Manuscript Review

Toward an Integrated Stratificational-Instantiational Continuum of Genre/Register-Semantic Realisation (Preliminary Remarks)

It is by now widely recognised that any adequately comprehensive account of language must move beyond the residual compartmentalisation of earlier models, and instead embrace a fully integrated architecture in which all relevant phenomena are situated along a unified continuum of semiotic organisation.

In this light, the traditional distinction between strata and instantiation may be seen as a useful heuristic, though ultimately one that invites reconceptualisation within a more encompassing theoretical topology.

Accordingly, we may propose the following stratificational alignment:

genre → register → discourse semantics → lexicogrammar → phonology

This alignment should not be misunderstood as a rigid hierarchy, but rather as a dynamic layering in which each level both anticipates and recapitulates the others in a mutually elaborative relation. In this sense, genre may be understood as preconfiguring the contextual potential which register subsequently modulates at the level of discourse semantics, prior to its lexicogrammatical and phonological instantiation.

At the same time, it is necessary to situate this stratificational organisation within a cline of instantiation, which may be provisionally represented as follows:

system → genre/register → text type → text → reading

Here, the traditional opposition between system and instance is enriched by the interpolation of intermediate phases, allowing for a more delicate calibration of semiotic emergence as it unfolds from potential to interpretation.

In particular, the composite category of genre/register provides a crucial mediating interface, enabling the simultaneous activation of social process and contextual configuration within a single analytic moment. This fusion should not be taken as a collapse of distinction, but rather as an indication of their underlying complementarity when viewed from the perspective of the cline as a whole.

Similarly, the inclusion of text type and reading extends the cline beyond the narrow confines of textual instantiation, incorporating both the generalisation of semiotic patterns and their uptake within interpretive practice. This expansion allows the model to capture not only the production of meaning, but also its circulation and reconstitution across instances.

It follows that the architecture proposed here is best understood not as a set of discrete components, but as a continuously unfolding semiotic field in which categories such as genre, register, text, and reading are differentially foregrounded according to analytic perspective.

From this vantage point, earlier concerns regarding the categorical status of these terms may be reconsidered as artefacts of an overly stratified view of language, one which the present model seeks to supersede through its commitment to theoretical integration.

---

Concluding remark

Further work is required to specify the precise nature of the relations holding between these categories. However, it is hoped that the framework outlined here provides a sufficiently flexible basis for future refinement.

---

---

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript, “Toward an Integrated Stratificational-Instantiational Continuum of Genre/Register-Semantic Realisation (Preliminary Remarks)”, proposes a unification of stratification and instantiation within a single, continuous semiotic architecture. The ambition is clear; the execution, however, requires substantial clarification before the contribution can be assessed.

I outline several points below in the spirit of constructive engagement.

---

1. On the status of “strata”

The paper presents the following as a stratificational alignment:

genre → register → discourse semantics → lexicogrammar → phonology

It is not clear on what basis these elements are being treated as commensurate.

• “Discourse semantics,” “lexicogrammar,” and “phonology” are presented as strata, presumably in a relation of realisation.
• “Register” is described elsewhere as a configuration of contextual variables.
• “Genre” is characterised in terms of staged social processes.

The manuscript would benefit from an explicit account of the relation holding between these categories. At present, it is difficult to determine whether:

• all items are intended to be strata in the same sense, or
• the sequence is heuristic.

If the former, the author should specify how “genre” is realised by “register,” and in turn how “register” is realised by “discourse semantics,” as this is not currently demonstrated. If the latter, the grounds for ordering remain unclear.

---

2. On the dual placement of register

“Register” appears both:

• as a level within the stratificational alignment, and
• as part of the composite “genre/register” within the instantiation cline.

These placements appear to assign different theoretical roles to the same term.

The paper would be strengthened by clarifying whether “register” is:

1. a stratum,
2. a position on the cline of instantiation, or
3. a concept that varies according to analytic perspective.

If (3), the author may wish to specify how these perspectives are constrained, as the current formulation risks allowing the term to function in multiple, potentially incompatible ways.

---

3. On the composite “genre/register”

The fusion of “genre” and “register” is presented as an analytic advantage, enabling their “simultaneous activation.”

However, given that the manuscript characterises:

• genre in terms of social process, and
• register in terms of contextual configuration,

it would be helpful to understand:

• what is gained by their fusion, and
• how their distinct contributions are preserved within the composite.

At present, the reader may have difficulty determining whether this move integrates the two concepts or renders their distinction analytically inert.

---

4. On the scope of the instantiation cline

The proposed cline is given as:

system → genre/register → text type → text → reading

The inclusion of “text” is unproblematic. However, the status of the surrounding terms requires further elaboration.

• “Text type” is described as a generalisation over instances. It is therefore unclear in what sense it occupies a position between system and instance.
• “Reading” appears to refer to an act of interpretation. The manuscript does not specify how this relates to instantiation as a semiotic relation.

