Systemic Functional Grammar: A Next Step Into The Theory — Axial Relations
A Meticulous Review Of Martin (2013)
Thursday 7 November 2024
Tuesday 7 May 2024
The Methodological Aberration That Undermines This Entire Monograph
Martin (2013: 112):
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Sunday 5 May 2024
Genre Staging And Phasing Lower Stratum Context Selections In The Instantiation Of Language
Martin (2013: 111):
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For some of the theoretical problems with the model of genre in Martin (1992), see the 69 posts here.
Friday 3 May 2024
Misunderstanding The Metafunctional Hookup
Martin (2013: 108):
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On the one hand, Martin's use of "traditionally" here is misleading, because it effaces the theorist responsible. Halliday applied the metafunctions that are intrinsic to language to the cultural context that language realises, yielding ideational field, interpersonal tenor, and textual mode.
On the other hand, this misunderstands SFL's architecture of language in context. The ideational metafunction of language is concerned with the construal of experience as meaning; the interpersonal metafunction of language is concerned with the enactment of intersubjective relations as meaning; and the textual metafunction of language is concerned with weaving ideational and interpersonal meanings together as text.
Field thus is concerned with the culture as a semiotic system in terms of the construal of experience; tenor is concerned with the culture as a semiotic system in terms of the enactment of intersubjective relations; and mode is concerned with the culture as a semiotic system in terms of weaving field and tenor together as situation.
The mechanism proposed for this constitutive power of discourse has been referred to as the 'metafunctional hookup': the hypothesis that (a) social contexts are organic — dynamic configurations of three components, called 'field', 'tenor', and 'mode': respectively, the nature of the social activity, the relations among the interactants, and the status accorded to the language (what is going on, who are taking part, and what they are doing with their discourse); and (b) there is a relationship between these and the metafunctions such that these components are construed, respectively, as experiential, as interpersonal, and as textual meanings.
Wednesday 1 May 2024
Misunderstanding Rank, Realisation And Metaphor
Martin (2013: 107):
[2] To be clear, the obvious speech function equivalent of K2 is a demand for information, a question, and the obvious speech function equivalent of A1f is a giving of information, a statement.
looking at a given stratum from above means treating it as the expression of some content
For statements and questions there is a clear pattern of congruence: typically, a statement is realised as declarative and a question as interrogative – but at the same time in both instances there are alternative realisations. For offers and commands the picture is even less determinate. A command is usually cited, in grammatical examples, as imperative, but it is just as likely to be a modulated interrogative or declarative, as in Will you be quiet?, You must keep quiet!; while for offers there is no distinct mood category at all, just a special interrogative form shall I ...?, shall we ...?, which again is simply one possible realisation among many.
Monday 29 April 2024
Rebranding A Misunderstanding Of Speech Function As Negotiation
- information rebranded as knowledge
- goods-&-services rebranded as action
- giving and demanding omitted
- the inclusion of a material-order response
- the inclusion of material-order interlocutors.
Saturday 27 April 2024
Confusing Meaners With Meaning Potential
Thursday 25 April 2024
Confusing Meaners With Meaning
Martin (2013: 104-5):
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Tuesday 23 April 2024
Confusing Orders Of Experience
Martin (2013: 104):
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Sunday 21 April 2024
Misconstruing The Material As Semiotic
Friday 19 April 2024
Misunderstanding Rank
Wednesday 17 April 2024
Misunderstanding Interstratal Realisation
At the same time, this stratal organisation means that it is crucial to specify the realisational relations between strata — inter-stratal realisation. In systemic theory, this relationship is stated in terms of the organisation of the higher stratum — for a simple reason: a higher stratum provides a more comprehensive environment than a lower one… . More specifically, inter-stratal realisation is specified by means of inter-stratal preselection: contextual features are realised by preselection within the semantic system, semantic features are realised by preselection within the lexicogrammatical system, and lexicogrammatical features are realised by preselection within the phonological/ graphological system.
Monday 15 April 2024
Tone And Syllabification
Saturday 13 April 2024
Misunderstanding Lexis As Most Delicate Grammar
Martin (2013: 97):
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Note that it is not (usually) the lexical items themselves that figure as terms of the systems in the network. Rather, the systems are systems of features, and the lexical items come in as the synthetic realisation of particular feature combinations.
Thursday 11 April 2024
Not Recognising The Distinction Between Word As Grammatical And Word As Lexical
Martin (2013: 95):
The folk notion of the "word" is really a conflation of two different abstractions, one lexical and one grammatical.
(i) Vocabulary (lexis): the word as lexical item, or "lexeme". This is construed as an isolate, a 'thing' that can be counted and sorted in (alphabetical) order. People "look for" words, they "put thoughts into" them, "put them into" or "take them out of another's mouth", and nowadays they keep collections of words on their shelves or in their computers in the form of dictionaries. Specialist knowledge is thought of as a matter of terminology. The taxonomic organisation of vocabulary is less exposed: it is made explicit in Roget's Thesaurus, but is only implicit in a standard dictionary. Lexical taxonomy was the first area of language to be systematically studied by anthropologists, when they began to explore cultural knowledge as it is embodied in folk taxonomies of plants, animals, diseases and the like.
(ii) Grammar: the word as one of the ranks in the grammatical system. This is, not surprisingly, where Western linguistic theory as we know it today began in classical times, with the study of words varying in form according to their case, number, aspect, person etc.. Word-based systems such as these do provide a way in to studying grammatical semantics: but the meanings they construe are always more complex than the categories that appear as formal variants, and grammarians have had to become aware of covert patterns.
