The 'Arguable' Metafunctional Address Of Internal Connexion

Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 195-6):

Indeed if we zoom out to an even longer stretch than we have here, the whole excerpt functions together with the previous sections on eukaryotes and prokaryotes as a single, larger chunk introducing what organisms are. This is suggested by the internal addition connexion And (which suggests a linking with the previous chunk) and the chain splitting the third branch (which, while introducing archaea and in doing so establishes a new participant chain) which in fact refer back to and illustrate similarity with the previous two branches. Importantly, this hierarchy of demarcation is developed not by a single discourse semantic system, such as PERIODICITY, IDENTIFICATION, or INTERNAL CONNEXION,¹¹ but by them all working together. And since these systems are all primarily concerned with organising texture, the resonance between textual metafunction and mode is sustained. Establishing hierarchies of demarcation also conforms to the general periodic structure of textual systems, whereby the same ‘meanings’ can be overlayed on top of each other at bigger of smaller stretches (Halliday 1979).

¹¹ The precise metafunctional address of internal CONNEXION, which we treat as a textual resource here, is arguable. Martin (1992) interprets it as ‘textual grammatical metaphor’, a position he retracts in Martin (2024) in his discussion of what he calls ‘coordination’ resources.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, mode is the part language is playing in terms of the culture. Chunks of information, on the other hand, are language, as too are Martin's discourse semantic systems, of PERIODICITY, IDENTIFICATION, and INTERNAL CONNEXION.

[2] This again misunderstands context-metafunction resonance as requiring that only textual systems realise the parameters of mode. One source of this misunderstanding is Martin's misunderstanding of metafunctions and strata as interacting modules. Martin (1992: 390, 488):

Each of the presentations of linguistic text forming resources considered above adopted a modular perspective. As far as English Text is concerned this has two main dimensions: stratification, and within strata, metafunction. …

The problem addressed is a fundamental concern of modular models of semiosis — namely, once modules are distinguished, how do they interface? What is the nature of the conversation among components?

[3] To be clear, the conjunction (now 'connexion') in Martin (1992: 179) is his logical system of the discourse semantic stratum, and it subsumes the internal variety:

However, this discourse semantic system is Martin's rebranding of the textual grammatical system of cohesive conjunction (Halliday & Hasan 1976), confused with the logical grammatical system of clause complexing (Halliday 1985). That is, the metafunctional address of this system is not 'arguable'; it is merely misunderstood by Martin and those taught by him.