A second set of evidence relevant to determining speech function is evidence from the co-text, either through the presence of one of the indexical markers noted above in an adjacent interact, or through the expression of gradations within probablity, usuality, inclination and obligation. Halliday (1985a:335) associates degrees of MODALISATION (probability and usuality) with propositions and degrees of MODULATION (inclination and obligation) with proposals; and within proposals, inclination is associated with Offers and Response Offers to Commands and obligation with Commands and Acknowledge Offers.Examples of this grading in the context of the adjacency pairs considered to this point are provided below.OFFER ^ ACKNOWLEDGE OFFER (obligation)
Shall I mark them then?
— You're required/supposed/allowed to.
COMMAND ^ RESPONSE OFFER TO COMMAND (inclination)
Get me a drink, would you?
— I'm willing/keen/determined to.
QUESTION ^ RESPONSE STATEMENT TO QUESTION (probability)
Will she win then?
— Possibly/probably/certainly she will.
STATEMENT ^ ACKNOWLEDGE STATEMENT (usuality)
She wins then.— Sometimes/usually/always¹ she does.The presence of realisations along these scales (with positive and negative polarity as outer poles), including their metaphorical variants (see Halliday 1985a:336), provides additional evidence for assigning speech function to grammatical classes. The metaphorical realisation of inclination I'd love to in the following pair, clearly associates it with exchanging goods and services, not information:
Why don't you get us a beer?— I'd love to.Similarly the scale of usuality associates the first pair below with the negotiation of propositions, while that of inclination implies the negotiation of a service.Can you open this window?
— Sometimes/usually/always.
Can you open this window?— I'm willing/keen/determined to.
¹ Always would of course be realised between Subject and Finite (i.e. she always does).
Blogger Comments:
[1] This is very misleading indeed. To be clear, here Martin is continuing the fiction that he is establishing SPEECH FUNCTION as a semantic system, despite the fact that Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION is already a semantic system, as part of the more general fiction that he is in the process of stratifying the content plane into semantics and lexicogrammar, despite the fact that this stratification was proposed in his chief source, Halliday & Hasan (1976: 5):
[2] To be clear, here Martin is trying to establish SPEECH FUNCTION as a semantic system by arguing 'from below': how it is expressed. This is opposite to SFL methodology, which takes the view 'from above': the meaning that is expressed.
[4] This is misleading, because it is not true. Expressions of MODALITY do not "provide evidence for assigning speech function to grammatical classes". On the contrary, Halliday (1985: 335) uses an already "determined" SPEECH FUNCTION to differentiate MODALITY into MODALISATION and MODULATION.
[5] This is misleading, because positive and negative polarity are not the outer poles of modality. Modality lies between these poles, but excludes them.
[6] To be clear, what can associate expressions of inclination with the exchange of goods-&-services, not information, is their being responses to demands for goods-&-services, not information. Such expressions are no identifier of the commodity being exchanged because the same expressions can be used in responses to demands for information, not goods-&-services:
Would you like to be a millionaire?— I'd love to.— I'm willing/keen/determined to.
[7] Similarly, expressions of usuality are no identifier of the commodity being exchanged because they can be used with goods-&-services as well as information:
Obey the rules, whatever your personal ethics!— sometimes/usually/always
[8] To be clear, always can occur in any position, depending on textual considerations:
She always does (least marked: interpersonal Theme)
She does always (focus of New information)
Always she does (most marked: focused interpersonal Theme)
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