Misrepresenting Matthiessen As Endorsing Martin's Misunderstanding Of Register

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 207-8):

Modelling concurrence and resonance is more of a challenge. One response would be to quantify the semantic ‘weight’ of the contributions from alternative modalities in terms of degrees of commitment – where commitment refers, following Martin (2010), to the number of optional systems taken up and the degree of delicacy of selections from both optional and obligatory systems. Figueredo and Figueredo (2019) outline a quantitative model for measurements of this kind. This would offer us a gauge of how much meaning language and paralanguage were committing but not tell us much about the kinds of meaning involved. 

Another response, perhaps better suited to this shortcoming, would be to turn to a higher-order semiotic such as register (Matthiessen, 2007) or genre (Bateman, 2008) and assign it responsibility for the distribution of meaning across modalities. Models of this kind take advantage of work on the relation of hierarchically organised categories in language (i.e. system realised in structure, higher ranks realised by lower ones and more abstract strata realised through more concrete ones) to explore intermodality – in effect treating co-instantiation across modalities as if it were realisation within a modality.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, Martin's notion of 'commitment' is invalidated by the fact that it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the system network, namely: that a speaker can choose the degree of delicacy to be instantiated during logogenesis. That is, Martin misconstrues what the linguist can do — decide on the degree of delicacy "pursued" in analysing a text — as what a speaker can do. But Martin also confuses 'delicacy' in the technical sense of a scale of decreasing generality in system networks with 'delicacy' in the sense of a scale of decreasing generality in a hyponymic taxonomy experiential meanings. See the earlier post Why Martin's Notion Of Commitment Is Invalid.

[2] This is very misleading indeed, because it knowingly misrepresents Matthiessen as supporting Martin's misunderstanding of register as a higher-order semiotic. Matthiessen, of course, follows Halliday in modelling register as a language variation (instantiation), not as a system more abstract than language (stratification).

[3] This confuses constituency (rank scale) with symbolic abstraction (realisation). All ranks are of the same level of symbolic abstraction, so a higher rank is not realised by a lower rank.

[4] To be clear, here the authors advocate making the same type of theoretical error that Martin made in his misunderstanding of register. With register, Martin modelled different types of language in terms of a more abstract stratum, and here he proposes modelling different types of semiotic system in terms of a more abstract stratum.

Misrepresenting Halliday On Theme

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 181-2):

As outlined by Halliday (1967, 1970a), English grammar and phonology structure textual meaning as waves of information. One peak of prominence is realised grammatically through Theme at the beginning of an English clause. It functions as the point of departure for the message by encoding an angle on the field. A complementary peak of prominence, termed New, is realised phonologically in the unmarked case through the major pitch movement on the final salient syllable of a tone group – its Tonic segment (Halliday, 1970a; Martin and Rose, [2003] 2007: 189–92). A secondary peak of informational prominence is realised through a salient syllable, which in SFL notation begins each foot. As noted in Chapter 3, Section 3.6, a salient syllable can be made super-salient where there is a significant jump in pitch, usually upwards, which does not involve a choice of tone. Super-salience is indicated via a vertical arrow, ‘↑’, before the syllable.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the notion of the textual meaning of a clause as a wave of prominence is first set out in Halliday (1985: 169).

[2] To be clear, the Theme functions as the point of departure for the clause as message. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 89):

The Theme is the element that serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that which locates and orients the clause within its context. The speaker chooses the Theme as his or her point of departure to guide the addressee in developing an interpretation of the message; by making part of the message prominent as Theme, the speaker enables the addressee to process the message.

Field, on the other hand, is the ideational dimension of context — two strata above lexicogrammar — which Martin (1992) misunderstands as register.

[3] To be clear, the New is peak of prominence of the information unit, which may or may not be co-extensive with the clause.

[4] This is misleading, because it credits Martin and Rose with theorising that is entirely Halliday's.

[5] To be clear, a salient syllable is a peak of phonological (rhythmic), not informational prominence. Here the authors confuse expression with content. Each salient syllable that is non-tonic realises what was not selected as the Focus of New information.

