David Kellogg Misunderstanding Halliday On The Relation Between Language And Context

David Kellogg replied on sys-func on 31 Dec 2024, at 12:11:

But there are three problems that occur to me, and at least two of them stem from this very distinction [between the material-semiotic dialectic and the stratal relation between culture and language]. 

First of all, Halliday and Matthiessen note that the logico-semantic categories of elaboration, extension, and enhancement are fuzzy ones, with considerable overlap. This really must be so, not just because all language categories are fuzzy, but because we use "and", "but" and "so" to do all three: they are logico-semantic categories, viz. categories of thinking, and they won't obey the strong classification and framing that we use in lexicogrammar (and most particularly in transitivity). 

Secondly, as Chris has reiterated many times, there is a distinction between theoretical categories and descriptive ones. The categories of elaboration, extension, and enhancement are descriptive ones (and they are really designed around English, which is perhaps why they fit the simile of decorating a room, adding an annex, and enhancing the grounds that Halliday proposes in IFG so well. They are not theoretical categories, much less metaphysical ones, and when Halliday uses them to think about the grammatics, he stresses that this too is a simile.

Thirdly, and most importantly from my point of view, there are always far more things in heaven and earth than can be dreamt of even in the philosophy of language, much less the theory of experience that is encoded in the actual grammar. Birds, those "dinosaurs that learned to fly", don't really know about or obey the names we give them, and if we say that the relation between context and language is not causal, since ("because?") since cause is an enhancing relation, we are attributing to language a power over causality that it does not possess. Marx said that being determines consciousness, he meant that being got here first and consciousness was late to the party. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the indeterminacy here is with regard to which expansion relation is being realised by the forms and, but and so in a given instance, not with regard to the distinctions between the expansion relations themselves.

[2] This is the exact opposite of what is true. To be clear, in SFL Theory, 

• logico-semantic relations are categories of meaning, 
• thinking is a mental process that projects meaning. and 
• meaning is construed by wording, lexicogrammar.

[3] To be clear, Halliday's distinction between theoretical and descriptive categories applies to the distinction between theorising language and using the theory to describe languages. This is the opposite of using a description of English to think about a theory of language. Halliday (2002: 413-4):

But as a final step I will shift to another angle of vision and look at realisation and instantiation from inside the grammar – turning the tables by using the grammar as a way of thinking about the grammatics. …

The identifying relationship, as construed in the grammar of English, involves two particular functions, mutually defining such that one is the outward form, that by which the entity is recognised, while the other is the function the entity serves. This relationship of course takes a variety of more specific guises: form / function, occupant / role, sign / meaning, and so on. I labelled these grammatical functions “Token” and “Value”. This Token / Value relationship in the grammar is exactly one of realisation: the Token realises the Value, the Value is realised by the Token. It is thus analogous to the relationship defined in the grammatics as that holding between different strata. The grammar is modelling one of the prototypical processes of experience as constructing a semiotic relationship – precisely the one that is fundamental to the evolution of the grammar itself. …

Of course, the boot is really on the other foot: the grammatics is parasitic on the grammar, not the other way around. It is because of the existence of clause types such as those exemplified above that we are able to model the linguistic system in the way we do. The grammatics evolves (or rather one should say the grammatics “is evolved”, to suggest that it is a partially designed system) as a metaphoric transformation of the grammar itself. This is a further aspect of the special character of grammatics: while all theories are made of grammar (to the extent that they can be construed in natural language), one which is a grammar about a grammar has the distinctive metaphoric property of being a theory about itself.

[4] Here again, Kellogg confuses Halliday's notion of semiotic context, culture, with the material environment of language; see the previous post.

David Kellogg Misunderstanding Halliday On The Co-Evolution Of Language And Culture

David Kellogg reacted to a Halliday quote on sys-func on 30 Dec 2024, at 16:42:

Note that "driving" is a very narrow interpretation of causality, and "determine" is not much better. There is an obvious sense in which a virus "causes" Covid and a bacteria [sic] "causes" tuberculosis, but it is rather vacuous to say that viruses or bacteria "drive" or "determine" epidemics. 

Co-evolution involves reciprocation, but not necessarily symmetrical reciprocity. When Halliday says, for example, that every use of a word (even in private speech) will have some effect on the probabilities of a language system, he is not saying that lexical invention is on a par with grammatical regularity. The use of "he or she" instead of "he" does not prevent a single instance of rape much less shake the foundations of patriarchy; these are secured not only by language but also by organised violence (c.f. the work of Annabelle Lukin).

I think that when Halliday says that language will always have an "ideological" role, and that construals of reality will differ as we alter our condition, he is really saying that changes in productive relations do in the long run cause the way we speak, even if they do not in the short run "drive" or "determine".

Blogger Comments:

[1] The quote was Halliday (2003 [1992]: 380):

Language neither drives culture nor is driven by it; the old questions about which determines which can be set aside as irrelevant, because the relation is not one of cause and effect but rather (as Firth saw it, though not in these words) one of realisation: that is, culture and language coevolve in the same relationship as that in which, within language, meaning and expression co-evolve. Thus above and beyond the random, local variation between languages that was the subject matter of earlier typological studies, we may expect to find non-random variation realising different construals of reality across major alterations in the human condition. But given that language and culture evolve together in this kind of relationship, it is inevitable that language will take on an ideological role.

