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.

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).

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.

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).

Misconstruing Heteroglossia And Dialogism As System And Process

Martin (1992: 574-5):

Like Firth, Bakhtin was interested in the heterogeneous nature of speech communities (for which he developed the notion of heteroglossia); and like Firth he saw this heterogeneity manifested in all texts (for which he developed the notion of dialogism*, using the metaphor of dialogue to capture the sense in which different voices converse as texture).

* Endnote #30 (p590):

The distinction between heteroglossia and dialogism in Bakhtin's writing is unclear; here heteroglossia is associated with system and dialogism with process.  Bakhtin himself however did not work with the Hjelmslevian notion of system and process, and was unlikely to have developed an opposition of this kind in light of his objections to Saussure's opposition of langue and parole.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misrepresents Bakhtin and misunderstands his notion of heteroglossia.  According to the glossary in Bakhtin (1981: 428), 'heteroglossia' is the notion that the same wording has different meanings according to context:

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.

[2] This misrepresents Bakhtin and misunderstands his notion of dialogism.  According to the glossary in Bakhtin (1981: 426), 'dialogism' is the notion that all utterances are made in the context of other utterances, with which they interact:

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.

[3] To be clear, in SFL theory, texture is the property of being a text (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 2).

[4] The distinction between heteroglossia and dialogism in Bakhtin's writing is made clear by an appended glossary (Bakhtin (1981: 423-34).

[5] Here Martin maps his misunderstanding of heteroglossia onto the SFL notion of system, and his misunderstanding of dialogism onto the SFL notion of process.  Further complexity is added to these misunderstandings and inconsistencies when it is remembered that Martin has throughout misinterpreted the SFL notion of process — the instantiation of the system in the instance — as the axial realisation of system in structure, as demonstrated in previous posts.

[6] Bakhtin would not have associated heteroglossia with system and dialogism with process because such a mapping is wildly inconsistent with each pair of oppositions.

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.

Why Martin Prefers His Own Model To Hasan's

Martin (1992: 572):

English Text's preferred position is to treat mode differences as simply difference in mode and to derive all text types from genre networks elaborated along the lines illustrated above.  These networks are in a sense systemic formulations of what Hasan's [sic] refers to as a culture's "array of existing conventions".  The model suggests however that these arrays are relevant for all genres, not just those constitutive in mode.  This avoids the problems inherent in Hasan's apparently materialist reading of context, which leads her to derive some texts from their context of situation and others with respect to their cultural heritage.  The ancillary/constitutive opposition is in any case a cline, which creates considerable uncertainty about how to model context for texts in 'middling' modes.

Blogger Comments:

[1] A preferred position is not a reasoned argument; it is merely a stance, an attitude, a pose.

[2] This is doubly misleading.  On the one hand, it falsely implies that Hasan does not "treat mode differences as simply difference in mode", and on the other hand, it falsely implies that Martin does.  As previously explained here, Martin allocates the mode system of medium to his register and the system of rhetorical mode to his genre.  In SFL theory, mode is a system of context, whereas register and genre are complementary perspectives on functional (diatypic) varieties of language.

[3] This is also doubly misleading.  

Firstly, the comparison here is with Hasan's model.  The discussion of Hasan's work focused on deriving text structures.  Here Martin offers his alternative "preferred position" but in doing so switches to deriving text types.  That is, it does not address the issue he raised about Hasan's model, and yet purports to be offering a better alternative.

Secondly, the reason Martin has switched from deriving text structures to deriving text types is to divert attention away from the fact that he has not devised any genre systems for deriving text structures — merely given excuses for not doing so; see here.  He has however provided small taxonomies of factual genres (Fig. 7.26) and story genres (Fig. 7.27), neither of which, of course, generates structures.

[4] This is a false claim.  Martin's taxonomy merely classifies types of story in terms of a few semantic features.  It provides no information about the conventions of text (semantic) structure associated with specific types.

[5] This is also doubly misleading.  On the one hand, it falsely implies that Hasan claimed these were relevant to constitutive mode, and on the other hand, it falsely implies that Hasan claimed these were relevant only to constitutive mode.  As Hasan (1984: 78) pointed out with regard to this "array of existing conventions":

But to say that the structure of a nursery tale is controlled by artistic conventions is to explain nothing …

[6] The claims here are that:

• Hasan's model of context is materialist;
• it is this materialist perspective that 'leads her to derive some texts from their context of situation and others with respect to their cultural heritage; and
• Martin's model avoids such problems inherent in Hasan's model.

All three claims are, of course, false.  This can be demonstrated as follows.

[a] Firstly, it is not true that Hasan's model of context is materialist.  Hasan uses Halliday's model of context, which conceives as context as the culture as a semiotic system.  In contrast, as previously demonstrated, Martin has used the term 'context' to refer to:

• material setting,
• co-text,
• register (diatypic variety of language viewed from the system pole),
• genre (diatypic variety of language viewed from the instance pole).

Materialism is clearly anathema to Martin, despite the fact that he doesn't understand what it is.  Here's one definition:

Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are results of material interactions.

By way of contrast with Martin, Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 609) clarify the philosophical underpinning of SFL theory as materialist in this sense:

… we are prepared to acknowledge a broadly materialist position …

[b] Secondly, it is untrue that a materialist perspective of context leads Hasan 'to derive some texts from their context of situation and others with respect to their cultural heritage'.  There are three untruths here, in addition to the false claim about Hasan's perspective being materialist:

• a materialist perspective — since this is Martin's misrepresentation — is thus not the reason for Hasan's two methods of analysis;
• Hasan does not "derive" texts, but text structures — Martin's omission of 'structure' misleadingly invites the interpretation as 'text type', on the basis of the preceding co-text; and
• Hasan does not "derive" text structures "with respect to their cultural heritage" — but from the semantic features of such texts, as explained in the previous post.

