Post Titles For Chapter 7 — Context: Register, Genre And Ideology

The titles of the posts that evaluate chapter 7 provide a glimpse of some of its theoretical shortcomings.

1. Misunderstanding Metafunctions
2. Confusing Orders Of Experience
3. The Invalidity Of The Argument For Register And Genre As Context Strata
4. Theoretical Inconsistencies In Modelling Genre And Register As Context Strata
5. The Invalidity Of The Argument For A Stratum Of Ideology
6. Inconsistent Claims About Discourse Semantics, Register, Genre And Ideology
7. Misrepresenting Firth On Context
8. Misrepresenting Halliday On Formal And Contextual Meaning
9. Misunderstanding Stratification And Context
10. Purpose, Genre And Register
11. Confusing Context With Semantics
12. Confusing Context With Text Type
13. Self-Contradiction
14. Problems With The Non-Argument For Register As Context
15. Problems With The Non-Argument For Genre As Context
16. Assigning Purpose To Theoretical Dimensions
17. Misrepresenting Purpose And Intention
18. Confusing Text Type (Genre) With Text Structure (Semantics)
19. Misrepresenting Previous Work On Text Structure And Context
20. Misrepresenting Hasan On Text Structure
21. Inverting The Stratification Hierarchy
22. Misunderstanding Stratification And Realisation
23. Confusing Context (And Semantics) With Text Type
24. Problems With 'Genre As A Pattern Of Register Patterns'
25. Seven Problems With The First Justification For A Genre Stratum
26. Two Problems With The Second Justification For A Genre Stratum
27. Eight Problems With The Third Justification For A Genre Stratum
28. Two Problems With The Fourth Justification For A Genre Stratum
29. Two Problems With The Fifth Justification For A Genre Stratum
30. Misidentifying Metafunctions
31. Misrepresenting Mode
32. Misconstruing A Dialogic Response As Monologue
33. Misunderstanding Mode
34. Not Acknowledging Hasan As Intellectual Source
35. Blurring Distinctions
36. Misunderstanding Bakhtin's 'Dialogic' And 'Heteroglossic'
37. Misunderstanding Orders Of Experience
38. Confusing Material Order Phenomena With Textual Semiosis
39. Confusing Context Potential (Mode) With Language Sub-Potentials (Registers)
40. Multiple Violations Of Theoretical Dimensions
41. Redefining Genre As Field
42. Under-Acknowledging Hasan As Theoretical Source
43. Confusing Contextual Potential With Semantic Sub-potentials
44. Miscategorising Texts By Mode
45. Miscategorising Text Types
46. Misrepresenting The Distinction Between Hortatory And Analytical Exposition
47. Misconstruing Degrees Of Abstraction
48. Confusing Mode (Context) With The Ideational Semantics Of Registers
49. Confusing Strata And Metafunctions
50. Misrepresenting Abstraction
51. Confusing Mode Potential (Context) With Text Types (Register)
52. Misconstruing Language Rôle As Speaker Rôle
53. Misconstruing Language Rôle As Speaker Rôle
54. Confusing Theoretical Dimensions: Stratification, Instantiation & Metafunction
55. Confusing Different Strata, Metafunctions & Orders Of Experience
56. Misconstruing Ancillary As Constitutive
57. Misconstruing Lower And Higher Orders Of Experience As Higher & Lower Levels Of Symbolic Abstraction
58. Confusing Mode Potential With Ideational Semantics Subpotentials
59. Confusing Mode Potential With Ideational Semantics Subpotentials
60. Misconstruing Field As Mode
61. Misconstruing The Notion Of Projection
62. Misconstruing Mode
63. Misconstruing Dialogue As Unprojected
64. The Non-Argument For 'Experiential Distance'
65. Misunderstanding Tenor
66. Misconstruing Context Potential (Tenor) As Language Sub-Potential (Register)
67. Blurring The Distinction Between Tenor (Context) And Interpersonal Meaning (Semantics)
68. Misattributing A Source
69. Three Minor Clarifications
70. Confusing Context Potential With The Semantics Of Registers
71. Misconstruing "Status-Like Relationships Between Participants"
72. Misconstruing Status As Control
73. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Status & Phonology
74. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Status & Grammar
75. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Status & Lexis
76. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Status & Discourse Semantics
77. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Status & Grammatical Metaphor
78. Misconstruing The Realisation Of Tenor
79. Misrepresenting The Relation Between Contact And Field
80. Metafunctional Confusion And A Non-Sequitur
81. Confusing Instantiation With Axial And Stratal Realisation
82. Misrepresenting Field As Discourse Semantics
83. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & Tone
84. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & Tonality
85. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & Tonicity
86. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & “Phonology”
87. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & Grammar
88. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & Lexis
89. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & Discourse Semantics
90. Presenting Unsupported Claims As A Survey: Contact & Grammatical Metaphor
91. Unsupported Claims About Affect
92. Misconstruing Relations Between Speakers As Individual Predisposition
93. Confusing Affect With Affection
94. Mental vs Relational vs Material Affection
95. Misconstruing Affect With Unsupported Claims
96. Misconstruing A Tenor Relation As The Behaviours And Predispositions Of Individuals
97. Blurring The Distinction Between Context And Semantics
98. Inconsistent Unsupported Claims About The Realisation Of Misconstrued Affect
99. Invoking Clinical And Social Psychology
100. Confusing Field With The Language That Realises It
101. Blurring The Distinction Between Realisation, Logogenesis And Instantiation
102. Misrepresenting Data & Confusing Strata
103. Confusing Context With Extra-Linguistic Knowledge, Register And Semantics
104. Misrepresenting The Distinction Between Fabula And Syuzhet
105. Misconstruing Barthes' 'Sequence' As Field
106. Not Acknowledging Barthes As Intellectual Source
107. Misrepresenting Barthes
108. Misrepresenting Barthes And Confusing Material & Semiotic Orders Of Experience
109. Confusing Composition And Superordination
110. Why Chomskyan Linguistics Has Power
111. Misconstruing Mode As Field
112. Misconstruing Behaviour As A Register Of Language
113. A False Dichotomy
114. Confusing Field And Language
115. Confusing Orders Of Experience
116. Misconstruing Field Taxonomies As Classifications Of Personnel & Semiotic Objects
117. Confusing Experience With Construals Of Experience
118. Metafunctional Inconsistency
119. Internal Inconsistency
120. Some Of The Problems With Register and Genre As Semiotic Planes
121. Misconstruing Activity Sequence (Semantics) As Field And Schematic Structure (Semantics) As Genre
122. Confusing First And Second Orders Of Experience
123. Inferring Invalidly From Misconstruals Of Semantic Structure As Field And Genre
124. The Reason For Separating Field And Genre
125. Misinterpreting Pike
126. Misinterpreting Hasan And Proposing Theoretical Inconsistencies
127. The Question Of Whether Systematising Generic Structure Potentials Leads Directly To A Two Plane Model Of Register And Genre
128. Misrepresenting Hasan On Generic Structure Potential
129. Prioritising Structure Over System
130. Misrepresenting The Prosodic Mode Of Realisation
131. Distinguishing Interpersonal Meaning From Evaluation
132. Misconstruing Prosody
133. Confusing Text Type With Text Structure
134. Misrepresenting Halliday
135. A Transparently False Claim
136. Misunderstanding Stratal Relations And Confusing Text Type (Genre) With System (Potential)
137. Misconstruing Language Sub-Potentials (Genres) As Context Potential (Culture)
138. Misrepresenting Longacre
139. Martin's Reason Why Field, Tenor & Mode Are Insufficient To Classify Genres
140. Misconstruing Semantics As Context And Misidentifying Metafunctions
141. Confusing Strata And Misidentifying Metafunctions
142. Misconstruing Semantics (Activity Sequence) As Context (Field)
143. Not Classifying Text Types From Above
144. Classifying Text Types From Semantics Instead Of Context
145. Misconstruing Language Sub-Potentials As Constituting Context Potential
146. Weaving An Illogical Argument Around A Misinterpretation Of Halliday
147. Martin's Reasons For Not Devising Genre Systems
148. Why Martin Prefers His Own Model To Halliday's
149. Misrepresenting Halliday On Context, Register And Genre
150. Misconstruing A Higher Order Of Experience As A Lower Level Of Symbolic Abstraction
151. Misconstruing One Mode System As Register And Another As Genre
152. Misconstruing First & Second Orders Of Field
153. Strategically Misrepresenting Hasan
154. Why Martin Prefers His Own Model To Hasan's
155. Asserting The Opposite Of What Is True
156. Misunderstanding Realisation
157. Misrepresenting Martin (1992)
158. Misconstruing Heteroglossia And Dialogism As System And Process
159. Misrepresenting Martin (1992) On Register & Genre
160. Addressing "The Central Problem In Marxist Theory" By Adding A More Abstract Level
161. Ignoring Halliday's Caution Against Premature Articulation
162. Preparing To Misconstrue Bernstein's Codes As Ideology
163. Misrepresenting Hasan
164. Misunderstanding Semantic Variation And Bakhtin
165. Martin's Reasons For Not Devising Ideology Systems
166. Misconstruing Bernstein's Coding Orientation As Ideology
167. Discursive Power And The Evolutionarily Necessary Resolution Of Semiotic Tension Through Dynamic Openness
168. Confusing Linguistic Variabilty With Contextual Tension
169. Misunderstanding System Architecture And Dynamics
170. Affirming The Metastability Of Evolving Dynamic Open Systems
171. Confusing Tenor (Context) With Interpersonal Meaning (Semantics)
172. Subscribing To The Naturalistic Fallacy
173. Misrepresenting Martin (1992) On Discourse Semantics And Contextual Theory

