The Thought Occurs

Saturday 30 November 2019

What's Wrong With The Design Of This Diagram?

Martin, 1997 (p.7) , Analysing Genre: Functional Parameters, in Christie and Martin, Genre and Institutions - Social Processes in the Workplace and School, Continuum.


Answer:

Martin uses two spatial dimensions, vertical and horizontal, to represent one theoretical dimension, stratification.  This leads to the absurdity of presenting the realisation relation between levels — represented by the double-headed arrow — as a level in itself (expression form of the "connotative semiotic").  The representation of levels of lower and higher abstraction, strata, along the horizontal dimension only adds to the confusion.

Note also that Martin thinks that a connotative semiotic consists only of its content plane, and that varieties of a denotative semiotic, genre and register, constitute (the content of) a connotative semiotic.