Misrepresenting Stratification [Revised]

Martin (1992: 32-3):

Offers and Commands are grouped together by Halliday as proposals, Statements and Commands as propositions:

Semantically oriented labels of this kind highlight the meaning of the grammatical terms (in this case, their typical function in dialogue) and are used throughout Halliday (1985) to focus on the grammar as a functionally organised meaning making resource (rather than as a syntax or set of forms).  No attempt is made to distinguish stratally between grammar and meaning; rather the grammar in [sic] infused with meaning, and a stratal distinction between grammar and semantics [is] systematically blurred.  In this book however, an attempt will be made to unpick the boundary between grammar and semantics in a systemic functional interpretation of English and Halliday's relabelling provides a point of departure for stratifying the content plane, along the lines suggested in Chapter 1.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, having falsely claimed in Chapter 1 that stratifying the content plane is his own initiative, rather than Halliday's, before him, Martin now has to disguise the fact Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION is a semantic system.

[1] Martin's first deception here is to misrepresent Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION features — offer, command, statement, question — as "semantically oriented labels" of grammatical terms instead of semantic features. This deception is aided by his not acknowledging the name of this semantic system, since doing so would distinguish it from the grammatical system of MOOD.

[2] Martin's second deception here is to misrepresent Halliday's semantic SPEECH FUNCTION features as being of the same stratum as grammatical elements such as Theme, Subject, Actor etc. .

[3] Martin's third deception is to use the previous two deceptions to falsely claim that Halliday (1985) blurs the stratal distinction between grammar (e.g. MOOD) and semantics (e.g. SPEECH FUNCTION). 

[4] Martin's fourth deception is to misrepresent the grammar as "infused with meaning", as if, again, grammar (wording) and semantics (meaning) were of the same stratum of symbolic abstraction. As Halliday (1985: xvii) makes clear, a functional grammar interprets wording by reference to what it means:

The relation between the meaning and the wording is not, however, an arbitrary one: the form of the grammar relates naturally to the meanings that are being encoded. A functional grammar is designed to bring this out; it is a study of wording, but one that interprets the wording by reference to what it means.

[5] Martin's fifth deception is to use the previous deceptions to misrepresent himself as the first to distinguish grammar and semantics.

[6] Martin's sixth and final deception is to misrepresent Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION features — offer, command, statement, question — as Halliday's "relabelling" of his system of MOOD. This misrepresentation of Halliday's theorising then becomes the justification of Martin's own modus operandi, which is to relabel Halliday and Hasan's systems as his own. For example, Martin relabels

• Halliday's semantic SPEECH FUNCTION as Martin's discourse semantic NEGOTIATION,
• Halliday & Hasan's grammatical cohesive REFERENCE as Martin's discourse semantic IDENTIFICATION,
• Halliday & Hasan's grammatical cohesive CONJUNCTION as Martin's discourse semantic CONJUNCTION, and
• Halliday & Hasan's LEXICAL COHESION as Martin's discourse semantic IDEATION.