Tuesday 9 April 2024
"Foregrounding" Paradigmatic Relations
Martin (2013: 95):
Sunday 7 April 2024
What Martin Has Done In Chapter 5
Friday 5 April 2024
The Big Lie Of Chapter 5
Martin (2013: 93):
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[1] This very misleading indeed. Martin has spent the bulk of Chapter 5 arguing that, because of grammatical metaphor, SFL needs two system-structure cycles, as if this were his idea and his argument. See also
- Falsely Claiming That The Content Plane Was Not Stratified Before Martin (1992).
- On The Theoretical Value Of Martin's Stratification Of The Content Plane
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 429):
… in our model there are two system-structure cycles, one in the semantics and one in the lexicogrammar. Terms in semantic systems are realised in semantic structures; and semantic systems and structures are in turn realised in lexicogrammatical ones. As we saw in Chapter 6 in particular, grammatical metaphor is a central reason in our account for treating axis and stratification as independent dimensions, so that we have both semantic systems and structures and lexicogrammatical systems and structures.
Martin furthers this false impression by falsely claiming that Halliday & Matthiessen propose a single system-structure cycle on the content plane for MODALITY, by making a false claim about their lexicogrammatical system, without considering their semantic system.
Martin makes these misleading claims to argue for his own discourse semantic systems, despite the fact that his discourse semantic stratum does not include a system of MODALITY, and he does not provide one here to demonstrate its relation to the lexicogrammatical system.
[2] To be clear, Martin's stratified social systems are his misunderstanding of linguistic registers and genres as the cultural context realised by linguistic systems.
Wednesday 3 April 2024
Falsely Finding Fault In The Mood Network Of Halliday & Matthiessen
Martin (2013: 93):
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This is misleading because it is not true. The feature [explicit] can be selected, and it can be realised: metaphorically as a projecting mental clause instead of congruently as a modal Adjunct; see previous post. There is thus no need to remove the feature [explicit] from the network.
Monday 1 April 2024
Giving Priority To Structure In Devising System
Martin (2013: 93):
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[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. The system of MODALITY represents the choices at clause rank. If one of these choices is realised metaphorically as a projecting mental clause instead of an Adjunct, it can be specified by a realisation statement attached to the feature in the network. Martin's misunderstanding here again derives from giving priority to the view 'from below', structure.
Moreover, in order to account for grammatical metaphor, it is necessary to provide both the congruent and metaphorical analyses. Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 613-4):
Here the cognitive mental clause I don’t believe is a metaphorical realisation of probability: the probability is realised by a mental clause as if it was a figure of sensing. Being metaphorical, the clause serves not only as the projecting part of a clause nexus of projection, but also as a mood Adjunct, just as probably does.
[2] To be clear, the entry condition to clause complexing is the feature clause, and in this metaphor, modality is realised within a clause complex instead of within a clause.
Saturday 30 March 2024
The Motivation For Speech Function vs Mood
If the congruent form had been the only form of construal, we would probably not have needed to think of semantics and grammar as two separate strata: they would be merely two facets of the content plane, interpreted on the one hand as function and on the other as form.
Thursday 28 March 2024
Misunderstanding 'From Above' And Rebranding Speech Function As Discourse Semantics
Tuesday 26 March 2024
Misunderstanding Congruent vs Metaphorical As Encoding vs Symbolising [2]
Martin (2013: 81):
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Sunday 24 March 2024
Misrepresenting Interpersonal Metaphor Of Mood
Friday 22 March 2024
Misunderstanding Congruent vs Metaphorical As Encoding vs Symbolising [1]
Martin (2013: 80):
Wednesday 20 March 2024
Misrepresenting Halliday's Speech Function As Martin's Discourse Semantics
Martin (2013: 78-9):
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To be clear, speech function is Halliday's system of interpersonal semantics. Here Martin misleads the reader by misrepresenting speech function as a system of his model of discourse semantics.
Monday 18 March 2024
Looking Up To Discourse Semantics
Martin (2013: 78):
The relation between the meaning and the wording is not, however, an arbitrary one: the form of the grammar relates naturally to the meanings that are being encoded. A functional grammar is designed to bring this out; it is a study of wording, but one that interprets the wording by reference to what it means. …
What this means is that both the general kinds of grammatical pattern that have evolved in language, and the specific manifestations of each kind, bear a natural relation to the meanings they have evolved to express. … the distinction into word classes of verb and noun reflects the analysis of experience into goings-on, expressed as verbs, and participants in the goings-on, expressed as nouns; and so on. …
… the relation of grammar to semantics is in this sense natural, not arbitrary …
Saturday 16 March 2024
Misunderstanding The Trinocular Perspective On Strata
Martin (2013: 77-8):
Thursday 14 March 2024
Misunderstanding The Trinocular Perspective
Martin (2013: 77):
A stratified semiotic defines three perspectives, which (following the most familiar metaphor) we refer to as 'from above', 'from roundabout', and 'from below': looking at a given stratum from above means treating it as the expression of some content, looking at it from below means treating it as the content of some expression, while looking at it from roundabout means treating it in the context of (i.e. in relation to other features of) its own stratum.
Tuesday 12 March 2024
The Problem Of Grouping Declarative With Imperative
Martin (2013: 77):
Sunday 10 March 2024
Misrepresenting Comment Adjuncts
express the speaker’s attitude either to the proposition as a whole or to the particular speech function. In other words, the target of the comment may be either ideational (the content of the proposition) or interpersonal (the speech function).
Friday 8 March 2024
Prioritising The Perspective Of Tagging
Martin (2013: 75-6):
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