Martin (1992: 519-20):
The potential source of confusion here has to do with the fact that genre-structured texts tend to be heavily nominalised, and through grammatical metaphor construct fields as thing-like, whether referring to activities or not. Abstract modes in other words interpret social reality through semiotic resources that in less abstract modes would be applied to things — texts are organised around semiotic space instead of experiential time or place.
Blogger Comments:
[1] This confuses ideational context (field) with ideational content (grammatical metaphor) of registers. The confusion is thus simultaneously along two theoretical dimensions: stratification and instantiation.
[2] The term 'abstract mode' confuses context (textual metafunction) with content (ideational metafunction). The confusion is thus simultaneously along two theoretical dimensions: stratification and metafunction.
[3] This confuses context (textual metafunction) with content (ideational metafunction — construing experience).
[4] The term 'social reality' blurs the distinction between ideational metafunction (construing experience as meaning) and the interpersonal metafunction (enacting intersubjective relations as meaning).