[2] To be clear, here Kellogg is disagreeing with Halliday on the basis of his misunderstanding of Halliday. Halliday is concerned with the relation between the two planes of a connotative semiotic system, where culture is semiotic content, and language is its semiotic expression. For Halliday, the relation between these two semiotic planes is realisation, which is an elaborating relation of identity (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 145). So the relation between culture and language is not causal, because 'cause' is an enhancing relation, not an elaborating one.

Kellogg, on the other hand, misconstrues the semiotic content that is realised in language as the material environment of language (organisms, diseases, rape, organised violence, productive practices). That is, the causal relation he proposes is between first-order material experience (phenomena) and second-order semiotic experience (metaphenomena), not between the culture as semiotic system and the language that realises it. In Halliday's terms, Kellogg is concerned with the ongoing material-semiotic dialectic, not the coevolution of culture and language. Halliday (2003: 238, 255):

The history of language, it seems to me, is part — an integral part — of human history; and this "history" is a dialectic interplay of material and semiotic processes, whose impacting engenders the complex ecosocial systems that we know as human cultures (cf. Lemke 1993 for a powerful account). …

Thus, grammar is bound up with all the other aspects of the human condition, as part of the eco-social system constituted by a human community and its environment. It takes its shape from the other strata of language with which it interfaces, from the relation of "languaging" both to other semiotic and to social and material processes, and from the nature of those processes themselves. It is the outcome of the ongoing dialectic between the material and the semiotic in human life.

David Rose Differentiating Grammatical Structures By Field, Mode And Tenor

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 24 Mar 2024, 08:45:

I’d kinda hoped it was obvious, a linguistic double entendre

But OK, it’s a pleasant Sunday morning exercise that someone may find useful, evaluating field, mode, tenor

The full arguments are in...

Martin, J. R., & Doran, Y. J. (2023). Structure markers: A subjacency duplex analysis. Language, Context and Text, 5(1), 16-48. 

This nom gp is ambiguous, with two different experiential interpretations. I offered three analyses...

1. Whose king’s hat? – counterexpectant interpretation

F: a traditional multivariate Hallidayan analysis of nom gp functions, but with all realising syntagms accounted for, using subj dupl labels, and possessive suffixes explicitly labelled as non-recursive #b

M: clearly displays each structure:syntagm cycle at each rank

T: authority of a ‘standard analysis’ plus, and it’s counterexpectantly funnier

2. Whose king’s hat?

F: a re-analysis of nom gp classifying function, as recursive subclassification at word rank, rather than multivariate group functions (Classifier Thing)

M: displays complementarity of subjacent and hypotactic word rank structures

T: more radical, but interesting, potentially inspiring further research

3. Whose hat? – expectant interpretation

F: more accurate than a ‘gamma beta alpha’ analysis, because this isn’t a hypotactic series. The Deictic is realised by an embedded nom gp [England’s king], which itself has a Deictic Thing structure

M: explicit syntagm labelling reveals this structuring

T: not as funny

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, field, mode and tenor do not distinguish these three analyses, because each analysis is in the same text of the same situation.

• The field is what's going on in the situation: linguistic analysis
• The mode is the role of language in the situation: dialogue on an email discussion list
• The tenor is who's taking part in the situation: linguists

None of Rose's "evaluations" bears the slightest resemblance to the field, mode and tenor of the situation of this text. See The Practice Of Public Bluffing In The SFL Community at What Lies Beneath.

[2] This is misleading because Martin & Doran (2023) does not provide any "full arguments" with respect to Rose's analyses. This can be verified by reading the review of Martin & Doran (2023):

Structure Markers: A Subjacency Duplex Analysis

David Rose On Halliday's Instantiation/Stratification Matrix

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 21 Mar 2024, 15:00:

This matrix from a talk MAKH gave to computer scientists in 95 may help to flesh out the SFL timeline a little.

It is based on ideas he first proposed in 1961. Subsequent research was overwhelmingly in the bottom row – on LG systems. Cells above that are proposals for research. He comments “Semantic representations of the instance — the instance as meaning — are still quite unsatisfactory, and there is much work to be done in this respect. Likewise for the instantial situation: we tend to work with informal word-pictures, like the stage directions in the printed edition of a play; but the basic concept of situation as instance has advanced very little in recent decades” (2005:255).

The upper and middle left-hand cells were the focus of Jim Martin and colleagues’ research through the 80s, culminating in English Text in 92. Metafunctional semantic systems were described as discourse semantics. Systems were also described for ‘potential clusterings of values of field, tenor, mode’, that were named genre systems. Appliability was one motivation for prioritising genre systems. Systems were proposed for field, tenor, mode, but it took another two decades for this research to be taken up in earnest, starting with Jing Hao on field, followed by a series of studies, culminating in Doran, Martin, Herrington 2023 (and Yaegan’s recent course at Usyd).

A crucial advance in this research is description of field, tenor, mode systems as semiotic systems that are instantiated, not by ‘informal word-pictures’, but by ‘selection expressions’, as the matrix specifies for LG and semantic systems.

