The Non-Argument For 'Experiential Distance'

Martin (1992: 523):

Some of the key realisations associated with experiential distance are reviewed in Table 7.9 [Mode — aspects of the realisation of experiential distance] for monitoring, reconstructing and genre-structured texts.

Blogger Comment:

This is the first mention of 'experiential distance'.  That is, the term has not been defined and there has been no discussion of its theoretical location, apart from including it at the end of a discussion of mode, the system of the textual metafunction at the level of context.  The claims in the table are thus unsupported by argument.

The nature of the unsupported claims can be exemplified by one row of the table, the realisation of experiential distance in the system of negotiation, Martin's interpersonal system at the level of discourse semantics:

• for 'monitoring' mode — textual metafunction — there are no realisations of experiential distance in the interpersonal system of negotiation;
• for 'reconstruction' mode  — textual metafunction — experiential distance is realised in the interpersonal system of negotiation as 'projected' (logical metafunction);
• for 'genre-structured' mode  — textual metafunction — experiential distance is realised in the interpersonal system of negotiation as 'quoted writing' (logical metafunction?).