The author may wish to clarify whether the cline is intended to represent:

• a relation between potential and instance,
• a broader account of semiotic activity, or
• a combination of both.

At present, these possibilities are not distinguished.

---

5. On “integration”

A recurring claim is that the model achieves “integration” by allowing categories to be “differentially foregrounded according to analytic perspective.”

This is an intriguing proposal. However, the paper would benefit from a more explicit account of:

• what constrains these perspectives, and
• how the integrity of individual categories is maintained under such shifts.

Without such constraints, it is difficult to determine whether the model:

• integrates distinct theoretical objects, or
• treats them as interchangeable under varying descriptions.

---

6. Recommendation

The manuscript raises important questions regarding the relation between stratification and instantiation. However, in its current form, key terms appear to shift in meaning depending on their location within the model, and the relations between categories are not consistently specified.

I therefore recommend major revision.

In particular, the author is encouraged to:

• define the ontological status of each category,
• specify the relations (e.g. realisation, instantiation) that organise them, and
• ensure that individual terms do not perform multiple, incompatible roles without explicit justification.

---

Final comment

The paper’s central insight—that existing distinctions may be overly rigid—is worth pursuing. However, the present formulation risks resolving this rigidity not by refinement, but by removing the distinctions altogether.

A more explicit articulation of differences, rather than their suspension, would significantly strengthen the argument.

The Geometry of Confusion: Martin’s Strata and the Collapse of Instantiation

There is a point at which theoretical “extension” ceases to extend and begins to decompose the system it claims to elaborate. What replaces it is not a more powerful model, but a rearrangement of terms stripped of their organising relations.

Consider the following:

Strata:

genre → register → discourse semantics → lexicogrammar → phonology

Instantiation:

system → genre/register → text type → text → reading

These are not two perspectives on a single architecture. They are two incompatible geometries forced to occupy the same space.

---

1. A hierarchy that isn’t one

Strata, in a Hallidayan sense, are not a list. They are a chain of realisation.

Break that chain, and you no longer have strata—only stacked terminology.

Now look at what has been stacked:

• Genre: a patterning of social processes
• Register: a configuration of semantic variation
• Discourse semantics: a relabelled slice of semantics
• followed by the only actual strata in the sequence

This is not a hierarchy. It is a category error arranged vertically.

Nothing in this sequence shares a common organising relation. The only thing holding it together is typography.

---

2. Register, everywhere and nowhere

Register performs a particularly impressive feat: it appears twice, doing two incompatible jobs, without explanation.

• In the “strata,” it behaves as though it were above semantics.
• In the “cline,” it reappears as a midpoint between system and instance.

So which is it?

A stratum cannot also be a position on the instantiation cline unless the theory is prepared to explain how realisation and instantiation have become the same relation.

It does not. It simply reuses the term and hopes the reader won’t notice.

---

3. Genre/register: fusion by erasure

The composite “genre/register” is not a synthesis. It is a loss of distinction disguised as integration.

• Genre organises staged social processes.
• Register organises variation in meaning potential relative to context.

These are not variants of the same thing. They operate at different orders of abstraction.

To fuse them is not to unify the theory, but to remove the very contrast that made either concept analytically useful.

---

4. The cline that eats everything

The instantiation cline, once extended, begins to behave like a theoretical vacuum cleaner:

system → genre/register → text type → text → reading

Everything gets pulled in—whether it belongs or not.

• Text type: a retrospective generalisation over instances
• Reading: an act of construal

Neither is an instance. Neither belongs on a cline defined by the relation between potential and instance.

By the time “reading” appears, the cline has silently shifted from:

• a semiotic relation
  to
• a mixture of semiotic objects and interpretive acts

No justification is given for this shift. It simply happens.

---

5. The underlying move

What ties all of this together is a single, repeated operation:

treat anything vaguely related to language as if it were the same kind of thing—and then arrange it linearly.

Strata, instantiation, abstraction, interpretation—collapsed into a single dimension, then ordered as if commensurable.

The result is not complexity. It is undifferentiated accumulation.

---

6. What remains

Once the distinctions are stripped away, the model cannot stabilise.

• Terms migrate between roles.
• Relations lose their specificity.
• Explanatory power is replaced by terminological density.

At that point, the theory no longer constrains interpretation. It absorbs it.

---

7. Final cut

This is not a richer account of language.

It is what a theory looks like when its distinctions have been flattened into a single, unstructured continuum.

Or, more directly:

Nothing here is wrong in isolation. It is their combination—without differentiation—that makes the model untenable.

When Renaming Replaces Modelling: Stratification, Instantiation, and the Flattening of SFL Architecture

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is not just a collection of analytic tools. It is a theory with a very specific architectural commitment: meaning is organised across different levels of symbolic abstraction, related by principled relations such as stratification, realisation, and instantiation. These relations are not optional metaphors; they are what give the theory its explanatory power.

