Misconstruing Ancillary As Constitutive

Martin (1992: 521):

Constructions can be broken down into fiction and generalisation.  Fictional texts are semiotically closely related to texts constructing unshared experience, but generally make fewer assumptions about what can be assumed.  Generalising texts neutralise TENSE, DEIXIS and PERSON in order to construct social processes as potentials underlying and cutting across particular manifestations.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the claim here, in Martin's terms, is that all "field-structured" texts that constitute "social processes" — and which do not construct past events — are either fiction or generalisation.  Generalising texts were said (pp518-9) to be those where 'the language generalises about what goes on', and the examples that were provided were:

• recipes
• manual You do. (proposal)
• implication sequence It does. (proposition)
• procedure It does. (activity focus)
• report They're attractive. (thing focus)

However, in terms of Hasan's (1985/9: 58) mode opposition of constitutive vs ancillary — as well as the meanings of the terms — the language rôle of recipes, manuals and procedures is ancillary, not constitutive.

[2] The claim here is that fictional constructions "generally make fewer assumptions about what can be assumed" than vicarious reconstructions.  Reconstructions were exemplified (p519) by:

• projected instruction S/he told me to do. (proposal)
• recount I/we did. (proposition/activity focus)
• description It was pretty. (thing focus)

The claim, then, is that romantic novels, for example, "generally make fewer assumptions about what can be assumed" than, for example, a speaker's recount of an overseas trip to an addressee who has never travelled overseas.

[3] The claim here is that texts such as recipes, manuals, procedures and reports "neutralise TENSE, DEIXIS and PERSON in order to construct social processes as potentials underlying and cutting across particular manifestations".  A grammatical analysis of this clause complex (see here) demonstrates that it is intended to merely bamboozle the reader.  This can be further demonstrated by applying this clause complex to recipes for chicken parmesan with basil; now the claim becomes:

recipes for chicken parmesan with basil neutralise TENSE, DEIXIS and PERSON in order to construct social processes as potentials underlying and cutting across particular manifestations.

That is, it is claimed that the purpose of neutralising these grammatical features in recipes (for chicken parmesan with basil) is to reconstruct the act of cooking (chicken parmesan with basil) as cooking potential, and that the potential (for cooking chicken parmesan with basil) "underlies" and "cuts across" particular manifestations of cooking (chicken parmesan with basil).