On CONJUNCTION And IDEATION Interactions As Definitive For The Notion Of Texture

Bateman (1998: 20):

And, in chapter 6, Martin sets out a preliminary attempt to explore the interaction and co-operation between different strata and regions in the construction of meaning. Martin gives examples of interdependencies and some of the very few attempts to explore these— for example, Hoey’s (1983) investigation of the relationship between phenomena assigned by English Text to the CONJUNCTION and IDEATION regions. These patterns of interaction Martin suggests are definitive for the notion of texture — that distinguishing property of any text that differentiates it from a set of unrelated sentences and which derives from “the fact that it functions as a unity with respect to its environment’’ (Halliday and Hasan, 1976:2).

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the sources of Martin's CONJUNCTION and IDEATION, Halliday & Hasan's (1976) cohesive conjunction and lexical cohesion, do contribute to texture, because texture is created by the textual metafunction, and systems of cohesion are systems of the textual metafunction (op. cit.: 27).

However, Martin misinterprets these textual systems as systems of the ideational metafunction — logical (CONJUNCTION) and experiential (IDEATION) — and ideational systems are not concerned with texture, but with construing experience.

This fundamental misunderstanding further undermines Martin's chapter on texture.