On CONJUNCTION And The Relationship Between Genre, Register And The Linguistic System

Bateman (1998: 25-6):

For all its complexity, I have used chapters of the book with few problems with students of varying experience — including those new to linguistics; I have also used positions in the book as the starting point for further linguistic research (particularly in the area of CONJUNCTION: cf. Bateman and Rondhuis, 1996) and for the design of computational models of the generation of texts (particularly here the relationship between genre, register and the linguistic system: cf. Bateman and Teich, 1995). Each such investigation has drawn close attention to areas where the proposals of English Text may need to be extended, refined, and perhaps changed; but without the starting point provided by English Text that work would not have been possible.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As set out in great detail here, Martin's logical discourse semantic system of CONJUNCTION is a confusion of two of Halliday's lexicogrammatical systems:

• expansion manifested as cohesive conjunction (textual metafunction), and
• expansion manifested as relations between units in complexes (logical metafunction).

Moreover, Martin creates (non-metaphorical) mismatches between semantics and grammar by

• not organising his system on the basis of the three most general types of expansion, elaboration, extension and enhancement,
• misunderstanding and misapplying types of expansion, especially concession,
• misunderstanding the distinction between internal and external expansion relation, and
• omitting projection entirely from the logical potential of discourse semantics.

[2] As set out in great detail here, Martin misunderstands "the relationship between genre, register and the language system".  For example, Martin

• misunderstands varieties of language (register/genre) as culture instead of language,
• misunderstands cultural dimensions (field/tenor/mode) as register dimensions,
• misunderstands sub-systems (register/genre) as systems,
• misunderstands two perspectives on the same phenomenon (register/genre) as different levels of symbolic abstraction (strata),
• misunderstands genre as more abstract than the cultural dimensions (field/tenor/mode) realised by language, and
• misunderstands instances of context (situations) as instances of language (texts).

In SFL theory, register and genre (text type) are two perspectives on the one point of variation of linguistic content on the cline of instantiation, midway between system and instance: