Negotiation: Grammatical Metaphor

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 15):

In terms of grammatical metaphor NEGOTIATION allows us to realise moves directly, or metaphorically through so-called indirect speech acts:

(39)
What’s his name? (congruent interrogative clause requesting information)
- Andy. 

(40)
Tell me his name. (metaphorical imperative clause requesting information)
- Andy. 

(41)
His name is…? (metaphorical declarative clause requesting information)
- Andy.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands grammatical metaphor. To be clear, NEGOTIATION (Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION) does not enable ("allow") moves to be realised congruently ("directly") or metaphorically by the grammatical system of MOOD. That is, SPEECH FUNCTION is not the Agent of realisation but the Medium or Range of the realisation.

[2] To be clear, the technical term here is demand, not request. A request is typically a command: a demand for goods-&-services.

[3] To be clear, this metaphorical clause realises a demand for a service: a process of saying (tell).

[4] To be clear, this metaphorical clause deploys cohesion: the ellipsis of the Identified/New after presenting the Identifier as Theme.

Negotiation: Lexicogrammatical Diversification

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 14-5):

The key interpersonal systems are NEGOTIATION and APPRAISAL. NEGOTIATION comprises resources for enacting social relations in dialogue. In terms of diversification it allows us, for example, to realise greeting moves through a range of more and less lexicalised structures:

(33) Hi everybody.
(34) Good morning.
(35) How’s it going?
(36) What a surprise!
(37) Lovely to see you!
(38) Didn’t know you were back in town.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, NEGOTIATION — Martin's rebranding of Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION — doesn't "allow" us to realise greetings grammatically, since higher strata do not "allow" lower strata; meaning does not "allow" wording in any sociosemiotic species. The realisation relation between strata is one type of elaborating identity: symbolic abstraction.

To be clear, greetings are a minor speech function which may be realised by nominal groups, minor clauses (with no mood structure) or major clauses. It is only when a greeting is realised by a major clause that it is constructed as a proposition or proposal, and so as negotiable. See Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 127, 195-6).

Connexion: Meaning Beyond The Clause

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 14):

In terms of meaning beyond the clause CONNEXION allows us to connect indefinitely long phases of discourse to one another (viz. the long explanation of why subscribers are watching a random chatty vlog rather than a prepared video below):

(32)

Hi everybody it is August first and I’m going to do just a random chatty vlog for you guys.

⇓ (implicit cause)

I had a video for today. I filmed it and I was going to edit it. It was a type one Tuesday. I was showing all the diabetes supplies — like the extra supplies we brought on vacation but I had bent down like before I started filming and my shirt got caught in my bra so it was like sitting — it just — it’s all I could see the whole time so I was like ‘I’m not posting this video ’cause that’s all people would be looking at.’

⇑ (explicit cause)

So this is what you get today.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the 'cause: result' relation in this text is expressed first structurally, and so is not "meaning beyond the clause", and then cohesively, through the textual grammatical system of CONJUNCTION (Halliday & Hasan 1976), which Martin rebrands as his logical discourse semantic system of CONNEXION.

Connexion: Grammatical Metaphor

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 14):

In terms of grammatical metaphor CONNEXION allows us to formalise relations between figures realised congruently between clauses or metaphorically as single clauses:

(30) (congruent clause complex construing a causal sequence)

Because he was harassing her, she left the parking lot.

(31) (metaphorical cause in the clause)

His harassment led to her departure.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the disadvantage of using Martin's CONNEXION instead of Halliday & Matthiessen's ideational semantics in modelling grammatical metaphor is that Martin's CONNEXION can only account for metaphor involving expansion relations that are additive, comparative, temporal or causal — and these without regard for the more general categories of elaboration, extension and enhancement — and cannot account for grammatical metaphor involving projection, such as the following example, which moves from the congruent to the increasingly metaphorical (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 711):

(a) Most linguists today believe → that there is no good evidence ...
(b) the strongest belief of all is [[ that there is no trace ... ]]
(c) these firmly entrenched – and vigorously defended – beliefs

Connexion: Lexicogrammatical Diversification

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13-4):

CONNEXION comprises resources for relating discourse semantic figures (both occurrence figures and state figures) to one another in sequences (via additive, comparative, temporal and causal relations). In terms of lexicogrammatical diversification it allows us to connect figures to one another in a variety of ways:

(26) Due to him harassing her, she left the parking lot.

(27) Because he was harassing her, she left the parking lot.

(28) He harassed her, so she left the parking lot.

(29) He harassed her. Consequently she left the parking lot.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the use of the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) makes the use of Martin's CONNEXION redundant, since the former subsumes the latter by relating figures in sequences.

[2] To be clear, the reason why Martin's CONNEXION is only concerned with these particular expansion relations is because that was the state of development of Halliday's model of textual cohesive conjunction in Halliday & Hasan (1976) which Martin rebranded in Martin (1992) as his own model of logical discourse semantics. There is no projection in Martin's model of logical discourse semantics because projection is not used cohesively.

