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.

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

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.

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.

Addressing "The Central Problem In Marxist Theory" By Adding A More Abstract Level

Martin (1992: 575, 576):

In their interpretations of language, register and genre as semiotic systems, systemicists have generally attempted to model cultures as a whole — to generalise meaning potential across all imaginable texts… .  The problems with this are:

1. as noted above, this meaning potential is not evenly distributed across participants in a culture; and 

2. for a culture to survive, this meaning potential has to evolve.

These two problems are in fact closely related; it is the tensions produced by the unequal distribution of meaning potential that forces a culture to change.  This brings social semiotic theory face to face with the central problem in marxist [sic] theory: what is the nature of the dialectic between base and superstructure that facilitates and at the same time frustrates social change?  Even more to the point, from the perspective of a theory of linguistics as social action, how is it possible to intervene in a dialectic of this kind?  These are the questions that the communicative plane of ideology has been articulated to address.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading.  Theory–competent Systemicists do not distinguish register and genre from language and do not model them as systems.

[2] This confuses culture (context potential) with the language that realises it.  The confusion is thus along the dimension of stratification.

[3] Neither of these are problems for proposing a system of language potential.  On the one hand, the social distribution of language system variants is a further dimension to be added to the model, and on the other, the evolution of the language system is modelled in SFL theory (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 18) by phylogenesis in relation to the other two semogenic processes:

• logogenesis provides the material for ontogenesis which provides the material for phylogenesis, while
• phylogenesis provides the environment for ontogenesis which provides the environment for logogenesis.

[4] The claim here is that:

• it is the tensions produced by the unequal distribution of meaning potential that forces a culture to change

Leaving aside the possibility that there may be other factors that "force a culture to change", the implication here is that an equal distribution of meaning potential would reduce tensions, but by doing so, put an end to cultural change.

[5] On the basis of [4], the academic revolutionary is faced with the choice of either working for social inequity or working for cultural stagnation.

[6] The claim here is that adding another level of symbolic abstraction to Martin's stratification hierarchy will address two questions:

1. what is the nature of the dialectic between base and superstructure that facilitates and at the same time frustrates social change?
2. how is it possible to intervene in a dialectic of this kind?

It might be remembered that the following has also been promised (p546):

Discourses of generation, gender, ethnicity and class channel subjects in very different ways according to the coding orientations they enjoy. It is the responsibility of the plane of ideology to make the nature of this channeling clear, deconstructing the momentum and inherent contradictions which allow it to evolve.

Misrepresenting Martin (1992) On Register & Genre

Martin (1992: 575):

The register and genre theory reviewed and developed above represents systemic theory's attempts to model heteroglossia and dialogism; it does this by formulating register and genre as social semiotic systems realised through text, thereby providing an account not simply of how one text relates to another (cohesion across products) but in addition of how one text relates to all the texts that might have been (product in relation to system). …

The interpretation does however need to be qualified in two important respects — namely heterogeneity and semogensis [sic] (i.e. semiotic change). 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is doubly misleading.  Firstly, 'the register and genre theory reviewed and developed above' does not represent systemic theory's attempts.  On the contrary, it is inconsistent with SFL theory, and represents Martin's attempts only.  Secondly, 'the register and genre theory reviewed and developed above' does not model heteroglossia and dialogism.  On the contrary, what is claimed bears little or no relation to heteroglossia and dialogism; see further below.

[2] This is inconsistent, both with Martin's model and with SFL theory.

In terms of Martin's stratification model, register and genre systems are realised by the systems of language, not by text.  In this, Martin confuses the system and instance poles of the cline of instantiation.

In terms of SFL theory, it involves two confusions.  Firstly, the notion of register and genre systems confuses a midway point of variation on the cline of instantiation (register/genre/text type) with the system pole of the cline.  Secondly, it misconstrues the relation between system and text as realisation instead of instantiation.  (This in addition to the inconsistencies entailed by modelling varieties of language as context rather than language.)

[3] This is misleading in terms of both register and genre.  In terms of register, any chance of providing an account how one text relates to another is undermined by Martin's numerous misinterpretations of field, tenor and mode systems, as demonstrated in many previous posts.  In terms of genre, Martin merely provides two simple taxonomies of factual and story genres (text types).  Martin nowhere presents any account of how his formulation of register and genre relates one individual text to another.

[4] To be clear, in SFL theory, cohesion is not a relation between 'products' (texts).

[5] This is the opposite of what is true.  This is precisely what Martin's model does not do.  In SFL theory, the relation of texts to text potential — of instances to system — is modelled as the cline of instantiation.  Martin's model is inconsistent with the cline of instantiation, due to the fact that it misconstrues the midway point on the cline (register/genre), not as language, but as systems of context, and as such, as higher levels of symbolic abstraction than language.  This follows from not understanding either stratification or instantiation, as demonstrated many times in previous posts.

[6] To be clear, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18) identify three types of semogenic 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.

Misrepresenting Martin (1992)

Martin (1992: 574):

The first point that needs to be made is that the interpretation of language and context here is indeed multi-structural and polysystemic.  System/structure theory has been re-involved in the description on a number of different levels — rank, stratum and plane — most of which involve metafunctional diversity and so can be analysed simultaneously as particle, wave and prosody; in addition, synoptic and dynamic perspectives on text as system and text as process have been introduced.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, context is interpreted here as types of language, rather than as context, with the result that, being context, these types of language are not considered language.

[2] This is misleading, in that it overstates what has actually been done.  Almost none of the systems that Martin has provided specifies structural realisations.  This is partially disguised by the fact that some networks do include realisation statements; however, these merely provide textual instances of the feature.