Another major step forward is the reconstrual of what MAKH calls ‘values’ in the top row as ‘principles’ of instantiation, and ‘domains’ of individuation. This potentially integrates research using different SFL models into a commensurate whole.

It also helps resolve an anomaly in the upper right-hand cell, in which instances of socio-semiotic systems are named ‘particular social semiotic situation events’, whereas instances of LG and semantic systems are simply named ‘particular texts’. A social semiotic event is of course a (multimodal) text.

"The left-hand upper cell is taken up with contextual networks: it contains a theory of the possible semiotic situations that collectively constitute a culture – taxonomies of institutions and of doings and happenings, manifested as possible clusterings of values of field, tenor and mode.” Halliday 2005: 255

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961) did not include a cline of instantiation, nor Malinowski's notions of context, nor a semantic stratum:

[2] To be clear, it is important to recognise that Halliday himself never proposed system networks to represent the systems of context.

[3] This is misleading. Martin (1992) rebranded the lexicogrammatical systems of the textual metafunction in Halliday & Hasan (1976) as his discourse semantic systems and distributed them across the different metafunctions. To these systems he added Halliday's semantic system of speech function and rebranded it as his discourse semantic system of negotiation.

[4] To be clear, Martin (1992) mistook registers for the contextual systems (field, tenor, mode) that are realised by registers, thereby proposing that a functional variety of language was not language, but context. Martin (1992) then confused two meanings of 'genre', genre as mode and genre as text type, and located the confusion stratally above register in context. This had the effect of proposing that text types were realised by field, tenor, and mode, instead of the reverse, thereby upending the realisation relation.

[5] To be clear, Hao and Doran were Martin's students and use Martin's model that proposes that functional varieties of language are not language, but context.

[6] This is cleverly misleading. First, Halliday did not describe field, tenor and mode as instantiated by 'informal word pictures'. Halliday used 'informal word pictures' to describe instances of field, tenor and mode, because he didn't have formal systems of field, tenor and mode to model the potential. Second, in Martin's model, context is realised by an instance of language, text, whereas this advance by Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024) rejects Martin's model, so that context systems are now instantiated by context, not by language (text).

[7] This is misleading, because this major step forward is major step backward. Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024) have reinterpreted the features of field, tenor and mode systems as 'principles of instantiation' in order to make room for semantic systems which they misconstrue as contextual.  That is, having first misconstrued language (register) as context, Martin is now, with his colleagues, misconstruing context (field, tenor, mode) as language. See also

• Negotiating Tenor: Enacting Affiliation In Dialogue And Monologue (Yaegan Doran)
• A Close Examination Of Yaegan Doran's 2023 ASFLA Plenary Abstract

[8] For some of the inconsistencies that invalidate Martin's model of individuation, see

• David Rose Endorsing Martin's Misunderstandings Of Individuation
• David Rose On Martin's Context-Bound/Free And Individuation As Allocation/Affiliation

[9] For some of the inconsistencies that invalidate Martin's integrated model, see

• David Rose On Jim Martin's Individuation
• David Rose Promoting Jim Martin's Misunderstandings Of Realisation, Instantiation And Individuation

[10] This is misleading, because there is no anomaly in the upper right-hand cell, though the false claim betrays a serious misunderstanding of the distinction between context and language. 'Particular social semiotic situation events' describes instances of context: the culture as semiotic potential. A text, on the other hand, is an instance of the content plane of language: semantics and lexicogrammar. A multimodal text includes instances of the content plane of semiotic systems other than language.

David Rose On The 1961, 1992 And 2024 Models Of Context And Instantiation

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 20 Mar 2024, 20:48:

In both 1961 and 92 models, context is realised by language (and other modalities), and language systems are  instantiated as text. In the 92 model, context is described as semiotic systems that are also instantiated as text (rather than as ‘settings’ in situations). Doran, Martin, Herrington supply the 2024 update.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. Scale-&-Category Grammar (Halliday 1961) does not construe levels as related by realisation, and neither does it construe a cline of instantiation as part of the theory.

[2] To be clear, Martin's notion that non-language (context) is instantiated as language (text) contradicts, inter alia, Martin's acknowledgement that the process of instantiation does not cross strata.

[3] This is misleading because it misrepresents settings and situations. In SFL Theory, a situation is an instance of context, the culture as a semiotic system. This contrasts with what Hasan calls the 'material situational setting' which is the first-order material environment from which is projected the second-order instance of language (text) and the semiotic context (situation) that it realises.

[4] To be clear, according to Doran, the update supplied by Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024) retracts the claim in Martin (1992) that context is instantiated as text.

David Rose On The "Slippage" Between The 1961 And 1992 Models Of Language And Context

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 20 Mar 2024, at 16:19:

The slippage is between 1961 and 92 models of lg and context 

61...

Lg described as semiotic systems instantiated as text (after Saussure, Firth)

Context modelled as culture instantiated as situation (after Malinowski)

Situation modelled as instantial categories of field, tenor, mode (not described as semiotic systems) 

92...