Misrepresenting Martin (1992) On Discourse Semantics And Contextual Theory

Martin (1992: 587):

So — texts are coherent, cultures are not.  Where does this leave linguistics which is articulated as a form of social action?

Clearly one important job, which has already begun […] lies in deconstructing the naturalisation process.  Systemic functional linguistics has always adressed [sic] this concern, and English Text's development of discourse semantics and contextual theory was undertaken with this goal explicitly in mind.  What seems crucial here is a model which displays the way in which language inflects and is inflected by contextual systems; one model of this kind has been provided.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As demonstrated by the reasoned arguments in the 550+ analyses on this website, English Text's development of discourse semantics and contextual theory proceeds from multiple misunderstandings of SFL theory — misunderstandings so fundamental and pervasive that they undermine the validity of the work as theory.  In an intelligent, informed academic community that values reason and intellectual integrity, this would be a serious problem.

[2] The relation between language and context is precisely defined in SFL theory as realisation.  This is the relation of intensive identity between two levels of symbolic abstraction.

[3] The contextual model that has been provided confuses context (the culture that is realised by language) with sub-potentials of language itself (registers/genres).  The confusion is along two theoretical dimensions simultaneously: stratification and instantiation.

Subscribing To The Naturalistic Fallacy

Martin (1992: 586):

Beyond this studies are needed on the inter-relationships between affect and morality (between ATTITUDE and MODULATION to put this grammatically): I like/dislike clearly conditions you should/shouldn't in ways that have been barely broached (see Martin 1992a).

Blogger Comments:

[1] The claim here is that

• the relation between affect (a neutral or charged tenor relation between interlocutors) and morality (principles of right and wrong) 
• can be described as 
• the grammatical relation between attitude (positive or negative evaluation) and modulation (obligation and inclination).

[2] The claim here is that the giving of information conditions the demanding of goods-&-services:

• propositions that are realised by declaratives of the form I like/dislike
• condition
• proposals that are realised by declaratives of the form you should/shouldn't.

In philosophy, the claim that an "ought" (prescription) can be derived from an "is" (description) is known as the Naturalistic Fallacy (G.E. Moore); see also Hume's Law/Guillotine.

In SFL theory, the mental processes that relate to modulation are not those of emotion (I like), but those of desideration (I would like).  This is because desiderative processes project proposals and can serve as interpersonal metaphors of modulation, as in I would like you to finish this by tomorrow.

Confusing Tenor (Context) With Interpersonal Meaning (Semantics)

Martin  (1992: 586):

… it demonstrates that […] the coding orientations associated with class, gender, ethnicity and generation focus attitudes in systematic ways.  Affect is in other words ideologically addressed (see Martin 1986 on the orientation of attitude in ecological debates) and exploring this projection of interpersonal meaning is an important dimension of semiotic space.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This continues the misconstrual of Bernstein's coding orientation as ideology.

[2] This continues the confusion of affect, as a dimension of tenor (context stratum), with affect as interpersonal meaning (semantics stratum). Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 33) refer to the contextual system as 'sociometric rôles'.

[3] This stratal confusion is aided by the blurring of two distinct meanings of 'projection':

• tenor as the theoretical "projection" of the interpersonal metafunction onto the context stratum;
• interpersonal meaning as the verbal projection of speakers.

