Sunday 12 June 2016

Misconstruing Dialogue As Unprojected

Martin (1992: 523):
With film and theatre projection is naturalised as real; this does not however take away from the fact that the language spoken has been scripted and is very different from the unprojected dialogue of everyday life.  These projection systems are developed in Fig. 7.12 where they crossclassify [sic] the basic action/reflection mode options.

Blogger Comments:

[1] More accurately, and theoretically, scriptwriters/dramatists (first-order experience) verbally project written texts, scripts/dramas, in which characters (second-order experience) verbally project spoken texts (third-order experience).  In the acting of films and plays, the orders of experience are reduced to as if two, with the characters as if of first-order experience, and their projections as if of second-order experience.

[2] Whether the language of films and plays is "very different" from the language of everyday life depends very much on the script/drama and the scriptwriter/dramatist.  Compare the films of Ken Loach with the films of Peter Greenaway, for example.

[3] This provides further evidence that the SFL theoretical notion of projection is not understood.  All dialogue is projected — all texts are projected — by sayers engaged in verbal processes, at whatever order of experience.

[4] In addition to the misconceived notions of projected vs unprojected mode, and experientialised vs unexperientialised verbalisation, the system network in Fig. 7.12 (p524) introduces two new inconsistencies — an inconsistency with the accompanying text, and an internal (logical) inconsistency.

With regard to the first inconsistency, the network distinguishes 'projected' from 'unprojected' and includes speaking and writing within 'projected', despite referring to the language of everyday life (above) as "unprojected".

With regard to the second inconsistency, the network distinguishes 'projected' from 'unprojected' and, within 'unprojected': '–'.  The logical problem here is that –unprojected equals projected.