this end we have focused on systems at the level of discourse semantics rather than the levels of lexicogrammar or social context, although we have touched on these lower and higher level systems at certain points. 

In particular we have explored discourse semantic resources for enacting social relations through appraisal and negotiation, for construing fields of experience through ideation and conjunction, and for presenting our enactments and construals as meaningful text-in-context through identification and periodicity. 

As far as discourse semantics is concerned, one set of textual resources we have not dealt with here is substitution and ellipsis — in part because we cannot enhance the accounts given in Halliday and Hasan’s 1976 Cohesion in English, and in part because rehearsing them would involve a lot of additional grammatical description. Martin’s 1992 English Text also contains discussions of cohesive harmony and modal responsibility that we have not developed here; and it also outlines a model of context, about which we’ll now say something further.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, for Halliday, it is the grammar that is essential for discourse analysis. Halliday (1994: xvi-xvii):

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.

However, as demonstrated in painstaking detail here, much of Martin's (1992) discourse semantics is grammar: the model of textual cohesion in Halliday & Hasan (1976), relabelled and relocated from Halliday's grammatical stratum to Martin's discourse semantic stratum. Martin & Rose have focussed on discourse semantics, rather than grammar, simply because discourse semantics is presented as Martin's theorising. 

[2] For the theoretical problems with these systems, and inconsistencies in their exposition, click on the following links:

• appraisal here
• negotiation here and here
• ideation here and here
• conjunction here and here
• identification here and here
• periodicity here and here.

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, experience is construed as the ideational meaning of language, whereas field is the ideational dimension of the culture that is construed by language. The distinction is important epistemologically, since 'experience' is what is transformed into meaning.

[4] To be clear, the reason why Martin & Rose are unable to 'deal with' ellipsis-&-substitution is because the relations involved are lexicogrammatical, not semantic. Halliday (1994: 316):

Nevertheless, Martin (1992) locates ellipsis-&-substitution both interpersonally within the mood system of grammar (pp34-5) and textually within the identification of discourse semantics (pp 100-2, 135, 144). The theoretical inconsistency here is thus metafunctional as well as stratal.

[5] For the misunderstandings of Hasan's cohesive harmony in Martin (1992), see the clarifying critiques here.

[6] For the misunderstandings of Halliday's modal responsibility in Martin (1992), see the clarifying critiques here.

[7] For the theoretical inconsistencies that invalidate the model of context in Martin (1992), see the clarifying critiques here.

The Global Purpose Of A Genre

Martin & Rose (2007: 261, 345):

Crucially all texts have more than one purpose, and for this reason they will include elements that we would expect to find in other genres. But all texts also have a global defining purpose, and it is this global purpose that predicts the stages the text will go through to achieve this goal, i.e. its genre. Its additional purposes are realised below the level of generic stages, in the variable phases of meaning within each stage, and within the messages that make up each phase. Identifying the genre of a text sometimes involves some shunting up and down, from identifying its global purpose, to analysing its stages and phases, and back up again to its purpose. As with other features of language, a first glance is often not sufficient to identify a genre. A useful guide is the table of genres, their purposes and stages, presented as an Appendix to this book.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, text types (genres) differ by their patterns of instantiation; that is by different frequencies of feature selection in semantic and grammatical systems. Systemic Functional Linguistics gives priority to system over structure.

[2] This is the opposite of what is true. As Martin & Rose have just demonstrated — see the previous post — they use their stages of a text to identify ("predict") the genre of a text, and thus its global purpose. As Appendix A (above) demonstrates, the 'purpose' of a text is just a gloss of its genre classification. In SFL Theory, the purpose of a text is modelled as a dimension of mode. Halliday (2002 [1981]: 225):

Halliday has suggested (1975) that the “textual” properties of a text – the cohesive patterns and those of ‘functional sentence perspective’ – tend to be determined by the “mode”, the function ascribed to the text in the given context of situation, the purpose it is intended to achieve.

[3] To be clear, here Martin & Rose propose a 'generic' compositional scale of

• stage
• phase, and
• message.

Now, although these are clearly semantic units of language defined ideationally, Martin & Rose incongruously locate them two levels of symbolic abstraction above semantics, on their stratum of genre, which they define as context, not language.

On terminology, in Martin (1992: 325), 'message' is proposed as the unit for his logical discourse semantics, whereas in SFL Theory, 'message' refers to the textual semantic counterpart of the clause (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 88, 212).

[4] To be clear, there is no shunting between levels here. On the authors' own description, in order to identify the global purpose of a text (a gloss of its genre classification), it is necessary to analyse its stages; see [2] above.

Two Reasons Why Martin's Model Of Genre Is Inconsistent With SFL Theory

Martin & Rose (2007: 260-1):

We can be confident that these are the genres we are looking at by asking a few probing questions. 

First is the global structure one of activities unfolding in time, or of phenomena described out of time? This criterion distinguishes the first and third sections, which are sequenced in time, from the second section, which describes and reflects on the struggle and its protagonists, but is not sequenced in time. 

Secondly, is the sequence of activities about specific people and events or about generic participants? This distinguishes stories from explanations and histories in the natural and social sciences. 

Thirdly is the story structured around a major disruption to the course of events or does it simply recount a series of events? This distinguishes narratives, anecdotes and exemplums (which involve a significant disruption) from recounts (whose series of events may or may not be problematic). 

And finally is it a recount of events in an episode of experience, as in the first recount, or of stages in a person’s life, as in the last? These and other generic criteria are discussed in detail in Martin and Rose (20076).

