Misrepresenting Hasan's Cohesive Harmony

Martin (1992: 433):

The limitations of this procedure should perhaps be stressed again at this point.  First, cohesive harmony is a measure of texture, which is just one aspect of textual unity; it does not account for unity deriving from register and genre.  Second, cohesive harmony is a measure of experiential texture; it has not been developed to the point where it takes into account the interaction of strings and chains with interpersonal, textual and logical structure.  Third, cohesive harmony focusses on componential cohesion; it does not treat organic relations realising CONJUNCTION and NEGOTIATION.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Cohesive harmony is not a measure of texture.  According to Halliday (1994: 334), the resources that give texture to a piece of discourse are those of the textual metafunction — both structural (thematic and information) and cohesive (reference, ellipsis-&-substitution, conjunction and lexical cohesion).

Hasan's (1985: 94) cohesive harmony, on the other hand, as developed at that time, is concerned with the harmony between the 'outputs' of two metafunctions: the textual and the experiential:

The output of the textual function are the chains and the interactions; the outputs of the experiential function at the rank of clause and group is what the interaction is built upon.  Thus cohesive harmony is an account of how the two functions find their expression in one significant whole.

[2] According to Hasan (1985: 52):

The unity in any text … is of two major types:

• unity of structure 

• unity of texture.

Her chapter on unity of text structure (1985: 52-69) discusses this in relation to context — which Martin misconstrues as register — on pages 54-9, in relation to genre on pages 59-68, and in relation to both on pages 68-9.  On Hasan's model, genre (= register) is concerned with textual identity (Hasan 1985: 97, 110).

[3] Cohesive harmony is not a measure of "experiential" texture.  See the clarification in [1] above.

[4] More accurately, as Hasan (1985: 94) put it:

No doubt the concept of cohesive harmony can be further refined by bringing the logical and interpersonal functions into the picture.

Textual structures are already included in the model; see [5] below.

[5] Cohesive harmony does include the organic relations of non-structural cohesion — Hasan's conjunctives, adjacency pairs and continuatives — but as Hasan makes clear (Hasan 1985: 85), she doesn't discuss these, or textual structures, for reasons of time and space:

I shall ignore instantial lexical cohesion, all organic relations, and all forms of structural cohesion.  This is not because they are less important, but because time and space are limited.

Conclusion:

This extract from Martin (1992) is intended as the first part of a critique of Hasan's cohesive harmony, as a prelude to introducing his own version.  As can be seen from the clarifications above, it is merely a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Hasan (1985).

The Problem Of Overlapping Lexical Strings And Reference Chains

Martin (1992: 427):

The problem of overlapping strings and chains can be illustrated with respect to the domicile string in [6:33] which overlaps with two distinct reference chains, one identifying the castle and one identifying the cottage:

domicile string:

castle–castle–home–woods–cottage–inside–home–inside

domicile chains:

a castle–the castle–the woods

this little cottage–there–here

The strategy adopted here to overcome this difficulty will be to analyse cohesive harmony from the point of view of reference chains as far as people, places and things are concerned and from the point of view of lexical strings for actions and qualities.  The strategy it must be noted has strong effects on the kind of string/chain interaction recognised for a text.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This nicely illustrates how the 'problem' of overlapping lexical strings and reference chains arises directly from Martin's misunderstanding of the cohesive system of reference.

As previously explained, the overlapping of Martin's lexical strings and reference chains arises from Martin's discourse semantic system of identification — 'the semantics of reference' — confusing two distinct types of cohesion, reference and lexical cohesion, largely as a consequence of confusing the referent with the system of reference. See previous critiques here, here, here, here and here.

[2] In SFL theory, reference is a cohesive system for marking the textual status of an element as identifiable (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 550). There are two types: co-reference (personal or demonstative) and comparative (general or specific).  Reference is a grammatical cohesive system, rather than a lexical cohesive system.  Here, because of the confusion explained in [1], Martin has included lexically cohesive relations in his reference chain, which thus accounts for the string/chain overlap.

[3] On the basis of what was said above, this amounts to arbitrarily splitting up lexical cohesion into two kinds of cohesive links, and mistaking one of them for grammatical reference.

[4] The consequences for this arbitrary division are less dire when it is understood that strings and chains are actually both largely concerned with lexical cohesion.

Misconstruing Enhancement As Elaboration And Misidentifying Metaphor

Martin (1992: 425, 427):

Notes on analysis:

(i) home and work are taken as places in this analysis to show their relationship to the domicile string; they could just as well have been treated as elaborations of the Process coming (home is so treated in the action strings below). …

Notes on the analysis:

(i) dead is taken as a metaphorical realisation of the action "die", and so worked into the "living" string here.

(ii) home is treated as a locative elaboration of the Process coming (cf. its treatment as a place in the place string above).

(iii) name is taken as a metaphorical realisation of the action "name", and so taken [as] a repetition of named in [6:33:a].

Blogger Comment:

[1] In SFL theory, Location circumstances are related to the nucleus (Process/Medium) by enhancement, not elaboration.  These are the clauses involved:

The next morning	she	ran away	from home
Location: temporal: rest	Medium	Process	Location: spatial: motion: away from

Meanwhile	the seven dwarfs	were coming	home	from work
	Medium	Process	Location: spatial: motion: towards	Location: spatial: motion: away from

[2] These are not instances of grammatical metaphor, but in any case, it isn't necessary to regard them as such for the purpose of analysing lexical cohesion — the lexical strings of Martin's discourse semantic ideation.

The clause featuring dead is an intensive attributive clause, congruently realising a figure of ascriptive being–&–having:

because	her parents	were	dead
	Carrier	Process: intensive	Attribute

The clauses featuring name are intensive identifying clauses, congruently realising figures of identifying being–&–having:

what	is	your name
Token/Identified	Process: intensive	Value/Identifier

my name	is	Snow White
Value/Identified	Process: intensive	Token/Identifier