On The Theoretical Value Of Martin's Stratification Of The Content Plane

Bateman (1998: 23-4):

The availability of the two strata, lexicogrammar and discourse semantics, is presented as beneficial in most areas that Martin addresses. The value of stratification, and of allowing the description to range across two (or more) strata, is argued in all of the areas that Martin addresses in English Text. The ability to distinguish systematically between a semantic unit and a range of possible grammatical units or patterns of such units is of fundamental importance—particularly given the very richly elaborated view of grammar assumed. Opening up the realisational relation between a semantic description and a grammatical description significantly empowers grammatical metaphor as an explanatory device.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading to the extent that it gives the false impression that the stratification of the content plane into lexicogrammar and semantics is Martin's proposal rather than Halliday's (whose considerably prior notion of grammatical metaphor depends on such a stratification).

[2] To be clear, Martin argues for the value of his stratification because it allows him to create his own "module" within SFL theory by rebranding his misunderstandings of others' work as his own systems:

• negotiation is Martin's rebranding of Halliday's speech function;
• identification is Martin's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's grammatical reference (and ellipsis-&-substitution);
• conjunction is Martin's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's grammatical conjunction; and
• ideation is Martin's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's lexical cohesion.

Martin's argument for stratification, however, presented in Chapter 1, does not survive close scrutiny; see, for example, Why The Argument For A 'Discourse' Semantic Stratum Is Invalid.

In brief, Martin provides three motivations for his stratification:

• semantic motifs
• grammatical metaphor
• cohesion

Of the three, only grammatical metaphor motivates a distinct semantic stratum, but this is Halliday's argument, not Martin's, and it does not motivate a specifically discourse semantics. Moreover, Martin misunderstands grammatical metaphor (evidence here), and reinterprets it as a process, a "texturing interface" (p401) between his discourse semantic systems and lexicogrammar (ellipsis-&substitution, Theme and collocation), thereby undermining his own argument for it as a motivation for stratification.

Of semantic motifs, Martin proposes (p16) setting up an attitude network to generalise what he sees as commonalities between some mental, behavioural and relational clauses.  For some of the misunderstandings involved, see The Problems With Semantic Motifs As A Motivation For Stratification.  Even so, no mention of semantic motifs is made beyond Chapter 1, and Martin's experiential system, ideation, does not address the points he raises — which is hardly surprising, given that it is a rebranding of a textual grammatical system, lexical cohesion.

Regarding cohesion as a motivation for stratification, Martin's argument involves misrepresenting the source of his ideas: Halliday & Hasan's (1976) model of cohesion.  See, for example:

• Misrepresenting Cohesion
• Misrepresenting The Domain Of Cohesion
• Misconstruing 'Cohesion Within The Sentence'
• Not Recognising The 'Continuity' Between Clause Taxis And Conjunctive Cohesion

[3] To be clear, Martin's discourse semantic units are:

• exchange and move (interpersonal system of negotiation)
• participant (textual system of identification — i.e. rebranded cohesive reference etc.)
• message (logical system of conjunction — i.e. rebranded cohesive conjunction), and
• message part (experiential system of ideation — i.e. rebranded lexical cohesion).

The problems here are with Martin's rebranding of cohesive systems. Most importantly, because Martin treats these non-structural systems as structural, the units he proposes are not units with internal structure, but units that relate to other units. This creates an inconsistency in the meaning of unit, since all other units in SFL theory are units with internal structure. So these discourse semantic units are not units in the same sense as lexicogrammatical units, such as clause, phrase and group.

Martin's naming of units further reveals his theoretical misunderstandings.  For example, the use of an experiential category, participant, for a textual system, identification, is consistent with his misunderstanding of textual reference with ideational denotation, as explained elsewhere on this blog.  On the other hand, Martin's use of textual categories, message and message part, for ideational systems, conjunction and ideation, is inconsistent with his own theorising, but (metafunctionally) consistent with the source of his ideas, the textual systems of cohesive conjunction and lexical cohesion.  Moreover, in naming the two message and message part, Martin misrepresents a relation of interdependency as one of composition (whole-part).

[4] This is very misleading indeed.  Firstly, as already mentioned, Martin does not understand grammatical metaphor (evidence here).  Secondly, Martin does not open up "the realisational relation between a semantic description and a grammatical description" since he provides no realisation statements that relate his discourse semantic systems to lexicogrammatical systems. Thirdly, because Martin does not specify congruent lexicogrammatical realisations of his discourse semantic systems, he provides no means of identifying congruent vs metaphorical realisations using his model.  That is, if anything, Martin's model undermines grammatical metaphor rather than "empowering" it — the direct opposite of Bateman's claim.