Martin (1992: 465):
Interpersonal resources for negotiation are foregrounded in the following sketch from Monty Python's first movie. Interlocutor A has paid for an argument, which he defines in ideational terms: An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition; what he receives instead is simply interpersonal — contradiction: the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. This underlines the fact that negotiation is more than interaction; it is about interlocutors accommodating ideational meaning.
Blogger Comments:
[1] (True to form) Monty Python's 'argument sketch' did not appear in the first "movie" And Now For Something Completely Different — a re-filming of some sketches from the 1st and 2nd series of the BBC television programme, Monty Python's Flying Circus, for U.S. cinema release in 1971. The argument sketch didn't appear until the 3rd episode of the 3rd series, broadcast in November 1972.
[2] The distinction between these two definitions of 'argument' in the text is not a metafunctional one. Experientially, they are both figures of being–&–having realised by identifying relational clauses, and interpersonally, they are both propositions: statements realised by declarative clauses. As propositions, they demonstrate the meaning of Subject as modal responsibility.
well
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an argument
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isn’t
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just
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contradiction
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Subject
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Finite
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mood Adjunct: intensity: counterexpectancy: limiting
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Complement
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Mood
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Residue
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an argument
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is
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a connected series of statements intended
to establish a proposition
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Subject
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Finite
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Complement
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Mood
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Residue
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argument
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is
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an intellectual process
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Subject
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Finite
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Complement
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Mood
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Residue
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contradiction
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is
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just
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the automatic gainsaying of any statement
the other person makes
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Subject
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Finite
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mood Adjunct: intensity: counterexpectancy: limiting
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Complement
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Mood
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Residue
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For each clause, the responsibility for the validity of what is predicated is carried by the Subject. The responsibility for the validity of an argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition is carried by its Subject an argument; the responsibility for the validity of contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes is carried by its Subject contradiction.
[3] Negotiation isn't about "interlocutors accommodating ideational meaning". This misunderstands the metafunctions. Meaning is simultaneously ideational, interpersonal and textual. Negotiation is concerned with meaning in its interpersonal guise. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 525):
Choosing a particular speech function is, obviously, only one step in a dialogue; what the grammar creates, through the system of “mood”, is the potential for arguing, for an ongoing exchange of speech rôles among the interactants in a conversation. The mood system, together with other systems associated with it, constructs a great range of speech functional variation; and since in principle any ideational meaning can be mapped on to any interpersonal meaning, this makes it possible to construe any aspect of experience in dialogic form.