In what follows, we want to examine a prominent reconstrual of SFL—associated most clearly with the work of J. R. Martin—not in order to dispute its descriptive utility, but to show that it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of this architecture. The issue is not disagreement over details. It is a systematic flattening of relations that Halliday treated as categorically distinct.

This flattening has consequences: theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary.

---

1. Levels of symbolic abstraction are not modules

At the core of Halliday’s model is the idea that language is organised across strata that differ in level of symbolic abstraction. Semantics, lexicogrammar, and phonology are not parallel components that “interact”; they are asymmetrically related.

Lower strata realise higher strata.

Higher strata are realised by lower strata.

This is not a claim about where meaning “is”. It is a claim about how symbolic systems are organised so that meaning can be made at all.

A crucial distinction follows from this:

semogenesis (the fact that meaning is made across the system) is not the same thing as stratification (the organisation of symbolic abstraction).

When stratification is misunderstood as “all strata make meaning”, the architectural distinction collapses. Once that collapse occurs, all strata are treated as strata of meaning, rather than as differently abstract symbolic resources.

This is precisely where the reconstrual begins.

---

2. From stratification to interaction

In Martin’s work, strata and metafunctions are consistently treated as modules that relate by interaction rather than by asymmetrical realisation. This is visible in the claim that all strata “make meaning”, and more starkly in the treatment of phonology as a stratum of meaning.

From a Hallidayan perspective, this is a category error.

Phonology does not mean in the same sense that semantics does. It stabilises and transmits distinctions that are already semiotically differentiated at a higher level of abstraction. Treating phonology as a meaning stratum erases the very notion of symbolic abstraction that stratification was introduced to explain.

Once this move is made, the theory no longer has the resources to explain why different symbolic levels exist at all.

---

3. Instantiation is not descent

A parallel misunderstanding occurs with instantiation.

In Halliday’s model, instantiation is a perspectival relation between potential and instance. A system can be viewed from the pole of potential (as a system) or from the pole of instance (as a text or event). Nothing “moves” down a ladder. No stratum instantiates another stratum.

Instantiation is not a process. It is a way of seeing the same semiotic organisation from different perspectives.

In Martin’s reconstrual, however, instantiation is characterised as all strata instantiate, as if instantiation were a kind of downward movement of meaning. This confusion becomes decisive in his treatment of context.

---

4. How context became language

Halliday distinguishes context from language. Context is not a higher stratum of language; it is a different order of abstraction altogether. Field, tenor, and mode are contextual variables that are realised by semantic patterns in language, not systems within language.

Martin reconstructs this architecture by:

• redefining context potential (context of culture) as a stratum of genre

• redefining context instance (context of situation) as a stratum of register

• treating field, tenor, and mode as systems of register

This move converts a relation of instantiation into a relation of interstratal realisation, collapsing context into language. The result is a model in which register and genre are systems of context rather than ways of relating semiotic potential to situation and culture.

The cost of this move is high: the theory loses the ability to distinguish contextual organisation from linguistic organisation in principle.

---

5. Renaming as a method of theorising

These architectural confusions would be serious enough on their own. But they are compounded by a distinctive method of theorising.

Rather than modelling new phenomena from data, Martin repeatedly takes existing Hallidayan analyses and renames them, presenting the renamed constructs as novel theoretical advances.

The most striking example is the stratum of discourse semantics.

Halliday’s stratum is simply semantics. In Cohesion in English (Halliday & Hasan 1976), cohesion is analysed as a set of lexicogrammatical resources.

Martin elevates cohesion to a new stratum and relabels its systems:

• reference becomes identification

• lexical cohesion becomes ideation

• conjunction becomes connexion

• Halliday’s semantic system of speech function becomes negotiation

These renamings are not accompanied by a new theory of symbolic abstraction. On the contrary, they are enabled by misunderstandings—such as confusing reference with deixis—which create apparent novelty by differentiation.

Misunderstanding becomes a generative resource.

---

6. Why this matters

This is not a dispute about terminology, nor about whose framework is “better”. It is about what happens when a theory built on differentiated relations is reconstructed as a flat landscape of interacting modules.

When stratification, instantiation, realisation, and variation are all treated as the same kind of relation:

• explanatory power is replaced by descriptive proliferation

• architectural constraints disappear

• theoretical novelty becomes indistinguishable from relabelling

The result may be productive in the short term, but it is unstable. It cannot explain its own foundations.

---

7. A broader lesson

The deeper issue here is not confined to SFL.

This case illustrates how a theoretical architecture can be hollowed out while its vocabulary is preserved. Once the relations that give concepts their force are flattened, the theory may continue to circulate—but it no longer does the work it once did.

Recovering Halliday’s model is not a matter of loyalty or orthodoxy. It is a matter of taking symbolic abstraction seriously.

Without that commitment, we are no longer doing systemic functional theory at all—we are simply rearranging its names.

