The Starting Point For This Paper

Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 178):

As reviewed in Tann (2017), Martin (2010) outlines an SFL framework for the study of semantic variation organised around three ‘hierarchies’ of meaning – realisation (strata of abstraction), instantiation (cline of generalisation), and individuation (scale of belonging). This is our starting point for this paper. 

Reviewer Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it misrepresents these SFL dimensions of language as Martin's framework. To be clear, 'realisation' and 'instantiation' are dimensions in Halliday's original model, and 'individuation' was introduced in the work of Matthiessen.

[2] This seriously misunderstands these three dimensions of language. 'Meaning' refers to the semantic stratum of language, but the three dimensions are also relevant to other strata of language, as well as to context. The error derives from Martin's misunderstanding of 'all strata make meaning', which describes semogenesis (making meaning) not stratification, as 'all strata are meaning'. It will be seen that this fundamental misunderstanding is the basis of the authors' "rethinking" of context from the perspective of realisation.

[3] This seriously misunderstands these three dimensions of language. 'Realisation' is not a hierarchy, but a relation (of symbolic identity) between any two levels of symbolic abstraction, such as between strata or between axes.

Instantiation is not a cline of generalisation, which is the scale of delicacy, but an elaborating relation of class membership between a token (instance) and a type (potential). Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 144-5) distinguish delicacy, realisation and instantiation as three types of elaboration:

In other words, the elaboration sets up a relationship either of generality (delicacy), of abstraction (realisation), or of token to type (instantiation): see Table 4(4).

And individuation is not a scale of belonging (extension) of meaners, but a cline of differentiation (elaboration) of meaning. However, this dimension is not explored in this paper.

[4] As can be seen from the above, the starting point for this paper involves very serious misunderstandings of SFL theory.