The Reason Why Fawcett Has Been Repeatedly Misrepresenting Halliday (1994) On Clause Structure

Fawcett (2010: 115-6, 116n):

It may come as a surprise to some readers that an IFG-style analysis in fact requires seven separate lines of representation (six of these being structural). This is because the writings of the Sydney grammarians regularly present the view that there are either three or at most four strands of meaning, each corresponding to one of the metafunctions. In Chapter 2 of IFG, for example, Halliday introduces the concept that a clause has multiple structures under the beguilingly simple section heading of 'Three lines of meaning in the clause" (p. 33). Yet, the fact is — as I have just demonstrated — that a analysis of a sentence in IFG terms regularly requires seven lines of analysis (and sometimes even more, as we shall see shortly).  

In IFG, therefore, the task of analysing a text — and so the model of language that underlies it — is rather more complex than we are at first led to expect. Indeed, in the analyses of 'The 'silver' text" on pages 368-85 of IFG there are often eight or more lines of analysis, because Halliday adds an extra line for the analysis of the 'unpacked' interpretation of examples that contain cases of what he terms "grammatical metaphor".…⁶

⁶ I should point out that the seven or eight lines of structure found in an IFG-style analysis do not correspond to the eight major types of meaning that I consider to be present (if only by their non-realisation) in a typical clause. See Section 7.8 for a brief introduction to the eight strands of meaning that are recognised in the Cardiff Grammar.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading.  As previously demonstrated, in arguing about clause structure, Fawcett switches between clause, 'text-sentence' and text in order to deceive the reader.  In erroneously arriving at seven lines of representation for the clause, Fawcett counts interpersonal structure twice, includes both information and logical structure, despite the fact they are not clause structures, and includes cohesion despite the fact that it is not a structure of any grammatical unit.

[2] This is correct.  There are three lines of meaning realised in clause structure: textual, interpersonal and experiential.

[3] This is misleading.  A statement about the number of lines of meaning realised in the structure of one one rank unit, the clause, is not a statement about the complexity of carrying out a complete text analysis using all the dimensions of the theory.

[4] This is correct.  In the analysis of the 'silver' text, Halliday demonstrates how to deploy the theoretical resources outlined in the body of the book, including the three metafunctional structures of the clause, logical relations between clauses in complexes, information unit structure, and the unpacking of grammatical metaphor.

[5] To be clear, it is Fawcett's model of the clause — not Halliday's — that proposes eight lines of meaning.  This suggests that Fawcett's motivation for misrepresenting Halliday's model is to disguise the fact that his own model is less elegant.