The Thought Occurs …
Matters Arising Within Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory And Its Community Of Users
Tuesday 19 March 2024
Monday 18 March 2024
Monday 11 March 2024
Monday 4 March 2024
"Courtesy Costs Nothing"
Monday 26 February 2024
David Rose's History Of SFL In Sydney
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:
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.
Brad Smith On Theories-As-Languages As Formative/Constitutive Of Academic Communities
Brad Smith wrote to asflanet on 23 Feb 2024 at 11:35:
there is an argument, or hypothesis I suppose, that theories-as-languages are actually formative/constitutive of academic communities — as Kay O'Halloran used to say (and possibly still does), 'the systemic functional way of life!'
Blogger Comments:
[1] Some relevant notes from The Life Of Meaning (2002):
Aligning With Specific Metafunctional Consistencies
Communities As Bodies Organised By Shared Construals, Values And AttentionsMeaning potential thus involves a web of different networks of metafunctional consistencies: different construals, different values, different foci of attention. Meaning-makers variously align (consistently or inconsistently) with different networks of consistency within the overall web of variant consistencies. Those who share a specific network of consistency potentially form a community of ‘like-minded’ individuals with a ‘common interest’: a community formed around a way of construing experience, a community formed around a way of valuing a construal, a community formed around a way of grading the relative importance of construals and values. Since each individual can align (consistently or inconsistently) with multiple networks, each can belong to multiple communities, “us”, and disassociate from multiple communities, “you” or “them”.
Semiosis As Social Immunological ProcessCommunities of users of shared construals-values-attentions emerge from social-semiotic interactions between potential users of models in a population. Bonding through shared values and attentions of specific construals of experience reinforces group identity and social identity of individuals in that group. It provides group cohesion and co-operation, creating a community of ‘us’ as an integrated ‘self’. Just as shared biological potential groups individuals as kin, as family, shared semiotic potential, in general, groups individuals together as kith, friends and acquaintances. But importantly, local bonding of ‘us’, the ‘self’, also defines the ‘not-us’ as the ‘not-self’, as the ‘other’. To bond is to exclude. The self-other distinction is itself a continuum rather than a binary opposition: a scale that extends from ‘first person us’ to ‘second person you’ (those we talk to) to ‘third person them’ (those we talk about).
The specific construals, values and foci of attention that organise a specific community can be understood as functioning as a type of immunological system of that social body. That is, semiotic construals, values and foci are a means of extending immunological function beyond the confines of an individual body to the confines of a social body. This can be explained as follows.Immunological systems in bodies recognise molecules as either ‘self’ or ‘other’ with regard to the systems of the body. Those that are categorised as ‘self’ are allowed, while those that are categorised as ‘other’, antigens, trigger an immune response in the system: the molecular shape of the antigen selects the production of multiple antibodies whose molecular shape fits into the antigen (and any of its copies) in order to neutralise it as a threat to the body.Similarly, semiotic systems in social bodies recognise the construals, values and foci of attention in models as either ‘self’ or ‘other’ with regard to systems of the social body. Those that are categorised as ‘self’ are allowed, while those that are categorised as ‘other’ trigger an immune response in the social-semiotic system: the metafunctional ‘shape’ (meanings) of the model selects the production of multiple ‘anti-texts’ (negative critiques) whose metafunctional ‘shape’ fits into the offending model (and any of its ‘copies’) in order to neutralise it as a threat to the social body (by undermining certainty in the offending model).Because the probability that a model will be selected is dependent on the recognition of it as ‘self’ or ‘other’ — in terms of consistency with the construals, values and attentions that potential users are most certain of — there is the possibility of misrecognition. On the one hand, ‘other’ construals, values and/or attentions can be misrecognised as ‘self’, and so not attacked. On the other hand, ‘self’ construals, values and/or attentions can be misrecognised as ‘other’ and consequently attacked with anti-texts.