Yaegan Doran's ISFC 50 Plenary Abstract

Modelling Context: Field, tenor and mode from multiple perspectives

Abstract

That language functions in its context of use is one of the fundamental tenets of SFL. This tenet has supported decades of SFL work into different registers and has contributed to a wide range of applied goals. It has also driven progressive theoretical modelling of context in SFL, even if there has not yet been consensus. This talk will reflect upon this modelling, fifty years after Halliday’s 1975 paper ‘Language as social semiotic: Toward a general sociolinguistic theory’. It will view context trinocularly – not in the typical sense of above, around and below, but in terms of three major dimensions of SFL theory: realisation, instantiation and individuation. Viewing context in this way will allow us to model field, tenor and mode along three distinct contours: in terms of realisation, field, tenor and mode can be viewed as resources for making meaning; for instantiation, they can be viewed as sets of principles for the co-selection and arrangement of choices in language; and for individuation, they can be viewed as domains of variation, contestation and collaboration. This talk will argue that these different perspectives are complementary, providing a view of a wide-range of things our model of context needs to grapple with. But it will also argue that each perspective needs to be modelled in different ways so as to support text analysis and an understanding of social semiosis more broadly. The talk will thus aim to synthesise where we have gotten to in SFL contextual linguistics, and look forward to how we might further expand our worldview.

Blogger Comments:

This abstract describes the paper Rethinking Context: Realisation, Instantiation, And Individuation In Systemic Functional Linguistics (Doran, Martin and Herrington 2024) which is reviewed in meticulous detail at Rethinking Context: Realisation, Instantiation, And Individuation In Systemic Functional Linguistics.

As the review demonstrates, in that paper, the authors misunderstood the dimensions of stratification ("realisation"), instantiation and individuation. The first half of the paper "reconceptualised" the contextual parameters of context, field tenor and mode, as the ideational, interpersonal and textual language that realises each. That is, the authors simply mistook one level of symbolic abstraction for another.

The second half of the paper then "reconceptualised" the original notions of contextual field tenor and mode as 'principles of instantiation' of language, thereby misunderstanding instantiation as an interstratal relation between context and language.

The relevance of individuation was only briefly declared, rather than explored, but it confused individuation as a scale of variation from the reservoir of meanings of a language community to the repertoires of meanings of individuals, whose organising principle is one of elaboration (subtypes of types), with allocation and affiliation, both of whose organising principle is one of extension (association). See Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 145-6).

ChatGPT Comments:

Context in a Hall of Mirrors: A Critique of Doran’s “Modelling Context”

1. Introduction: A Recurring Confusion

Yaegan Doran’s ISFC50 abstract, Modelling Context: Field, tenor and mode from multiple perspectives, reprises a confusion that has surfaced repeatedly in recent Sydney school publications. It presents as theoretical innovation a series of metaphorical manoeuvres that misrepresent foundational dimensions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The abstract aligns with the paper Rethinking Context: Realisation, Instantiation, and Individuation in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Doran, Martin & Herrington, 2024), which is critiqued in detail elsewhere. Here, I offer a briefer but sharper critique of both the content and rhetorical strategies of the abstract, before situating its manoeuvres within a broader pattern of what I call metaphorical opportunism in the Sydney school.

2. Misunderstanding Realisation: The Collapse of Context into Semantics

The abstract proposes to model context "trinocularly," along the dimensions of realisation, instantiation, and individuation. But what follows is not an application of these dimensions to context — rather, it is a substitution of the semantic for the contextual.

The abstract claims that, "in terms of realisation, field, tenor and mode can be viewed as resources for making meaning." But this is a misunderstanding. In Halliday’s theory, field, tenor and mode are parameters of the context of situation, realised by ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning respectively. They are not themselves meaning resources. To treat them as such is to confuse the stratum of context with that of semantics — to collapse one level of symbolic abstraction into another.

This manoeuvre reframes the contextual parameters as though they were metafunctional resources, implying that field is ideational meaning, tenor is interpersonal meaning, and mode is textual meaning. But in SFL, metafunctions are realised by lexicogrammatical systems; contextual parameters are realised through metafunctional semantics. To conflate them is to erase the stratal boundary between context and language, undermining the architecture of the model.

3. Misunderstanding Instantiation: From Meaning Potential to Situational Principles

In a further move, the abstract proposes that, "for instantiation, [field, tenor and mode] can be viewed as sets of principles for the co-selection and arrangement of choices in language." Again, this misrepresents a fundamental category. Instantiation is the relation between a system’s potential and its instances. It does not refer to how context constrains linguistic choice — that is the function of context, not the definition of instantiation.

What Doran offers is not a model of instantiation but a rebranding of context as a kind of ‘control system’ for language — a view which collapses instantiation into an interstratal process, rather than recognising it as a dimension orthogonal to stratification. The abstract thus substitutes a theory of control for a theory of instantiation, and reinterprets the context of situation as a set of principles operating within language.

