The Confused Notion Of "Logically Oriented Textual Metaphor"

Martin (1992: 416-7, 397):

Textual metaphors are illustrated in the following revision of [6:22]; in this text all the textual metaphors are logically oriented — they provide resources for metaphorical realisations of conjunctive relations:

meta-message relation	reason, example, point, factor, pointing out
text reference	this
negotiating texture	let me begin by…
internal conjunction	a number of reasons, for example, let me begin by, another example, as a final point, as a result of these factors

[6:32]	revised version: illustrating textual metaphor
	a.	I think Governments are necessary at different levels for a number of reasons.
	b.	For example, they make laws, without which people would be killing themselves,
	c.	and help keep our economic system in order.
	d.	Let me begin by pointing out that the Federal Government fixes up problems that occur in the community.
	e.	Another example the State Government looks after schools;
	f.	this prevents vandalism and fighting.
	g.	As a final point the Local Government is important to look after rubbish:
	h.	otherwise everyone would have diseases.
	i.	As a result of these factors, Governments at several administrative levels are necessary.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As explained in the previous post, textual grammatical metaphor, if it were possible, would, by definition, involve an incongruent realisation of textual meaning (semantics) in textual wording (lexicogrammar).  Since discourse semantics reduces all textual meaning to the system of identification ('the semantics of reference'), textual grammatical metaphor would involve, on the discourse semantic model, an incongruent realisation of the semantic system of identification in the grammatical system of reference.  None of the examples involves an incongruent realisation of identification in reference.

[2] On the discourse semantic model, conjunctive relations are logical meaning, and metaphorical realisations in the grammar would thus be logical metaphor.  Indeed, in the discussion of logical metaphor (p408) — critique here — four of the seven examples above of "logically oriented textual metaphor" were presented as logical metaphor:

[6:25]	metaphorical internal conjunction
	a.	I think Governments are necessary at different levels for a number of reasons.
	b.	They make laws, without which people would be killing themselves,
	c.	and help keep our economic system in order.
	d.	To begin, the Federal Government fixes up problems that occur in the community.
	e.	Another example is that the State Government looks after schools,
	f.	preventing vandalism and fighting.
	g.	As a final point the Local Government is important to look after rubbish:
	h.	otherwise everyone would have diseases.
	i.	As a result of these factors, Governments at several administrative levels are necessary.

In SFL theory, on the other hand, conjunction is a non-structural (cohesive) grammatical system of the textual metafunction, and there is no such thing as textual metaphor.

[3] See the critiques in the previous post here.