The Term ‘Connexion’ And 'Grammatical Terminology In Semantics'

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 12, 232):

The key ideational discourse semantic systems are IDEATION and CONNEXION.¹⁴

¹⁴ The term ‘connexion’ is taken from Hao (2015, 2018), replacing Martin’s earlier term ‘conjunction’ in order to more clearly differentiate discourse semantic and lexicogrammatical terminology (reacting in particular to confusion invited by the use of grammatical terminology for semantic description in several SFL publications, particularly those dealing with grammatical metaphor (e.g. Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the system of conjunction in Martin (1992) is the textual grammatical system of cohesive conjunction in his source, Halliday & Hasan (1976), confused with Halliday's logical grammatical system of clause complexing, and rebranded as his own logical discourse semantic system. Rebranding the name of the system merely completes the rebranding process.

[2] To be clear, this is merely a pretext for Martin's rebranding of the original work of Halliday and Hasan. On the one hand, grammatical terms abound in Martin's model of discourse semantics, so this cannot be the reason for renaming the system. Moreover, it will be seen that the authors nevertheless adopt the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999), in preference to Martin's experiential discourse semantic system of IDEATION, putting the lie to the claim that it is discourse semantics.

To be clear, the grammatical terminology used in modelling grammatical metaphor include 'process', 'participant' and 'circumstance', which are the functions of the grammatical forms verbal group, nominal group, and prepositional phrase. A functional grammar interprets grammatical form in terms of its function, which is to realise meaning. In grammatical metaphor, the meaning of a grammatical form is incongruent with the meaning being realised, creating two levels of meaning on the semantic stratum. It is the use of meaning terminology on both strata that enables the systematic description of grammatical metaphor. And again, as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237) point out:

Of course, what we are recognising here as two distinct constructions, the semantic and the grammatical, never had or could have had any existence the one prior to the other; they are our analytic representation of the overall semioticising of experience — how experience is construed into meaning. If the congruent form had been the only form of construal, we would probably not have needed to think of semantics and grammar as two separate strata: they would be merely two facets of the content plane, interpreted on the one hand as function and on the other as form.