Saturday 11 June 2016

Misconstruing Mode

Martin (1992: 521-3):
Some examples of linguistically and pictorially projected texts across three modes are outlined in Table 7.8.

Table 7.8. Projection across modes

field-structured:
accompanying

(re-)constructing
genre-structured




linguistic
simultaneous
narrative
quotations

translation
dialogue





pictorial
comic strip
comic strip
figures, tables

dialogue
headers


Blogger Comments:

[1] In terms of first-order experience, the dialogue and headers of comic strips are verbal projections of the author; that is, they are linguistic, not pictorial.  In terms, of second-order experience, the dialogues of comic strips are projections of the characters; again, they are linguistic, not pictorial.  It is the drawing that accompanies these wordings that is pictorial.

Language and pictures are distinct semiotic modes; that is, distinct semiotic systems.  Pictorial semiosis differs from language, both in terms of its expression plane and in not having a stratified content plane (meaning without wording).

[2] The projection relation between speaker/writer and text is ideational, not textual, and so is not a feature of mode.

[3] Again, the use of the word 'texts' here betrays the ongoing confusion between text types (registers) and context (mode).  The confusion is thus along two theoretical dimensions simultaneously: stratification (context vs language) and instantiation (system vs instance type).

[4] In terms of Hasan's (1985/9: 58) mode opposition of constitutive vs ancillary, the rôle of the language of comic strips is constitutivenot ancillary to something else.