Blogger Comments:

As these generic criteria demonstrate, Martin & Rose classify genres (text types) according to their ideational semantic structure. That is, the authors classify text types in terms of just one metafunction, the ideational, and by taking the view 'from below': structural realisation.

This is seriously inconsistent with SFL Theory on two counts. Firstly, the authors ignore the other two metafunctions, the interpersonal and textual, and secondly, the perspective taken in SFL Theory is 'from above': that is, in terms of what is being expressed, not in terms of the expression.

In SFL Theory, therefore, in terms of stratification, different text types (genres) realise different combinations of contextual features of field, tenor and mode (Hasan's 'contextual configurations'), and it is these contextual differences that account for the different patterns of instantiation, of linguistic systems, that distinguish one text type from another.

See also Jim Martin Misunderstanding SFL Methodology.

The Authors' Definition Of A Response

Martin & Rose (2007: 232-3):

We can thus define a response as a move which:

(1) takes as given the experiential content of its initiating pair part

and

(2) accepts the general terms of its argument established by its Subject-Finite structure (i.e. its polarity/modality/temporality). …

But a response does not allow for changes to the nub of the argument (its Subject),  or to the content of what is being argued about in the rest of the clause. By definition, any move making changes of this kind would not be considered a response but a new initiating move.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, speech function is concerned with interpersonal meaning, not with experiential meaning. In the case of propositions, what is accepted or rejected in a response is the validity of what is predicated of the Subject (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 148, 151-2).

[2] To be clear, a responding move may accept or reject the validity of a proposition or proposal. 

[3] Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 148):

From above, [the Subject] is that which carries the modal responsibility: that is, responsibility for the validity of what is being predicated (stated, questioned, commanded or offered) in the clause. … The notion of validity relates to the arguing of the case, if it is a proposition, or to the putting into effect if it is a proposal. The Subject is that element in which the particular kind of validity (according to the mood) is being invested.

Vocatives

Martin & Rose (2007: 225-6):

Moves may contain names which specify who is expected to respond (vocatives). For analysis purposes we recommend not treating vocatives as distinct moves when they simply accompany a speech act, addressing its receiver. This would mean treating Ernest’s move addressing Coetzee below as a statement including the vocative you white piece of shit, and his father’s move as a command including the vocative Ernest:

So vocatives are only taken as separate speech acts when they function as a move on their own, in greeting or calling sequences, as illustrated above… .

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because this is simply the analysis that is consistent with SFL Theory, and yet Martin & Rose present it as their recommendation.

[2] To be clear, unknown to Martin & Rose, this an instance of interpersonal metaphor: a command realised by a declarative clause with Mood ellipsis:

[3] Trivially, these are moves in exchanges, not sequences. Sequences (of figures) are ideational, not interpersonal.

Negotiating Feelings And Ideational Meanings

Martin & Rose (2007: 220):

The three principal texts we have used in the book up to now were essentially monologues. At certain points however both Helena and Tutu became more conversational. Helena, for example, talks to God, asking a series of questions about her husband’s disintegration and exclaiming about how she feels:

'God, what's happening? What's wrong with him? Could he have changed so much? Is he going mad? I can't handle the man anymore! But I can't get out. He's going to haunt me for the rest of my life if I leave him. Why, God?'

And Tutu addresses his readers with questions about the integrity of the Truth Commission:

Can it ever be right for someone who had committed the most gruesome atrocities to be allowed to get off scot-free, simply by confessing what he or she has done? Are the critics right; was the Truth and Reconciliation process immoral?... So is amnesty being given at the cost of justice being done?

Helena doesn’t get an answer from God, and Tutu has to answer his own questions in the argument that follows. So a conversation never really develops. But in spoken discourse, both the feelings we discussed in Chapter 2 and the ideational meanings we presented in Chapter 3 are indeed negotiated between speakers. The system of resources that enables this to-and-fro of dialogue is called NEGOTIATION.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, a dialogue involves a conversation between two or more speakers. This can occur at different orders of experience. For example, the dialogue may be first-order experience: people talking to each other, or second-order experience: people in a text talking to each other. 

(Tutu's questions are, of course, rhetorical questions.)

[2] To be clear, what people negotiate are interpersonal meanings: propositions and proposals. The mistaken notion that ideational meanings are negotiated derives, in part, from Martin's (1992: 391, 488) misunderstanding of metafunctions as interacting modules.

"Catalysing Symbiosis"

Martin & Rose (2007: 209):

Perhaps what we can learn from discourse of this kind is the significance of interaction among discourse systems. Conjunction, identification, ideation and periodicity are all interfacing in various ways to scaffold the argument and grammatical metaphor is catalysing this symbiosis at every turn. For most of us, a little discourse analysis wouldn’t hurt, when first learning to access texture of this kind.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the notion of interaction between metafunctional systems continues the misunderstanding of metafunctions (and strata) as interacting modules in Martin (1992: 391, 488). The architecture of SFL Theory is relational, not modular. See the critiques here, and the clarification here.

[2] To be clear, if discourse semantic systems are scaffolding the argument, the question arises as to which systems are making the argument that they are scaffolding.

[3] To be clear, Martin & Rose have not demonstrated how grammatical metaphor catalyses anything. The authors have not unpacked any ideational metaphors in order to explain the nature of metaphor and how it functions; they have merely identified nominalised words in a text.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, it is the grammar that is the resource for discourse analysis.

[5] To be clear, in SFL Theory, texture is created by the resources of the textual metafunction; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 650ff).

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).