On Field Consisting Of Activity Sequences

Bateman (1998: 18):

Field consists of sequences of activities and their participants as these contribute to particular socially recognisable endeavours. The lexical relations in English are then presented as they relate to the three ‘ranks’ of the contextual structure of activity sequences, giving three primary delicacy distinctions: taxonomy, nuclear and activity. These Martin illustrates with respect to the field of tennis as follows [p293].

• TAXONOMY: part/whole relations among game-set-match 
• CONFIGURATION: (‘nuclear’) Agent-Process-Medium structures, e.g., player-serve-ball 
• ACTIVITY SEQUENCE: [player serve]--[opponent return]--[player volley]

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin's (1992) notion of activity sequence confuses what is going on in terms of culture (context) with what is going on in a text (language).  For some of the many problems with the notion of activity sequence, see the 48 clarifying critiques here.

In contrast, in Working With Discourse (Martin & Rose 2007), activity sequence is relocated to discourse semantics as an experiential system, despite being concerned with expansion relations, like the "logical" discourse semantic system, conjunction.  For the problems that arise through this later relocation, see some of the clarifying critiques here.

[2] This misrepresents Martin (p292) who only regards activity sequences as contextual:

A given institution comprises a large number of different activity sequences, where these are realised linguistically through temporally ordered chains of Process and Medium and their attendant participant and circumstantial roles.

Bateman's confusion is understandable, however, since Martin here not only violates the SFL notion of strata as different levels of symbolic abstraction, he also violates his own misunderstanding of strata as different modules.

[3] This example of an activity sequence nicely illustrates the tangle of confusions in Martin's model.  To explain:

• if [player serve]--[opponent return]--[player volley] appears in a text, then it is not context (field), but linguistic content (semantics or lexicogrammar); but, on the other hand,

• if [player serve]--[opponent return]--[player volley] is what is going on in the cultural context, then it is realised by the language spoken by the tennis players while playing tennis — texts which Martin nowhere addresses.