On Martin's "Metafunctionally Diversified" Discourse Semantics

Bateman (1998: 24-5): 

And second, a very different kind of semantics needs to be pursued when a ‘metafunctionally diverse’ grammar is assumed. For non-metafunctionally diverse grammars, i.e., grammars which foreground basic predicate-argument structures, and which downgrade alternations such as diatheses, constructions of textual prominence, interpersonal evaluations and speech functions, the semantics resulting is skewed towards experiential, propositional content. In contrast, a ‘metafunctionally broad’ grammar—such as IFG—attempts to foreground equally the distinct kinds of meanings made in grammar; and, hence, Martin’s semantics as an abstraction made on the basis of such a grammar is naturally a discourse semantics, ranging over textual, interpersonal, as well as ideational areas.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL theory, 'propositional content' is interpersonal, not experiential.

[2] Here Bateman assumes that the 'natural' relation between lexicogrammar and semantics in SFL theory guarantees that Martin's discourse semantics will be metafunctionally diversified like the grammar, whereas such an outcome actually rests on the ability of the theorist to understand and consistently apply the theory.  As previously demonstrated over and over on this blog, and in far more detail here, this is certainly not the case.

For example, Martin takes Halliday & Hasan's (1976) four types of cohesion, all textual in metafunction and lexicogrammatical in terms of symbolic abstraction, and distributes them across three different metafunctions at a higher (unjustified) level of symbolic abstraction (discourse semantics):

• reference and ellipsis–&–substitution (textual lexicogrammar) are rebranded IDENTIFICATION (textual discourse semantics),
• cohesive conjunction (textual lexicogrammar) is rebranded CONJUNCTION (logical discourse semantics), and
• lexical cohesion (textual lexicogrammar) is rebranded IDEATION (experiential discourse semantics).

Moreover, there are metafunctional confusions within each of these systems:

• textual IDENTIFICATION confuses textual reference with interpersonal deixis and ideational denotation;
• logical CONJUNCTION confuses (non-structural) textual conjunction with (structural) logical complexing; and
• experiential IDEATION confuses textual lexical cohesion with logical relations between experiential elements of grammatical structures.