4. Misunderstanding Individuation: Mixing Allocation, Affiliation and Elaboration

The abstract gives only brief mention to individuation, suggesting that field, tenor and mode can be viewed as “domains of variation, contestation and collaboration.” But this description conflates several distinct processes.

Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 145–6) distinguish between:

• Elaboration: the principle governing individuation, which organises subtypes of meaning potential — from the reservoir of the culture to the repertoires of individuals;

• Extension: the principle governing affiliation and allocation, which organises associations among speakers and speech roles.

Doran’s account blends these without clarity. “Variation” suggests elaboration; “contestation and collaboration” suggest extension. The result is a vague gesture at individuation that collapses it into neighbouring domains, offering thematic resonance instead of analytic traction.

5. Rhetorical Strategies: Gesturing Towards Synthesis, Avoiding Commitment

The overall strategy of the abstract is not to argue for a new model of context, but to reframe known categories through metaphor. It avoids committing to theoretical definitions, preferring suggestive rewordings and image-rich paraphrases. “Trinocular perspective,” for instance, is repurposed from Halliday’s original metaphor (above, around, below) and applied to three dimensions that are not perspectives on a single object but ontologically distinct planes of organisation.

This is not theoretical synthesis. It is semiotic window-dressing — a kind of metaphorical kaleidoscope in which familiar terms are turned to new angles to suggest complexity without delivering precision. The appearance of insight is sustained by the rhetorical strategy of non-committal parallelism: “field, tenor and mode can be viewed as…”, repeated with varying completions. This lends the text an air of systematicity while avoiding the responsibility of system-building.

6. Metaphorical Opportunism: A Broader Pattern in the Sydney School

The errors in Doran’s abstract are not isolated. They reflect a deeper and more pervasive pattern within the Sydney school’s approach to theoretical development — a pattern of metaphorical opportunism, in which metaphors are deployed not to illuminate distinctions but to paper over them.

In Halliday’s theory, metaphors are powerful tools for explicating system — as in grammatical metaphor — but the discipline lies in mapping metaphors precisely onto functional categories. In the Sydney school, by contrast, metaphor has drifted into a mode of exposition in which loosely associated images are treated as theoretical mechanisms. Dimensions like realisation, instantiation, and individuation are no longer grounded in the architecture of the theory but redefined by what they can be made to resemble in the moment.

Doran’s abstract is a perfect example. The metaphor of a “trinocular” perspective — originally a heuristic for observing language from above (semantics), below (phonology), and around (lexicogrammar) — is reappropriated to frame realisation, instantiation and individuation as “views” on context. But these are not alternative perspectives on the same object. They are distinct dimensions of the theory, and each organises different kinds of relations. Realisation organises symbolic abstraction; instantiation organises the potential–instance relation; individuation organises the relation between social and personal meaning potential. Treating them as interchangeable lenses is not a theoretical insight — it’s a category mistake.

The deeper problem is that this opportunistic use of metaphor is self-insulating. Because metaphors are not evaluated for theoretical consistency but for rhetorical effect, they can always be reinterpreted or replaced when challenged. What appears to be a theoretical model is often a shifting palimpsest of metaphors, each of which suggests structure without committing to any. The result is an illusion of synthesis — a constellation of phrases that sound as though they add up to a system, but which evade analysis when probed.

This strategy is particularly attractive when addressing the more abstract dimensions of SFL — notably, instantiation and individuation — where the temptation to rely on imagery increases as conceptual clarity declines. Rather than clarifying these dimensions, Doran's abstract offers them up as thematic motifs to be rearranged in metaphorical combinations. This is not modelling; it is bricolage.

This approach has rhetorical power. It creates the impression of theoretical depth, the promise of synthesis, and the aesthetic of innovation. But it comes at a cost. The architecture of the theory is eroded, distinctions collapse, and terms lose their analytic value. Under the banner of expanding the worldview, what is actually expanded is the range of plausible-sounding metaphors. And with each new iteration, it becomes harder to retrieve the conceptual rigour that once underpinned the model.

7. Conclusion: Context Lost in the Mirror Maze

Doran’s abstract reads like a theoretical hall of mirrors: each familiar term reflects another, but the reflections are distorted. Context becomes semantics; semantics becomes system; system becomes metaphor. The architecture that once scaffolded systemic functional theory is replaced by a fluid ensemble of rhetorical effects.

If there is to be progress in modelling context within SFL, it will not come from treating its dimensions as interchangeable perspectives. It will come from clarifying the architecture of the theory, preserving its distinctions, and resisting the lure of metaphor when what is needed is logic. What the field requires now is not a new way of seeing context, but a better way of thinking it.

Friday Research Student Course Semester 1 2024

James Martin wrote to asflanet on 21 Jan 2024, at 11:20:

Hi all

This 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.

Cheers

Jim

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.

