On Martin's Mistaking Different Manifestations Of Expansion For Different Realisations Of Conjunction

Bateman (1998: 13-4):

CONJUNCTION is then perhaps quite appropriately the discourse semantic region for which Martin discusses the most varied selection of possible lexicogrammatical realisations. Not only does he make sure to preserve the required continuity between congruent grammatical realisation in terms of clause complexes and cohesive realisations of conjunctive relations (as illustrated in examples (c-f) above), he also makes considerable use of the diverse grammatical metaphors available below the clause. Thus, the following variants can all be seen as alternative realisations of a single discourse semantic temporal relation between two semantic messages [pp168–169]:

We walk the ring with our dogs and then we just wait.
After we walk the ring with our dogs, we just wait.
Subsequent to walking the ring with our dogs, we just wait.
After our tour of the ring, we just wait.
Our tour of the ring is prior to our wait.
Our tour of the ring is before we wait.
Our tour of the ring is the antecedent of our wait.
Our tour of the ring precedes our wait.
The first thing we do is tour the ring with our dogs; the second thing we do is we wait. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin's conjunction is Halliday & Hasan's (1976) conjunction, relocated from lexicogrammar to discourse semantics, and misunderstood as a structural logical system instead of a non-structural (cohesive) textual system.  The theoretical inconsistencies are both stratal and metafunctional.  To add to the confusion, Martin also relocates expansion relations between clauses from lexicogrammar to discourse semantics, while ignoring projection relations; that is, the logico-semantic relation of projection is entirely absent from Martin's logical discourse semantics, with the consequence that projection systems in the lexicogrammar have no discourse semantic systems to realise.

To add further to the confusion, because Martin uses Halliday & Hasan (1976) as the source of his ideas, instead of Halliday (1985), his conjunction systems do not present elaboration, extension and enhancement as the most general types of relations, with the consequence that the stratal relation between discourse semantic and grammatical features are incongruent, even in the absence of grammatical metaphor.

To add further still to the confusion, Martin misunderstands and misapplies the types of expansion, including the distinction between internal and external relations, which he claims (wrongly) to be the 'main factor distinguishing Halliday's (1985) classification from that being developed here (1992: 182).

For the evidence on which all the above assessments are based, and much more, see the extensive clarifications and critiques here.

[2] To be clear, in "preserving the required continuity between congruent grammatical realisation in terms of clause complexes and cohesive realisations of conjunctive relations", Martin confuses expansion in the service of the logical metafunction (clause complexes) with expansion in the service of the textual metafunction (cohesive conjunction) and relocates the confusion from lexicogrammar to discourse semantics.

[3] To be clear, this "considerable use" amounts to displaying a few example sentences on a single page (p169).

[4] To be clear, Martin confuses conjunction with the more general resource of expansion, of which conjunction is but one manifestation.  What these instances have in common is not conjunction, but the expansion category temporal enhancement.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 669) 'present a systematic and comprehensive summary of the different grammatical environments in which elaboration, extension and enhancement are manifested':

the environments of manifestation can be differentiated in terms of (i) metafunction – textual (CONJUNCTION), logical (INTERDEPENDENCY; MODIFICATION) and experiential (CIRCUMSTANTIATION; PROCESS TYPE: relational), and (ii) rank – clause and group/phrase. …

From a grammatical point of view, the environments … are, of course, all different. But seen from above, from the vantage point of semantics, they are all agnate ways of construing expansion. Collectively they thus construe expansion as a semantic system. This means that for any given type of expansion we want to express, we have at our disposal a range of resources.

[5] To be clear, in SFL theory, a message is a textual unit at the level of semantics (cf. 'clause as message').  This is why cohesive conjunction, a grammatical resource of the textual metafunction, is concerned with conjoining messages.  In rebranding Halliday & Hasan's (1976) textual grammar as his own logical discourse semantics, Martin also rebrands a textual unit as a logical unit.

On Martin's Misrepresentation Of Halliday & Hasan (1976)

Bateman (1998: 13):

Martin also attempts [p180] what he terms a “less materialist’’ and more semiotic interpretation of the internal/external division, drawing on the relationships between discourse semantics, register and genre that he sets out in Chapter 7; external relations then relate to ‘field’, the “institutional organisation of our culture’’, and internal relations relate to the ‘text genre’, the “organisation of text as it is formulated to construct our culture.’’ Conjunction is thus seen as the “most upward-looking’’ system in the discourse semantics and, as such, is suggested as a particularly useful place to start whenever the structure of a whole text is to be considered [p269].

