Misconstruing Language Rôle As Speaker Rôle

Martin (1992: 520):

The accompanying texts are then distinguished according to whether the verbal action is that of participants in or observers of the social action.

Blogger Comment:

[1] Again, the use of the word 'texts' here betrays the ongoing confusion between text types (registers) and context (mode).  The confusion is thus along two theoretical dimensions simultaneously: stratification (context vs language) and instantiation (system vs instance type).

[2] The claim here is that the experiential rôle of the speaker, as participant or observer, is a distinction of mode.  This is inconsistent with the notion of mode — a system of the textual metafunction — as the part that language plays (not the speaker).  The confusion here is metafunctional.

Cf. the system of process sharing in Hasan (1985/9: 58):

The second factor to be considered under mode is that of PROCESS SHARING.  Is the addressee able to share the process of text creation as it unfolds, or does the addressee come to the text when it is a finished product?