Friday 28 August 2015

Confusing Cohesive Relations With Logogenesis

Martin (1992: 267):
A further parallel has to do with the distinction between reference to participants as opposed to text reference and external as opposed to internal conjunction:
TEXT REFERENCE : INTERNAL CONJUNCTION ::
PARTICIPANT REFERENCE : EXTERNAL CONJUNCTION
Both text reference and internal conjunction construct text as part of rather than as an interpretation of the world. 

Blogger Comment:

In SFL theory, 'constructing text' is logogenesis, the unfolding of the text at the instance pole of the cline of instantiation as systemic potential is actualised though the selection of features and the activation of realisation statements.  The ideational selections are a construal of experience of the world as meaning.  The text is part of the world both materially (e.g. soundwaves, pages, pixels) and semiotically (the content plane that realises the cultural situation).

Reference and conjunction, on the other hand, in SFL theory, are systems of the textual metafunction on the content stratum of lexicogrammar.  They are resources for relating elements in the text through cohesive relations rather than by structural means.