For some of the theoretical misunderstandings in Martin et al.'s 2010 Deploying Functional Grammar workbook, see the meticulous review here.

A Close Examination Of Yaegan Doran's 2023 ASFLA Plenary Abstract

Negotiating social relations: Viewing tenor from multiple perspectives

Whenever we talk or write, we negotiate our social relations. This may involve small seemingly inconsequential chats with friends, families and colleagues that help us stay in contact and possibly get us closer to them; or they may be large, momentous events that bring us together or tear us apart. In all cases, we negotiate these social relations through the discourse we use – through language and a range of related semiotic resources. In SFL, this has typically been explored through tenor, a variable of context (Halliday 1978; or register, Martin 1992, depending on the model being used). Tenor has variously been described in terms of the 'roles played by those taking part’ in a situation, ‘the values that the interactants imbue’ the activity with (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 33) and the relationships between addressees or interactants (Gregory 1967; Hasan 2020). Or, more broadly, the ‘general dimensions of social relations’ (Poynton 1990:70) and their negotiation (Martin 1992: 523). However, to this point, there has been little by way of comprehensive models of tenor that have been able to link the various dimensions underpinning our social relations with the set of language resources that realise them, in particular, resources within the interpersonal metafunction (Hasan 2020 and related work such as Butt et al. 2021 being perhaps the most comprehensive proposal thus far).

As a step toward such a model, this talk will focus on how we can consider tenor in SFL in relation to recent expansions of SFL theory that have distinguished realisation, instantiation and individuation (Halliday 1991, Matthiessen 1993, Martin 2010). It will propose that a fruitful avenue for understanding the link between language and social relations is to view tenor from these multiple perspectives. 

From the perspective of realisation, tenor can be viewed as a set of resources for enacting social relations (drawing on a model developed in Doran, Martin and Zappavigna forthcoming). 

From the perspective of instantiation, it can be viewed as sets of guiding principles that underly how we co-select and arrange different language features (such as the principles of status and contact, described by, e.g. Poynton 1990, Martin 1992, Hasan 2020 and Butt et al. 2021). 

And in terms of individuation, it can be viewed as sets of social roles and relationships – or more broadly, arenas of sociality – that offer possibilities for variation, contestation and collaboration, in terms of the meaning making resources that are taken up or presumed. 

In short, given the major role tenor plays in our understanding of how language and broader semiosis enacts social relations, this talk will propose that it is time to give it the theoretical space it needs.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the fundamental misunderstanding in this abstract, as in two of Doran's previous seminars on the subject, is the confusion of interpersonal context with interpersonal semantics. This is a consequence of not understanding the meaning of distinct levels of symbolic abstraction. See further below.

[1] To be clear, even in Martin's model, negotiation is a matter of discourse semantics, whereas social relations are a matter of context. Speakers and writers do not negotiate tenor variables. For example, the essay of a primary school student does not negotiate the status roles  — equal or unequal power — with the teacher for whom the essay was written. In his work, The Lord Of The Rings, the author Tolkien does not negotiate the contact roles — familiar or unfamiliar — of himself with his readers.

What speakers and writers potentially negotiate are their propositions and proposals — statements, questions, offers and commands — their speech functional moves in exchanges, as realised by the grammar of MOOD. But such negotiation is largely restricted to the semantics that realise dialogic MODE. For example, what propositions or proposals does Lewis Carroll negotiate with his readers in The Hunting Of The Snark?

[2] To be clear, the linking of social relations with the interpersonal language that realise them is not a model of tenor. It is a description of interstratal relations: how tenor variables are realised by semantic options. See [4] below.

[3] This misunderstands realisation. Specifically, it confuses context with the language that realises it. That is, the set of resources for enacting social relations as meaning is interpersonal language, not tenor. Tenor is the interpersonal context that language realises.

[4] This confuses instantiation with interstratal realisation. From the perspective of instantiation, tenor is the interpersonal dimension of the culture > subcultures/situation types > situations. The notion of tenor as "guiding principles" for the selection of language features is modelled in SFL Theory by interstratal preselection. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 375):

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.

A Close Examination Of David Rose's 2023 SFLIG Plenary Abstract

Plenary 3: Cultures, Texts and People: Challenges Of Change In SFL Practice 

Dr David Rose, University of Sydney 

Abstract: 

Thanks to Jay Lemke, SFL has a model for interpreting change at three time scales, named for us by Michael Halliday as phylogenesis for the evolution of semiotic systems, ontogenesis for the growth of persons, and logogenesis for the unfolding of texts. Jim Martin has associated these scales of change with three hierachies [sic] in our model of semiosis. Phylogenesis is associated with the hierachy [sic] of realisation, between evolving systems at the strata of genre, register, discourse, grammar and phonology. Ontogenesis is associated with the cline of individuation, from personae to groups, communities and master identities. Logogenesis is associated with the instantiation cline, from systems to text types to texts to readings. 

