Sunday 18 November 2018

On Required Extensions Of Genre Theory

Bateman (1998: 21):
Martin himself draws attention to some of the ways in which the theory will have to be extended, including the move from genre ‘agnation’ (i.e., organisation into system networks) to genre topologyand the tension between synoptic (language as product) and dynamic accounts.


Blogger Comments:

[1] On the one hand, this misunderstands genre agnation, since genre agnation is concerned with systemic relations between genres in a genre taxonomy, not with agnation in system networks that model genre as potential.  On the other hand, this is misleading, since Martin provides neither a taxonomy of genres nor a system network of genre potential to "move from" in extending the theory.

[2] To be clear, a genre topology would represent the degrees of relatedness between different genres.  In SFL theory, where genre means text type — that is: register viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation — the degree of relatedness between text types is measured by the relative frequencies of shared semantic and lexicogrammatical features.

[3] As previously demonstrated, Martin misunderstands the synoptic vs dynamic distinction, with  his 'synoptic' corresponding to syntagmatic structure and his 'dynamic' to instantiation in logogenesis.  In relation to genre, this distinction arises in his application of metafunctional structure types — particle, prosody and wave — to genre (pp548-60), despite the fact that his genre, contrary to SFL theory, is not theorised on the basis of the three metafunctions.

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