Misconstruing Context As Language And Material Setting Instead Of Culture [updated]

Martin (1992: 122):

Where participants are not inherently given, reference must be made to the context of situation, which can be divided into two parts: verbal (co-text) and non-verbal.  Technically reference to the co-text is referred to as endophora and reference to the non-verbal context as exophora.

Blogger Comment:

[1] This again confuses ideational denotation with textual reference.  Reference is concerned with  a type of textual status, identifiability, not with the experiential identity of participants.  The confusion is one of metafunction.

[2] This misunderstands the context of situation as

• instance of language (co-text) and 
• its material setting.

To be clear, the context of situation is an instance of the culture that is realised by an instance of language (text).  Context and language are different levels of symbolic abstraction.

[3] To be clear, 'exophoric reference means that the identity presumed by the reference item is recoverable from the environment of the text' and 'enodophoric reference means that the identity presumed by the reference item is recoverable from within the text itself – or, to be more precise, from the instantial system of meanings created as the text unfolds' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 624-5).