Misunderstanding The Use Of Reference In A Child's Text

Martin (1992: 94-5):

As suggested above, the tiger, this man and it seem to assume knowledge on the part of a general reader that s/he could not have.  Yet the tiger is realised in the same way as the zoo (the + noun); and the food is realised in the same way as the writer (pronominally).  Why is the zoo appropriate, but the tiger not?  Why I but not it?  Clearly, the answer is not a grammatical one as with Rhinocerous, which is not a well formed nominal group.  In the remainder of this chapter an attempt will be made to analyse the way in which participants are identified in English which gives a text-based answer to these questions.  As with NEGOTIATION and MOOD, the focus will be on how English is structured to refer to participants, not simply on how it is used to do so.

Blogger Comments:

The 7-year-old's text under discussion is:

[3:1] at the zoo
One day I went to the zoo and I saw Rhinocerous I moved to a Hippopotamus I touched him and he is hand and he is big and so I went on and I saw the tiger and this man was feeding him it was eating it up Mum tod me mv on and next came then a gorilla. I had a baby gorilla. Mum tod me to move on. I saw a watch. It was 5 ock. …

[1] To be clear, in SFL terms, the "knowledge" presumed is the recoverability of the identity of the referent.

[2] This is manifestly untrue.  The demonstratives of the tiger and this man both cohesively refer anaphorically to the title of the text at the zoo.  The only slight obstacle to the recoverability of the personal reference it is its anaphoric reference to the Process feeding rather than a 'food' participant.

[3] The concessive conditional relation (if P then contrary to expectation Q) marked by yet creates a non-sequitur; see further below.

[4] To be clear, the tiger and the zoo are instances of demonstrative reference, whereas I and it are instances of personal reference.

[5] The proposition that the tiger is "inappropriate" is manifestly untrue.  As pointed out in [2], the identity of the tiger is recoverable from its anaphoric reference to the title at the zoo.

[6] For the degree of "inappropriateness" of it, see [2] above.  Interestingly, given that Martin is here purportedly concerned with the semantics of (cohesive) reference, the reference of "appropriate" I is exophoric, and only indirectly cohesive.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 624-5):

Exophoric reference means that the identity presumed by the reference item is recoverable from the environment of the text… . Here the reference links the text to its environment; but it does not contribute to the cohesion of the text, except indirectly when references to one and the same referent are repeated, forming a chain.

[7] Here Martin betrays the fact that he thinks grammatical issues are merely a matter of "well-formedness".  This is the perspective of Chomskyan Formal linguistics and its grammaticality judgements.

[8] Martin's opposition of grammatical vs text-based misleadingly implies that the grammar is not "text-based".

[9] This foreshadows three of the fundamental errors that invalidate the theorising in this chapter:

• confusing nominal group deixis with cohesive reference;
• misconstruing cohesive relations as structural relations;
• confusing the textual resource for referring with the experiential meaning of the referent.

On Context "Independency"

Martin (1992: 93-4):

But reference of this kind is not really appropriate in written mode, where context independency is functional across most contexts.

Blogger Comments:

This confuses semiotic context with material setting.  In SFL theory, there is no "context independency" and so it is not "functional across most contexts", even in written mode.  The stratal relation between language and context is one of symbolic abstraction, such that language realises context.  In terms of semogenesis, language construes (intellectually constructs) its cultural context; the cultural context is construed by means of language.

Misunderstanding Grammatical Intricacy

Martin (1992: 93):

Consider then [3:1], written by a 7 year old in Sydney, Australia, after a class trip to the city zoo:

[3:1] at the zoo

One day I went to the zoo and I saw Rhinocerous I moved to a Hippopotamus I touched him and he is hand and he is big and so I went on and I saw the tiger and this man was feeding him it was eating it up Mum tod me mv on and next came then a gorilla. I had a baby gorilla.  My mum tod me to move on.  I saw a watch.  It was 5 ock. …

As far as CONJUNCTION is concerned the text makes use of "spoken" rather than "written" sentences; e.g. the "run-on" sentence I touched him and he is hand and he is big and so I went on and I saw the tiger and this man was feeding him (see Halliday 1985 on grammatical intricacy and spoken language).