[2] A relevant quote from What Lies Beneath (2022):
SFL Theory is both intellectually challenging and unfamiliar in its methodology. For example, it requires linguists to be able to operate at multiple levels of different types of abstraction, and to be always aware of the level at which they are operating. This is most problematic in the case of distinguishing meaning (semantics) from wording (lexicogrammar), since wording is lexicogrammatical form (clause, group & phrase, etc.) categorised according to the meaning it realises.In terms of unfamiliar methodology, where other linguistic theories begin with the lowest levels of symbolic abstraction: structure and form, and assign them categories, SFL Theory begins the highest levels of symbolic abstraction: system and meaning, and asks how these are realised in structure and form.Its intellectual challenges and contrary methodology make SFL Theory and its argumentation comparatively difficult to understand. This creates a culture in the SFL community where the theory is less understood than taken on trust, like religious faith.In a faith community, a doctrine is held as a revelation to be believed, rather than a theory to be in/validated by reasoned argumentation. In such a community, experts are providers or interpreters of revelations, rather than experts in reasoned argumentation, and in matters of interpretation, it is such individuals that are criterial, rather than reasoned argumentation. With individuals as criterial in doctrine interpretation, communities form around those individuals.Where, in a scientific community, interpretations of theory are on a scale from accurate to inaccurate, in a faith community, interpretations of doctrine are on a scale from orthodox to unorthodox (if tolerated), or to heretical (if not tolerated).
Declare Your Reading Position
Monday 19 February 2024
Audience Comprehension
Monday 12 February 2024
Facts And Reasons vs Personal Attacks
Monday 5 February 2024
Monday 29 January 2024
Dumbing Down Theory & Practice
Monday 22 January 2024
Friday Research Student Course Semester 1 2024
James Martin wrote to asflanet on 21 Jan 2024, at 11:20:
Hi allThis semester's course will be convened by me, with a focus on axial argumentation in linguistic descriptions informed by SFL. We'll begin with an introduction to system/structure relations in SFL, before moving on to modelling the relation of axis to basic theoretical dimensions of SFL (i.e., rank, metafunction and stratification).The course assumes familiarity with Halliday's description of English grammar, up to the level of delicacy canvassed in Martin et al.'s 2010 Deploying Functional Grammar workbook.The course is open to all research students. There is no need to register; simply come along to the first meeting Feb 23, at 2pm, in Quad Seminar Room 204 (Oriental Room).There is no auditing or on-line participation for this course – all students are expected to attend in person and do the coursework assigned; completed assignments will be submitted to the course instructor and their supervisors (with formal assessment undertaken by their supervisors).Bring some paper and writing instruments to practice network drawing.CheersJim
Blogger Comments:
For some of the theoretical misunderstandings that Martin will be inculcating in students in this course, see the review of Systemic Functional Grammar: A Next Step Into The Theory — Axial Relations.
Putting The 'I Con' In 'Bondicon'
Monday 15 January 2024
Monday 8 January 2024
Our Culture Is Our Best Asset
Monday 1 January 2024
How To Defeat Reason
Monday 25 December 2023
Thursday 21 December 2023
Research prizes are opaque and rife with bias — it’s time to shake them up
Monday 18 December 2023
Snakes On Ladders
Monday 11 December 2023
Monday 4 December 2023
Monday 27 November 2023
Celebrating Our Achievements
Friday 24 November 2023
A Close Examination Of Yaegan Doran's 2023 ASFLA Plenary Abstract
At the same time, this stratal organisation means that it is crucial to specify the realisational relations between strata — inter-stratal realisation. … More specifically, inter-stratal realisation is specified by means of inter-stratal preselection: contextual features are realised by preselection within the semantic system, semantic features are realised by preselection within the lexicogrammatical system, and lexicogrammatical features are realised by preselection within the phonological/graphological system. This type of preselection may take different forms between different strata! boundaries, but the principle is quite general.
