Tom Bartlett On What Identifying Clauses Do

Tom Bartlett replied to Kieran McGillicuddy on SYSFLING on 7 Mar 2022, at 07:37:

As I said Kieran

When the lexicogrammatical reactances identify the process in a clause as belonging to a specific process type but the reading this gives is in some way in conflict with the label we give the process type or the typical examples that label brings to mind, we have to question the ineffable meaning of that process type/grammatical construction, try and work out what relations it actually construes, not assign the example to a different category.

So - we have an identifying process - it is this by definition, because we define it according to its grammatical potential - the question is what identifying clauses do. And it seems that they don't always identify. So a bad label and a bad explanation. Let's move on. Let's try a bit of coextension. And if you don't like that, that's no problem - let's try and find a better way of explaining it. But, one way or another, there's a bunch of processes that have the same grammatical potential and, as functionalists, we assume that this means something in social semiotic terms. If not to identify, then something else. If not for coextension, then something else. All we know is that, whatever that something is, it gets that special something in a network of relations with all the other things that are not that something.

Blogger Comments:

[1] See note [5] in the earlier post Tom Bartlett On Identifying Processes.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. What identifying clauses do is clearly stated by Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 276):

In the ‘identifying’ mode, some thing has an identity assigned to it. What this means is that one entity is being used to identify another: ‘x is identified by a’, or ‘a serves to define the identity of x’. Structurally we label the x-element, that which is to be identified, as the Identified, and the a-element, that which serves as identity, as the Identifier.

So, 'identifying' is not "a bad label" or "a bad explanation"; it is merely not understood by Bartlett. But this is, perhaps, understandable, since Bartlett's preferred model, the Cardiff Grammar, does not distinguish between identifying and attributive clauses. See note [6] in the earlier post Tom Bartlett On Identifying Processes.

However, in terms of the political games played out in the SFL community, in negatively appreciating an aspect of Halliday's theory, Bartlett is merely emulating his role model. See, for example:

Robin Fawcett Negatively Appreciating Halliday And Matthiessen (2004)
Robin Fawcett Negatively Judging And Negatively Appreciating Halliday And Matthiessen (1999)

[3] See note [2] in the earlier post Tom Bartlett On Identifying Processes.

[4] To be clear, "a better way of explaining it" is waiting to be read and understood by Bartlett in Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 276).