Misconstruing Non-Structural Cohesion As Discourse Structure

Martin (1992: 404, 403):

This projection of metafunction across the content plane in correlation with register is outlined in Table 6.14, which illustrates the way in which interpreting cohesion as discourse structure re-organises its metafunctional address.

Table 6.14. Register and metafunction in relation to discourse semantic and lexicogrammatical systems
register	discourse semantics	lexicogrammar
Tenor	interpersonal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	negotiation	clause: mood (modalisation, modulation, polarity, vocation, tagging)
Mode	textual --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	identification	nominal group: deixis, substitution & ellipsis
		interdependency
Field	logical --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	conjunction	clause complex:
	experiential --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		logico-semantics
	ideation	clause: transitivity (including lexis as delicate grammar); group rank experiential grammar; collocation

Blogger Comments:

[1] This continues the misrepresentation of context, a semiotic system that is more abstract than language, as register, a functional variety of language that realises a functional variety of context: a situation type.

[2] In SFL theory, cohesion is a non-structural system of the textual metafunction only.  Construing cohesion as a stratum more abstract than lexicogrammar arises from several interrelated misunderstandings, including the confusion of logogenesis (discourse) with semantics (meaning).

[3] The system of identification, theorised as the semantics of reference, to be consistent, would be realised lexicogrammatically by the non-structural cohesive system of reference, not the structural system of deixis at group rank.

[4] The system of identification, theorised as the semantics of reference, to be consistent, would be realised lexicogrammatically by the cohesive system of reference, not the cohesive system of substitution–&–ellipsis.

[5] Logico-semantic relations are systems of the logical metafunction, not the experiential metafunction.