Martin therefore takes pains to position English Text as building explicitly on the broadest approach to the functional description of English grammar currently available, i.e., that set out at length in Halliday’s IFG and elaborated further systemically in Matthiessen’s (1995) Lexicogrammatical Cartography. Martin then considers where such an account — already, as he describes in this chapter, somewhat ‘extravagent’ [sic] in the dimensions of organisation that it provides — itself necessarily ‘runs out of steam’ when we turn to the distinctive phenomena of text and discourse. The regularities that grammar cannot capture then provide the point of departure for those regularities that a distinct discourse semantics may be in a better position to describe and explain.
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The claim that the grammar "runs out of steam" is Martin's (1992:16):
Extravagant as systemic functional grammars are, they do run out of steam. Three of their limitations will now be reviewed.The three "limitations" that Martin identifies then become the justification for his proposed stratum of discourse semantics. These are:
- semantic motifs (p16)
- grammatical metaphor (pp16-7)
- cohesion (pp17-9)
The first notion, 'semantic motifs', refers to generalisations across some instances of some process types. However, this does not provide support for a higher stratum of symbolic abstraction, because generalisation is not abstraction. In SFL theory, this type of generalisation is modelled in terms of delicacy. Martin's 'semantic motifs' is actually an argument for a more general system of process types, not a higher stratum.
It can be noted that Martin, having introduced the notion of 'semantic motifs' as a rationâle for discourse semantics, promptly forgets about it; that is, it is not addressed in his chapter on experiential semantics (termed 'ideation'), or anywhere else.
For a more detailed critique, see The Problems With Semantic Motifs As A Motivation For Stratification.
The second notion, grammatical metaphor, on the other hand, does provide a justification for a higher level of symbolic abstraction. However, this merely justifies a semantic stratum, in general, not a specifically discourse semantics. Looking at the way Martin words his discussion, the reader could be forgiven for thinking that this argument is Martin's insight, and that Martin is the first to propose a stratification of the content plane. The insight and the proposal were originally, of course, Halliday's.
It can be noted that Martin, in any case, misunderstands the notion of grammatical metaphor, as demonstrated, for this specific discussion, at Misrepresenting Grammatical Metaphor, and more generally throughout the entire publication here.
The third notion, cohesion, refers to the non-structural resources of the textual metafunction on the stratum of lexicogrammar. Martin's focus is on conjunctive cohesion, and the fact that this, like clause complexing, involves the deployment of expansion relations. According to Martin (p19), setting up a discourse semantic stratum 'will permit generalisations to be made across structural and non-structural textual relations.
The confusions here are manifold. Firstly, the argument again confuses generalisation with abstraction, and so does not support the notion of a higher stratum — discourse semantic or otherwise. Secondly, the generalisation ignores the distinction between metafunctions: textual (conjunction) and logical (clause complexing), and between non-structural (conjunction) and structural (clause complexing) relations. See also Not Recognising The 'Continuity' Between Clause Taxis And Conjunctive Cohesion.
In the course of his argument, Martin misrepresents Halliday and Hasan's work on cohesion, as demonstrated in the following critiques:
For a summary critique of Martin's three arguments, see Why The Argument For A 'Discourse' Semantic Stratum Is Invalid.
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