J. R. Martin

English Text: System and structure

This book is a comprehensive introduction to text forming resources in English, along with practical procedures for analysing English texts and relating them to their contexts of use. It has been designed to complement functional grammars of English, building on the generation of discourse analysis inspired by Halliday and Hasans Cohesion in English . The analyses presented were developed within three main theoretical and applied contexts: (i) educational linguistics (especially genre-based literacy programmes) (ii) critical linguistics (as manifested in the development of social semiotics) and (iii) computational linguistics (in dialogue with the various text generation projects based on systemic approaches to grammar and discourse). English Texts major contribution is to outline one way in which a rich semantically oriented functional grammar can be systematically related to a theory of discourse semantics, including deconstruction of contextual issues (i.e. register, genre and ideology). The chapters have been organized with the needs of undergraduate students in theoretical linguistics and postgraduate students in applied linguistics in mind.

Genre and Literacy-Modeling Context in Educational Linguistics

Christie (1992), in the previous years volume of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , reviewed literacy initiatives in Australia which drew on systemic functional linguistics, focusing on three themes: differences between speech and writing, written genres, and the study of spoken language. This paper is designed to complement her review, highlighting ongoing research within the same general theoretical framework, and focusing on the general question of modeling context in educational linguistics.

Mourning: How we get aligned

This article takes up an interpersonal perspective on discourse, which focuses on what we might think of as the rhetorical power of language. In particular, it emphasizes the role of evaluation, and the constructive role it plays in organizing sociality – how we share feelings in order to belong. It considers in some detail the texture of an editorial from a Hong Kong lifestyle magazine published 10 days after 11 September 2001 (9/11), outlining the ways in which the editor negotiates solidarity with his expat readership, naturalizing a range of reading positions both within and between those readers.

Interpersonal meaning, persuasion and public discourse: Packing semiotic punch

Abstract This paper considers the discursive deployment of modality in one public text, with a view to outlining the significance of grammatical metaphor as resource for expanding the meaning potential that can be brought to bear on the modal assessment of English propositions and proposals. The implications of this interpretation of interpersonal meaning for critical social literacy in Australian schools is subsequently discussed with reference to two pieces of expository writing from a senior secondary school context.

Grace: The Logogenesis of Freedom

In this article I consider a two-page autobiographical recount which appears at the end of Nelson Mandelas book Long Walk to Freedom as a summary of his life and what he has learned from it. My aim is to illustrate the role of a detailed analysis of single texts in the field of discourse analysis, as opposed to studies of selected variables across a corpus of texts. The analysis is conducted within the general theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics, with special attention to transitivity, mood, theme, grammatical metaphor, lexical relations, conjunction, tense, phase, process type, hierarchy of periodicity, polarity, continuity, elaboration, extension and the analysis of images in multimodal text. Through these procedures I show the way in which Mandela reconciles the linear unfolding of his life history with the deepening understanding of freedom that gives meaning to his life - by means of a spiral texture (evoking the oral tradition of his native tongue) which returns again and again to the meaning of freedom at different levels of abstraction. The effect, I think, is inspirational - with no tinge of bitterness or betrayal; rather a message of hope and wisdom - grace personified. The approach exemplifies a positive style of discourse analysis that focuses on hope and change, by way of complementing the deconstructive exposé associated with critical discourse analysis.

Linguistics and the consumer: The practice of theory

How refreshing it is, reading de Beaugrande (1997), to see linguistics socially framed-both with respect to its own disciplinary practice, and with respect to the political context of its applications, in education and beyond. A genuinely ecosocial perspective, which might serve to guide us well across the fraught frontiers of the new millennium. By way of responding, 1’11 comment from an Australian perspective, in response to those parts of de Beaugrande’s paper that most struck a chord and where I think Australians have something distinctive to contribute on the basis of our experiences. Some sympathetic, and hopefully productive, repartee.

