Saturday 26 December 2015

Misconstruing Strata And Metafunctions As Modules

Martin (1992: 390):
Each of the presentations of linguistic text forming resources considered above adopted a modular perspective.  As far as English Text is concerned this has two main dimensions: stratification and, within strata, metafunction.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Taking a modular perspective on strata and metafunctions is a source of serious theoretical errors, as will become apparent as this chapter is examined.  Modules are distinct units that can be combined with others to make more complex structures. This is at odds with the status of strata and metafunctions in SFL theory as complementary perspectives.

[2] This is misleading.  Stratification and metafunction are dimensions of SFL theory; the observation is not an insight of English Text.