Perhaps most relevant to the research themes of this conference are clines of individuation - how communities affiliate around issues of environment, governance and conflict, how semiotic repertoires are allocated by institutions such as education and healthcare, and now how to characterise the place of AI in semiotic communities. For SFL researchers, variations in affiliation and allocation are found by comparing patterns instantiated in texts. A difficult question is how to grapple with this complexity in our data and our arguments. 

The traditional practice of listing features with clause examples falters beyond systems of grammar and phonology. One alternative is to leave linguistic analysis for statistics, mining texts for clause or item types and counting their frequencies. Another is to interpret data discursively with loosely defined topologies. But if our goal is changing practices in these fields, we need to be able to show how systems are instantiated and individuated at each semiotic stratum, in ways that will be useful for non-specialists. For me, that means hanging on to texts, and presenting them in novel formats that foreground the patterns we are concerned with. These formats must also be economical for the analyst, and concise enough for publication. In this talk I will illustrate some processes for designing analyses, that couple multiple perspectives on texts, while keeping them intact.

Blogger Comments:

[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):

[3] This is misleading. Phylogenesis is the evolution of the system — meaning potential — in the species, whereas realisation is merely the relation of symbolic abstraction that obtains between system and structure and between strata. Phylogenesis involves change in all dimensions of language, for example, change within the systems of semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology, change in the structures of semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology, change in the instantiation probabilities of semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology.

[4] To be clear, these are Martin's strata, all of which are proposed on the basis of theoretical misunderstandings, as demonstrated in great detail here. For example, Martin's genre misconstrues text type and the semantic structures of various text types as non-linguistic context. Martin's register misconstrues functional varieties of language as the non-linguistic context that are realised by such varieties. Martin's 'discourse' is primarily his rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's lexicogrammatical cohesion as his discourse semantics.

[5] To be clear, this has Martin's cline of individuation backwards. Individuation is the process by which an individual becomes distinct. But see further below.

[6] This misunderstands the cline of instantiation. Texts are instances of a speaker's meaning potential, whereas readings are addressees' interpretation of such texts.

[7] This misunderstands the cline of individuation. The organising principle of individuation, like instantiation, is elaboration (hyponymy). Moving down the cline is viewing the elaboration of types. The organising principle of affiliation, on the other hand, is extension (meronymy). Affiliation is concerned with the groups that individuals associate with. This confusion explains why Rose described Martin's cline from the bottom up, instead of the top down.

[8] Clearly, there are no clause features in phonology.

[9] To be clear, in SFL Theory, statistics are the means of distinguishing varieties on the cline of instantiation. Viewed from the system pole, varieties differ in terms of the instantiation probabilities of features; viewed from the instance pole, varieties differ in terms of the instantiation frequencies of features.

[10] To be clear, "hanging on to texts" should go without saying in SFL. Halliday (2003[1994]: 437):

… 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

Wording As The Overlap Of Form And Meaning

A Close Examination Of Fontaine's 2023 ISFC Plenary Abstract

Grammatical Energy: the Powerhouse of Language

“Meaning is brought about by language; and the energy by which this is achieved, the source of its semogenic power, is grammar.”

(Halliday, 2005, p. 63)

Within the framework of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), language is modelled as a semiotic system.  At the heart of this language system is the lexicogrammar, which, for Halliday (2005 p 74), is the powerhouse of language. Despite its central role, however, there is generally a feeling that this core area is relatively understudied, at least for English, which has historically provided the foundation of the theory. While the expansive development and use of SFL for transdisciplinary purposes (Wegener et al, in preparation) is very welcome and indeed promising, the source of grammatical energy, the powerhouse itself, should also be the focus of our attention — not instead of, but in addition to, the wealth of work being done on the understanding of its effects on people and society at large. Accepting that language is a semiotic system implies that we should also accept that while it is "made of meaning", it has "to materialise — to become matter" (Halliday 2005 p 68). It follows that if the semiotic system is entirely semantic, the materialised form (matter) of language must be related to, but outside of (or at some boundary of) the semiotic system. We might agree that the materialised form is embedded in context, but the language system as a whole, i.e. its theoretical (abstract) representation, cannot be. For this reason, the distinction between instantiation and actualisation becomes significant, where "actualisation is defined as the relation between the actual and either the potential or the typical" (Wegener 2011 p 98). 

In this talk, I use the semantic profile of watch, as an atypical verb of visual perception, to demonstrate ways in which, at the lexical level, we can explore the relationship between instantiation and actualisation. I will also consider its semantic features in relation to several related verbs (see, stare, look and listen). The unique profile of watch makes it a challenging case study because it appears to defy categorisation and as such, provides a useful example to demonstrate the significance of the SFL concept of 'meaning potential' in a meaning driven account of lexical semantics (cf. Allwood 2003, Fontaine 2017). By shift [sic] our focus to the lexical side of the lexicogrammar stratum, we may shed more light on the theoretical powerhouse, ideally resulting in a better understanding of its grammatical energy.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this unsourced 'feeling' is self-contradictory. Since the lexicogrammar 'has historically provided the foundation of the theory' — Halliday's term for the theory is Systemic Functional Grammar — this 'core area' is demonstrably not 'relatively understudied', especially with regard to English, since the theory of grammar is elaborated in most detail in the description of English (Introduction to Functional Grammar 1985, 1994, 2004, 2014).

