"The Proliferation Of Multi-Strand Analyses Of Functional Structure"

Fawcett (2010: 140-1):

To summarise so far: we have seen that when Halliday suggests that different patterns of elements in the clause tend to be associated with different strands of meaning, he is simply pointing out a tendency rather than issuing a prescriptive statement. And yet the proliferation of multi-strand analyses of functional structure in IFG and in the many 'spin-off works has established and re-enforced a firm belief in many users of the theory that this is an accurate model of the structure of language. Indeed, many of those who use Halliday's theory would be surprised that there could be any other way of representing the structure of language in a SF framework. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it strategically confuses the notion of metafunctionally organised clause structures (those of theme, mood and transitivity) with the type of structure favoured by each metafunction (culminative, prosodic and segmental).

Importantly, in SFL Theory, 'structure' refers to the relation between elements, and so the valeur of each element is its relation to other elements of the metafunctional structure in which it figures. This is why "different patterns of elements" are necessarily associated with "different strands of meaning".

[2] To be clear, the 'multi-strand analyses of function structure' have proliferated in publications because such analyses accurately demonstrate how clause structure is modelled in SFL Theory.

[3] To be clear, other ways of "representing the structure of language in a SF framework" are only theoretically valid if they are consistent with the architecture of SFL Theory, and those that are consistent are only preferable if they have more explanatory power than the standard  model.