• Of Martin's 49 discourse semantic system networks, across four metafunctions, only 4 specify structural realisations, and all are confined to the interpersonal metafunction.
• Of Martin's 11 register system networks, not one specifies any structural realisations; that is, no register structures are specified by register systems.
• Martin provides 0 genre systems — only taxonomies of types (factual and story genres); that is, no genre structures are specified by genre systems.

[3] This is misleading, in that it overstates what has actually been done.  Martin has not provided a rank scale for his planes of register and genre, and in the case of the stratum of discourse semantics, only one of the four metafunctional systems, the interpersonal, includes a rank scale: exchange and move.  The ranks discussed in the experiential dimension of discourse semantics — the clause and group — are ranks of a different stratum: lexicogrammar. 

[4] The level that does not involve metafunctional diversity is genre.  Metafunction is thus another dimension in which the model is inconsistent with the architecture of SFL theory, which follows from the misinterpretation of genre as context.

[5] To be clear, these are the favoured modes of structural realisation only, varying according to metafunction.  Significantly, these were introduced in the section on genre, the plane without metafunctional diversity. 

[6] This confuses text with language.  Text is only the instance pole of the cline of instantiation.  Language is the entire cline, from systemic potential to actual instance, with every point on the cline providing a different perspective.

'Text as system', therefore, is the instantial system; i.e. the system of an actual text, not the system of the language as a whole.  It is the instance viewed from the system pole.  Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384): 

If we look at logogenesis from the point of view of the system (rather than from the point of view of each instance), we can see that logogenesis builds up a version of the system that is particular to the text being generated: the speaker/writer uses this changing system as a resource in creating the text; and the listener/reader has to reconstruct something like that system in the process of interpreting the text — with the changing system as a resource for the process of interpretation. We call this an instantial system.

'Text as process', on the other hand, is the process of instantiation that occurs at the instance pole of the cline of instantiation during logogenesis.  As previously explained, Martin misconstrues 'process' as structure, the syntagmatic axis, "viewed dynamically".  That is, he confuses the instantiation of the system as instance with the axial realisation of the system as structure.

Misunderstanding Realisation

Martin (1992: 574):

In general terms Firth privileged text over system (see Halliday's comments in Thibault 1987: 603) and it was left to Halliday to develop system/process theory in a way that placed potential and actual on an equal footing, related through the dialectic of realisation. …

Setting aside for a moment the problems of formalising realisation as a dialectic, English Text has for the most part followed Halliday's lead in refusing to privilege either system or process.  The attention paid to system however does run the risk of being read as involving an over-deterministic interpretation of language, register and genre as homogeneous systems.  This (mis)reading needs to be seriously addressed.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands the relation between potential and actual, which is instantiation, not realisation.

[2] This misunderstands the notion of realisation.  Realisation is an intensive identifying relational process that relates different levels of symbolic abstraction.  It is the relation, for example, between strata, on the one hand, and between axes, on the other.

It also misunderstands the notion of dialectic, which refers to the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions. Its synonyms include reasoning, argumentation, contention, logic; discussion, debate, dialogue, logical argument.

[3] The notion of "formalising realisation as a dialectic" is therefore nonsensical, at best.

formalising (‘making formal’)		realisation	as a dialectic
Process: relational	Attribute	Carrier	Rôle: guise

[4] There is a concealed confusion here, in as much as Martin (1992) uses the term 'process' to mean structure, viewed dynamically, rather than the process of instantiation.  In terms of system vs structure, SFL theory, as the name implies, does give priority to system.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 49):

Giving priority to the view ‘from above’ means that the organising principle adopted is one of system: the grammar is seen as a network of interrelated meaningful choices. In other words, the dominant axis is the paradigmatic one: the fundamental components of the grammar are sets of mutually defining contrastive features.

[5] To be clear, SFL theory maps out the dimensions of language as a resource of choices for making meaning.

[6] Here diatypic varieties of language, register and genre, are again presented as not being language.

Asserting The Opposite Of What Is True

Martin (1992: 573):

The general point here is that single plane models of context tend to introduce additional complexity to handle the contextual variables distributed among field, tenor, mode and genre by English Text.  So the cost of recognising two connotative semiotics instead of one is not as high as it might initially appear.

Blogger Comments:

This is the conclusion of Martin's "argument" for the theoretical superiority of his stratification hierarchy over Halliday's original model, and it is clearly the opposite of what is true.

[1] As the previous six posts have demonstrated, Martin's model is more complex, not less complex than Halliday's model, but more importantly, its complexity arises from misunderstandings of the theoretical architecture of SFL, principally stratification and instantiation.  This has resulted in a model that is inconsistent both with the theoretical architecture and also with itself.

Furthermore, in the course of his argument, Martin has been prepared to misrepresent the work of both Halliday and Hasan in order to invent non-existent problems, which he purports to solve with his model.  As the previous posts demonstrate, each of Martin's "solutions" involves the creation of additional theoretical consistencies.

[2] The principal defect in Martin's bi-stratal model of context is, of course, that it is not a model of context.  Register and genre refer to language, not to context, and in SFL theory, they are complementary perspectives on diatypic variation.

With respect to register, Martin's misunderstanding arises from mistaking the contextual systems that identify registers — field, tenor and mode — for systems of registers themselves.  This in turn arises from Martin not understanding the principle of stratification: as levels of symbolic abstraction related by realisation (as demonstrated many times in previous critiques).

With respect to genre, Martin's misunderstanding arises from mistaking Hasan's generic structure potentials for potentials 'at the level of genre'.  For Hasan, they are structural potentials at the level of semantics which vary according to genre (text type/register).

In conclusion, because Martin confuses semogenesis (all strata make meaning) with stratification, his strata of register and genre are — ignoring internal inconsistencies — both focused on linguistic meaning; that is, both strata are theoretical relocations and rebrandings of semantics.