David Rose's History Of SFL In Sydney

On the asflanet discussion list, David Rose replied to Brad Smith on 23 Feb 2024 at 15:25:

Let’s consider that hypothesis in the light of Rob’s iteration of ‘our prophet’ (in a parallel post). I’ve no doubt that’s the last thing Michael would have wanted to be. Until 1985 he was an academic leader, in both senses of leading a theoretical field and organising it through courses, doctorates, conferences, university politics etc. His ten years at Sydney enormously expanded the field, resulting not only in IFG, but also Xian’s Lexicogrammatical Cartography and Jim’s English Text, along with courses that taught them and graduates to teach them, and arguably SFL’s biggest export, genre literacy pedagogy.

His elevation to ‘prophet’ status coincided with both expansion and fragmentation of the field. When he retired early, the Australian descriptivists organised a coup in Sydney that marginalised SFL ever after. Jim refused to give in, but has used it as a base to seed further generations of research in genre pedagogy, appraisal, multimodality, individuation, register studies, grammar and typology. He too has been an academic leader in both senses.

Meanwhile, SFL became more widely taught, particularly the IFG grammar. Macquarie became another base thanks to Ruqaiya’s powerful academic leadership. As it widened, and Michael’s status grew, a rift started appearing between the work emerging from Sydney and elsewhere (I’m obviously oversimplifying). Students at Sydney and associated centres continued to study IFG, but applied its principles to researching other strata and modes. From outside, this work got corralled as the ‘Sydney school’. Its boundaries were defined in contrast to work up to 1985, which were cemented as the SFL ‘canon’ (as Rob put it), in concert with Michael’s canonisation as ‘prophet’.

Ironically the opposite of his own stated goals, politics, and how he carried himself...

‘This standpoint is associated with impure categories, with tendencies (analogy), with functionalism, and with the testing of theories by better-or-worse criteria of application - whether or not you can do something with them.’

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, it was Rose himself who introduced Bernstein's (2000) application of 'prophet' to the social structure of a pedagogical field, and Spence merely used what Rose provided: 

The religious field is constituted by three positions which stand in various relations of complementarity and opposition. In the religious field, we have the prophets, we have the priests, and we have the laity. The rule is that one can only occupy one category at a time. Priests cannot be prophets, and prophets cannot be priests, and the laity cannot be either. There is a natural affinity between prophets and laity, and there is a natural opposition between prophets and priests. These are the lines of opposition structuring the religious field.

If we look at the structure of the pedagogic field, we also have basically three positions that provide analogues to the prophets, priests and laity. The ‘prophets’ are the producers of the knowledge, the ‘priests’ are the recontextualisers or the reproducers, and the ‘laity’ are the acquirers. Thus, we have the structure of the pedagogic field.

[2] To be clear, this is irrelevant, since it is Bernstein's sociological model that positions Halliday as a prophet.

[3] To be clear, Martin's English Text, including his model of genre, is inconsistent with the theory that Halliday created (evidence here).

[4] To be clear, Halliday was not elevated to prophet status. There was no historical event. 'Prophet' is merely Halliday's position in Bernstein's sociological model.

[5] As should be obvious, there was no 'coup'. As one member of the selection panel, not a linguist, told her son, a linguistics student, the choice of Halliday's successor as departmental professor was decided on the basis of publication history. Importantly, if Halliday had wanted Martin to succeed him as departmental professor, he need only have retired at a later date, instead of at the comparatively young age of 59.

[6] To be clear, Martin subsequently tried to leave the Sydney University Linguistic Department by applying for a professorship at Macquarie University, but lost out again, this time to Christian Matthiessen, six years his junior.

[7] To be clear, any rift that appeared was between those who adopted Martin's misunderstandings of Halliday's theory (evidence here), and those who didn't.

[8] This is very misleading because it is very untrue. According to its Wikipedia entry, which Rose obviously contributed to, at the very least, the Sydney School was founded by Michael Halliday who established it in 1979 at the Working Conference on Language in Education held at the University of Sydney. See also Deceptive Use Of Wikipedia.

[9] To be clear, the SFL 'canon' is a religious term for what, in science, would be called the Standard Theory.

[10] To be clear, this quote from Halliday (1984) is part of a characterisation of the rhetorical-ethnographic orientation to meaning, as opposed to the logico-philosophical orientation. As such, it is entirely irrelevant to any point previously made by Rose in this email post. Its inclusion here is an instance of logical fallacy known as the Red Herring:

As an informal fallacy, the red herring falls into a broad class of relevance fallacies. Unlike the straw man, which involves a distortion of the other party's position, the red herring is a seemingly plausible, though ultimately irrelevant, diversionary tactic. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a red herring may be intentional or unintentional; it is not necessarily a conscious intent to mislead.