Wednesday 2 October 2013

David Rose On Text Type [2/10/13]

On 2/10/13, David Rose wrote on sysfling:
In a cline of instantiation, both genre and register lie at the system end, and text type is the next step







 Blogger Comments:

[1] On the stratified model (Martin 1992) that Rose advocates, genre and register are distinct strata.  Instantiation is the relation between system and instance.  It is not a relation across strata.  So, in terms of Martin's stratification — to be consistent with the notion of instantiation — the cline for each distinct stratum would be the relation between:
  • genre as system and genre as instance
  • register as system and register as instance

[2] In Martin's stratified model, genre and register are strata of context.  Here Rose is construing text type — i.e. language instead of context — as a point on the cline of instantiation of context.


Rose's construal of text type is quite difficult to unpack, owing to the fact that:
  1. the model that Rose advocates is full of internal inconsistencies, and
  2. Rose's construal of that model is inconsistent with the model itself.

David Rose On Text Type [1/10/13]

On 1/10/13, David Rose wrote on the sysfling list:
One use of 'text type' is to avoid the word genre, by pedagogues who oppose explicit genre pedagogy, and linguists who oppose a stratified context model.
Another is for a node in an instantiation cline starting with genre at the system end, and reading at the instance end.
… genre - text type - text - reading
In other words, text type is more specific subset of texts of the same genre.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, the term 'text type' has a precise definition.  It is the same point on the cline of instantiation as register.  Text type is register viewed from the instance pole of the cline, just as register is text type viewed from the system pole of the cline.  

This is a separate issue from any "opposition" to Martin's stratified model of context.  As argued elsewhere on this site, Martin's stratified model of context is based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of both stratification and context in SFL theory.

[2] The cline of instantiation Rose presents above is that of Martin, with the terms 'system' and 'register' (strategically) omitted.  In Martin's model, register is conflated with genre, and both are points on the cline; ie genre is not at the system pole of the cline.  If genre is placed at the system pole, this cline is concerned only with instantiation on Martin's stratum of genre, thereby restricting the notions of text type, text, and reading to that stratum.

As argued elsewhere on this site, it is logically inconsistent to place 'reading' on this cline because the relation between reading and text is not the same as the relation between text and text type.

As also argued elsewhere on this site, Martin's cline of instantiation is logically inconsistent with his stratified model of context.  This is because his stratified model construes genre and register as more abstract than (the strata of) language — a construal inconsistent with the SFL notion of register — while his instantiation cline construes genre/register as a subpotential of (the system of) language.