David Rose On Stratification, Instantiation And Individuation

David Rose replied to Ed McDonald on SYSFLING on 23 Aug 2020 at 08:31:

That is, to start answering your questions, could we….

1. Take our long work on stratification as a starting point, and admit variability of relations between all strata, not just realisation hierarchies… moving beyond old dichotomies like form/content, language/context, natural/conventional 

2. Reconceptualise system/text relations as co-instantiation or coupling of distinct contributions from each mode and stratum, as ‘all strata instantiate' 

3. Model language typology in terms of individuation, as ‘all strata individuate’, from phoneme systems to material and social worlds of human communities (always already semiotic)

?

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, "our long work on stratification" is Martin's model, which replaces

• semantics with discourse semantics, and
• culture as context with genre and register as two strata of context.

As demonstrated in detail here, Martin's model is based on several theoretical misunderstandings and is internally inconsistent. For example, Martin's discourse semantics is a mixture of Halliday's semantics: speech function (rebranded negotiation) and Halliday & Hasan's lexicogrammatical cohesion (reference and ellipsis rebranded as identification, conjunction now rebranded as connexion, and lexical cohesion rebranded as ideation). That is, Martin's discourse semantics confuses two distinct levels of symbolic abstraction: semantics and lexicogrammar.

Martin's model of context locates varieties of language, register and genre, outside language: as context, while at the same time claiming that their instances are instances of language. In Hjelmslevian terms, Martin's model takes varieties of the expression plane of a connotative semiotic and relocates them as the content plane of a connotative semiotic. In terms of SFL Theory, Martin's model takes the midway point on the cline of instantiation of language and reconstrues the two perspectives on that point, register and text type (genre), as the system pole of the cline of instantiation of context. That is, Martin's model is inconsistent in terms of two dimensions of SFL Theory: stratification and instantiation. Compare the theoretically consistent model of Halliday:

[2] This is misleading. The theoretical dimension of stratification is the layering of different levels of symbolic abstraction. The relation between levels of symbolic abstraction is realisation. While the relation between levels may be natural or conventional, the invariable relation between levels is realisation.

[3] As previously explained, Martin's 'co-instantiation or coupling' is theoretically superfluous, since, because instantiation is the selection of features (and activation of realisation statements), the relation between instantiated features is already given by the systemic and stratificational architecture.

[4] To be clear, with regard to language, the theoretical dimension of individuation is the relation between a language, as a whole, and the varieties of that language that develop in its individual speakers, whereas language typology is the classification of different languages according to theoretical criteria.

[5] To be clear, Martin's mantras 'all strata instantiate' and 'all strata individuate' say nothing about either instantiation or individuation; cf all X instantiate, all X individuate. The process of instantiation is the selection of potential during logogenesis; the process of individuation is the differential ontogenesis of potential across individuals.