Against Conflation: 2 Discourse Semantics and the Manufacture of Novelty

In the previous post, we argued that the central problem with Martin’s model is not empirical but architectural: a failure to distinguish levels of symbolic abstraction and the relations that hold between them. In this post, we turn to the most influential outcome of that failure — the stratum Martin names discourse semantics — and to the method by which it was constructed.

The claim here is straightforward: discourse semantics does not arise from new semiotic data, nor from a principled reworking of Halliday’s stratification. It arises from the systematic relabelling of existing descriptions, particularly those developed by Halliday and Hasan, in a way that converts misunderstanding into apparent theoretical novelty.

From Semantics to “Discourse Semantics”

In Halliday’s canonical model, semantics is the stratum of meaning — not discourse meaning, not contextual meaning, but meaning as such. It is realised by lexicogrammar and realises context. Its systems include ideational, interpersonal, and textual resources.

Martin’s move is to split lexicogrammar by elevating selected resources into a new stratum named discourse semantics. The justification offered is functional: discourse semantics is said to model meanings that extend beyond the clause. But this justification is incoherent within Halliday’s architecture. Syntagmatic scope is not a criterion for stratification; abstraction is. Hallidayan semantics already spans the entire text.

Cohesion Rebranded

The clearest source of discourse semantics is Cohesion in English (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). In that work, cohesion is treated as a resource of lexicogrammar, enabling texture across clauses.

Martin reconstructs these non-structural grammatical systems as discourse semantic systems in his new stratum:

• Halliday & Hasan’s reference becomes Martin’s identification

• Lexical cohesion becomes ideation

• Conjunction becomes connexion

The renaming is not accompanied by a re-theorisation of abstraction, nor by a redefinition of the relation between these systems and lexicogrammar. Instead, the same phenomena are redescribed as if they now belong to a higher stratum. The result is the appearance of added explanatory power without any change in what is being explained.

More importantly, the renaming is enabled by conceptual slippage. For example, reference is routinely conflated with deixis. These misunderstandings function productively: they generate difference.

Speech Function Becomes Negotiation

The same pattern appears in Martin’s treatment of speech function. Halliday’s semantic system of speech function models how clauses enact moves in interaction — offers, demands, statements, questions — realised through mood and modality.

Martin relabels this system as negotiation and recontrues it as discourse semantics. But nothing about the system’s abstraction changes. Its realisation remains lexicogrammatical. Its domain remains semantic. What changes is its theoretical ownership.

Again, misunderstanding does the work. Speech function is treated as if it were a discourse phenomenon rather than just a semantic one, enabling its reassignment to a new stratum without architectural justification.

Novelty Through Relabelling

Taken together, these moves illustrate a consistent method of theorising:

1. Take an existing description developed within Halliday’s model

2. Rename its categories

3. Reassign them to a newly declared stratum

4. Present the result as theoretical advance

The success of this method depends on treating all domains as if they occupy the same level of abstraction, such that movement between them appears unproblematic. Stratification collapses into modular interaction; realisation collapses into influence; instantiation collapses into descent.

The result is not cumulative theory-building but competitive rebranding. Halliday’s architecture remains in place, but its components are rearranged and renamed to produce a rival model that appears richer while being conceptually thinner.

Why This Matters

The issue here is not terminological preference. It is theoretical integrity. Once semantic systems are redescribed as higher strata, the explanatory power of stratification is lost. Relations between meaning, wording, and context become opaque. And the distinction between semantic potential and patterns of use is blurred beyond recovery.

In the next post, we turn to the broader consequences of this method: how relabelling substitutes for explanation, how misunderstanding becomes a resource for differentiation, and how an entire research community has been encouraged to mistake novelty for theoretical advance.

Against Conflation: 1 Stratification, Abstraction, and Theoretical Architecture in SFL

Why This Matters

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is not merely a descriptive framework for analysing language. It is a theory of symbolic abstraction: a carefully articulated account of how different kinds of semiotic organisation relate to one another.

Much contemporary confusion in SFL debates arises not from empirical disagreement, but from a failure to respect this architecture — in particular, the distinction between levels of abstraction and types of theoretical relation. When these distinctions collapse, theoretical terms may remain familiar while their explanatory force quietly evaporates.