[5] To be clear, individuation is the process of creating different types of individuals. Individuated tenor thus refers to the different types of tenor (from potential to instance) at the level of the individual. Moving up the cline of individuation (of tenor) is moving up to ever more inclusive types of individuations (of tenor). This is distinct from the individuation of language, and the use of language to contest and collaborate.
[6] To be clear, this presents Doran's paper as righting a wrong, which, in terms of logical fallacies, might be interpreted as an appeal to emotion.
Thursday 23 November 2023
ASFLA Awards The Inaugural MAK Halliday Prize To Cléirigh's Plagiarisers
Plagiarism: the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
The fact that more worthy contenders were passed over — the works of Matthiessen et al, McCabe, and Maagerø et al — suggests either that theoretical competence and intellectual integrity were not high on the list of criteria for determining the winner, or that the judges lacked the knowledge and ability to apply these criteria to the works submitted for the prize.
All in all, if this first award is any indication, the MAK Halliday Prize has been established by the Sydney-based members of ASFLA merely to confer the prestige status of 'Halliday' on themselves. This conclusion is supported by the fact that ASFLA chose a judging committee that was mostly composed of educationalists affiliated with Martin's pedagogy, rather than experts on SFL theory, and the fact that the only nominee from Sydney-based members of ASFLA was the work that just happened to be awarded the prize — at an ASFLA conference.
Monday 20 November 2023
Conference 'Bonding' T-Shirt
Thursday 16 November 2023
A Close Examination Of David Rose's 2023 SFLIG Plenary Abstract
[1] As the term suggests, 'ontogenesis' is the coming into being of the system (in the individual).
[2] This is very misleading indeed. This was not Martin's innovation but Halliday's model. For example, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18):
… systemic theory gives prominence to discourse, or 'text'; not — or not only — as evidence for the system, but valued, rather, as constitutive of the culture.
∞
See also:
David Rose Promoting Jim Martin's Misunderstandings Of Realisation, Instantiation And Individuation
David Rose On Martin's Context-Bound/Free And Individuation As Allocation/Affiliation
David Rose On Jim Martin's Individuation
David Rose Endorsing Martin's Misunderstandings Of Individuation
A Close Examination Of Martin's 2023 ISFC Plenary Abstract
Monday 13 November 2023
This Calls For Immediate Discussion
Monday 6 November 2023
Anaphoric Reference
Saturday 4 November 2023
Explaining Lexis As Most Delicate Grammar Through A Phonological Analogy
The notion of lexis as most delicate grammar is made difficult to understand by the fact that we don't have the grammar elaborated sufficiently delicately to the features that specify individual lexical items and the lexical sets that they form through shared features. But the principle can be understood by looking at articulatory phonology, where systems are sufficiently delicate.
In lexicogrammar, 'word' conflates two abstractions: word as grammatical rank and word as lexical item. The same conflation can be applied to the phoneme in articulatory phonology: a phoneme can be understood as both a phonological rank and an articulatory item.
As a phonological rank unit, the phoneme is a constituent of the higher rank unit, the syllable, and classes of phoneme, consonants and vowels, realise elements of syllable structure, Onset, Nucleus and Coda — just as a grammatical rank unit, the word is a constituent of the higher rank unit, the group, and classes of word, nominal, verbal etc., realise elements of group structure, Thing, Event etc.
As an articulatory item, the phoneme is the synthetic realisation of the most delicate articulatory features. For example, the phoneme /b/ is the synthetic realisation of the features [voiced, bilabial, stop] and phonemes can be grouped into articulatory sets on the basis of shared features, such as [voiced] and/or [bilabial] and/or [stop]. For example, the [voiced] set includes {b d g v z m n a e i o u w y}, the [bilabial] set includes {p b m} and the [stop] set includes {p b m t d n k g}.
It is in this sense that the lexical item is the synthetic realisation of the most delicate grammatical features, and that lexical items form lexical sets on the basis of shared features.