Geoff Thompson On Genre

Thompson (2014: 42-3):

If we now turn, more briefly, to genre, this can be seen in very simple terms as register plus communicative purpose: that is, it includes the more general idea of what the interactants are doing through language, and how they organise the language event, typically in recognisable stages, in order to achieve that purpose. An image that may help you to grasp the difference between register and genre is to see register as cloth and genre as garment: the garment is made of an appropriate type of cloth or cloths, cut and shaped in conventional ways to suit particular purposes. Similarly, a genre deploys the resources of a register (or more than one register) in particular patterns to achieve certain communicative goals.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, in SFL Theory, 'communicative purpose/goal' is rhetorical mode, a textual system of context. Every register realises the mode as well as the field and tenor of a situation type. The notion of 'genre' here is thus redundant.

Thompson's aim here was to include Hasan's notion of genre in his coverage of SFL, but Hasan herself identified her 'genre' as Halliday's 'register'.

Instead Of Arguing With Idiots

David Rose On There Being No Important Differences Between Martin's And Halliday's Approaches To SFL

David Rose wrote to Sysfling on 19/9/23 at 16:32: 

no *important* differences...

Blogger Comments:

No important differences:

David Rose Strategically Misrepresenting Michæl Halliday

David Rose wrote to Sysfling on 17/9/23 at 7:29:

For Halliday’s own take on this shared approach, see his Introduction to Martin’s Systemic functional grammar: a next step into the theory – axial relations.

Framed as history, from Saussure through Firth, he describes how and why he came up with the approach, and the value of a textbook for doing it...

Blogger Comments:

[1] A meticulous review of this monograph has begun at Systemic Functional Grammar: A Next Step Into The Theory — Axial Relations.

[2] This is very misleading indeed. Halliday's only comment on Martin's monograph itself was, as stated, that it teaches students 'the principles and practice of using system networks'. The rest of his introduction is an introduction to his theory of SFL. There is no endorsement of a "shared approach" that includes Martin's approach to SFL Theory.

David Rose On Martin's Approach To SFL

David Rose replied to Annabelle Lukin and Mick O'Donnell on SYSFLING on 16 Sept 2023 at 20:34:

It’s important that people know that the approach is always SFL, as developed by Halliday and colleagues through the 60s-70s, and applied by himself and others to different regions of meaning making over the following decades. The theory has been extended as descriptions have expanded, but the approach is the same... linguistic(/semiotic), functional, systemic.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, for Rose, it is enough that Martin's work is in SFL. Questions of whether the work is consistent with SFL Theory or with itself are immaterial. This is SFL as a faith, rather than a theory. See The Culture Of 'Faith' In The SFL Community.

Field, Tenure & Mode

The Community Of Bluff

Positive Discourse Analysis

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
— Thomas Paine

Wording As The Overlap Of Form And Meaning