Misrepresenting Martin (1992) As Expanding On The Textual Meanings Of Halliday & Hasan (1976)

Bateman (1998: 4):

In taking on the task of describing this more abstract semantic unit, Martin attempts to get behind the system that would motivate the appearance of particular cohesive links in text, thereby expanding considerably on the very general kinds of meanings discussed formerly for cohesive ties in Cohesion in English itself (cf. Halliday and Hasan, 1976, Chapter 7).

Blogger Comments:

Bateman's claim here is that Martin attempts to provide the systems behind the instantiation of cohesion in text.  This is very misleading.  What Martin actually does is

1. take three of Halliday & Hasan's four types of cohesion: reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion, 
2. relocate them from lexicogrammar to semantics (rebranded as discourse semantics), 
3. misunderstand them, 
4. rebrand two of the misunderstandings as identification (reference) and ideation (lexical cohesion), and 
5. relocate two of the misunderstandings in terms of metafunction: conjunction from textual to logical, and lexical cohesion ("ideation") from textual to experiential.

The effect of all this is to create an internally inconsistent model that is inconsistent with the theoretical architecture of SFL theory, and this is why any claim that doing so equates to 'expanding considerably on the very general kinds of meanings discussed formerly for cohesive ties in Cohesion in English itself' is a very serious misrepresentation of the work under review.