Saturday 6 February 2016

The Confused Notion Of "Interpersonally Oriented Textual Metaphor"

Martin (1992: 417):
Textual metaphors are not however tied to logical meaning.  They are commonly interpersonally oriented as well, deployed particularly for expressing an interlocutor's attitude to meanings being made:
meta-message relation
That point is just silly!
text reference
That’s ridiculous!
negotiating text
What a stupid point you just made!
internal conjunction
Indeed, she just made a complete mess of it.

Blogger Comments:

[1] By definition, a textual metaphor would involve textual meaning (semantics) being incongruently realised as textual wording (lexicogrammar).  Metaphorical grammatical realisations of logical meaning — e.g. as circumstantial processes — constitute ideational metaphor.

[2]  This blurs the distinction between what is claimed to be textual metaphor and various (congruent) grammatical realisations of negative attitude:
just 
mood Adjunct of intensity (counterexpectancy: limiting)
silly 
Attribute
ridiculous 
Attribute
stupid 
Epithet
mess 
Thing
[3] The notion of 'negotiating text(ure)' as textual metaphor derives from mistaking monologic texts that acknowledge the addressee for dialogic texts, as explained in a previous post here.