Sunday, 30 September 2018

Misrepresenting Fries On Method Of Development

Bateman (1998: 20):
Several examples of this kind of integration and its contribution to textuality are given. In general, the resource of grammatical metaphor is used to ensure that textually appropriate meanings are placed in lexicogrammatically supportive positions. Thus, in order to obtain desired unmarked Theme selections, it may be necessary to select grammatically incongruent realisations for the messages to be expressed so that the participant to become Theme may also legitimately be Subject [p435]. And, in turn, the requirement that particular Themes be selected as marked or unmarked comes from the discourse semantic motivation of achieving a particular method of development as investigated predominantly by Fries (e.g., 1983).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, all of this is Martin reporting Fries (1981), not Martin, and it only applies to method of development — not to cohesive harmony, modal responsibility or point.

[2] This is misleading. Fries' work (1981) on method of development, is couched theoretically consistently, that is: in terms of lexicogrammar, not in terms of Martin's discourse semantics, and "motivations" for Theme selection are textual, not discourse semantic.  This latter misunderstanding confuses metafunction with stratum.

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