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Why Martin's Notion Of A Monostratal Semiotic System Is Nonsensical

[This old post has been made relevant again by Martin's nonsensical claim being confidently reasserted by Yaegan Doran at today's seminar at the University of Sydney.]

Jim Martin claims that in a semiotic system where content conflates with paradigm and expression conflates with syntagm, there is only one stratum. Note, incidentally, that by this logic, it could be alternatively argued that there is only one axis, and therefore no system–structure cycle.

This is a bit like saying because all my squares are ('conflate with') blue and all my triangles are ('conflate with') red, there is only one shape (or only one colour).

If content conflates with paradigm and expression conflates with syntagm, then:

content/paradigm is realised by expression/syntagm.

This conflates

content is realised by expression

with

paradigm is realised by syntagm.

There are still 2 strata and 2 axes in this conflation.

By definition, a semiotic system has at least two levels of symbolic abstraction.

By definition, a symbol is something that means something other than itself.

Meetings

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Lise Fontaine's Right To Stop Me Saying It

Sun, 2 Feb 2020 20:31:11

You have been removed from the SYSFLING list (Systemic Functional Linguistics).
The change was carried out by a list administrator (Lise Fontaine).

To be clear, Lise Fontaine unsubscribed me from the Sysfling list when she was alerted to the existence of my blog The Cardiff Grammar by Robin Fawcett posing as Dmytro Poremskyi (to praise his own work) on the Facebook site of the NASFLA. The blog provides evidence that the architecture of language proposed by the Cardiff Grammar is invalidated by internal inconsistencies and that Fawcett repeatedly misrepresents Halliday in ways that always suit his own argument. Fontaine is a proponent of the Cardiff Grammar.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

— George Orwell

Giving And Demanding Goods–&–Services

Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory Vs Systemic Functional Linguistics

Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory ('Systemic Functional Grammar') is a scientific theory with a precisely defined architecture that provides the means of identifying misinterpretations of it.

Systemic Functional Linguistics, on the other hand, is a movement, the members of which have responded to a call to improve humanity by teaching students and/or analysing texts.  Because it is the movement that is paramount, it is not so much the theoretical consistency of the work that matters, but merely the fact that the work is 'Systemic' (i.e. 'us' not 'them'). When members of the movement die, they are chiefly praised for the extent to which they served the 'cause'.

Blind Trust

University.com

Meeting Preparation

The Difference Between ASFLA & The Australian SFL Community

A: Australian Systemic Functional Linguistic Association
B: The Australian Systemic Functional Linguistic Community

Division Of Labour

Conference Calls

Collegial Collaboration

Evoked Attitude

"Well Within Registerial Norms"

Choosing A Mentor

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.

Mentoring

The Bullying Of PhD Students By Their Supervisors

Teaching

From Earned Privilege To Costly Entitlement

Buyer Beware!

Scholars who are new to SFL Theory should note that this new publication mainly features papers by Jim Martin and his former students.

Evidence of Jim Martin's serious misunderstandings of SFL Theory is available here (English Text 1992) and here (Working With Discourse 2007).

The only way to get a solid grounding in Halliday's theory is to read Halliday (± Matthiessen).

Intracultural Communication

Intercultural Communication

Collegiality

External vs Internal Cohesive Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 611):

Relations between representations of segments of experience are called external relations, and conjunctions marking such relations are called external conjunctions. … 

Relations linking text segments in their interpersonal guise are called internal relations – internal to the text as a speech event, and conjunctions marking such relations are called internal conjunctions.

The Interpersonal Is Realised By Parodic Structure

This Could Never Happen In The SFL Community

Sharing The Dream

Collaboration