Context modelled as semiotic systems instantiated as text (after Hjelmslev)

Text instantiates systems at all strata (no ‘situation’ outside of semiosis)

Doran, Martin, Herrington describe field, tenor, mode systems as ‘resources’

Earlier classification model incorporated as ‘principles’ of instantiation

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Scale and Category Grammar differed from SFL Theory in that it had no system networks, no metafunctions, no cline of instantiation, and the level between grammar and situation was called context, not semantics. The architecture of language proposed by Scale and Category Grammar (Halliday 1961) was as follows:

[2] This is misleading because it is untrue. Scale and Category Grammar ("the 1961 model") did not include a cline of instantiation.

[3] This is misleading because it is untrue. In Scale and Category Grammar ("the 1961 model"), 'context' referred to the equivalent of semantics in SFL Theory, and 'situation' referred to the equivalent of context in SFL Theory.

[4] This is misleading because it is untrue. In Scale and Category Grammar ("the 1961 model"), there were no metafunctions, and so, no metafunctional categories of situation.

[5] This is misleading because it is untrue. In SFL Theory, context is the culture modelled as a semiotic system, and field, tenor and mode constitute the projection of the metafunctions, modes of meaning, onto the culture as semiotic system.

[6] To be clear, this is the model of Martin (1992) in which Halliday's culture as semiotic system is mistakenly stratified into two perspectives on language variation: genre and register. In SFL Theory, genre, in the sense of text type, and register are at the midway point of the cline of instantiation: text type is register viewed from the instance pole, and register is text type viewed from the system pole of the cline.

[7] On the one hand, this is misleading because it falsely implies that Martin (1992) was the first to model context as semiotic. On the other hand, this is a self-contradiction, because text is an instance of language, whereas context is distinguished from language in Martin's stratification hierarchy.

[8] This is misleading because it is untrue. Hjelmslev did not model context as semiotic systems instantiated as text. Like Halliday before him, Martin used Hjelmslev's notion of a connotative semiotic as a semiotic that has a denotative semiotic, such as language, as its expression plane. Martin, however, misunderstood Hjelmslev on two counts. First, he mistook the content plane of the connotative semiotic, context, for the entire connotative semiotic. Then he mistook varieties of a denotative semiotic, genres and registers, for connotative semiotics.

[9] This repeats the self-contradiction of language (text) as an instance of non-language (context).

[10] This is misleading because it falsely claims that situation, as an instance of culture, is not modelled as semiotic, in Halliday's model.

[11] To be clear, in their model of field, tenor and mode as resources, Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 1) confuse context with semantics: 

In this paper, we review recent work in SFL which focuses on modelling register as a resource — reconceiving field as a resource for construing phenomena, tenor as a resource for negotiating social relations, and mode as a resource for composing texture. 

That is, having first misconstrued language (register) as context, Martin is now, with his colleagues, misconstruing context (field, tenor, mode) as language.

See also

• Negotiating Tenor: Enacting Affiliation In Dialogue And Monologue (Yaegan Doran)
• A Close Examination Of Yaegan Doran's 2023 ASFLA Plenary Abstract

[12] To be clear, the proposal of Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 12) is to remove Poynton's CONTACT and STATUS from tenor systems to make way for their misinterpretation of tenor as interpersonal semantics:

Accordingly, we will propose below that these dimensions [of contact and status] be interpreted as principles of instantiation, rather than as tenor options within the realisation hierarchy.

Ed McDonald On The Nature Of Semiosis

 Edward McDonald wrote to sys-func on 19 Nov 2023, at 14:02:

(3) … Can language be taken as the model / interpretant of all other semiotic systems …  

(McDonald 2013):

If social semiotic approaches are to free themselves from their current reliance on linguistic models, they will need to understand the nature of semiosis, in other words, to explicitly theorise the iconic and/or indexical and/or symbolic referential processes involved in recognising the links between expression and interpretation in the case of each modality, before they will be able to understand how modalities combine in ‘‘performance’’. Until we have, not a Semantics and the Body, to use the title of Ruthrof’s 1997 work, but a semantics of the body, the challenge of accounting for a multimodal text like opera in a semiotically democratic way will remain a question in search of an answer.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the 'nature of semiosis' depends on the theory used to model it, which in turn, depends on the assumptions on which the theory is founded. The notion of a 'nature of a phenomenon' takes a transcendent view of meaning, which contradicts the the immanent view of meaning taken in SFL Theory. 

[2] To be clear, this confuses data with theory. Iconic and/or indexical and/or symbolic referential processes are not data to be theorised, but one way of theorising the data — that of Peirce. Moreover, Peirce's semiotics is inconsistent with SFL Theory in terms of the triadic sign relation, and in terms of icons, indexes and symbols referencing their objects (see here).

[3] To be clear, as previously demonstrated, McDonald first construed perceptible expression and interpretable behaviour as two poles of the context of a semiotic system, and then reconstrued these as the two poles of the semiotic system itself.

[4] To be clear, McDonald's notions of perceptible expression and interpretable behaviour construe the perspective of the listener only. The speaker and the musician — the performers — are excluded from this model of 'performance'.

[5] To be clear, the use of the word 'democratic' implies that other approaches are socially unjust, and that the approach McDonald advocates will right a wrong. As a logical fallacy, this might be termed an appeal to emotion.