This post examines one such collapse. We name the alternative model early, but the argument is architectural rather than personal: the issue is not who proposed the model, but what happens when stratification, instantiation, and semogenesis are treated as if they were the same kind of thing.

Stratification Is Not Interaction

In Halliday’s canonical model, stratification is a relation between levels of symbolic abstraction.

• Semantics construes meaning potential

• Lexicogrammar operationalises that potential as structured choices

• Phonology/graphology materialises those choices for transmission and stabilisation

These strata do not interact as modules. Nor do they all “make meaning” in the same sense. Rather:

A lower stratum realises a higher stratum; a higher stratum is realised by a lower stratum.

This asymmetry matters. It is what prevents SFL from collapsing into a flat architecture of mutually influencing components.

By contrast, in Martin’s reinterpretation (most explicitly in English Text, 1992), strata are effectively treated as parallel modules whose relation is interactional rather than abstractive. The claim that “all strata make meaning” conflates semogenesis (the ongoing creation of meaning in use) with stratification (the organisation of symbolic abstraction).

The consequence is subtle but severe: if all strata are equally strata of meaning, then no principled distinction remains between construing meaning, enacting meaning, and materialising meaning.

When Phonology Becomes a Stratum of Meaning

The clearest symptom of this collapse is the treatment of phonology as a stratum of meaning.

In Halliday’s model, phonology does not construe meaning; it stabilises and transmits distinctions already construed at higher strata. Its semiotic contribution is real, but it is not semantic.

Martin’s decision to locate the information unit within phonology (1992: 384, 401) exemplifies the problem. Information is a grammatical system — not a phonological system that independently “makes meaning.”

This is not a terminological quibble. It reflects a deeper misunderstanding of what different levels of abstraction are.

Stratification vs. Instantiation

A second, compounding confusion concerns instantiation.

Instantiation is not something that happens within each stratum independently. It is a perspectival relation between:

• Potential (the system)

• Instance (the text/event)

To say that “all strata instantiate” treats instantiation as a process moving down a ladder, rather than as a shift in perspective on the same semiotic architecture.

This confusion becomes explicit in Martin’s reconstrual of context:

• Context of culture (potential) is redescribed as a stratum of genre

• Context of situation (instance) is redescribed as a stratum of register

Here, a relation of instantiation is replaced by a relation of interstratal realisation. Context — which in Halliday’s model is not language at all, but a higher-order semiotic environment realised by language — is absorbed back into the linguistic architecture as if it were simply another layer of meaning-making.

The result is a theoretical category error: a perspectival relation is mistaken for a structural one.

One Level of Abstraction Disguised as Many

Taken together, these moves reveal a consistent method:

• Distinct theoretical relations (realisation, instantiation, semogenesis) are treated as interchangeable

• All domains are assumed to exist at the same level of symbolic abstraction

• Architectural asymmetry is replaced by modular interaction

The vocabulary of SFL remains, but its theoretical force is redistributed. What looks like innovation is often the product of relabelling across collapsed distinctions.

What This Post Has (and Has Not) Argued

This post has not argued that Martin’s work lacks descriptive value, nor that it has had no productive influence. It has argued something narrower and more consequential:

That Martin’s model systematically misunderstands the architectural commitments of Hallidayan SFL by collapsing distinctions between levels of abstraction and types of theoretical relation.

In the next post, we turn to a specific case study of this method: discourse semantics as a stratum, and the systematic relabelling of existing systems that made this move appear both novel and necessary.

Against Conflation: A Three‑post Critique Of Martin’s Theory And Method: Preface

This three-part mini-series examines a recurring method in contemporary reinterpretations of systemic functional linguistics (SFL): the systematic relabelling of pre-existing theoretical categories. Across the series, we trace how misunderstandings of Hallidayan stratification and instantiation have been transformed into apparent innovations, creating new strata and terminology that are widely accepted despite conceptual weaknesses.

The aim is not to single out individual scholars for criticism, but to understand the architecture of theory, the role of method, and the dynamics of scholarly communities in shaping what comes to be seen as legitimate knowledge. By carefully following these threads, readers can gain insight into both the theoretical structure of SFL and the social processes that influence its interpretation and extension.