Saturday 6 August 2022

David Rose Endorsing Martin's Misunderstandings Of Individuation

The complexity of relations between code, register and language seems to be resolving with studies in individuation, such as this paper of yours...
Martin, J. R., Zappavigna, M., Dwyer, P., & Cléirigh, C. (2013). Users in uses of language: embodied identity in Youth Justice Conferencing. Text & Talk, 33(4-5), 467-496.


Blogger Comments:

[1] This is not the case, as demonstrated below.

[2] To be clear, Martin is responsible for the misunderstandings (see below) in this paper. Cléirigh's contribution was to provide the model of body language that Martin & Zappavigna (2019) rebranded as their model of paralanguage. Evidence here.

[3] To be clear, Martin's model of individuation confuses an elaboration relation within language with an extension relation between language users. To explain:

Firstly, in this context, Bernstein's notion of reservoir and repertoire refer to the language of users, not to the language users themselves. The two differ in terms of order of experience: a language user is a first-order phenomenon, whereas the language that a user projects is a second-order phenomenon (metaphenomenon).

Secondly, the relation between reservoir and repertoire is elaboration, since varying repertoires are different subtypes of a reservoir, whereas an affiliation relation between language users, as association, is a subtype of extension (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 146).

[4] To be clear, Martin's Figure 4 takes the fundamental confusions outlined above and adds to them. On the one hand, if Bernstein's distinction is viewed as a cline of individuation, then in SFL terms, the cline is
reservoir — reservoir subpotential/repertoire type — repertoire
where each point on the cline is the stratal hierarchy of systems
context — semantics — lexicogrammar — phonology.
On the other hand, Figure 4
  • treats a persona (a language user) as an individuation of culture (context potential);
  • inserts a subtype (master identity) between culture and its named subtype (subculture);
  • models affiliation as an elaborating relation between persona and culture, instead of an extending relation perpendicular to the cline (between personas, between subcultures etc.)

For Halliday's distinction between socio-semiotic meaner and social persona, and Lemke's (1995) examination of the 'notion of the individual human subject', see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 610-1).