David Rose Misleading Through Misunderstanding And Misrepresenting Context Of Culture And Situation

David Rose wrote to Sysfling on 18/9/23 at 9:04:

Let’s try to clear up the confusion between situation/culture and register/genre, since it still befuddles sysflingers in my generation...

A ‘context of situation’ is a specific instance of a general ‘context of culture’. These terms were borrowed a century ago by Firth, from the anthropologist Malinowski. They were handy metaphors, long before SFL had a model of tenor, field and mode realised in metafunctions of language, or of semiotic systems instantiated as texts. In contrast, genre and register are terms in SFL theory. 

A genre is a configuration of recurrent selections in tenor, field and mode systems, that is recognised by members of a culture. These are all cultural systems, so ‘context of situation’ is not an appropriate cover term for tenor, field and mode. Instead, the term ‘register’ was appropriated to include tenor, field and mode systems. Genres are realised by selections in register systems. Systems of genre are realised by systems of register, which are realised by systems of language and other modalities.

That’s the perspective of realisation between strata, a synoptic view. Instantiation is more dynamic. As a text unfolds, it instantiates selections in genre systems, register systems and language systems, in each moment.

These are all semiotic systems (systems of meanings), so there is no longer any need for notions of ‘culture’ or ‘situation’ outside of meaning. But metaphors like ‘context of situation and culture’ can be very sticky. How about we prise them loose.

Blogger Comments:

Having previously claimed there are no important differences between the models of Martin and Halliday & Hasan, here Rose proposes replacing Halliday's model of context with Martin's.

[1] To be clear, this confusion began when Martin (1992: 495) incongruously proposed replacing the instantiation relation between culture and situation with a realisation relation between genre and register:

The tension between these two perspectives will be resolved in this chapter by including in the interp[r]etation of context two communication planes, genre (context of culture) and register (context of situation), with register functioning as the expression form of genre, at the same time as language functions as the expression form of register.

[2] To be clear, the only ones befuddled are those who trust Martin to understand SFL Theory for them. See The Culture Of 'Faith' In The SFL Community.

[3] This misleading, because it confuses instantiation with delicacy. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 144-5):

One participant elaborates another one along the dimensions of delicacy, realisation, or instantiation. In other words, the elaboration sets up a relationship either of generality (delicacy), of abstraction (realisation), or of token to type (instantiation): see Table 4(4).

[4] This is very misleading indeed. The claim here is that 'genre' and 'register' are (genuine) SFL terms, whereas 'context of culture' and 'context of situation' are not, because they are merely "handy metaphors" that precede SFL Theory. The truth is that all four terms are used in SFL Theory. 

Halliday models context as the culture as a semiotic system, with situation as an instance of culture. The term 'register' is used by Halliday for a subpotential of language, varying for context, whereas Martin misunderstands register as a system of context. 

The term 'genre' was introduced by Hasan, at first to refer to a rhetorical mode, but then to refer to a register that realises a rhetorical mode, whereas Martin misunderstands genre as a system of context.

[5] This misunderstands stratification. Martin's model posits his genre as a higher level of symbolic abstraction than his register, so his genre can not be a configuration of selections from his lower stratum, anymore than lexicogrammar can be a configuration of phonological selections. 

Moreover, the process of selection is the process of instantiation, so selections refer to instances, and recurrent selections refer to instance types, not to systems of potential. So the theoretical point that Rose misunderstands here is that a situation type — i.e. "recurrent" selections of tenor, field and mode — is realised by a text type.

[6] This is a very serious misunderstanding of stratification and instantiation. To be clear, 'context of situation' is an appropriate term because it refers to an instance of the context of culture, the systems of tenor, field and mode.

[7] To be clear, it was Martin who rebranded Halliday's context as register. This "appropriation" was not appropriate, because it models a functional variety of language as not being language. This is tantamount to claiming that dairy cattle and beef cattle are not cattle. More technically, in Hjelmslev's terms, it mistakes a variety of a denotative semiotic for (the content plane of) a connotative semiotic.

[8] This confuses stratification with instantiation. To be clear, the claim here is that genres (systems) are realised by instances of registers, since selecting in register systems is the instantiation of register systems.

[9] To be clear, this contradicts the previous statement, since here genre and register are both described at the system pole of the cline of instantiation. However, the claim is that systems like story genres are realised by systems like status and contact relations between the speakers producing the story.

[10] To be clear, here the claim is that genres like narratives, anecdotes etc. are not language.

[11] To be clear, Rose's 'synoptic view' of realisation between strata is confused with the 'dynamic view' of instantiation. See [5], [6] and [8] above.

[12] This misunderstands both instantiation and stratification. Firstly, a text does not instantiate selections in systems; a text is the instantiation of systems, and selection is the process of instantiation. Secondly, a text cannot be the instantiation of Martin's genre and register systems, since text is an instance of language potential, whereas genre and register systems are not language potential, but context potential.

[13] This is very misleading because it is untrue. In SFL Theory, context of culture is not "outside of meaning". Context is the culture modelled as a semiotic system, a system of meaning, and a situation is an instance of that system.

[14] To be clear, since context of situation and culture, when understood, are consistent with SFL Theory, and Martin's misconstrual of language varieties as not language is not, the intelligent response would be try to understand what the terms context of situation and culture mean, and "prise loose" Martin's self-contradictory model.

