Confusing Stratification With Instantiation: Register And Genre [Revised]

Martin (1992: 26):

Finally, in Chapter 7, a model of context will be built up by sketching in the connotative semiotics of register, genre and ideology.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Martin (p493) claims to be following Hjelmslev in his use of the notion of a connotative semiotic. However, for Hjelmslev (1943), a connotative semiotic is a semiotic system whose expression plane is a denotative semiotic system. Martin's model of context misunderstands Hjelmslev in two crucial respects.

Firstly, as will be seen, Martin misinterprets Hjelmslev's connotative semiotic as merely its content plane, excluding its expression plane, the denotative semiotic.

Secondly, as will be seen, Martin misinterprets functional varieties of a denotative semiotic, registers and genres of language, as connotative semiotics.

These basic theoretical inconsistencies invalidate Martin's model of stratified context.

In SFL Theory, register and genre (text type), as functional varieties of language, are modelled as language, not as context. This means that, as varieties, they are located at the midpoint on the cline of instantiation of language. Register is text type (genre), viewed from the system pole of the cline, whereas text type (genre) is register, viewed from the instance pole.

However, as will be seen, Martin's model of genre adds further to the theoretical inconsistencies by also encompassing the SFL notions of MODE (e.g. recount, anecdote etc.) and semantic structure (e.g. Orientation^Record^Reorientation).