Misrepresenting Critical Reactions To Fawcett (1974)

Fawcett (2010: 161):

It is ironic, therefore, that I should have been admonished in the mid-1970s by two senior systemic linguists at the time (though not by Halliday himself) for the changes that I suggested in "Some proposals" . The irony lies in the fact that my proposals were for a syntax whose representations were far more like those of the Scale and Category model than the proposals for representing structure that Halliday himself developed during the very late 1960s and the early 1970s. As we saw in Chapter 7, it was during this period that he shifted his representations of structure away from the model presented in "Categories" (in which the major clause elements were 'Subject', 'Predicator', 'Complement' and 'Adjunct') to the multiple structures used in IFG and widely elsewhere, in which an analysis in terms of such elements plays little or no role. The changes made by Halliday were far greater than the changes that I was suggesting in "Some proposals", and yet the position of my critics at the time seemed to be that I should not be suggesting any changes to "Categories" at all! The fact is that, even though Halliday's changes were already well under way by the mid-1970s, the key role of "Categories" as the founding document of the new theory seems to have placed it beyond criticism for many. On the whole, then, I think that my critics' response shows that the admittedly provocative use of the term "iconoclastic" in the subtitle of "Some proposals" was justified. 

However,"Some proposals" was really not as revolutionary as its critics felt it to be. With the benefit of a further twenty-five years of hindsight, I see now that, far from being too critical of "Categories", "Some proposals" did not go as far as it should in proposing changes, as we shall see in due course.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. By the mid-1970s, Halliday had replaced his Scale and Category Grammar with a new theory: Systemic Functional Grammar. In proposing a syntax at that time, Fawcett was inconsistent with both theories. In proposing changes to the first theory, Fawcett was ignoring the fact that that theory had been superseded.

[2] This is very misleading indeed. In the new theory, Systemic Functional Grammar, the elements Subject, Predicator, Complement and Adjunct (± Finite) constitute the interpersonal structure of the clause.

[3] To be clear, the changes made by Halliday were so great that they resulted in a new theory. Fawcett's suggestions for changes to "Categories" were suggestions for changes to the superseded theory.

[4] This is misleading. Scale and Category Grammar was the earlier theory from which Halliday developed his new theory. An old theory (e.g. Newton's Universal Gravitation) is not the founding document of the theory that replaces it (e.g. Einstein's General Relativity).

[5] To be clear, Fawcett's use of 'iconoclastic' couches support for a theory in terms of belief, rather than, say, in terms of explanatory potential, self-consistency, reasoned argumentation and evidence.

[6] This is misleading, because it is the opposite of what is true. Here Fawcett misrepresents his critics as deeming his proposals as revolutionary, despite the fact that, in advocating the old theory, his proposals were reactionary.