On The Basic Aim Of Martin's 'English Text'

Bateman (1998: 2):

The basic aim of the book, as presented in Chapter 1, is to show and explain the systematicity and regularities that allow sequences of grammatical units to be construed as texts. The book seeks to enable its readers to “relate any English text to the context in which it is used’’[p1].

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Martin (1992: 1) explains the aim of the book as follows:

Its aim is to provide a comprehensive set of discourse analyses which can be used to relate any English text to the context in which it is used. … Like Cohesion in English, English Text uses systemic functional grammar to ask questions about text structure, and complements the grammar by developing additional analyses which focus on the text rather than the clause.  Cohesion in English organises the division of labour as the opposition between grammar and cohesion (between structural and non-structural resources for meaning).  English Text organises this division of labour in a different way — stratally, as an opposition between grammar and semantics (between clause oriented and text oriented resources for meaning).

Some of the thoughts that didn't occur to Bateman are:

1. Contrary to Bateman's implication, Martin does not provide realisation statements that relate his discourse semantic "systematicity and regularities" to lexicogrammatical systems or structures;
2. It is the textual metafunction only — and at all linguistic strata, not just semantics — that is concerned with relating a text to its context;
3. Martin misinterprets the distinction between the structural and non-structural (cohesive) resources of the textual metafunction at the lexicogrammatical stratum as an opposition between grammar (in general) and cohesion;
4. Martin takes the non-structural (cohesive) resources of the textual metafunction at the lexicogrammatical stratum and relocates them at a higher level of abstraction, discourse semantics, without providing supporting argument as to how and why they are more abstract; and
5. Martin relocates the non-structural (cohesive) resources of the textual metafunction across the metafunctions, such that lexical cohesion is misinterpreted as experiential (and structural), and cohesive conjunction is misinterpreted as logical (and structural).

See here for more on Martin's "division of labour". In short, Martin (1992) misconstrues a metafunction, the textual, for a level of symbolic abstraction, discourse semantics.