The Contextual Dependence Of The Meaning Of Body Orientation

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 149):

Greater or lesser involvement is realised through the horizontal angle between the characters and the presence or absence of accompanying gaze. At one end the features [involved] indicates maximum involvement though face-to-face orientation accompanied by mutual gaze. At the other end of the continuum there is an absence of involvement; the interlocutors share no gaze and have a widely oblique or even back-to-back orientation in relation to each other. Between these endpoints, body (and head) angle varies and involvement with the other may be enhanced by direct gaze or weakened by a lack of it. An oblique angle to another realises a [less involved] or relatively detached orientation, while face-to-back indicates [involvement sought] or a desire to engage and back-to-back indicates [uninvolved] or thorough disengagement. A side-by-side orientation on the other hand realises a solidarity relation but yet [less involved]. Note that the head and the body can be angled relatively independently so there are more points on the continuum than actually specified here.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the 'involvement' meanings of these body orientations depend crucially on context. For example, consider the "solidarity" of two strangers sitting side-by-side on public transport or in a waiting room, or the "involvement sought" of two strangers face-to-back in a queue, or in former times, of "uninvolved" orientation of two duellists standing back-to-back before trying to kill each other.

Misunderstanding Realisation

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 93):

Entities are the ideational discourse semantic units construing items in a field of experience. The primary types of entity are thing entities (a person, place, or object), activity entities (an activity or sequence of activities) and semiotic entities (verbiage or ideas).

In the Chatty Vlog, the ‘National Night Out’, ‘Hair Dye’, ‘Caring for Children (A)’, ‘Dermatology’ and ‘Parking Lot’ episodes tend to realise concrete thing entities from the fields of domestic/daily life and medicine (e.g. people, neighbours, kids, feet, syringe). 

By way of contrast, the ‘Social Media’ phase at the end of the vlog, where the vlogger reflects on her own social media posting practices and goals, tends to realise fewer thing entities and more semiotic entities relating to her social media text production (e.g. vlog, text message, clips, videos, comments). 

Activity entities are not common (one example being vacation in the Intro) in the vlog. Examples from other studies include entities that realise activity sequences such as method, pipette calibration, study and experiment (in scientific discourse; Hao, 2015, 2020b; Hao and Hood, 2019).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in the discourse semantics of Martin (1992: 326), the only experiential unit proposed is the message part, which in the lexicogrammar 'is realised congruently as a lexical item'. The discourse semantic unit, entity, presented here, on the other hand, is that of Martin's former student, Hao, which, as will be seen, involves inconsistencies deriving from misunderstandings of the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999).

[2] To be clear, this seriously misunderstands the notion of realisation in SFL Theory, since it presents a episode/phase of discourse realising a discourse semantic unit, entity. These are at the same level of symbolic abstraction, whereas realisation is the relation between different levels of symbolic abstraction.

[3] Again, this seriously misunderstands the notion of realisation in SFL Theory, though in a more convoluted way. In Martin (1992) activity sequences are misunderstood as context rather than semantics (evidence here). So here the authors use 'realise' in a way that consistent with the misunderstandings in Martin (1992), since a semantic entity is a lower level of symbolic abstraction than a contextual activity sequence. 

However, this consistency with the misunderstandings in Martin (1992) is inconsistent with Martin's later work, Martin & Rose (2007: 100ff) where 'activity sequence' is relocated to the discourse semantic stratum in the experiential system of IDEATION. That is, in terms of Martin's more recent work, there is no realisation relation between entity and activity sequence because both are positioned at the same level of symbolic abstraction.

Interacting Discourse Semantic Resources Realising Register And Genre

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 17-8): 

The discourse semantic resources briefly reviewed here are outlined by metafunction in Figure 1.6. 

Space precludes detailed consideration of the interaction of these systems in the realisation of register and genre (for a discussion of which, see Martin, 1992; Martin and Rose, [2003] 2007, 2008).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the use of the term 'interaction' here betrays Martin's misunderstanding of metafunctions and strata as modules, rather than dimensions. Martin (1992: 390, 488):

Each of the presentations of linguistic text forming resources considered above adopted a modular perspective. As far as English Text is concerned this has two main dimensions: stratification and, within strata, metafunction. …

The problem addressed is a fund[a]mental concern of modular models of semiosis — namely, once modules are distinguished, how do they interface? What is the nature of the conversation among components?

[2] To be clear, the authors think discourse semantics realises register and genre because Martin (1992) misunderstands these functional varieties of language as not language, but the context that is realised in language. Claiming that varieties of language are not language is analogous to claiming that dairy and beef cattle are not cattle. Nevertheless, these non-language systems are instantiated as texts, instances of language, in Martin's model.

For a close examination of Martin's model of context, and the evidence supporting this critique, see here (Martin 1992) and here (Martin & Rose 2007).