Martin's Stratification Of The Content Plane [New]

Martin (1992: 19-20):

Stratification of this kind can be usefully compared with expansions of descriptive power in other models where an increase in abstraction need not involve a focus on larger units (e.g. the syntax, semantics, pragmatics stratification associated with formal syntax, truth functional semantics and speech act theory; see Levinson 1983) or where a focus on larger units may not involve an increase in abstraction (eg. extending the scale of rank at the level of grammar to include units larger than the clause as in tagmemics; see for example Longacre 1976, 1979). The model developed to this point is outlined in Fig. 1.12. 

The solidary (or "natural") relationship between discourse semantics and lexicogrammar is noted in the model and contrasted with the experientially arbitrary relationship between content and expression form.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this demonstrates the extent to which Martin — who (p390) misunderstands strata as modules — does not understand the notion of stratification in SFL Theory. On the one hand, the size of units is irrelevant to levels of abstraction (strata), as demonstrated by:

• the information unit (lexicogrammar) being co-terminous with the tone group (phonology);
• the sequence (semantics) being co-terminous with the clause complex (lexicogrammar);
• the figure (semantics) being co-terminous with the clause (lexicogrammar); and
• the element (semantics) being co-terminous with the group or phrase (lexicogrammar).

Moreover it is these correspondences between semantic and grammatical units that makes a systematic account of grammatical metaphor possible, and it is the absence of these correspondences in Martin's discourse semantics that undermines any systematic attempt to account for metaphor.

On the other hand, any stratification that is not based on levels of symbolic abstraction, is not stratification is the SFL sense of the term.

[2] This is potentially misleading. The only innovation in Figure 1.12 is the word 'discourse' positioned before the word 'semantics'. The reader could be forgiven for falsely thinking that the stratification of the content plane in SFL Theory was Martin's innovation, rather than Halliday's.

[3] This is potentially misleading. The reader could be forgiven for falsely thinking that the natural ("solidary") vs arbitrary distinction between interstratal relations was Martin's observation, rather than Halliday's. Halliday (1985: xvii):