Saturday 18 April 2015

Misrepresenting Texture [New]

Martin (1992: 26):
Chapter 6 then looks at the ways in which the discourse structures generated by these systems interact systematically with lexicogrammatical structures (the question of texture).


Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin's notion that the discourse semantic stratum and the lexicogrammatical stratum "interact" derives from his misunderstanding (e.g. p390) of strata as modules. Importantly, strata are not modules, but different levels of symbolic abstraction, and to claim that they interact is analogous to claiming that Hamlet and the actor playing him interact.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory 'texture' refers to the property of being a text (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 2), and it is created by the textual resources of the lexicogrammar: the systems of THEME, INFORMATION and COHESION (Halliday 1985: 313-4). That is, texture is not a question of semantic structures interacting with lexicogrammatical structures.

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