Misunderstanding Homophoric Reference As Its Opposite

Martin (1992: 122-3):

Generic reference is not treated as a type of homophora because definite and indefinite articles function as alternative realisations (cf. the discussion of the realisation of deserts in [3:16] above); generic reference depends on knowledge of the language and culture as a whole, not knowledge of the relevant cultural context.  Note the contrast between [3:51] and [3:52]: generic reference does not presume the identity of the manager of a particular company the way homophoric reference does.

GENERIC
[3:51]      The/a manager functions as a kind of supervising executive…

HOMOPHORIC
[3:52]      Will you please put me through to the manager right away?

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands homophoric reference.  As the term homophora suggests, this is reference that is 'self-pointing', and so self-specifying.  Halliday & Hasan (1976: 71) use it for exophoric reference that 'does not depend on a specific situation'.  Here Martin misinterprets it to mean the exact opposite.

[2] Here again, inconsistent with the functional model of SFL theory, Martin takes the view 'from below' (realisations) instead of the perspective 'from above'.

[3] To be clear, the indefinite article does not function as a reference item, since it does not signal that the identity of an item is recoverable.  As previously explained, one source of Martin's confusion in this regard is his confusion of nominal group (interpersonal) deixis with textual reference.

[4] This demonstrates that Martin is concerned with reference in the sense of ideational denotation ("the realisation of deserts"), not in the sense of textual reference and the signalling of identifiability.  The confusion is primarily one of metafunction.

[5] Here Martin makes the same contrast as his source, Halliday & Hasan (1976), and justifies his rebranding of their terms by misinterpreting one of theirs:

	Halliday & Hasan (1976)	Martin (1992)
situationally specific	exophoric	homophoric
not situationally specific	exophoric: homophoric	generic

Reasoning 'From Below' Instead Of 'From Above' And A Self-Contradiction

Martin (1992: 122):

The analysis being presented here needs to be contrasted with that of Halliday and Hasan (1976: 71-4) who treat homophoric reference as a type of exophora, and who classify generic reference realised by the as a kind of homophora.  Homophora is distinguished from exophora/endophora here because its realisation includes the class of proper names, which class is not used exophorically or endophorically; in other respects the realisation of homophora, exophora and endophora overlaps.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is reasoning 'from below', in terms of realised forms, instead of 'from above', in terms of the function realised.  This is inconsistent with a functional model of language, where priority is given to the view 'from above' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 49).

[2] As previously explained, the notion of proper names "referring" confuses ideational denotation for textual reference.  The confusion is thus one of metafunction.  On the other hand, even in its own terms, Martin's claim that proper names are "not used exophorically" — i.e. 'pointing outward from the text' — is inconsistent with his claim on the previous page (p121):

As noted above, proper names regularly depend on information retrieved from the context of culture.

Misconstruing Context As Language And Material Setting Instead Of Culture [updated]

Martin (1992: 122):

Where participants are not inherently given, reference must be made to the context of situation, which can be divided into two parts: verbal (co-text) and non-verbal.  Technically reference to the co-text is referred to as endophora and reference to the non-verbal context as exophora.

Blogger Comment:

[1] This again confuses ideational denotation with textual reference.  Reference is concerned with  a type of textual status, identifiability, not with the experiential identity of participants.  The confusion is one of metafunction.

[2] This misunderstands the context of situation as

• instance of language (co-text) and 
• its material setting.

To be clear, the context of situation is an instance of the culture that is realised by an instance of language (text).  Context and language are different levels of symbolic abstraction.

[3] To be clear, 'exophoric reference means that the identity presumed by the reference item is recoverable from the environment of the text' and 'enodophoric reference means that the identity presumed by the reference item is recoverable from within the text itself – or, to be more precise, from the instantial system of meanings created as the text unfolds' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 624-5).

