Genre Staging And Phasing Lower Stratum Context Selections In The Instantiation Of Language

Martin (2013: 111):

Blogger Comments:

For some of the theoretical problems with the model of genre in Martin (1992), see the 69 posts here.

To be clear, Martin (1992) models genre as a (non-metafunctional) stratum of context, located above the systems of field, tenor and mode, which he misunderstands as systems of register. As a consequence, genres (narratives etc.) are modelled as realised by field, tenor and mode features, such as those characterising the relative social status and contact of the speaker/writer and the addressee.

To be clear, even in Martin's model, genre cannot be "a resource for staging field, tenor and mode selections in unfolding discourse" because unfolding discourse is the instantiation of language systems in logogenesis, whereas genre and field, tenor and mode are systems of different strata at the level of context, and are thus not instantiated in language.

Misunderstanding The Metafunctional Hookup

Martin (2013: 108):

Blogger Comments:

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.

Halliday (2003 [1994]: 437):

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.