Falsely Claiming That The Content Plane Was Not Stratified Before Martin (1992) [New]

Martin (1992: 15-6):

As we know, human languages elaborate these two strata in various ways: removing their experiential bias by adding foot and tone group ranks to the phonology, enabling the periodic and prosodic patterning characterising textual and interpersonal meaning; incorporating metafunctional layering in the grammar, of the different types discussed above; systematising combinations of words (groups) and reduced clauses (phrases) giving rise to an intermediate rank of group/phrase in the grammar (see Halliday 1985a:159); introducing morphology (eg. Hudson 1973), adding a rank below the word; providing for clause linkage (see Chapter 4) and so on. This raises the question of the point at which the grammar and phonology become saturated? When is stratification necessary within the content plane, especially given the extravagant approach to grammar pursued by systemic linguists as outlined above? Extravagant as systemic functional grammars are, they do run out of steam.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1]  This confuses language with metalanguage. To be clear, it wasn't human languages that elaborated these two strata in these specific ways but Halliday in his Systemic Functional theory of language.

[2]  This also confuses language with metalanguage. To be clear, any "experiential bias" is in theories of language that don't distinguish the different metafunctional modes of meaning.

[3] To be clear, the notion of a stratum becoming "saturated" or "running out of steam" is nonsensical, and derives from Martin's misunderstanding of the dimensions of SFL Theory as modules (pp 55, 77-8, 90, 268-9, 390, 488). The strata represent different views on language in terms of different levels of symbolic abstraction: 

• the semantic stratum is language viewed as meaning,
• the lexicogrammatical stratum is language viewed as wording
• the phonological stratum is language viewed as sounding.

Accordingly, all wording is located on the lexicogrammatical stratum, no matter how "saturated" it gets, and, since it alone is concerned with all of wording, no other stratum can be of assistance if it "runs out of steam".

[4] This is very misleading indeed, because here Martin falsely claims that the content plane is not already stratified into semantics and lexicogrammar, and that he will be the one to do so. Importantly, Martin knows that the content plane is already stratified, because it is explicitly stated in the principal source of his ideas: Halliday & Hasan (1976: 5):

Moreover, the earlier notion of grammatical metaphor depends on the content plane being stratified into semantics and lexicogrammar, and Martin uses Halliday's semantic system of SPEECH FUNCTION, rebranding it as his NEGOTIATION.

If John Bateman's review of Martin's English Text is any guide, then Martin has been successful in this deception. See

• On The Theoretical Value Of Martin's Stratification Of The Content Plane
• On "Martin's" Solidary Relationship Between Grammar And Semantics