[15] To be clear, on the one hand, this diagram of Martin's model misrepresents text, an instance of language, as also being an instance of context, which Martin opposes to language. On the other hand, this diagram strategically omits the term that would make its other inconsistencies more obvious: 'register' is omitted from the stratum of field, tenor and mode, and from each cline of instantiation. If the term 'register' is given its place in Martin's model, then it yields:

• a system of genre,
• a register/text type of genre,
• an instance of genre,
• a system of register,
• a register/text type of register,
• an instance of register,
• a system of language,
• a register/text type of language,
• an instance of language (text). 

Moreover, if Martin's stratification is cross-classified with Martin's instantiation:

then it yields such anomalies as:

• a genre/register of genre,
• a text type of genre,
• a genre/register of register,
• a text type of register.

∞

See also

• The Practice Of Public Bluffing In The SFL Community
• David Rose Negatively Appreciating The Deployment Of Logic
• David Rose Positively Judging 'Being Wrong'

Mick O'Donnell On The Differences In Martin's Model

Mick O'Donnell replied to Attia Rasool on Sysling on 16/9/23 at 19:39:

My take on the differences in Martin's model:

1. What Halliday called "context of situation" was renamed as "Register" in the Martin approach. In the Halliday model, a register is "a variety of language, corresponding to a variety of situation", so is basically the language pattern appropriate to a context of situation. Martin lifted the term up to apply to the situation, not to the language used in the situation.

2. Martin and others (Rothery, Christie, etc.) added in a level of Genre above context of situation. As Annabelle said, this change was never adopted by Halliday, Hasan, and their followers. But it has proved popular in the area of Language Education, where it has proved useful to have individual genres existing as names in the theory, while in Halliday's approach, what a genre exists as a set of contextual features scattered across Field, Tenor and Mode (except since Matthiessen 2015 where terms like expounding, reporting, recreating, etc. are covered under Field).

3. Halliday's "Semantic" stratum is largely (but not entirely) a level of meaningful abstraction over the clause (or clause complex). Martin's "Discourse Semantics" has been described as "grammar above the clause", e.g., capturing patterns which don't respect the borders of clauses, e.g., reference, evaluation, logical relations, exchange, etc. Neither characterisation is totally true, but there is definitely a difference in orientation here. And certainly Hasan's work explored deeply patterns outside the clause (she introduced the notion of cohesion, cohesive harmony, schematic structure etc.)

4. Semantics was not highly specified by Halliday himself, and those who followed have proposed different components to the semantics. Most share some kind of Experiential and Logical semantics, and Speech Function as part of an Exchange semantics, some form of Thematic Progression, and Cohesion resources. The nature of these descriptions varies though, Hasan's "message semantics" takes a different turn that Eggin's (in the Martin camp) speech function network. And approaches to cohesive resources, while a common base in Hasan's work, varies in the way it is applied. Martin's model adds in other areas of semantics, e.g., Martin and White added in attitudinal, engagement and graduation models (part of Appraisal). And other components as well.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin (1992) rebranded Halliday's context — from potential to instance — as register. Context of situation is merely an instance of context. Despite modelling register as context instead of language, an instance of Martin's register is nevertheless an instance of language: a text. This inconsistency is exacerbated by Martin's acknowledgement that instantiation does not cross stratal boundaries (such as from context to the strata of language.

[2] To be clear, in Halliday's model, register is a subpotential of language, a point of variation at the midway point on the cline of instantiation between potential and instance. As such, it realises context at a point of variation at the midway point on the cline of instantiation between potential and instance: a situation type. Because situation is an instance of context, it is realised by an instance of language: text, not register.

[3] To be clear, this is a serious misunderstanding of the stratification of levels of symbolic abstraction. Locating genres, as text types, above context is misconstruing varieties of language as not being language and as more abstract than culture.

[4] To be clear, Martin's notion of genre is unwittingly scattered over various dimensions of SFL theory. As text type, genre is register viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation. The types of genre are categories within rhetorical mode, context, and the stages of genres are semantic structures of text types.

[5] To be clear, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 604) outline the explanatory advantages that motivate modelling semantics at a low level of abstraction above the grammar:

But in modelling the semantic system we face a choice: namely, how far "above" the grammar we should try to push it. Since the decision has to be made with reference to the grammar, this is equivalent to asking how abstract the theoretical constructs are going to be. We have chosen to locate ourselves at a low point on the scale of abstraction, keeping the semantics and the grammar always within hailing distance. There were various reasons for this.  

First, we wanted to show the grammar at work in construing experience; since we are proposing this as an alternative to cognitive theories, with an "ideation base" rather than a "knowledge base", we need to posit categories such that their construal in the lexicogrammar is explicit.  

Secondly, we wanted to present the grammar as "natural", not arbitrary; this is an essential aspect of the evolution of language from a primary semiotic such as that of human infants.  

Thirdly, we wanted to explain the vast expansion of the meaning potential that takes place through grammatical metaphor; this depends on the initial congruence between grammatical and semantic categories.

But in any case, it is not really possible to produce a more abstract model of semantics until the less abstract model has been developed first. One has to be able to renew connection with the grammar.

