Rebranding Halliday's Clause Nuclearity As Their Own Nuclear Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 75-6):

We can identify three sets of lexical relations. …
The second is the configurations of elements within each clause. These include relations between people and things and the process they are involved in, and the places and qualities associated with the process, for example the configuration of two people and a process when Helena’s romance starts: Helena - meet - young man. As they are more or less central to the unfolding of the process, as in Figure 3.1, these are known as nuclear relations.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misrepresents lexicogrammar as discourse semantics.  To be clear, lexical relations are relations between lexical items, and lexical items are the synthetic realisations of feature combinations at the level of lexicogrammar (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 199).  The theoretical inconsistency is in terms of stratification.

[2] To be clear, 'the configuration of elements within each clause' involves grammatical relations, not lexical relations, which obtain at the level of lexicogrammar, not discourse semantics.  The theoretical inconsistencies are thus twofold: in terms of delicacy and stratification.

[3] This is misleading.  These relations are those of clause nuclearity (Halliday 1985, 1994).  In not acknowledging the source of this work, Martin & Rose falsely present it as their own.

plagiarism (noun)

the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. 

synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing, poaching, appropriation;

See also Jim Martin "Honouring" The Late Ruqaiya Hasan where Martin falsely accused the late Ruqaiya Hasan of plagiarism at a symposium organised to honour her.

Taking Halliday's Notions Of 'Figure' And 'Nuclearity' And Passing Them Off As Their Own

Martin & Rose (2007: 74, 75):

From a grammatical perspective, the clause is a structure of words and word groups, but from a discourse semantic perspective the clause construes an activity involving people and things. The core elements of such a figure are the process and the people and things that are directly involved in it, while other elements such as places and qualities may be more peripheral. This nuclear model of experience is diagrammed in Figure 3.1. The ‘doer-doing’ nucleus is represented as a revolving yin/yang complementarity, with ‘place’ and ‘quality’ in peripheral orbits.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands and misrepresents the clause by reducing it to the syntagmatic axis (structure) and by confusing structure with constituency (the rankscale).  Systemically, the clause is a level on the rankscale that serves as the entry condition to the systems of THEME, MOOD and TRANSITIVITY. Structurally, as a construal of experience, the clause is a configuration of functions (process, participant, circumstance).

[2] This misunderstands and misrepresents a semantic counterpart of the clause (the figure) by reducing all process types to "activities" and reducing all participants to "people and things".  The latter also confuses orders of phenomena (figure with element); see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 56ff).

[3] Here Martin & Rose present the Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) notion of a 'figure' without acknowledging its source, thereby falsely presenting it as their own work.

plagiarism (noun)

the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. 

synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing, poaching, appropriation;

See also Jim Martin "Honouring" The Late Ruqaiya Hasan where Martin falsely accused the late Ruqaiya Hasan of plagiarism at a symposium organised to honour her.

[4] Strictly speaking, not all participants are directly involved in the process; those mediated by a minor Process are only indirectly involved.

[5] Here Martin & Rose present the Halliday (1985) notion of 'nuclearity' without acknowledging its source, thereby falsely presenting it as their own work.  In the second edition of IFG, Halliday (1994: 164) writes:

[6] Cf Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 174):

[6] This mistakes the 'doer-doing' relation in doing-&-happening figures with the 'medium-process' relation on which the notion of nuclearity is founded.  In grammatical terms, it confuses ergativity with transitivity, reducing a general ergative relation to one type of transitive relation.

[7] To be clear, consistent with their lack of meticulous scholarship, Martin & Rose have not even bothered to present the yin-yang representation the right way around — and the term 'revolving' serves no explanatory function here.

The "taichi symbol" (taijitu)

Rebranding Halliday & Hasan's Lexical Cohesion As Their Own Taxonomic Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 75):

We can identify three sets of lexical relations. The first is the chains of relations between elements as a text unfolds, from one clause to the next. These include relations such as repetition, synonymy and contrast, that build up a picture of people and things as the text progresses. For example, early in her story Helena begins to construct a picture of herself as a teenage girl: late teenage years - farm girl - eighteen-year-old. As they progressively construct taxonomies of people, things, places and their qualities, these are known as taxonomic relations.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misconstrues lexicogrammar as discourse semantics.  To be clear, lexical relations are relations between lexical items, and lexical items are the synthetic realisations of feature combinations at the level of lexicogrammar (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 199).  The theoretical inconsistency is in terms of stratification.

[2] This is misleading.  These relations are those of lexical cohesion (Halliday & Hasan 1976).  In not acknowledging the source of this work, Martin & Rose falsely present it as their own.

plagiarism (noun)

the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. 

synonyms: copying, infringement of copyright, piracy, theft, stealing, poaching, appropriation;

See also Jim Martin "Honouring" The Late Ruqaiya Hasan where Martin falsely accused the late Ruqaiya Hasan of plagiarism at a symposium organised to honour her.

[3] This misrepresents a lexicogrammatical system of the textual metafunction (lexical cohesion) as  a discourse semantic system of the experiential metafunction.  It is the logogenetic patterns of instantiation of systems of the ideational metafunction, such as clause transitivity, that "build up a picture of people and things as the text progresses".  The theoretical inconsistencies are thus twofold: stratal and metafunctional.

[4] Here Martin & Rose rebrand Halliday & Hasan's lexical cohesion (textual lexicogrammar) as their own taxonomic relations (experiential discourse semantics).

Perception Management

Martin & Rose (2007: 254):

Meanwhile we’ll leave the last move for this chapter to Tutu, as he is quoted in the production notes to Forgiveness on DVD, the kind of gracious and memorable A2 move we have come to expect from this man:

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this invites the reader to associate the authors with the graciousness of Desmond Tutu. Previously, the authors have invited the reader to associate one author, Martin, with Nelson Mandela (p62):

His communion with Mandela, at such a distance in so many respects …

For a reality check, see 

1. Jim Martin Falsely Accusing The Late Ruqaiya Hasan Of Plagiarism
2. David Rose Dishonestly Vilifying His Friend At The Time Of His Mother's Tragic Death