Misrepresenting Information Structure

Martin (1992: 434):

Halliday is careful to distinguish Theme from Given, assigning distinct Theme ^ Rheme (realised by constituent sequence) and (Given) ° New structures (realised by intonation) to the English clause.  This is an essential step in understanding the difference between method of development (this section) and point (Section 6.3.3 below); without this distinction no adequate account of English texture can be provided.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, Given and New are not functional elements of clause structure.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 88):

[information] is a system not of the clause, but of a separate grammatical unit, the information unit. The information unit is a unit that is parallel to the clause and the other units belonging to the same rank scale as the clause: clause group/phrase word morpheme. Since it is parallel with the clause (and the units the clause consists of), it is variable in extent in relation to the clause and may extend over more than one clause or less than one clause; but in the unmarked case it is co-extensive with the clause.

[2] Because Martin does not understand that thematic and informational structures also contribute to texture in Halliday & Hasan's model — see Misrepresenting Hasan's Cohesive Harmony — the implication here is that their (original) model is therefore inadequate, but that his (derived) model, which will "add" them, is not.

Again, there is no reasoned argument, merely the declaration of an attitude, in this case negative appreciation: composition (no adequate).

Misrepresenting Hasan's Work On Coherence As Formalist

Martin (1992: 433):

As a final caveat the reasons for developing a measure of textual coherence need to be cautiously examined.  One might argue from the perspective of formal linguistics that just as the goal of a grammarian is to account for speakers [sic] intuitions about which sentences are grammatical, so the goal of the textlinguist is to account for intuitions about which texts are coherent.  But just as a functional grammarian would reject this delimitation of the goals of grammatical theory, so a functional discourse analyst might view accounting for a speaker's intuitions about coherent text with some suspicion.  Alternatively, one might pose questions about the effectiveness of a text in achieving it's [sic] interlocutors' social purpose.  This rhetorical perspective is likely to prove more appropriate as far as functional linguistics is concerned.  Or one might ask questions about a text's role in sustaining culture as a dynamic open system.  These points will be taken up again in Chapter 7 below.

Blogger Comments:

[1] The reason for raising formal linguistics here is to present Hasan's work as proceeding from Formalist (Cartesian, Chomskyan) principles and/or assumptions.  Martin introduced the word intuition in the previous paragraph and uses it three times in this paragraph in order to establish the collocation with Formal linguistics.  It is misleading in a number of ways.  To begin with, here is what Hasan (1985: 72, 86, 88) actually wrote:

The property of texture is related to the listener's perception of coherence.  Thus in common parlance, Example 5.1 would be described as possessing coherence while example 5.2 would be seen as lacking in coherence. …

Whenever I have presented these two texts to informants, they have unanimously agreed that text 5.2 is less coherent than 5.1… .  An explanation of what this judgement correlates with in patterns of texture is difficult to find, so long as grammatical and lexical cohesion are examined separately. …

…can the listener's perception of varying degrees of coherence between Texts 5.1 and 5.2 be correlated with differences in texture…?

A cautious examination of Hasan's work reveals that the purpose of the work on texture is to determine the linguistic correlates of the listeners' perception of coherence.  In Hasan's work, the data are instances of language (texts).  This is very distinct from the concerns of Formal semantics. In Formal semantics, it is intuitions about language that constitute the data.  As Martin Stokhof (2011 Intuitions And Competence In Formal Semantics) explains:

In formal semantics intuition plays a key role, in two ways. Intuitions about semantic properties of expressions are the primary data, and intuitions of the semanticists are the main access to these data.

[2] The implication here is that Hasan's work is not framed within the rhetorical perspective.  This is also misleading.  Here is what Hasan (1985: 96) actually wrote:

The infra-structure of all assumptions about co-operative acts of doing and saying is, in the last resort, social. The assumption of coherence can be sustained so well because human language has the resource for indicating coherence, while the nature of language as a resource has developed in a particular way because it has had to serve the needs of the community.  Our task is to understand the specific nature of these resources — not simply to hide behind the mind and the intention of particular speakers and listeners.

By way of clarification, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 415-6) characterise the two linguistic traditions in the following way:

We can identify two main traditions in Western thinking about meaning (see Halliday 1977):

(i) one oriented towards logic and philosophy, with language seen as a system of rules;

(ii) one oriented towards rhetoric and ethnography, with language seen as resource.

… Our own work here falls mainly within the second tradition — but we have taken account of the first tradition, and the general intellectual environment in which versions of our meaning base are being used also derives primarily from the first tradition. Indeed the two traditions can in many respects be seen as complementary, as contributing different aspects to the overall picture. Our own foundation, however, is functional.

