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.

Seriously Misunderstanding Projection

Martin & Rose (2007: 319-20):

In Chapters 2 and 3 we described how processes of saying and sensing can project locutions (what is said) or ideas (what is sensed), and also attribute the source of saying or sensing, as well as locating it in time. So if we say Bakhtin argued that creativity depends on mastery of the genre, then the projecting clause Bakhtin argued:

• projects the locution that creativity depends on mastery of the genre, through the process argue
• places the saying in the past (argued) with respect to if we say
• sources the locution to Bakhtin.

The projecting clause in other words provides a frame for interpreting its projection. By analogy, we can argue that genesis projects language, register and genre by conditioning the semantic oppositions that hold sway at one or another point of time, with respect to the unfolding of a text, with respect to interlocutors’ subjectivities and with respect to the meanings at risk in the relevant discourse formations. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously noted, the logico-semantic relation of projection does not feature in the authors' model of logical discourse semantics: conjunction. This is because Martin's model derives from Halliday & Hasan (1976), where conjunction is a non-structural (cohesive) relation, and projection is not a cohesive relation.

[2] To be clear, this misunderstanding seriously misrepresents projection. The projecting clause construes the first-order symbolic processing that brings the second-order projected clause into symbolic existence; see, e.g. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 110, 129). Importantly, only mental and verbal processes project, and projection is a relation between two different orders of experience.

[3] To be clear, this analogy seriously misunderstands semogenesis and projection. Logogenesis, ontogenesis and phylogenesis do not project language — and register and genre are (varieties) of language, not distinct from it. Instead, mental and verbal processes project the content plane of language. In contrast, logogenesis is the instantiation of the linguistic system in text, ontogenesis is the development of the linguistic system — not just "interlocutors' social subjectivities" — in the individual, and phylogenesis is the evolution of the linguistic system — not just "discourse formations" — in the species.

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.

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.