Christian Matthiessen On Jim Martin's Context As Connotative Semiotic

Christian Matthiessen wrote to Sysfling on 18 Jun 2019 at 01:32:

…In a way, the textual metafunction is the most fragile of the metafunctions — the one most likely to be influenced by the observer, so it is absolutely essential to base observations and analyses on naturally occurring examples in context — in their textual environment [co-text] and in their context in the sense of connotative semiotic (Martin, 1992). …

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Martin's (1992) 'connotative semiotic' — which mistakes the content plane of a connotative semiotic for a connotative semiotic — is his stratification of context as genre and register.  As demonstrated in great detail here (context), here (genre) and here (register), Martin's model is not only inconsistent with the architecture of SFL theory, but also inconsistent with the meanings of the terms 'context', 'genre' and 'register'.

For example, Martin models varieties of language, register and genre (text type), not as sub-potentials or instance types of language, but as semiotic systems other than language: the context that is realised by language.  Nevertheless, inconsistent with this, Martin claims that instances of context are text, that is: language rather than context.  But this is just the tip of the iceberg.  For more details, see the clarifying critiques here.

For Ruqaiya Hasan's critique of Martin's model of context, see The Conception Of Context In Text in

Fries, Peter H. and Gregory, Michael (1995) DISCOURSE IN SOCIETY: SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVES: Meaning and Choice in Language: Studies for Michael Halliday Norwood: Ablex (pp183-283).

The place of register and text type (genre) in the architecture of SFL theory is identified by Halliday's instantiation/stratification matrix:

An elaboration of this matrix can be found in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384):