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.