Blogger Comments:

[1] Martin's misrepresentation of the source of his ideas — Halliday & Hasan's distinction between internal and external conjunctive relations — as "materialist" derives from his own misunderstanding of their distinction.  Martin (1992: 180):

Internal relations in other words structure semiosis; external ones code the structure of the world.

As Halliday & Hasan (1976: 241) point out, it is both types of cohesive conjunction that create text, not merely internal conjunctive relations.  This is hardly surprising, given the fact that conjunction is a resource of the textual metafunction, rather than of the logical metafunction, and given the fact that the textual metafunction is concerned with 'semiotic reality' — 'reality in the form of meaning' — rather than with 'natural reality' (ideational metafunction) or 'intersubjective reality' (interpersonal metafunction); see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398).

[2] To be clear, Martin's reinterpretation of Halliday's context, the culture as a semiotic system, confuses culture with varieties of language, register and genre; see the clarifications and critiques of Martin's Chapter 7 here.  In SFL theory, language lies on the expression plane of context.

Significantly, it is Martin (1992: 33, 39-40, 122) who, in earlier chapters, adopts a "materialist perspective", confusing semiotic context with material setting.

[3] To be clear, Martin's proposal is to relate one type of conjunctive relation to the lower level of his model of context, and the other type of conjunctive relation the higher level of his model of context, skipping the lower level,

• where strata are misunderstood as interacting modules (p390), rather than levels of symbolic abstraction, and
• where the strata are varieties of language misunderstood as cultural context.

Moreover, Halliday's system of conjunction, a resource of the textual metafunction, is misunderstood by Martin as a logical system, and relocated from lexicogrammar to discourse semantics.

[4] This quoted glossing of 'field' is inconsistent with both SFL theory and Martin's own use of the term. In SFL theory, 'field' refers to the ideational dimension of the culture as semiotic system, whereas 'institution' refers to a point of variation on the cline of instantiation, namely sub-potentials of the culture as semiotic system (which are realised by sub-potentials of language: registers). In Martin's usage, on the other hand, 'field' usually refers, in SFL terms, to the ideational dimension of semantics: the domain that realises a contextual field. For Martin's misunderstandings and inconsistencies with regard to field, see the clarifications and critiques here.

[5] This quoted glossing of 'genre' is inconsistent with both SFL theory and Martin's own use of the term. In SFL theory, 'genre' is Hasan's (1985/9: 64) term for text type, which is, in turn, register viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation. In Martin's usage, 'genre' refers to context, whereas the organisation of text is the organisation of an instance of language, not context.

One possible source of Martin's confusion could be his misunderstanding of Hasan's (1985/9: 64) model of 'Generic Structure Potential', which is concerned with the potential semantic structure of texts according to type (genre).

[6] This quote from Martin, exemplifies his misunderstanding of strata as interacting modules, instead of as levels of symbolic abstraction. The relation between strata is an intensive identifying relation, with the lower stratum as Token and the higher stratum as Value; a Token does not "look up to" a Value — a Token realises a Value at a lower level of abstraction.

[7] To be clear, the original source of Martin's model, Halliday & Hasan's (1976) cohesive conjunction, is a non-structural resource of the textual metafunction at the level of lexicogrammar. There are two significant reasons, then, from the perspective of SFL theory, why conjunction is not a model of text (semantic) structure:

• conjunction is not structural, and 
• conjunction is not semantic.

On Internal vs External Conjunctive Relations

Bateman (1998: 13):

Distinct networks are also presented for both the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ (cf. Halliday and Hasan, 1976:241) guises of the logico-semantic relationships. This latter division is one that is now well-established in work on discourse connectives, although usually referred to under different terms (e.g., quite typically, ‘semantic’ for external, and ‘pragmatic’ for internal: cf. Sanders, 1997 and the further references there). Internal relations, according to Halliday and Hasan, are when conjunctive relations are used to create text; external relations are when the relations refer to some experiential ‘reality’ external to the text. An example of the distinction is the contrast in meanings involved in (i).

(i.a) He is out of breath because he has been running.

(i.b) He has been running because he is out of breath.

In (i.a) the consequential causal relationship is one external to the text: the cause of his being out of breath is that he had been running; in (i.b), however, the causal relationship is within the text itself, a paraphrase of the sentence would be:

The reason that I believe, and am telling you, that he has been running is that he is out of breath.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin (1992: 182) emphasises the centrality of the internal vs external distinction in his rebranding of Halliday's work:

The centrality of the internal/external distinction to an adequate account of the discourse semantics of logical relations is the main factor distinguishing Halliday's (1985) classification of expansion from that being developed here.

