Consistent with the Cardiff Grammar community being a faith community rather than a scientific community, the way it deals with reasoned criticism of its doctrine is to attack the non-believer rather than to provide reasoned argument in return.
For example, when criticisms of the Cardiff Grammar by Halliday & Matthiessen were posted on a blog, Fawcett misrepresented the criticisms as those of the person who quoted Halliday & Matthiessen, as recorded here.
I have checked on those blogs that refer to the model of language known as 'the Cardiff Grammar' … they show no understanding of the alternative SFL framework that they criticise; and they are almost completely lacking in reasons for their critical stance, simply presenting quotations from IFG as a self-evident proof that the IFG approach is the correct one, so assigning it an unquestioned authority.
When a blog was set up to provide reasoned critiques of the Cardiff Grammar (here), Fawcett, using the pseudonym Dmytro Poremskyi, sent the following personal message to the Facebook page of the person who provided the critiques:
the lot could have easily discredited you but for the fact that you had already been discredited in the SFL community
Again, using the pseudonym Dmytro Poremskyi, Fawcett wrote the following on the Facebook site of the North American Systemic Functional Linguistics Association (NASFLA), misrepresenting the reasoned critiques of the Cardiff Grammar as a personal attack:
I've come across a most curious web of WordPress blogs entirely devoted to the grammatical aspects of Systemic Functional Linguistics, but here's the twist: its author, who goes by the name "Dr CLÉiRIGh", seems strangely obsessed with proving that Robin Fawcett in his Cardiff version of SFG grossly misrepresents Halliday's ideas and that Fawcett's contribution is nothing but ideological sabotage (this main line of attack is occasionally supported with his less active blogs where Dr CLÉiRIGh attacks Jim Martin, David Rose and some other figures in the SL community using more or less the same pattern: <NAME> misrepresenting <TOPIC>).
My questions, therefore, are these: what do you make of this kind of theorising? To what extent do you think this criticism is justified? And, last by not least, who is Dr CLÉiRIGh and what is their contribution to the SFG theory beyond blogging?
This drew the following response from a fellow member of the Cardiff Grammar community, Fontaine, who did not recognise the author as Fawcett:
Whether any SFL scholars agree with Robin Fawcett or not, he has always made a case for engaging with debate and supporting one's arguments. … I do not feel that attacks are productive for our community. I'm not convinced that what we find on that blog is theorising. It is certainly one person's opinion. Given we are all invested in the theory, I think it is useful for us to discuss ideas and positions but people do really have to find their own way and decide what works for them. This is helpful, I think, whether you are primarily applying the theory or developing the theory.
Fontaine uncritically accepted Fawcett's misrepresentation of the reasoned arguments as attacks and denied that they are reasoned arguments (which Fontaine claims to favour), but merely one person's opinion, as opposed to "theorising". (Fontaine later used the same tactic in defence of her own publication, as recorded here.)
Significantly, Fontaine also expressed support for the anti-intellectualism identified by Asimov that is an important feature of the culture of the Fawcett faith community.
Fontaine then abused her position as list manager to unsubscribe the critic of the Cardiff Grammar from the international systemic email discussion list, Sysfling — recorded here — putting the lie to her stated commitment to the importance of "engaging with debate and supporting one's arguments".
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