Fawcett's Claim That The Metafunction Structures In IFG Have No Status In The Theory

 Fawcett (2010: 273-4):

However, this leaves the long-established 'multiple structure' representations shown in the box diagrams of IFG and other works with no status in the theory. So the remaining question is whether the 'multiple structures' are nonetheless useful in text description — perhaps on the grounds that they are the best functional representations that are generally available at present (as it is arguably the case). This in turn raises the practical questions of how usable they in fact are in text analysis, and what alternatives are currently available, or soon will be. We shall return to these matters in the final section of this chapter.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is misleading — though comically so — because it is so obviously the opposite of what is true. The theoretical status of (clause) box diagrams in SFL Theory is that they represent the metafunctional (clause) structures that are specified by metafunctional (clause) system networks on the lexicogrammatical stratum. 

[2] As will be seen in the examination of Fawcett's questioning of the usefulness and usability (of representations) of metafunction structures, Fawcett continues to misrepresent SFL Theory, and again confuses layers in the sense of rank (form) with layers in the sense of structure (function).