[4] Trivially, 'exploring' is not a dimension.

exploring this projection of interpersonal meaning	is	an important dimension of semiotic space
Identified / Token	Process	Identifier / Value

Affirming The Metastability Of Evolving Dynamic Open Systems

Martin (1992: 585):

Martin 1986 introduces the term contratextuality for texts which directly oppose each other from different positions and this idea has been extended in delicacy by Lemke (1988: 48).  Contratextuality is critically related to semogenesis in ways that are only beginning to be investigated (for a revealing study of the semiotic subversion of genre fiction by feminist writers see Cranny-Francis 1990) and it is probable that work in this area will be among the first to shed light on the vexing question of how text renovates system as dynamic open systems evolve, thereby affirming their metastability.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the semogenesis to which contratextuality is related involves three related processes:

• logogenesis, the instantiation of the system in the text;
• ontogenesis, the development of the system in the individual; and
• phylogenesis, the evolution of the system in the species.

[2]  To be clear, on the SFL model, the relation between text and system is instantiation.  In this view, language is a probabilistic system and it is differences in probabilities that define register variation (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 552-6).  Probabilities in the system are manifested as frequencies in the text, and the frequencies in each text minutely nudge the probabilities in the system up or down.

Misunderstanding System Architecture And Dynamics

Martin (1992: 582):

Martin [1986] suggested as part of a model for dealing with ideology in crisis as system involving two axes: protagonist/antagonist and left/right. […] In general terms the systemic oppositions are outlined below; as far as the dynamics of ideology are concerned these are best treated as genuine oppositions, not simply as alternative choices within a system.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands system architecture.  In terms of SFL theory, the system network (Fig. 7.28) involves two simultaneous (conjunctively related) systems.  The term 'axis', on the other hand, refers to the distinction between the paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions: i.e. system vs structure.

[2] This misunderstands system architecture and dynamics.  Alternative choices (features) in systems are "genuine" oppositions, and the dynamics of the system is its instantiation (the selection of options and the activation of their realisation statements).

Confusing Linguistic Variabilty With Contextual Tension

Martin (1992: 581-2):

As noted with respect to text [7:5] above, variable realisation implies in a sense that all texts are multi-voiced. There is in other words a certain tension in the system, which manifests itself in semiotic processes.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This involves two dimensions of confusion, as previously identified here.  Martin claimed that, because one mother's coding orientation was variably realised linguistically, she had 'more than one voice' in the conversation, and this was falsely equated with being dialogic in the Bakhtinian sense.

[2] There are two additional dimensions of confusion here — variability with tension, and language with context — since variability in the language realising context (one coding orientation) is misconstrued as tension in the context itself (misconstrued as ideology).

Discursive Power And The Evolutionarily Necessary Resolution Of Semiotic Tension Through Dynamic Openness

Martin (1992: 581):

Because coding orientations are variably realised, ideology will never be a question of this or that but one of more or less; and because these coding orientations distribute discursive power unevenly, there will always be semiotic tension in the community. The variable realisation of ideology provides the dynamic openness through which this tension can be resolved — it is a necessary condition for the system to evolve.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This continues the confusion of variability in the linguistic realisation (semantic style) of one coding orientation with the different linguistic realisations (semantic variation) of different coding orientations; see earlier critique here.

[2] This continues the misconstrual of coding orientation as ideology; see earlier clarification here.

[3] Bernstein's coding orientations do not distribute (the undefined) "discursive power" — unevenly or evenly — and so this is not a cause of (the undefined) "semiotic tension in the community".  The codes are different uses of language by different social groups.  Halliday (1978: 106):

What Bernstein’s work suggests is that there may be differences in the relative orientation of different social groups towards the various functions of language in given contexts, and towards different areas of meaning that may be explored within a given function.

And these sub-cultural angles are functions of the social structure; Halliday (1978: 123):

This angle of vision is a function of the social structure. It reflects, in our society, the pattern of social hierarchy, and the resulting tensions between an egalitarian ideology and a hierarchical reality.

[4] Two claims are made here about the mistaken notion of "the variable realisation of ideology":

• it provides the dynamic openness through which semiotic tension can be resolved;
• it is a necessary condition for the system to evolve.

No evidence or argument is offered to support either of these bare assertions.

Misconstruing Bernstein's Coding Orientation As Ideology

Martin (1992: 581):

Perhaps the most that can be said at this stage is that from a synoptic perspective, ideology is a system of coding orientations which makes meaning selectively available depending on subjects' class, gender, ethnicity and generation.  Interpreted in these terms, all texts manifest, construe, renovate and symbolically realise ideology, just as they do language, register and genre.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confusion of ideology with coding orientation fixes ideology to the social co-ordinates of language users.  It should be obvious that speakers with similar social co-ordinates can project very different ideologies, and that speakers with very different social co-ordinates can project very similar ideologies.

