Martin (1992: 416):
The possibility of textual grammatical metaphor is not introduced in Halliday (1985). However, as has been introduced in Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5, discourse systems can be used to construe text as "material" social reality. From the point of view of lexical relations Winter's (1977) Vocabulary 3 items and Francis's (1985) A-nouns (e.g. reason, example, point, factor) organise text, not field. Similarly, text reference identifies facts, not participants, and internal conjunction orchestrates textual not activity sequences. NEGOTIATION can also be exploited to construe monologic text as dialogue. Good examples of meta-proposals/propositions were considered from a different perspective in Chapter 4 (see also 6.3.4 below): the imperative realisation of internal elaboration in [4:187j] — Let's be clear, and the interrogative realisation of internal concession as [4:188a] — What if you're having to clean floppy heads too often? These proportionalities are summarised below:
Blogger Comments:
[1] In SFL theory, there is only ideational and interpersonal metaphor, though these are themselves manifestations of the second–order nature of the textual metafunction (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 398-9). Setting aside the incongruity of the notion of 'textual metaphor', in order to demonstrate textual metaphor, Martin would need to provide congruent versus metaphorical grammatical realisations (wordings) of his textual discourse semantic system of identification (meanings). Since this system reduces all textual semantics to merely the semantics of cohesive reference, textual metaphor would involve congruent versus metaphorical grammatical realisations of identification, which he does not provide; see further below.
[2] This specific misunderstanding was only explicitly introduced in the present chapter (6); see [3].
[3] This notion of construing text as "material" social reality is presented as the basis of Martin's notion of textual metaphor. The argument (Martin 1992: 406) was that this follows from nominalisation (a source of ideational metaphor):
Construing meaning as a thing in other words means construing text as material object — as a material part of the social reality it is simultaneously engaged in constructing (ideationally) and intruding upon (interpersonally).
See the critique in the post Mistaking Ideational Metaphor For Metaphor here.
[4] This distinction — organising field versus organising text — from the logical discourse semantic system of conjunction (Martin 1992: 183) is presented as the basis for determining congruent versus metaphorical grammatical realisations of textual meaning. As previously demonstrated, this distinction arises from a misunderstanding of the distinction between external and internal expansion relations together with a misunderstanding of stratification, inter alia. See, for example, the critique in the post Misconstruing Internal And External Relations here.
[5] This combines the notion of 'construing text as material social reality' ([3] above) with the notion of 'organising text' ([4] above) to present 'organising text as social reality' as the identifier of textual metaphor, i.e. of metaphorical grammatical realisations of textual meaning.
The notion of 'organising field' then becomes relabelled as 'organising social reality' and presented as the identifier of congruent grammatical realisations of textual meaning.
Cf. Martin (1992: 378):
organising field :
|
organising text ::
|
message part relation :
|
meta-message relation ::
|
participant reference :
|
text reference ::
|
external conjunction :
|
internal conjunction
|
[6] This distinction — identifying participants versus identifying facts — from the textual discourse semantic system of identification is presented as the basis for determining congruent versus metaphorical grammatical realisations of textual meaning.
However, this distinction is not one of metaphor, but Martin's (1992: 139) blurring of Halliday & Hasan's distinctions within the grammatical system of cohesive reference: in personal reference, the distinction of extended versus text reference (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 52), and in demonstrative reference, the type of extended reference termed 'reference to fact' (op. cit.: 66).
[7] This confuses dialogic text (two or more speakers) with monologic text (one speaker) in which the addressee is acknowledged.
[8] The text [4:187j] does not appear in Chapter 4. Text [4:187] on page 237 is:
[4:187] a. Ben was unlucky.The clause let's be clear occurs in text [4:199j] on page 244. See the critique in the post Confusing Textual Conjunction With Logical Relations here.
b. He had to take steroids for his injured hamstring
c. and then they introduced more sophisticated tests.
The text [4:188a] on page 238 is:
[4:188] a. Ben was thirsty.
The clause simplex What if you're having to clean floppy heads too often? occurs as text [4:200a] on page 247. The claim there was that it was related to the following clause simplex Ask for SYNCOM diskettes, with burnished Ectype coating and dust-absorbing jacket liners by the logical relation of internal condition.
