Saturday, 6 February 2016

The Confused Notion Of "Interpersonally Oriented Textual Metaphor"

Martin (1992: 417):
Textual metaphors are not however tied to logical meaning.  They are commonly interpersonally oriented as well, deployed particularly for expressing an interlocutor's attitude to meanings being made:
meta-message relation
That point is just silly!
text reference
That’s ridiculous!
negotiating text
What a stupid point you just made!
internal conjunction
Indeed, she just made a complete mess of it.

Blogger Comments:

[1] By definition, a textual metaphor would involve textual meaning (semantics) being incongruently realised as textual wording (lexicogrammar).  Metaphorical grammatical realisations of logical meaning — e.g. as circumstantial processes — constitute ideational metaphor.

[2]  This blurs the distinction between what is claimed to be textual metaphor and various (congruent) grammatical realisations of negative attitude:
just 
mood Adjunct of intensity (counterexpectancy: limiting)
silly 
Attribute
ridiculous 
Attribute
stupid 
Epithet
mess 
Thing
[3] The notion of 'negotiating text(ure)' as textual metaphor derives from mistaking monologic texts that acknowledge the addressee for dialogic texts, as explained in a previous post here.

Friday, 5 February 2016

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.

Thursday, 4 February 2016

Problems With The Argument For "Textual" Metaphor

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:

organising social reality :
organising text as social reality ::
message part relation :
meta-message relation ::
participant reference :
text reference ::
external conjunction :
internal conjunction ::
negotiating dialogue :
negotiating texture


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.
b. He had to take steroids for his injured hamstring
c. and then they introduced more sophisticated tests.
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.

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.