[6] To be clear, "patterns which don't respect the borders of clauses" are modelled in terms of cohesion in SFL Theory (Halliday & Hasan 1976). Martin (1992) rebranded these lexicogrammatical systems as his discourse semantic systems, rebranding reference and ellipsis-&-substitution as identification, lexical cohesion as ideation, and cohesive conjunction as conjunction (later connexion).

[7] To be clear, reference, evaluation, logical relations and exchange are all Halliday, not Martin. But see [10] below.

[8] This is misleading because it is untrue. See, for example, the 618-pages of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999). 

[9] This is potentially misleading, since speech function is Halliday, not Martin.

[10] The systems of APPRAISAL differ from all the other discourse semantic systems in that they were developed through the collective efforts of Martin's colleagues and PhD students, with a first, early version of the key subsystem of ATTITUDE set out in 1994 by Iedema, Feez and White in their monograph, Media Literacy. Martin is possibly often regarded as the founder of the theory on the basis of references he made to APPRAISAL in a 1997 paper ("Analysing Genre: Functional Parameters") and/or his fuller treatment in his 2000 paper ""Beyond Exchange: Appraisal Systems in English". (The 1997 chapter presented an account of the sub-system of APPRECIATION, which was also developed through collaboration, most notably through Rothery's work on visual arts education.) However, key elements of what is now the widely referenced version of the theory were first presented in White's 1998 PhD thesis and then in White's 2002 paper, "The Language of Evaluation and Stance" (Handbook of Pragmatics.)". The version of the theory now most widely deployed in textual analysis was outlined in Martin and White's 2005 The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. It includes accounts of the following sub-systems: AFFECT (drawing on earlier work by Martin), JUDGEMENT (collaboration by Martin, Iedema, Feez and White), APPRECIATION (collaboration by Martin and Rothery), ENGAGEMENT (from White's 1998 PhD thesis), GRADUATION (White and Martin collaboration).

David Rose On There Being No Important Differences Between Martin And Halliday & Hasan

David Rose replied to Attia Rasool on SYSFLING on 16 Sept 2023 at 09:32:

There are no important differences between Martin’s, Halliday’s and Hasan’s approaches in SFL. Halliday’s major contribution was developing SFL theory in the process of describing lexicogrammar and intonation through the 1960-70s. He and Hasan used the work on lexicogrammar to describe structures of discourse as ‘cohesion’ in 1976. Hasan was also trained as a sociologist. She and Halliday both used the work on lexicogrammar to interpret aspects of social contexts in their later work.

Martin used Halliday’s and Hasan’s work on lexicogrammar and discourse to describe discourse semantic systems. His foundational English Text (1992) explains carefully how this work builds on their research. It should be read closely by anyone interested in SFL.

Martin also extended SFL theory to social context, describing field, tenor and mode as semiotic systems, realised in language, and genre as a semiotic system realised in field, tenor and mode. This work has been widely applied to research in education and other fields.

Martin and colleagues then built on Kress and van Leeuwen’s work on images to describe other modalities as semiotic systems. Martin and colleagues have also integrated Halliday’s, Hasan’s and others’ research on ‘users’ and ‘uses’ of language, as individuation and instantiation.

Work on individuation helps to understand various alignments within the SFL community in terms of affiliation, or bonding around icons. As the founder of the field, Halliday has been iconised, so that SFL work beyond his was sometimes seen as too different and less legitimate. This is not the view of younger generations.

Measured objectively, by far the most influential figures in SFL have been Halliday with [almost 200,000] citations, and Martin with almost 100,000 citations. Other leaders in SFL have only a fraction of these followers.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is very misleading indeed, because there are very many important irreconcilable differences, all deriving from Martin's misunderstandings of Halliday's theory. See some of the evidence at:

Review of Martin (1992)
Review of Bateman (1998)
Review of Martin & Rose (2007)
Review of Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010)
Review of Martin (2013)
Review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019)
Review of Martin & Doran (2023)

[2] This is potentially misleading. Halliday's "major contribution" was to actually formulate SFL theory, developing it, in the 1970s, from his 1960s theory, Scale & Category Grammar. The integration of all the dimensions that the theory assigns to language is Halliday's work. Without Halliday, SFL Theory does not exist; without Martin, it does. 

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday & Hasan (1976) theorises the lexicogrammatical systems of cohesion, a non-structural resource of the textual metafunction. Later, Martin (1992) rebranded his misunderstandings of their non-structural systems as his structural systems of discourse semantics. See the evidence at Review of Martin (1992).

[4] This is potentially misleading. In the 1960s, Hasan worked at the Sociolinguistic Research Centre with Basil Bernstein.

[5] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday & Hasan did not interpret context in terms of the lexicogrammar. Halliday used Hjelmslev's notion of a connotative semiotic to stratify context in relation to language, and projected the notion of metafunction onto context as the systems of field, tenor and mode.

[6] For the closest of all readings of Martin (1992), see  Review of Martin (1992).

[7] This is very misleading indeed, because it credits Martin with Halliday's work. It was Halliday who modelled context in terms of field, tenor and mode. Martin's "contribution" was to misunderstand context (the culture as semiotic system) as register (a diatypic variety of language). See the evidence at Review of Martin (1992).

