Martin On Modularity, Realisation And Reddy's Conduit Metaphor [New]

Martin (1992: 77-8):

There is no reason in principle why these macro- and micro-perspectives should not complement each other and in time converge. For this synthesis to occur however it would be necessary for conversational analysts to make more explicit their position on a number of key issues:

a. MODULARITY — how many components will the model of conversation have?; and what role will language play in this modularity?

b. REALISATION — how are these different components related (by rank, strata, plane, metafunction etc.)?

c. TYPE OF STRUCTURE — what kinds of structure are adjacency pairs: univariate, multivariate or other?; is constituency or dependency representation appropriate?

d. ROLE OF GRAMMAR — will this be viewed as a meaning making module?; or will it be preferred to invoke the conduit metaphor (Reddy 1979)?

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, here Martin is viewing the work of conversational analysts in terms of the architecture proposed by SFL Theory.

[1] This again repeats Martin's misunderstanding of SFL Theory as 'modular' in its view of language. Importantly, metafunction and stratification are global dimensions of the theory (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 20, 32). Each are complementary perspectives on the same phenomenon. As different perspectives on the same phenomenon, they cannot "interact".

[2] This misunderstands realisation. To be clear, realisation is the (elaborating identifying) relation between different levels of symbolic abstraction, as between system and structure, between strata and between planes. 

The rank scale, on the other hand, is all of the same level of symbolic abstraction, grammatical form, and its organising principle, composition, is a type of extension, not elaboration.

Similarly, the metafunctions are not related as different levels of symbolic abstraction, but are different types of function that are distributed throughout the content plane.

[3] This again reflects Martin's confusion of semogenesis (meaning making) with stratification (grammar realising meaning).

[4] This is a false dichotomy, since the conduit metaphor is simply a view of grammatical forms as containers of meaning.

The conduit metaphor […] operates whenever people speak or write as if they "insert" their mental contents (feelings, meanings, thoughts, concepts, etc.) into "containers" (words, phrases, sentences, etc.) whose contents are then "extracted" by listeners and readers. Thus, language is viewed as a "conduit" conveying mental content between people.