[c] Thirdly, it is untrue that Martin's model avoids the problems inherent in Hasan's model.  This also doubly misleading.  On the one hand, the "problems" in Hasan's model are not problems, but misrepresentations and misunderstandings on Martin's part, as demonstrated above and in the previous post.  On the other hand, Martin's model lacks what Hasan's model provides, since, unlike Hasan's, it does not account for text structures; it is merely a taxonomy of text types (genres).

[7] The claim here is that because ancillary vs constitutive opposition is a matter of degree — modelled as a cline — it "creates considerable uncertainty about how to model context for texts in 'middling' modes" when using Hasan's model.  Martin's confusions here are threefold:

• the mode system cline is a way of modelling context;
• Hasan is concerned with modelling the structural potential (semantics) of text types — i.e. language — not context;
• uncertainty does not arise, because both of Hasan's methods can be used for determining the structural potential of text types that realise intermediate values on the mode cline.

Consequently, on this fourth tendered piece of evidence, Martin's claim that his model of register and genre avoids additional complications in Halliday's (and Hasan's) model is the exact opposite of what is true.

∞

The number of untruths here, so efficiently packed into such a small passage of text, amply justifies the type of assessment made by Peter Medawar (1961) of another author:

its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.

Why Martin Prefers His Own Model To Halliday's

Martin (1992: 571):

Before turning to the plane of ideology, the question of distinguishing register and genre as semiotic planes will be taken up once again with reference to the work of Halliday, Hasan and Longacre, none of whom "stratify" context along these lines.  Their models can each be shown however to involve additional complexity that the genre and register model here avoids.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is the beginning of Martin's argument as to why his model of register and genre as contextual planes is preferable to (his misunderstanding of) Halliday's original model in which genre and register are construed, instead, as complementary perspectives on varieties of language.

[2] It will be demonstrated in the following posts that this is the opposite of what is true.  That is, it will be demonstrated that Martin's model is more complex, as well as being inconsistent with several dimensions of the architecture of SFL theory.  It will also be demonstrated that Martin misrepresents the work of Halliday and Hasan in the course of his argument.

Weaving An Illogical Argument Around A Misinterpretation Of Halliday

Martin (1992: 570):

Probably the main theoretical weakness as far as modelling [the system of genres that constitute our context of culture] is concerned lies in interpreting both system and process as what might metaphorically be referred to as "negotiation".  This stems in part from a fundamental weakness in the dynamic modelling of the exchange; but it projects from there onto difficulties in dealing with tenor (the ways in which interlocutors treat in status, contact, affect), with genre (the interplay through which participants consummate, frustrate or abandon a genre) and on to ideology where tension among coding orientations vies with power, deprivation and systemic inertia to engender evolution.  As Halliday comments in Thibault (1987):

I would interpret the power relations in a particular situation, when we represent that situation in terms of field, tenor and mode, by building into our representation that fact that the situation may be different things for different interactants.  The total picture is obviously going to bring in all angles; but in any typical context of situation in which there is a power relationship of inequality, then the configuration embodied in that situation is different from the way it is seen from either end.  This means, of course, that the register that is being operated by the interactants will be bifurcated, although we may choose to characterise the register of the situation as a whole by building in both strands.  (1987: 620-1)

It remains to develop ways of building in "both strands" that show how text negotiates with system, and different systems with each other; lacking a model of this metasystemic dynamism, contextual theory remains dangerously incomplete.

Blogger Comments:

[1] The main theoretical weakness, as far as modelling "the system of genres that constitute our context of culture" is concerned, actually lies in Martin's confusion of context potential (context of culture) with language sub-potentials (genres/text types/registers), as explained in previous posts.  There has since appeared an entire book devoted to promoting this misunderstanding: Genre Relations: Mapping Culture (Martin & Rose 2008).

[2] This confuses potential (system) and the instantiation of potential (process) with interpersonal semantics, the system–&–process whereby interlocutors enact intersubjective relations as meaning.  Note that Martin's argument is that it is this interpretation that is the main theoretical weakness as far as modelling genre systems is concerned.

probably	the main theoretical weakness	lies in	[[interpreting both system and process as [[ what might metaphorically be referred to as "negotiation"]] ]]
	Identified / Value	Process: relational	Identifier / Token

[3] The claim here is that the source (cause) of this theoretical weakness — the (mis)interpretation — is a fundamental weakness in the dynamic modelling of interpersonal semantics.

this	in part	stems from	a fundamental weakness [in the dynamic modelling [of the exchange] ]
Identified / Token	Manner: degree	Process: relational: causal: reason	Identifier / Value

[4] The claim here is that the theoretical weakness — the (mis)interpretation — extends to difficulties in modelling tenor, genre and ideology.

[simplified]

it	projects	from there onto difficulties [[[in dealing with tenor …  genre … ideology … ]]]
Carrier	Process: relational: spatio-temporal	Attribute: circumstantial

[5] This misunderstands Halliday.  The Halliday quote is concerned with the question of modelling contexts in which two interlocutors see the same situation as different configurations of field, tenor and mode.  These are the two strands that Halliday refers to.

[6] There can be no such "negotiation".  Text and system are the same phenomenon viewed from opposite poles of the cline of instantiation.