[2] This misunderstands Martin's own model of stratification.  Taking (meta)metaredundancy into account, the claim — in Martin's terms only — should be:

• language (not text) realises the realisation of ideology in the realisation of genre in register.

[3] In SFL theory, the relation between texts and language, register and genre is neither manifestation, nor construal, nor renovation, nor symbolic realisation.  The relevant theoretical dimension, instead, is the vector of instantiation:

• text is a point of variation at the instance pole of instantiation, 
• register and genre are complementary perspectives on a midway point of variation on the cline of instantiation, and 
• language is the entire cline, since each point on the cline is a perspective on language.

Martin's Reasons For Not Devising Ideology Systems

Martin (1992: 580-1):

What are the implications of Hasan and Bernstein's work for the interpretation of ideology as system?  This is a question which is in some respects premature.  Work on mapping out the fashions of meaning constituting a culture at the level of ideology has only just begun (most of Hasan's own work in this area remains unpublished as of 1989). …

All of this is compounded by the fact that fashions of meaning and the more abstract notion of coding orientation need always to be interpreted in context — that is, with respect to the genre and register through which they are manifested.  Given our present understanding of these planes, this is a challenging task; and certainly not one for which even a provisional network of oppositions can be provided at this time.

Blogger Comments:

[1] The work of Hasan and Bernstein has no implications for the interpretation of ideology as system.  The reason for this is that neither work is concerned with ideology.  One way to define 'ideology' is as a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.  In contrast, from the perspective of SFL theory, Bernstein's work on codes is concerned with how social structures affect the semantics of registers, and Hasan's work is concerned with that semantic variation.

[2] The implication here is that Martin cannot devise an ideology system until Hasan has provided one that he can alter.

[3] This is misleading.  It misrepresents the work of Hasan and colleagues on semantic variation as framed within Martin's model of ideology.

[4] Given that Martin locates fashions of meaning and coding orientations on a contextual plane of ideology, this misconstrues lower levels in the stratification hierarchy as the context of higher levels.  This is the opposite of what the hierarchy represents.

Misunderstanding Semantic Variation And Bakhtin

Martin (1992: 580):

[7.5]	Mother:	Don’t do that…Now look, you’ll get it all over me
	Peter:	(Laughs)
	Mother:	It’s not funny.  What’s funny about that? You do it again and I’ll whack you.

As Cloran points out this example nicely illustrates the variable nature of semantic styles as tendencies, not rules; the mother in 7:5 appeals to both an inherent consequence (You'll get it all over me) and a threat (I'll whack you) to control her son (the text is in Bakhtin's terms, dialogic — it realises more than one voice; his dialogism can thus be seen as a natural implication of any text based on semantic variation).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confuses variability in the linguistic realisation (semantic style) of one coding orientation with the different linguistic realisations (semantic variation) of different coding orientations.  The notion of a text as "based on" semantic variation derives from this misunderstanding.

[2] Martin's claim here is that because the mother uses two different linguistic realisations of her coding orientation to control her son's behaviour, the text realises more than one voice, and that this makes it dialogic in Bakhtin's terms.  This misunderstands the terms 'voice' and 'dialogic', as formulated by Bakhtin. The glossary provided in Bakhtin (1981: 434, 428, 426) clarifies the distinction between them, and how they differ from heteroglossia:

VOICE
This is the speaking personality, the speaking consciousness. A voice always has a will or desire behind it, its own timbre and overtones. Single-voiced discourse is the dream of poets; double-voiced discourse the realm of the novel. At several points Bakhtin illustrates the difference between these categories by moving language-units from one plane to the other — for example, shifting a trope from the plane of poetry to the plane of prose: both poetic and prose tropes are ambiguous [literally "double-meaninged"] but a poetic trope, while meaning more than one thing, is always only single-voiced. Prose tropes by contrast always contain more than one voice, and are therefore dialogised.

HETEROGLOSSIA
The base condition governing the operation of meaning in any utterance. It is that which insures the primacy of context over text. At any given time, in any given place, there will be a set of conditions — social, historical, meteorological, physiological — that will insure that a word uttered in that place and at that time will have a meaning different than it would have under any other conditions; all utterances are heteroglot in that they are functions of a matrix of forces practically impossible to recoup, and therefore impossible to resolve. Heteroglossia is as close a conceptualisation as is possible of that locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide; as such, it is that which a systematic linguistics must always suppress.

