Confusing Affect With Affection

Martin (1992: 533):

Poynton's (1984: 25) network for affect, subclassifies positive and negative features, but the more delicate features are not discussed.  Unfortunately at present there do not appear to be any obvious linguistic criteria for classifying types of affection.  Feelings about oneself do seem to pair off with attitudes to someone else, and so a [self/other] system will be introduced here (for an alternative classification see Roget).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confuses the theoretical notion of affect (a charged or neutral relation between interlocutors) with the general notion of affection ('a gentle feeling of fondness or liking').

[2] This continues the misconstrual of a relation between interlocutors (affect) as the mental processes and states of an individual.

Misconstruing Relations Between Speakers As Individual Predisposition

Martin (1992: 533):

Poynton classifies affect as positive or negative and as permanent or transient.  The latter distinction takes into account the fact interlocutors have long-term predispositions as more volatile short-term ones.  This distinction will be developed here by suggesting that "transient" affect can be interpreted as a surge of "permanent" affect, with a long term low-key prosodic realisation bursting into an explicit and intense behavioural one: dislike erupting into telling someone off, sadness into tears, happiness into laughter and so on.  In the grammar of TRANSITIVITY this correlates with the opposition between mental processes of reaction and behavioural processes.  Accordingly, Poynton's system will be reworked with the features [surge] and [predisposition] here.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misinterprets affect — a relation between interlocutors — as a predisposition of individuals.  It will be seen that this misunderstanding completely undermines the validity of Martin's reworking of Poynton's model of this dimension of tenor.

[2] Here Martin is using the metalanguage of mental and behavioural processes to model individual speakers, distinguishing their "permanent" mental predispositions from their "transient" behavioural surges.  As such, it is not a model of the charged vs neutral affect relation between interlocutors, as a system of the culture.

[3] Accordingly, Martin's misunderstanding of affect makes his reworking of Poynton's system invalid.

Unsupported Claims About Affect

Martin (1992: 533):

As Poynton (1985/9: 78) points out, affect differs from status and contact in that it is not manifested in all texts.  It is much more likely to be realised in involved than uninvolved contact situations; and as far as status is concerned, it is more probable with equal than with unequal status — although it can of course be taken up at the discretion of participants in a dominance position.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Affect has become the tenor system of sociometric rôle in Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 33):

sociometric rôles (affect, either neutral or charged, positively or negatively)

To be clear, either neutral or charged affect is realised in semantics.

[2] The combinatorial probabilities of affect features with contact features are a matter for empirical research.  Here the claim is merely asserted without supporting evidence.

The combination of charged affect and uninvolved contact is realised, for example, in 'Letters To The Editor' and, more recently, in the texts of internet flame wars between fundamentalist Christians and atheists.  The spatio-temporal distance between interlocutors provided by some modes would seem to to be an important consideration.

[3] The combinatorial probabilities of affect features with status features are a matter for empirical research.  Here the claim is merely asserted without supporting evidence.

[4] The system of affect describes a dimension of the interpersonal relation between interlocutors.  To construe it as being under the control of a dominant interlocutor is misleading.  Consider, for example, the situation of a charged relationship between a boss and the team of employees with justifiable grievances against him.

Misrepresenting The Relation Between Contact And Field

Martin (1992: 528-9):

Whereas status addresses the concerns of social hierarchy, contact is concerned with the degree of involvement among interlocutors.  This is determined by the nature of the fields speaker/listeners are participating in — how much contact they involve, how regularly, whether work or leisure activities and so on.  Poynton's (1985/9: 77-78) field oriented contact distinctions have been reworked slightly here; the notion of contact appears to be equivalent to what Hasan (1977: 231-2, 1985/9: 57) refers to as social distance, which for her is determined by "the frequency and range of previous interaction" (1977: 231).

Blogger Comments:

Contact is not determined by field.  In logical terms, the relation between tenor and field systems is extension — they are conjunct systems — not enhancement (cause-condition).  Less abstractly, a given field may involve interlocutors who have had many previous interactions, some previous interactions, or no previous interactions at all.

Blurring The Distinction Between Tenor (Context) And Interpersonal Meaning (Semantics)

Martin (1992: 523):

The model of tenor to be presented here is that developed by Poynton (1984, 1985, 1990).  As with interpersonal meaning in general, tenor is concerned with the semiotics of relationships.  It mediates these relationships along three dimensions, which will be referred to here as status (Poynton's power), contact and affect.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This blurs the important stratificational distinction between the context of culture (tenor) and the semantics of language (interpersonal meaning).  As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 320) tenor is concerned with: 

the relationship between the interactants, between speaker and listener, in terms of social rôles in general and those created through language in particular (‘who are taking part?).

Interpersonal meaning, on the other hand, is concerned with the linguistic resources that interactants use to enact social and intersubjective relationships.  Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 11):

The interaction base provides the resources for speaker and listener to enact a social and intersubjective relationship, through the assignment of discursive rôles, the expression of evaluations and attitudes.

[2] This is misleading.  Tenor does not mediate the "semiotics of relationships".  The system of tenor models the interpersonal dimension of cultural potential that is realised in language.