[3] Incidentally, Martin provides no reasoned argument for or against the two linguistic perspectives, he merely expresses negative attitude (reject, suspicion) towards the Formalist tradition, and positive attitude (appropriate) towards the rhetorical tradition.

[4] In SFL theory, this is modelled by realisation, instantiation and semogenesis.  A text realising a context of situation (an instance of culture) unfolds at the instance pole of cline of instantiation during logogenesis, each text nudging the probabilities of its register and the overall linguistic potential, and each context of situation nudging the probabilities of the situation type and the overall culture as potential.  And, as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18) put it, logogenesis provides material for ontogenesis, which provides material for phylogenesis (with phylogenesis providing the environment for ontogenesis, and this for logogenesis).

Conclusion:

This extract from Martin (1992) is intended as the third and final part of a critique of Hasan's cohesive harmony, as a prelude to introducing his own version. As can be seen from the clarifications above, it is merely a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Hasan (1985).

Presenting Misunderstandings Of Hasan's Cohesive Harmony As Deficiencies In The Model

Martin (1992: 433):

All this means that it is in principle possible to take a text and re-arrange it in any of the following ways without affecting cohesive harmony:

(i) Change the order of any two elements of the generic structure. 

(ii) Weave the strings and chains realised as Subject or Theme into Residue or New. 

(iii) Reverse the sequence of selected pairs of messages or moves.

Any of these disintegrating manœuvres would affect interlocutor's intuitions about the coherence of a text, which is simply to underscore the linguistic (as opposed to contextual), experiential (as opposed to interpersonal, textual and logical) and componential (as opposed to organic) bias in cohesive harmony analysis.

Blogger Comments:

[1] None of this is true; see the previous post.  All of these entail changes in the texture — the structural (thematic and informational) and non-structural (cohesion) resources of the textual metafunction, which in turn affects the cohesive harmony between the textual and experiential metafunctions.

[2] Here Martin presents his misunderstandings of cohesive harmony as a deficiency in the model itself; see the previous post and the next three points below.

[3] Cohesive harmony does not have a linguistic (as opposed to contextual) bias. Cohesive harmony is linguistic, not contextual.  Cohesive harmony refers to the harmony of the resources of the textual metafunction with those of the other metafunctions in texts (language).  Language realises context. They are two distinct levels of symbolic abstraction.

Of course, what Martin means here by 'contextual' is register and genre, both of which are (varieties of) language, not context.

[4] Cohesive harmony does not have a experiential (as opposed to interpersonal, textual and logical) bias; see the previous post.  On the one hand, in 1985, it had not been extended to the interpersonal and logical metafunctions, and on the other, cohesive harmony takes the textual metafunction as its point of departure, since it is the textual metafunction that creates the texture with which the 'outputs' of other metafunction do or do not harmonise.

[5] Cohesive harmony does not have a componential (as opposed to organic) bias; see the previous post.  Cohesive harmony does include the organic relations of non-structural cohesion but as Hasan makes clear (Hasan 1985: 85), she doesn't discuss these, or textual structures, for reasons of time and space.

Conclusion:

This extract from Martin (1992) is intended as the second part of a critique of Hasan's cohesive harmony, as a prelude to introducing his own version.  As can be seen from the clarifications above, it is merely a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Hasan (1985).

Misrepresenting Hasan's Cohesive Harmony

Martin (1992: 433):

The limitations of this procedure should perhaps be stressed again at this point.  First, cohesive harmony is a measure of texture, which is just one aspect of textual unity; it does not account for unity deriving from register and genre.  Second, cohesive harmony is a measure of experiential texture; it has not been developed to the point where it takes into account the interaction of strings and chains with interpersonal, textual and logical structure.  Third, cohesive harmony focusses on componential cohesion; it does not treat organic relations realising CONJUNCTION and NEGOTIATION.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Cohesive harmony is not a measure of texture.  According to Halliday (1994: 334), the resources that give texture to a piece of discourse are those of the textual metafunction — both structural (thematic and information) and cohesive (reference, ellipsis-&-substitution, conjunction and lexical cohesion).

Hasan's (1985: 94) cohesive harmony, on the other hand, as developed at that time, is concerned with the harmony between the 'outputs' of two metafunctions: the textual and the experiential:

The output of the textual function are the chains and the interactions; the outputs of the experiential function at the rank of clause and group is what the interaction is built upon.  Thus cohesive harmony is an account of how the two functions find their expression in one significant whole.

[2] According to Hasan (1985: 52):

The unity in any text … is of two major types:

• unity of structure 

• unity of texture.