Blogger Comments:

[1] Trivially, Martin misunderstands the situational context of the text.  This is a family outing, not a class trip, as shown by the presence of a parent and by the time of day.

[2] This is misleading.  As a characteristic of spoken MODE, Halliday's grammatical intricacy is concerned with structurally related clauses in clause complexes (logical metafunction: expansion and projection).  It is quite distinct from Halliday's conjunction, which is concerned with cohesively related messages (textual metafunction: expansion only).

As will be seen in the critiques of Chapter 4, Martin's conjunction is a misunderstanding of Halliday's cohesive conjunction, confused with misunderstandings of Halliday's logical relations between clauses, relocated from the textual and logical grammar to Martin's logical discourse semantics.

Martin's Problems With Explicitness [New]

Martin (1992: 90):

In this Chapter a general framework for analysing conversational structure has been proposed. Its focus was on the discourse semantics of MOOD, and so the discussion was restricted in several places to interpersonal meaning, setting aside as far as possible the logical, textual and experiential metafunctions. This is in accordance with the modular strategy to building up a picture of discourse semantics adopted in English Text. …

As is apparent, modularity poses problems of explicitness even within the interpersonal perspective adopted throughout Chapter 2. Investigating the complex interrelationships between the systems of TONE, MOOD, SPEECH FUNCTION and NEGOTIATION is a major task which has barely been broached here. …

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This again repeats Martin's misunderstanding of SFL Theory as 'modular' in its view of language, with the metafunctions and strata misconstrued as modules.

[2] This is potentially misleading, since it invites the reader to believe that a metafunctional approach to semantics is Martin's innovation, rather than the innovation of Halliday in formulating SFL Theory.

[3] This is misleading, because it is the direct opposite of what is true. On the one hand, the theoretical dimensions of metafunction and stratification provide the means of being very explicit within the theoretical architecture that they precisely specify. 

On the other hand, the "complex interrelationships" between the systems of TONE, MOOD, and SPEECH FUNCTION — and so NEGOTIATION — have already been "investigated" by Halliday. For example, the relation between MOOD, and SPEECH FUNCTION has been described in terms of congruent and metaphorical grammatical realisations of the semantic system features, and the relation between TONE and MOOD has been described in terms of the system of KEY. See, for example, Halliday (1985: 68-71, 342-5, 284-5).

Misunderstanding Stratification [New]

Martin (1992: 81):

As noted above, in general English Text prefers to distribute descriptive responsibility for text structure across phonology, lexicogrammar and the four different systems comprising the discourse semantics.

Blogger Comments:

This misunderstands stratification. To be clear, in SFL Theory, the text is a semantic unit, and text structure is thus the syntagmatic dimension of the semantic stratum. Lexicogrammar and phonology provide descriptions of lexicogrammatical and phonological structures, not text structure. The lexicogrammatical systems of cohesion do provide descriptions of realisations of textual cohesion, but not text structure.

Martin's four discourse semantic systems, on the other hand, are his rebrandings of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) systems of lexicogrammatical cohesion and developments of Halliday's semantic system of speech function.

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.

Conflating Content And Expression

Martin (1992: 76):

[The discussion] has dealt only minimally with intonation; whether this is treated as a meaning making resource in its own right following El-Menoufy (1988), as most delicate MOOD following Halliday (1967c), or as a direct coding of discourse structure following Brazil (1981), this omission is a serious one.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This again confuses semogenesis ('meaning making resource') with stratification ([realising] 'most delicate mood', 'coding of discourse structure').

[2] Halliday does not treat intonation as most delicate mood.  Intonation is a system in the rank scale of the phonological stratum (expression plane), whereas mood is a system of the lexicogrammatical stratum (content plane).

The interpersonal intonational system of tone realises the interpersonal lexicogrammatical system of key (more delicate mood), while the other intonational systems, tonicity and tonality, are resources of the textual metafunction.

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 142):

The tones are not, however, simply additional markers attached to the realisation of mood. They realise distinct grammatical systems of their own, which are associated with the mood categories. The general name for systems that are realised by tone is key.