However, as demonstrated by the 50 clarifications and critiques here, Martin misunderstands Halliday & Hasan's (1976) distinction between internal and external conjunctive relations.

[2] Here Bateman, following Martin (1992: 180), also misunderstands Halliday & Hasan's distinction.  Both external and internal conjunctive relations are used to create text.  Halliday & Hasan (1976: 241):

The distinction between external and internal conjunctive relations, in textual cohesion, is made on the basis of the metafunctional distinction between experiential and interpersonal.  Halliday & Hasan (1976: 240):

[3] The use of 'refer' here demonstrates that Bateman takes a transcendent perspective on meaning, such that the meanings of language refer to meanings outside language.  This contradicts the perspective taken by SFL theory, which assumes that meaning is immanent, within semiotic systems like language, such that experience is construed as meaning.

[4] Here Bateman, following Martin (1992: 180), misunderstands the external/internal distinction to mean external/internal to the text; see [3].  To be clear, both types of conjunctive relation are internal to the text.  For Halliday & Hasan (1976: 240), the external/internal distinction means external/internal to the communication situation:

On The Logic Of English Text

Bateman (1998: 12-3):

Chapter 4 [pp159--270] turns to develop the ‘logic’ of English Text in terms of CONJUNCTION and CONTINUITY. This is the resource by which semantic messages are combined into larger complex messages, and through which messages are related to previously expressed messages as a text or dialogue unfolds. This is a rich and complex component of the discourse semantics and is essential for any adequate analysis of how texts ‘hang together’. System network classifications are given corresponding to all the major areas of ‘conjunctive cohesion’ discussed by Halliday and Hasan (1976), including subregions of addition, comparison, temporality and consequence, as well as further areas of CONTINUITY.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, "Martin's" CONJUNCTION and CONTINUITY are Halliday & Hasan's (1976) cohesive CONJUNCTION and CONTINUITY relocated from (non-structural) textual lexicogrammar to Martin's (structural) logical discourse semantics.  The theoretical inconsistencies created are thus both metafunctional and stratal.

[2] The thought that didn't occur to Bateman here is that, though he has described a resource of the textual metafunction (relations between messages), Martin's model rebrands his relocation of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) model as a resource of the logical metafunction. 

[3] The thought that didn't occur to Bateman here is that this "rich and complex" resource was theorised by Halliday & Hasan (1976) as a component of the lexicogrammar.

[4] The thought that didn't occur to Bateman here is that Martin's model is not theorised in terms of the three most general types of expansion: elaboration, extension and enhancement (Halliday 1985).  This creates mismatches between discourse semantic and grammatical descriptions, such that relations between the two are incongruent, without being metaphorical.

[5] The thought that didn't occur to Bateman here is that Martin's CONTINUITY mistakes

• mood Adjuncts of temporality for continuity items,
• mood Adjuncts of intensity for continuity items,
• substitution for continuity,
• circumstantial Adjuncts for continuity items.

For the detailed arguments on which all of the above assessments are made, see the clarifications and critiques here.

On Martin's Text Analysis And The Differences Between Identification And Negotiation

Bateman (1998: 12):

The chapter concludes with detailed analyses of two longer texts, both drawn from earlier research into the development of children’s narrative, a brief discussion of the relation between the circumstances of location and manner and discourse identification, and an orienting summary of the differences between IDENTIFICATION and NEGOTIATION as discussed in the previous chapter.

Blogger Comments:

[1] For some of the serious problems with Martin's analyses of texts [3:88] and [3:89], unnoticed by Bateman, see:

• The Analysis Of Text [3:88]: An Attempt To Hide A Theoretical Inconsistency
• Eight Problems With Martin's Six Notes To His Analysis Of Text [3:88]
• Eight Problems With Martin's Nine Notes To His Analysis Of Text [3:89]

[2] For 19 of the problems with Martin's 2-page discussion, unnoticed by Bateman, see:

• Confusing Circumstances Of Location With Demonstrative Reference Items
• Mistaking Manner For Extent And Confusing Circumstances With Comparative Reference Items

[3] For some of the theoretical misunderstandings and inconsistencies in the "orienting summary", unnoticed by Bateman, see:

• Metafunctional Inconsistencies
• Some Of The Theoretical Problems With Participant As The Entry Condition To The System Of Identification
• Misconstruing 'Multivariate' & Metafunctional Inconsistencies (1)
• Misconstruing 'Multivariate' & Metafunctional Inconsistencies (2)
• Martin's Insight That Interruptions Depend On There Being Something To Interrupt
• The Commonality Of Reference Structures And Negotiation Structures