Greetings and Calls [New]

Martin (1992: 42):

Minor clauses lack Subject, Finite and Predicator functions, so the question of negotiating MODALISATION and MODULATION does not directly arise. This raises the question of the function of minor clauses as interacts. For one thing, minor clauses are used to initiate two types of adjacency pair: Greetings and Calls. Greetings (subsuming leave-takings) are found at the beginning and end of conversations, making way for or closing down negotiations:

Greeting                             G'day.

Response to Greeting       — G'day.

Calls summon the attention of potential negotiators where this attention has not been secured or has wandered:

Call                                     Bill.

Response to Call               — What?

Both Calls and Greetings can be realised through major clauses, although these are for the most part lexicalised formulas: How's it going?, Nice weather we're having!, We'll be seeing you., Got a minute?, Listen to this. etc.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously observed, MODALISATION and MODULATION are only potentially "negotiated" in clauses that feature MODALISATION and MODULATION, and not all exchanges involve negotiation.

[2] To be clear, this question had already been answered by Halliday in Dimensions of Discourse Analysis (1985), where minor clauses were said to realise minor speech functions: exclamations, calls, and greetings. Here Martin once again misleads the reader into thinking that this is his original thinking.