[8] To be clear, Martin's genre is a confusion of text type (register viewed from the instance pole), mode (textual context) and semantics not organised by metafunction. It unwittingly proposes that stages of a narrative ("genre"), for example, are realised by the relative social status of the speaker and addressee (tenor). See the evidence here, here and here.

[9] For some of the misunderstandings in Martin's work on pictorial semiosis, see here (Working With Discourse) and here (Deploying Functional Grammar). For theoretical and ethical problems with "Martin's" work on "paralanguage", see Martin's Model Of Paralanguage.

[10] To be clear, Martin does not understand instantiation; evidence here, here and here. And as previously explained, Martin's model of individuation incongruously maps a meronymic taxonomy (affiliation) onto a hyponymic taxonomy (individuation). See the previous post David Rose On Martin's Context-Bound/Free And Individuation As Allocation/Affiliation.

[11] See The Tactics Of The Disciplinarian Head Of The Martin Faith Community.

[12] To be clear, here Rose implies that Martin's work has been rejected because it is too different or less legitimate, rather than because it is inconsistent with both SFL Theory and itself. See also The Culture Of 'Faith' In The SFL Community.

[13] To be clear, here Rose is talking of Martin's former and current students.

[14] To be clear, this confuses quantity (citations) with quality (theoretical integrity). The most reliable interpreter of Halliday, by far, is Christian Matthiessen. A meticulous review of his 700+ page book, Lexicogrammatical Cartography, warranted only 41 critiques.

[15] See The Culture Of 'Faith' In The SFL Community.

David Rose On Martin's Context-Bound/Free And Individuation As Allocation/Affiliation

David Rose replied to Ed McDonald on Sysfling on 12/9/23 at 16:55:

For recentish work on "context-bound" vs "context-free" see

Revisiting mode: Context in/dependency in Ancient History classroom discourse

JR Martin, E Matruglio

Studies in functional linguistics and discourse analysis 5, 72-95

Revisiting field: Specialized knowledge in secondary school science and humanities discourse

JR Martin

Onomázein, 111-148

SF work on coding orientation is now being reframed as individuation: allocation/affiliation

Discourse and Diversionary Justice: an analysis of youth justice conferencing

M Zappavigna, JR Martin

Palgrave Macmillan

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin mistakes language varieties, register and genre, for context. If register and genre are misunderstood as the context of language, then the claim is that language is either independent or dependent of the context it construes. In this case, the realisation relation between context and language is misunderstood as dependency.

But even if register and genre are understood as language varieties, the claim is that texts are either independent or dependent of the varieties of which are instances. In this case, the instantiation relation between register/genre and text is misunderstood as dependency.

 [2] To be clear, Halliday (2008: 114) explains Bernstein's coding orientation as follows:

… Bernstein’s concept of “code”, which he defined as sociolinguistic coding orientation […] with its opposition of “elaborated/restricted”, was the basic mechanism of cultural transmission: it was the different semiotic practices, or “meaning styles”, of different social classes that was responsible for transmitting social class distinctions across the generations.

See Misunderstanding Bernstein at Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause (Martin & Rose, 2007).

[3] To be clear, Martin has presented two models of a 'cline of individuation': one derived from the work of Bernstein and the other from the work of his PhD student, Knight. The Bernstein-derived model is a cline from 'reservoir' to 'repertoire', where 'reservoir' refers to the potential of the community and 'repertoire' refers to the potential of the individual. Bernstein (2000: 157):

I shall use the term repertoire to refer to the set of strategies and their analogic potential possessed by any one individual and the term reservoir to refer to the total of sets and its potential of the community as a whole.

Applied to language, this is a model of the meaning potential of meaners (language users). The organising principle of the cline is elaboration and ascription (intensive attribution), since 'repertoire' is both a subtype of 'reservoir' (elaboration), and a member of the class 'reservoir' (ascription); cf. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 145).

However, it is the Knight-derived model that is relevant here. Martin et al (2013):

A second, complementary perspective on individuation looks at how personæ mobilise social semiotic resources to affiliate with one another — how users attitude and ideation couplings, in Knight's (2010) terms, to form bonds, and how these bonds then cluster as belongings of different orders (including relatively "local" familial, collegial, professional, and leisure/recreational affiliations and more "general" fellowships reflecting "master identities" including social class, gender, generation, ethnicity, and dis/ability).

Like the Bernstein-derived model, the organising principle is again elaborating ascription, since each point on the cline is a subtype and member of the points above as types, but unlike the Bernstein-derived model, the individuation here is not of the meaning potential of meaners but of the meaners themselves. This inconsistency leads to a more serious inconsistency: the conflation of two different types of hierarchy.

Affiliation differs from individuation in that its organising principle is extension, not elaboration, since it is concerned with composition and association (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 146). That is, where individuation is a hyponymic taxonomy (an elaboration of types), affiliation is a meronymic taxonomy (a composition of parts).

Because of this difference, affiliation can not be mapped onto the cline of individuation. For example, the bonding of meaners through shared evaluations does not affiliate them as a master identity such as gender or ethnicity. Gender and ethnicity are not created by people making the same interpersonal assessments, and the meaners (personæ) of the same gender or ethnicity can differ markedly in their interpersonal assessments.