John Bateman Misunderstanding Stratification And Realisation

On 10/10/13, John Bateman wrote on the sysfling list:

I'm afraid we know rather less than we might hope (or think?) on some of these issues though. …

However [quoting the blog post below],

by definition, the relation between different levels of abstraction is realisation. That is what the theoretical architecture means. The reason why it is difficult to apply realisation to register and genre as strata is that they are not levels of abstraction higher than the strata of language.

This is circular unfortunately; even though I might agree with it :-) 'The theoretical architecture' is then one of strata related by realisation. Realisation is not appropriate to register and genre because register and genre are not strata. Register and genre are not strata because that is not what 'the' theoretical architecture says.

I agree that terms *within* theories should be used in ways that are consistent within those theories; but across different theories such consistency may not be present. And I think we are dealing with different theories here (in a technical sense of different organisational principles, different predictions, different descriptions).

Blogger Comments:

[1]  See appraisal analysis here.

[2] The argument is demonstrably not circular — it is merely misunderstood.  The theoretical architecture is an hypothesis for managing the complexity of language.  It has to be self-consistent, otherwise any theory building on its design will collapse.  The stratified model is a means of parcelling out the complexity by distributing it over different levels of symbolic abstraction, and different levels of abstraction are related by realisation.  The reason they are related by realisation is because, in terms of the grammar, the verb 'realise' serves as an intensive identifying process that relates two levels of abstraction, Token and Value; the lower level Token realises the higher level Value.  (This is theory turned back on itself.)

So, for theoretical constructs to be proposed as strata in this model, they must be consistent with its defining principles; the proposed stratum must be more abstract than the stratum below it — it must be realised by the stratum below — and it must be less abstract than the stratum above — it must realise the stratum above.  If this principle is violated when proposing strata, the model becomes internally inconsistent.  I have given reasons several times why placing register and genre is this model makes the model internally inconsistent.

[3] We are indeed dealing with different theories with different organisational principles etc.  That is the point. Halliday and Martin don't mean the same thing by 'register' or by 'context', and genre is largely not theorised on SFL principles.  When Martin's register and genre are inserted into Halliday's stratification model, it creates an internally inconsistent theory.