DIALOGISM
Dialogism is the characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia. Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole — there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others. Which will affect the other, how it will do so and in what degree is what is actually settled at the moment of utterance. This dialogic imperative, mandated by the pre-existence of the language world relative to any of its current inhabitants, insures that there can be no actual monologue. One may, like a primitive tribe that knows only its own limits, be deluded into thinking there is one language, or one may, as grammarians, certain political figures and normative framers of "literary languages" do, seek in a sophisticated way to achieve a unitary language. In both cases the unitariness is relative to the overpowering force of heteroglossia, and thus dialogism.

Misrepresenting Hasan

Martin (1992: 579):

Hasan's major innovation has been to base her study on semantic variables, essentially by conceptualising system networks as variable rules and coding her data on the basis of selections from delicately elaborated discourse semantic networks she devised.

Blogger Comment:

This is misleading.  The unwarranted intrusion of the word 'discourse' falsely implies that Hasan shares Martin's misconstrual of semantics as discourse semantics.  Hasan's networks are semantic networks.

Preparing To Misconstrue Bernstein's Codes As Ideology

Martin (1992: 576-7):

Basically Bernstein's suggestion […] is social class positions subjects to make meaning in distinctive ways depending on context.  Taking up Hallidays' (Thibault 1987: 620) terms quoted above, code "bifurcates" register, with the result that speakers from different classes (or generations, ethnicities and genders) construe context in different ways.  In Bernstein's own terms:

… I shall take the view that the code which the linguist invents to explain the formal properties of grammar is capable of generating any number of speech codes, and there is no reason for believing that any one language code is better than another in this respect. On this argument, language is a set of rules to which all speech codes must comply, but which speech codes are realised is a function of the culture acting through social relationships in specific contexts. (1971/1974: 197)

Without an interpretation of these divergent speech codes, or better, fashions of meaning, contextual theory does indeed run the danger of over-determining, homogenising and thereby reifying semiotic communities.  The notion of 'fashions of meaning' which has been used to relativise context here is based on work by Whorf who differentiated languages and cultures on the basis of different fashions of speaking …

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in terms of SFL theory, Bernstein's codes regulate the selection of meanings in the registers that realise situation types.  Halliday (1978: 67, 68):

In terms of our general picture, the codes act as determinants of register, operating on the selection of meanings within situation types: when the systemics of language — the ordered sets of options that constitute the linguistic system — are activated by the situational determinants of text (the field, tenor and mode […]), this process is regulated by the codes. …

It is important to avoid reifying the codes, which are not varieties of language in the sense that registers and social dialects are varieties of language. […] The code is actualised in language through register, the clustering of semantic features according to situation type. (Bernstein in fact uses the term ‘variant’, i.e. ‘elaborated variant’, to refer to those characteristics of a register that derive from the choice of code.) But the codes themselves are types of social semiotic, symbolic orders of meaning generated by the social system. Hence they transmit, or control the transmission of, the underlying patterns of a culture and subculture, acting through the primary socialising agencies of family, peer group and school.

[2] To be clear, in terms of SFL theory, Bernstein's 'fashions of speaking' are registerial varieties, at the level of semantics, as regulated by Bernstein's codes. Halliday (1978: 25):

The ‘fashions of speaking’ are sociosemantic in nature; they are patterns of meaning that emerge more or less strongly, in particular contexts, especially those relating to the socialisation of the child in the family.

[3] This misconstrues under-specifying as over-determining.

[4] This misconstrues under-specifying as homogenising.

[5] This misunderstands the meaning of 'reify'.  The meaning of reify is to convert into, or regard as, a concrete thing; that is, to metaphorically construe a phenomenon that is not a thing as a thing.  To claim that a community is not congruently a thing, is to claim that is either a quality, a process or a circumstance.  Of course, in using the word 'communities' Martin has construed the phenomenon as a thing himself.  On the basis of grammatical reactances, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 193) classify human collectives as things that are intermediate between conscious things and non-conscious semiotic things (institutions):

Human collectives: intermediate between conscious beings and institutions. These can function as Senser in figures of sensing of all kinds, including those embodying desideration; but they accept either singular or plural pronouns, and if singular pronominalise with it (e.g. the family says it is united/ the family say they are united).