David Rose wrote to sys-func on 3 June 2022 at 11:08:
30 years later, once the grammatical systems had been fleshed out in detail, this conceptualisation was crystallised in ‘Construing Experience’, with his fellow grammarian CMIMM, which modelled semantics as the meaning systems made by the grammar. …
But two things puzzled me.
One was that MAKH’s axial theory already described the meanings made by the grammar as features realised axially by wordings. So the notion of lang strata as ‘meaning, wording and sounding’ seemed a gross over-simplification. Why would language need to simply repeat systems of features in the grammar, at another ‘more abstract’ semantic stratum with different names?
The other was that research in discourse semantics had taken off in the 70s and 80s, initially by MAKH himself, and exploded metafunctionally in JRM’s English Text. Why was this research and theory ignored in ‘Construing Experience’, particularly as every system in English Text was built diligently on the work of MAKH and of RH. All these years later I’m still wondering. Anyone else?
Blogger Comments:
[1] This is a very serious misunderstanding of SFL Theory. The meaning-wording relation is not axial; that is, it is not a matter of paradigmatic meanings realised as syntagmatic wordings. The relation is stratal: meaning (semantic stratum) is realised by wording (lexicogrammatical stratum).
[2] To be clear, in order to understand strata as meaning, wording and sounding, it is necessary to understand that 'wording' refers to lexicogrammatical form, which is modelled as the rank scale, and that, in a functional grammar, lexicogrammatical form is interpreted in terms of its function, and its function is to realise meaning; e.g. a function of the form 'verbal group' is to realise the meaning 'process'. Halliday (1985: xvii):
The relation between the meaning and the wording is not, however, an arbitrary one: the form of the grammar relates naturally to the meanings that are being encoded. A functional grammar is designed to bring this out; it is a study of wording, but one that interprets the wording by reference to what it means.
[3] To be clear, the answer to this question is given in the work that Rose cites: Halliday & Matthiessen (1999). Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 26, 237):
Thus when we move from the lexicogrammar into the semantics, as we are doing here, we are not simply relabelling everything in a new terminological guise. We shall stress the fundamental relationship between (say) clause complex in the grammar and sequence in the semantics, precisely because the two originate as one: a theory of logical relationships between processes. But, as we have shown, what makes such a theory (i.e. an ideation base as the construal of experience) possible is that it is a stratal construction that can also be deconstructed, every such occasion being a gateway to the creation of further meanings which reconstrue in new and divergent ways. Thus a sequence is not 'the same thing as' a clause complex; if it was, language would not be a dynamic open system of the kind that it is. …
Of course, what we are recognising here as two distinct constructions, the semantic and the grammatical, never had or could have had any existence the one prior to the other; they are our analytic representation of the overall semioticising of experience — how experience is construed into meaning. If the congruent pattern had been the only form of construal, we would probably not have needed to think of semantics and grammar as two separate strata: they would be merely two facets of the content plane, interpreted on the one hand as function and on the other as form.
[4] To be clear, the "metafunctional explosion" in English Text (Martin 1992) is just Martin's misunderstandings of textual grammar, cohesion (Halliday & Hasan 1976), and his theoretically unwarranted distribution of these textual systems across the metafunctions on his discourse semantic stratum. See the examination of Martin (1992) here.
[5] To be clear, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) presents a model of ideational semantics. The so-called ideational systems in Martin (1992), ideation and conjunction, are actually textual grammar misunderstood as ideational semantics; evidence here. Ideation is Martin's misunderstanding and rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's lexical cohesion, and conjunction, now connexion, is Martin's misunderstanding and rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's cohesive conjunction. Consequently, to include Martin's systems in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) would have seriously compromised the theoretical consistency, and so the theoretical value, of the work.
[6] To be clear, it is true that English Text (Martin 1992) was built on Cohesion in English, (Halliday & Hasan 1976). But, it is largely Martin's misunderstanding of their work, its relocation from textual grammar to Martin's discourse semantics, and the rebranding of their reference, lexical cohesion and cohesive conjunction as Martin's identification, ideation and conjunction (now 'connexion').
[7] To be clear, here Rose is being disingenuous. He is not puzzled or wondering; he is implicitly accusing Halliday and Matthiessen of impropriety, and trying to elicit support for his accusation. As he has previously explained in discussing the "omission" of Martin's discourse semantics from IFG, he puts this sort of thing down to "personal institutional politics".
My own view is that this omission [of Martin’s discourse semantic systems from IFG by Halliday and Matthiessen] has as much to do with personal institutional politics within the SFL leadership, as it does with the relative merits of the theory.
It was this outrageous claim by Rose that originally motivated me to embark on the meticulous examination of Martin (1992) here, which quickly demonstrated that the "relative merits of the theory" were indeed sufficient grounds for omitting Martin's model from IFG.
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