David Rose On The Absence Of Published Criticism Of Each Other’s Work

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 14 Feb 2024, at 10:37:

An interesting feature of SFL, in contrast to some other linguistic schools, is an absence of published criticism of each other’s work. You can see this ethic of learning from each other and getting on with it continually in Halliday’s interviews. …

And again at 13:27:

The point is that linguistics sits in the humanities and has inherited its habits, especially philosophy’s notions of truth and falsehood. SFL’s approach to observing and theorising is closer to how science works.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. Martin (1992) criticises Hasan's work on cohesion, Hasan (1995) criticises Martin's stratification of context, and Fawcett (2010) criticises Halliday's model of grammar, to name but three.

[2] To be clear, 'learning from each other and getting on with it', without critical assessment of each other's work, is an anti-intellectual approach that serves the interests of the incompetent, and not just fosters, but proliferates theoretical misunderstandings and poor quality work. See The Promotion Of Anti-Intellectualism In The SFL Community

[3] As Halliday has pointed out, we don't argue about truth, we argue about validity.

• Are the assumptions on which this theory is founded valid?
• Is this theoretical description valid?
• Is this interpretation of theory valid?

[4] To be clear, SFL is a scientific theory, but the culture of much of the SFL community is more like that of a religious fellowship. See

The Scientific Status Of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory
The Culture Of 'Faith' In The SFL Community