[2] To be clear, the work that Fontaine positively appraises as 'very welcome and indeed promising' is her own collaboration:

Wegener, R., McCabe, A., Sellami Baklouti, A. & Fontaine, L. (In preparation) The Routledge Handbook of Transdisciplinary Systemic Functional Linguistics. London: Routledge.

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the grammar is the CPU ('powerhouse') of language, and the CPU of the grammar is the clause. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 22, 10):

Grammar is the central processing unit of language, the powerhouse where meanings are created … The clause is the central processing unit in the lexicogrammar — in the specific sense that it is in the clause that meanings of different kinds are mapped into an integrated grammatical structure.

It will be seen that, despite the title of her paper, Fontaine is concerned here not with this 'powerhouse', but with lexis.

[4] To be clear, no semiotic system is entirely semantic, since every semiotic system also necessarily includes an expression plane, and in the case of language, the content plane includes a stratum of lexicogrammar as well as a stratum of semantics. ('Semiotic' does not mean 'semantic'.)

[5] To be clear, the 'materialised form' of language is the audible sound or visible marks made by bodily action. These are specified by the systems of the expression plane of language.

[6] To be clear, the materialised forms of language, audible sounds and visible marks, form part of the first-order material experience, whereas context is a plane of second-order semiotic experience. In SFL Theory, 'context' refers to the culture as a semiotic system. Clearly, here Fontaine is misconstruing 'context' as material.

[7] As Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 25) explain:

A language is a series of redundancies by which we link our eco-social environment to non-random disturbances in the air (soundwaves).

That is, language links two aspects of its material environment, and in that sense, can be said to be "embedded" in the material order (Fontaine's understanding of 'context'). On the other hand, in SFL terms, language construes and realises context: the culture as a semiotic system.

[8] This confuses a first-order semiotic, language ('the language system as a whole'), with a second-order semiotic, metalanguage ('its theoretical (abstract) representation').

[9] To be clear, the claim here is that because the language system as a whole cannot be embedded in the material environment ("context"), the distinction between instantiation and actualisation (Wegener 2011) becomes significant.

Wegener proposes actualisation as an interstratal relation (p98) between actual and either potential or typical (p95):

However, this distinction is motivated by a misunderstanding of instantiation (p95):

Instantiation as a relation is not contextualised. It is, as Halliday (1992) suggests, entirely intrastratal. Because it is intrastratal it does not reach the actual. The actual is interstratal and thus is contextualised.

To be clear, in SFL Theory, the 'contextualisation' of instantiation is the dimension of stratification. As such, the notion of 'actualisation' is a confusion of the dimensions of instantiation and stratification, proposed as an additional complementary dimension.

[10] To be clear, the verb watch is grammatically anomalous, as noted 29 years ago in Halliday (1994: 139):

The verb watch is anomalous: in I’m watching you, the tense suggests a behavioural process but the you appears as a participant like the Phenomenon of a ‘mental’ clause.

[11] To be clear, the concern 'at the lexical level' is with the meaning of lexical items in open sets, not with meanings of grammatical systems, such as the clause. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 604n):

We can talk of "lexical semantics" if we want to foreground the meanings of words (lexical items functioning in open sets), and of "grammatical semantics" if we want to foreground the meanings of closed grammatical systems;

[12] To be clear, in terms of 'grammatical semantics', the verb see typically serves as a mental process, whereas the verbs stare, look and listen typically serve as behavioural processes.

[13] To be clear, the verb watch is not unique in this respect. Other examples include observe, ogle, eye, view, contemplate and ponder. In each case, the tense suggests behavioural process, but each affords a Phenomenon, suggesting a mental process.

[14] Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 549-52) outline five types of ideational indeterminacy: ambiguities, blends, overlaps, neutralisations, and complementarities. Anomalies like clauses featuring the verb watch are cases of overlap: 'two categories overlap so that certain members display some features of each'.

[15] To be clear, the term 'meaning potential' in SFL Theory refers to language as system, as opposed to language as instance (text). Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 33):

The meaning potential itself is one pole on the dimension of instantiation: it is instantiated in the unfolding of text, with patterns of typical instantiation (specific domains of meaning) lying somewhere in between the potential and the instance.

∞

See also 

Lise Fontaine's Right To Stop Me Saying It

Lexis As Most Local Context (Fontaine 2017)

Lise Fontaine Personally Attacking Her Paper's Reviewer