[3] To be clear, in (26) the first figure is realised metaphorically as a prepositional phrase. In (27) and (28), two figures are realised congruently as clause complexes, each clause structurally related through hypotaxis (27) or parataxis (28). In (29), the two figures are realised by two clauses that are not structurally related, but instead related textually through cohesive conjunction.

Ideation: Meaning Beyond The Clause

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13):

In terms of meaning beyond the clause, IDEATION allows us, for example, to anticipate activity – using one figure to name what’s to come (another thing that has been really annoying in (25)) and others to spell it out:

(25)

Oh another thing that has been really annoying this summer is —

⇓

you know when you go to a parking lot and it’s a busy place. You get in your car and you don’t necessarily want to leave immediately. Like you might want to — I might want to have Henry test his blood sugar, give the kids snacks. Or if we were at the pool, like change or look at my phone or send a text message or whatever. It drives me crazy when a car is like sitting there following you and then they just wait for you to leave.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, in terms of IDEATION, this is not meaning beyond the clause because all the wording that follows the first em dash is embedded as the Token of a single clause.

That is, it does not use one figure to 'name what's to come' — it thematises a Value to provide the point of departure for a rhematic Token. And this suggests the discourse function of another thing that has been really annoying this summer: It has the textual function of serving as the point of departure of the message. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 89):

The Theme is the element that serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that which locates and orients the clause within its context. The speaker chooses the Theme as his or her point of departure to guide the addressee in developing an interpretation of the message; by making part of the message prominent as Theme, the speaker enables the addressee to process the message.

Ideation: Grammatical Metaphor

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13):

In terms of grammatical metaphor IDEATION allows us to formalise the difference between an occurrence figure realised congruently in grammar as a clause or metaphorically as a nominal group (Hao, 2020b):

(23) (congruent realisation of an occurrence Figure)

Her granuloma was spreading.

(24) (metaphorical realisation of an occurrence Figure)

The spread of her granuloma was upsetting her.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, in the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999), later rebranded in Hao (2020), the metaphor here lies in a happening figure being realised by a nominal group, in which the Process is realised as Thing, and the Actor as Qualifier, with the nominal group serving as the Phenomenon of a mental clause. In terms of the semantics, this sets up a Token-Value relation, such that the meaning of the metaphorical expression, an impinging Phenomenon, realises the meaning of the congruent expression, a happening.

Ideation: Lexicogrammatical Diversification

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13, 232):

In terms of diversification IDEATION allows us, for example, to position¹⁵ figures lexicogrammatically through a range of clause types (Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999; Hao, 2015, 2020a,b):

(20) (behavioural clause realising the positioning of a state Figure)

‘It will be kind of fun’, she smiled.

(21) (mental clause realising the positioning of a state Figure)

She thought it would be kind of fun.

(22) (relational clause realising the positioning of a state Figure)

She was sure it would be kind of fun.

 

¹⁵ For Hao (2020) a positioned figure is one that is in some sense attributed to a particular source.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, by 'diversification', the authors mean 'diversification of grammatical systems realising discourse semantic ones' (p12).

[2] To be clear, 'positioned' figure is Hao's rebranding of Halliday & Matthiessen's 'projected' figure. (Hao was Martin's student and has adopted his modus operandi.)

[3] To be clear, this confuses a projecting clause with the logico-semantic relation of projection. The projecting clause does not realise the projection ('positioning') of a figure of being, it realises the figure that projects the figure of being. Note also: Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 302):

Note, finally, that while ‘behavioural’ clauses do not ‘project’ indirect speech or thought, they often appear in fictional narrative introducing direct speech, as a means of attaching a behavioural feature to the verbal process of ‘saying’.

[4] Again, this confuses a projecting clause with the logico-semantic relation of projection. The projecting mental clause does not realise the projection ('positioning') of a figure of being, it realises the sensing figure that projects the figure of being.

[5] To be clear, this confuses an embedded fact clause with a ranking projected clause. Importantly, being embedded, the fact clause is not projected ("positioned") by the Process of the clause in which it is embedded.

And this misunderstanding is then compounded by confusing what is mistaken to be a projecting relational clause with the logico-semantic relation of projection, as in the two previous examples.

Ideation

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 12-3):

IDEATION comprises resources for construing experience as goings-on and relationships. The basic framework for analysing ideation adopted here is based on Halliday and Matthiessen (1999), Hao (2015, 2020a) and Doran and Martin (2021).

As flagged in Figure 1.5, it deals with sequences consisting of one or more figures and figures consisting of one or more elements; and the main types of element are occurrences, entities and qualities – which in various combinations constitute figures. In simple terms, occurrences realise activity, entities realise items participating in activity and qualities realise associated properties. Figures including an occurrence are referred to as occurrence figures (e.g. she headed to Target); figures not including an occurrence are referred to as state figures (e.g. her hair dye wasn’t there).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the authors have abandoned Martin's discourse semantic system of IDEATION in favour of the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen, which is not concerned with 'meaning beyond the clause'. That is, they have rebranded a semantic model as discourse semantic, with discourse semantics being Martin's model, not Halliday's.

[2] To be clear, the 'consist of' relation is not the same in each case. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 48):

While figures are said to consist of elements and sequences are said to consist of figures, the 'consist-of' relation is not the same: elements are constituent parts of figures, functioning in different roles; but figures form sequences through interdependency relations.

