On Chapter 1 Of Martin's 'English Text'

Bateman (1998: 2):

The book is organised into 7 chapters, which, for the purpose of this review, I will distribute among three parts. The first part, chapter 1, introduces the basic premises and position of the book, arguing for both the existence of a distinct level of discourse semantics and the approach adopted for uncovering its details.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Martin provides three motivations for a stratum of discourse semantics: 'semantic motifs', grammatical metaphor and conjunctive cohesion.  Of these, only grammatical metaphor provides a genuine motivation for the stratification of the content plane, though it does not justify a 'discourse' semantics, merely a stratum of semantics, which is Halliday's prior proposal.

Martin's understanding of 'semantic motifs' does not justify a higher level of abstraction because it confuses generalisation (delicacy) with symbolic abstraction (stratification), as explained in more detail at The Problems With Semantic Motifs As A Motivation For Stratification.

Martin's understanding of conjunctive cohesion does not justify a higher level of abstraction because it confuses the deployment of structural expansion relations by the logical metafunction in unit complexes with the deployment of non-structural expansion relations by the textual metafunction.  See Not Recognising The 'Continuity' Between Clause Taxis And Conjunctive Cohesion.

For a critique of Martin's three reasons for proposing a discourse semantic stratum, see Why The Argument For A 'Discourse' Semantic Stratum Is Invalid.

[2] This is misleading because it is untrue.  Martin does not provide an argument in support of the approach he adopts in uncovering the details of a discourse semantic stratum.  For a detailed critique of Martin's chapter 1, see here.

Moreover, Martin's approach to modelling discourse semantics is to take Halliday's systems of cohesion, non-structural resources of the textual metafunction at the level of lexicogrammar, misunderstand them, and rebrand the misunderstandings as his own systems of discourse semantics.

• The (textual) grammatical systems of reference and substitution–&–ellipsis are rebranded as the (textual) discourse semantic system of identification;
• the (textual) grammatical system of conjunction (& continuity) is rebranded as the (logical) discourse semantic system of conjunction (& continuity); and
• the (textual) system of lexical cohesion is rebranded as the (experiential) discourse semantic system of ideation.

In the latter two cases, there is thus the additional confusion of metafunctions. For the interpersonal metafunction, Martin rebrands Halliday's semantic system of speech function as his own discourse semantic system of negotiation.