Favourably Misrepresenting Martin's Discourse Structures

Bateman (1998: 7-8):

These diverse discourse structures are developed in detail and with copious examples in their own particular chapters, but a number of useful overview tables are also given towards the end of Chapter 5. For example, the semantic units participating in discourse structures are summarised in Table 5.18 [p325] thus:

Table 5.18. Discourse semantics: units proposed in English Text
interpersonal	textual	ideational: logical	experiential
exchange
move		message
	participant		message part

As within the grammar, different labellings are proposed within each metafunction. That is: the region of NEGOTIATION, which is concerned with the interpersonal construction of text as an unfolding ‘exchange’, links together discourse ‘moves’; the region of CONJUNCTION, which is concerned with how meanings are combined together to form larger ‘logically’ related meanings, links ‘messages’; the region of IDENTIFICATION, concerned with establishing reference to discourse entities, links ‘participants’; and the region of IDEATION, concerned with ‘the company that words keep’, links ‘message parts’.

Blogger Comments:

[1] The term 'diverse' here is misleading.  Martin (1992: 331) describes all his structures as covariate, with the addition of multivariate structure in the case of his interpersonal meaning; see previous post.  Importantly, 'covariate' (Lemke 1985) is not a type of structure, as later acknowledged by Lemke (1988: 159) himself.

[2] The notion of 'units participating in discourse structures' conceals an inconsistency in Martin's structure types, deriving from his confusing structured units with units in a relation.  To be clear, Martin's interpersonal units are structured units, like the clause in the grammar, whereas the units of Martin's other metafunctions are units in relations to other units, like Halliday's cohesive relations that Martin has misunderstood, rebranded and relocated, stratally and metafunctionally, from lexicogrammar to discourse semantics.

[3] This echoes Martin's confusing of the realisation relation between system (negotiation) and structure (exchange), on the one hand, with the instantiation of potential in logogenesis (unfolding of text), on the other.  See, for example, Confusing Realisation And Instantiantion.

[4] The use of 'links' here continues the concealment of the inconsistencies in Martin's notion of structure, as identified above in [2].  The relation between 'exchange' and 'move' is one of constituency: an exchange consists of moves.  The notion of NEGOTIATION "linking" moves falsely construes interpersonal structure as consistent with

• CONJUNCTION "linking" messages, 
• IDENTIFICATION "linking" messages, and
• IDEATION "linking" message parts.

The notion of 'links' is consistent with the notion of 'cohesive ties': the non-structural relations in the systems of cohesion that Martin has rebranded, relocated and misunderstood as discourse semantic structural relations.