Technology, Bureaucracy and Schooling: Discursive Resources and Control:

ions. The explanation is thus grammaticalised in terms of pseudothings bringing about pseudo-things. This reasoning is itemised below (with abstractions italicized): Agent [abstraction] Process [caused] Medium [abstraction] the Long March contributed to the eventual Communist victory it (the Long March} established the leadership of Mao Zedong. the prestige Mao acquired... assured his dominance. Mao’s leadership brought an end to the dominance of the Soviet Union... {Mao’s leadership } made Chinese Communism... independent. The Long March forged a tightly knit army 13 that { a tightlyknit army} } drew strength from its sufferings. The survivors formed the tough nucleus of the...RedArmy... The policy of going north... stimulated high morale... {The policy of going north... appealed to patriots throughout China. { the Red Army } brought message of Communism to...peasants Metaphorically expanded meaning potential of this kind makes it possible for qualities (e.g. prestige, leadership, strength, morale) and processes (e.g. the Long March, victory, sufferings) to affect each other through a wide range of processes (e.g. a tightly knit army that drew strength from its sufferingslike water from a well). The tension between grammar and semantics is immense, in some cases requiring two or more layers of unpacking to translate from very written to more typically spoken form; for example: 117 TECHNOLOGY, BUREAUCRACY AND SCHOOLING LITERAL the prestige Mao acquired... assured his dominance. TRANSFERRED 1 Mao became prestigious and so became dominant. TRANSFERRED 2 Mao became prestigious and so dominated his party. Only highly literate subjects are able to construe discourse of this kind, which is at the same time the kind of discourse on which the uncommon sense of history, and of the humanities in general, ultimately depends. The point of this section of the paper has been to point towards a line of argument in which humanities discourse trains students in the discourse technology of bureaucracy, which in turn functions to organise and manage discursive resources. The power of humanities discourse derives from its apprenticing position in this chain of command. Humanities teaches the grammatically metaphorical discourse needed for institutionalised hierarchies of bureaucratic control. All that is required to move from humanities to bureaucracy is a change in mood-from a declarative to an imperative stance (and since bureaucracy realises its imperatives metaphorically as declaratives in any case, this is a very small move indeed). The status of humanities discourse, unlike that of science, is almost inversely related to this power. Across a wide range if contexts it suits our social order to construct the humanities as useless (humanities leaders themselves are prone to compliantly defending their disciplines as transcending economic imperatives); and bureaucratic discourse is itself so generally stigmatized that the humanities could hardly be expected to accrue status even if the ways in which they engender bureaucratic technology were more widely recognised. In many contexts it is quite natural to dismiss both humanities and bureaucratic discourse as bull-shit-as opaque and exclusive ways of saying nothing at all. Whether or not this negative evaluation makes humanities discourse irrelevant to the needs of contemporary social subjects is another question entirely. Critically, we are suggesting that in order to construct uncommon sense, humanities discourse, like scientific discourse depends on the grammar of writing-on a heavily nominalised texture which places grammar and semantics in tension with each other and makes it necessary to read a text on two or more levels to construe its meaning. It follows that this grammar and the everyday meaning potential it expands is a necessary condition for apprenticeship into this second of our culture’s powerful controlling discourses. Functional illiteracy in this domain means not just exclusion, but enslavementsince subjects are denied the tools they need to read critically or write oppositionally in contexts of public control. Once again, spoken grammar, however cherished, is not enough. 118 TECHNOLOGY, BUREAUCRACY AND SCHOOLING 5. A note on social science and technocracy The discussion of science and humanities as controlling discourses (for related summary see Martin 1991, 1993) to this point in the paper in one sense does no more than bring us up to the beginning of the 20th century as far as constructing a hierarchy of literacies is concerned. For reasons of space we can do little more than round off the discussion here by positioning social science discourse in an argument of this kind (drawing particularly on Wignell 1990). Discursively speaking, social science, as its name implies, shares features of both scientific and humanities discourse. This is hardly surprising since it has evolved throughout the century in terms of applying aspects of scientific discourse to the analysis of discursive resources. Like humanities discourse, social science discourse is very abstract; readers unfamiliar with its texts often react as if tension between semantics and grammar has been pushed to breaking point, a reaction only further apprenticeship can cure. Like science discourse, social science discourse is technical, although for some readers the process of definition seems less precise, with the meaning of terms evolving dynamically-both within and between texts; and the taxonomies into which these technical terms arrange themselves are certainly far less elaborate, and in some texts, far less complete, than those construed in scientific writing. One might argue that in social science technical terms function as transtextual consolidations, as opposed to the transcendent distillations of scientific terms. Like the humanities, out of which social science has for the most part evolved, social science discourse derives its power from its ability to control discursive resources-in reproductive (e.g. schooling, training), remedial (e.g. counselling, therapy) and executive (e.g. economic planning, personnel management) contexts. Bureaucratic discourse has become increasingly inflected by social science, to the point where the term technocracy has evolved reflecting this phase of its genesis (see Lemke 1990, Thibault 1991). Text 7 above could in fact be taken as an example of technocratic discourse of this kind because of the way in which it blends in a rationale derived from economics (italicized below): Hopefully, sustainable fisheries development will involve less drastic demand management than the whaling experience. However, demand must be in balance with supply, and to this end priority must be given to the more demanding commercial fisheries. An example of the kind of discourse from which such rationale derived is presented as text 13 below. The text has been jointly constructed by a senior secondary economics teacher with her class as a model for writing in exams (with nominalisations italicized to highlight abstraction, and technical terms underlined as an index of technicality). 119 TECHNOLOGY, BUREAUCRACY AND SCHOOLING [Social science report] 13. What is inflation? What are the causes and consequences of inflation? What are the policies used to control inflation? l’1flation is an increase in the general level of retail TJrice’i:, as measured by the consumer -12rice index (CED. The M is determined by quarterly surveys of prices for a representative range of goods and services. This ’basket’ of goods and services was determined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics from an estimation of the pattern of household expenditure in 1984. The selected goods and services are divided into eight groups: food, clothing, health and personal care, houszng, household equipment and operation, tobacco and alcohol, recreation and education, and transportation. Each item is given a weifhtinf which reflects the relative importance of the item in the household bud1(et. There are a number of factors which contribute to inflation. These include demand pull, wage 2us , external causes, znflationarv expectations, public sector causes, price shocks and excess monev supplv...