Misunderstanding Homophoric Reference And Context Of Culture

Martin (1992: 121-2):

As noted above, proper names regularly depend on information retrieved from the context of culture. The definite article is commonly phoric in this way as well, presuming information available through membership in communities of any size. Some typical examples are presented below, scaled with respect to the size of the community involved.

examples of reference to the context of culture (homophora)

[community]	[homophoric nominal group]
English speakers	the sun, the moon
nations	the president, the governor
states	the premier, the Department of Education
businesses	the managing director, the shareholders
offices	the secretary, the photocopier
families	the car, the baby, the cat

Technically, reference of this kind is referred to as homophora. It is used when interlocutors' membership in a particular community means that certain participants can be treated as inherently "given".

Blogger Comments:

[1] There are several confusions here.  Firstly, proper names are not reference items, since they do not present an item as identifiable; instead, they present an identity.  Here Martin again misconstrues textual reference as ideational denotation.  Secondly, the meaning denoted by a proper name is semantic, not contextual.  Thirdly, context of culture and text are at opposite poles of the cline of instantiation, the former being potential that is realised by language as potential, the latter being an instance of language that realises an instance of context: a context of situation.

[2] This misunderstands homophoric reference.  As the term makes plain, 'homophoric' means self-pointing; that is 'self-specifying; there is only one – or at least only one that makes sense in the context' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 631).

[3] To be clear, the size of the community is irrelevant to any of the points being made.

[4] This confuses human collectives (actual language users) with context of culture (cultural potential realised by language potential).

[5] This confuses the reference item (the) with the grammatical domain in which it is located.

[6] This is misleading.  The referential function of the non-specific demonstrative (the) depends on how it it used in a text.  The reference of all of these examples may exophoric, including homophoric, but it may also be endophoric: anaphoric or cataphoric.    To be clear, only endophoric reference is cohesive.

Confusing Material Setting And Context Of Situation [updated]

Martin (1992: 121):

These orientations [situation vs community] can be systematised as follows.  Adapting Malinowski's terms, a distinction can be drawn between context of culture and context of situation.  Context of situation refers here to relevant information that can be perceived (seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelled), including text; context of culture embraces relevant information which cannot be perceived, but which can be assumed because of shared knowledge among interlocutors deriving from their membership in some definable community.

Blogger Comment:

[1] The relation between 'situation' and 'community' — even on Martin's understanding of these terms — is not the same relation as that between 'context of situation' and 'context of culture', as will be demonstrated below.

[2] Here Martin fails to inform the reader that Malinowski's terms had already been introduced into SFL theory by Halliday; see, for example, Halliday & Hasan (1985/9: 5-7).  In doing so, Martin thus falsely presents the work of others as his own.

In SFL theory, 'context' is the culture modelled as a semiotic system, whose expression plane includes language — a connotative semiotic in Hjelmslev's (1961) terms.  Language realises context; context is a higher level of symbolic abstraction than language.

The relation between 'context of culture' and 'context of situation' is instantiation, with the former constituting the 'system pole' of the cline of instantiation, and the latter constituting the 'instance pole'.  In other words, a 'situation' is a instance of 'culture' as potential, where both are conceived of as semiotic, not material.

[3] The material phenomena that can be perceived by interlocutors are features of the material setting.  Any such phenomena only feature in the semiotic context of situation if they figure as an instance of the culture that is realised by the (instance of) language of the interlocutors.

[4] This blurs an important distinction.  To be clear, the 'surrounding' text is the co-text, and so is language that realises context, not context itself.  On the other hand, instances of culture realised in any ancillary texts, as in a teaching situation, can feature in the semiotic context of situation.

[5] To be clear, the 'context of culture' is the cultural potential that can be realised in the meaning potential that is language.

__________

Importantly, 374 pages later in this work, these inconsistencies are further compounded when Martin (p495) reinterprets context of situation as register and context of culture as genre.  The absurdity of substituting two perspectives on functional varieties of language (register and genre) for opposite poles of the instantiation cline for context (situation and culture) can be made clear by substituting the later terms for the terms introduced above, yielding:

Register refers here to relevant information that can be perceived (seen, heard, felt, tasted, smelled), including text; genre embraces relevant information which cannot be perceived, but which can be assumed because of shared knowledge among interlocutors deriving from their membership in some definable community.