On What Martin's 'English Text' Presents

Bateman (1998: 2):

English Text presents a single overarching framework within which functional motivations are offered for an unprecedented range of phenomena, often showing how quite distinct lexicogrammatical realisations must be considered as alternatives available for single classes of discourse functions. These discourse functions are themselves highly organised and structured; indeed, one of the main achievements of the book is to reveal a level of discourse semantics that turns out to be as richly structured and interrelated as grammar has been shown to be — particularly by the work in the functional tradition of, for example, Halliday, Fawcett, Matthiessen and Davidse.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is precisely what English Text does not do. It does not show 'how quite distinct lexicogrammatical realisations must be considered as alternatives available for single classes of discourse functions'.  It does not even provide realisation statements in any of the discourse semantic networks.  Bateman has here accepted, without question, one of Martin's arguments for setting up a discourse semantic stratum, which Martin subsequently does not address in the rest of the book.  The theoretical misunderstandings that invalidate Martin's argument are outlined here.

[2] Here again Bateman accepts Martin's claims without question.  The "structures" that Martin sets up, which he terms 'co-variate' (following Lemke 1985), are the non-structural cohesive relations of the lexicogrammar, transposed to discourse semantics.  Unknown to Martin (1992), Lemke later (1988) acknowledged that his notion of co-variate structure was not a type of structure.  For details, see here; for critiques of Martin's notion of structure, more generally, see here.

[3] As demonstrated here, Fawcett continually misunderstands Halliday's theory, and misrepresents it in ways that favour his own position, while arguing by means of various types of logical fallacies (examples can be viewed here).