Rebranding Co-Reference As 'Reminding Phoricity'

Martin (1992: 99):

By definition then, phoric items require that information be recovered from the context.  There are three main types of information that need to be recovered, and nominal groups may depend on their context with respect to any one, or any one of the three.  The first type, reminding phoricity, has been illustrated in the IDENTITY RECOVERABLE column of Table 3.2.  It signals that the identity of the participant being realised is recoverable …

REMINDING PHORICITY ('you know my identity')

[3:4]  The little boy had a frog in a jar.

          It ran away.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, 'phoricity' — a term coined by Du Bois (1980) — is Martin's rebranding of cohesive reference (Halliday & Hasan 1976).  'Phoric items' are reference items, misunderstood as the nominal groups in which reference items appear, as a result of Martin confusing nominal group deixis with reference.

[2] To be clear, reference items do not "require that information be recovered from the context".  As Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 625) put it:

Endophoric 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.

[3] As previously explained here, Martin confuses semiotic context (the culture as semiotic system) with both co-text — as in this case — and the material setting.  In the final chapter, he confuses context with two perspectives on functional varieties of language: register and genre.

[4] To be clear, the "type" of information is the identity presumed by the reference item.

[5] To be clear, reference items (misunderstood as nominal groups) do not "depend on their context".  The identity presumed by the reference item is recoverable from the instantial system of the unfolding text.

[6] This confuses the recoverable identity ("types of information") with a purported type of reference ("reminding phoricity").

[7] This is merely anaphoric co-reference, personal and demonstrative, rebranded as 'reminding phoricity'; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 626-8).

[8] This is merely anaphoric personal co-reference, rebranded as 'reminding phoricity'; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 626-8).