Her chapter on unity of text structure (1985: 52-69) discusses this in relation to context — which Martin misconstrues as register — on pages 54-9, in relation to genre on pages 59-68, and in relation to both on pages 68-9.  On Hasan's model, genre (= register) is concerned with textual identity (Hasan 1985: 97, 110).

[3] Cohesive harmony is not a measure of "experiential" texture.  See the clarification in [1] above.

[4] More accurately, as Hasan (1985: 94) put it:

No doubt the concept of cohesive harmony can be further refined by bringing the logical and interpersonal functions into the picture.

Textual structures are already included in the model; see [5] below.

[5] Cohesive harmony does include the organic relations of non-structural cohesion — Hasan's conjunctives, adjacency pairs and continuatives — but as Hasan makes clear (Hasan 1985: 85), she doesn't discuss these, or textual structures, for reasons of time and space:

I shall ignore instantial lexical cohesion, all organic relations, and all forms of structural cohesion.  This is not because they are less important, but because time and space are limited.

Conclusion:

This extract from Martin (1992) is intended as the first part of a critique of Hasan's cohesive harmony, as a prelude to introducing his own version.  As can be seen from the clarifications above, it is merely a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Hasan (1985).

The Problem Of Overlapping Lexical Strings And Reference Chains

Martin (1992: 427):

The problem of overlapping strings and chains can be illustrated with respect to the domicile string in [6:33] which overlaps with two distinct reference chains, one identifying the castle and one identifying the cottage:

domicile string:

castle–castle–home–woods–cottage–inside–home–inside

domicile chains:

a castle–the castle–the woods

this little cottage–there–here

The strategy adopted here to overcome this difficulty will be to analyse cohesive harmony from the point of view of reference chains as far as people, places and things are concerned and from the point of view of lexical strings for actions and qualities.  The strategy it must be noted has strong effects on the kind of string/chain interaction recognised for a text.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This nicely illustrates how the 'problem' of overlapping lexical strings and reference chains arises directly from Martin's misunderstanding of the cohesive system of reference.

As previously explained, the overlapping of Martin's lexical strings and reference chains arises from Martin's discourse semantic system of identification — 'the semantics of reference' — confusing two distinct types of cohesion, reference and lexical cohesion, largely as a consequence of confusing the referent with the system of reference. See previous critiques here, here, here, here and here.

[2] In SFL theory, reference is a cohesive system for marking the textual status of an element as identifiable (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 550). There are two types: co-reference (personal or demonstative) and comparative (general or specific).  Reference is a grammatical cohesive system, rather than a lexical cohesive system.  Here, because of the confusion explained in [1], Martin has included lexically cohesive relations in his reference chain, which thus accounts for the string/chain overlap.

[3] On the basis of what was said above, this amounts to arbitrarily splitting up lexical cohesion into two kinds of cohesive links, and mistaking one of them for grammatical reference.

[4] The consequences for this arbitrary division are less dire when it is understood that strings and chains are actually both largely concerned with lexical cohesion.

Misconstruing Enhancement As Elaboration And Misidentifying Metaphor

Martin (1992: 425, 427):

Notes on analysis:

(i) home and work are taken as places in this analysis to show their relationship to the domicile string; they could just as well have been treated as elaborations of the Process coming (home is so treated in the action strings below). …

Notes on the analysis:

(i) dead is taken as a metaphorical realisation of the action "die", and so worked into the "living" string here.

(ii) home is treated as a locative elaboration of the Process coming (cf. its treatment as a place in the place string above).

(iii) name is taken as a metaphorical realisation of the action "name", and so taken [as] a repetition of named in [6:33:a].

Blogger Comment:

[1] In SFL theory, Location circumstances are related to the nucleus (Process/Medium) by enhancement, not elaboration.  These are the clauses involved:

The next morning	she	ran away	from home
Location: temporal: rest	Medium	Process	Location: spatial: motion: away from

Meanwhile	the seven dwarfs	were coming	home	from work
	Medium	Process	Location: spatial: motion: towards	Location: spatial: motion: away from

[2] These are not instances of grammatical metaphor, but in any case, it isn't necessary to regard them as such for the purpose of analysing lexical cohesion — the lexical strings of Martin's discourse semantic ideation.

The clause featuring dead is an intensive attributive clause, congruently realising a figure of ascriptive being–&–having:

because	her parents	were	dead
	Carrier	Process: intensive	Attribute

The clauses featuring name are intensive identifying clauses, congruently realising figures of identifying being–&–having:

what	is	your name
Token/Identified	Process: intensive	Value/Identifier

my name	is	Snow White
Value/Identified	Process: intensive	Token/Identifier