Types of Structure: Deconstructing Notions of Constituency in Clause and Text

In this paper I will present arguments in favour of a view of text structure in which constituency is not privileged, but deconstructed as just one way of looking at text organisation. This view of text structure has been developed in Australia in dialogue with Halliday’s (e.g., 1994) and Matthiessen’s (e.g., in press) work on English clause grammar. Consequently I will begin with an overview of their clause analysis before moving on to argue the main point of my paper—namely that constituency is a semantically biassed and reductive form of representation for text structure (i.e. that a text is not a tree).

Incongruent and proud: de-vilifying 'nominalization':

This rejoinder reviews the interpretation of nominalization and grammatical metaphor in systemic functional linguistic theory and the critical role it plays in constructing knowledge, enabling evaluation and facilitating information flow. It is suggested that different disciplines deploy grammatical metaphor in complementary ways to construct their discourse and that these discourses depend fundamentally on this resource for their existence.

Evolving systemic functional linguistics: beyond the clause

In this autobiographical essay I reflect on my training in linguistics and the way it affected my interpretation and development of SFL theory. In particular I am concerned to show how I tried to help SFL evolve, accumulating previous understandings into a model with additional theoretical architecture taking descriptive responsibility for a wider range of linguistic data. This evolution is illustrated with respect to my work on discourse semantics (as part of stratified content plane), genre (as part of a stratified context plane) and appraisal (a discourse semantic framework for analysing feeling).