[3] To be clear, in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 59), the main types of element are process, participant, circumstance and relator:

and quality (op cit: 60) is a type of participant:

The model to be used by the authors rebrands (a subset of) process as occurrence, omits circumstance and relator, and replaces participant with two subtypes of participant: quality and thing, the latter rebranded as entity. On this model, figures don't consist of circumstances and cannot be related to other figures by a relator. However, in any case, as will be seen (e.g. p95), the authors actually misapply this semantic system of the content plane to the expression plane (!).

[4] To be clear, the use of the term 'realise' puts the terms 'activity', 'item' and 'associated properties' at a higher level of symbolic abstraction than the semantic stratum.

[5] To be clear, in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 53), the main types of figure are doing, sensing, saying and being:

The authors reclassify these as occurrence vs state figures, which basically corresponds to the distinction of doing vs being (and sensing and saying). However, in any case, as will be seen (e.g. p101), the authors actually misapply this semantic system of the content plane to the expression plane as well (!). This fundamental misunderstanding alone invalidates the content of this prize-winning work. But there are many others, as will be seen.

The Term ‘Connexion’ And 'Grammatical Terminology In Semantics'

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 12, 232):

The key ideational discourse semantic systems are IDEATION and CONNEXION.¹⁴

¹⁴ The term ‘connexion’ is taken from Hao (2015, 2018), replacing Martin’s earlier term ‘conjunction’ in order to more clearly differentiate discourse semantic and lexicogrammatical terminology (reacting in particular to confusion invited by the use of grammatical terminology for semantic description in several SFL publications, particularly those dealing with grammatical metaphor (e.g. Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the system of conjunction in Martin (1992) is the textual grammatical system of cohesive conjunction in his source, Halliday & Hasan (1976), confused with Halliday's logical grammatical system of clause complexing, and rebranded as his own logical discourse semantic system. Rebranding the name of the system merely completes the rebranding process.

[2] To be clear, this is merely a pretext for Martin's rebranding of the original work of Halliday and Hasan. On the one hand, grammatical terms abound in Martin's model of discourse semantics, so this cannot be the reason for renaming the system. Moreover, it will be seen that the authors nevertheless adopt the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999), in preference to Martin's experiential discourse semantic system of IDEATION, putting the lie to the claim that it is discourse semantics.

To be clear, the grammatical terminology used in modelling grammatical metaphor include 'process', 'participant' and 'circumstance', which are the functions of the grammatical forms verbal group, nominal group, and prepositional phrase. A functional grammar interprets grammatical form in terms of its function, which is to realise meaning. In grammatical metaphor, the meaning of a grammatical form is incongruent with the meaning being realised, creating two levels of meaning on the semantic stratum. It is the use of meaning terminology on both strata that enables the systematic description of grammatical metaphor. And again, as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237) point out:

Of course, what we are recognising here as two distinct constructions, the semantic and the grammatical, never had or could have had any existence the one prior to the other; they are our analytic representation of the overall semioticising of experience — how experience is construed into meaning. If the congruent form had been the only form of construal, we would probably not have needed to think of semantics and grammar as two separate strata: they would be merely two facets of the content plane, interpreted on the one hand as function and on the other as form.

Discourse Semantics, Meaning Beyond the Clause, And Convergence

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 11-2):

We will briefly introduce six discourse semantic systems here, organised by metafunction as per Table 1.2.

For a detailed presentation of these systems, see Martin (1992), Martin and White (2005) and Martin and Rose ([2003] 2007); useful introductory overviews include Butler (2003), Martin (2009, 2014, 2015a, 2019) and Tann (2017). For each system we will note the diversification of grammatical systems realising discourse semantic ones, including where relevant what we will refer to as metaphorical realisations; and we will exemplify what we mean by co-textual relations between units of discourse that are not grammatically related to one another (i.e. meaning beyond the clause). As will be introduced later, in our model paralanguage converges with discourse semantic systems in language, not lexicogrammatical ones — IDEATION, APPRAISAL, IDENTIFICATION and PERIODICITY in particular.

Blogger Comments:

[1] For a detailed review of Martin (1992), see English Text: System And Structure. For a detailed review of Martin and Rose (2007), see Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause.

[2] This misunderstands "cotextual relations". To be clear, what Martin means by 'meaning beyond the clause' is modelled in SFL Theory as lexicogrammatical cohesion (Halliday & Hasan 1976). It involves relations that are lexicogrammatical, but are not structural. In Martin (1992), these systems of cohesion are rebranded as Martin's systems of discourse semantics.

[3] Here yet again, the authors remind the reader that Cléirigh's model of body language is their model of paralanguage.  The plagiarism in this work is effected through myriad small steps.

[4] To be clear, this flatly contradicts the authors' definition of sonovergent paralanguage as 'phonologically convergent' (p22). Moreover, sonovergent paralanguage is neither sonovergent nor paralanguage. Sonovergent paralanguage is the authors' rebranding of Cléirigh's linguistic body language, in which gestures serve the same function as prosodic phonology. That is, sonovergent paralanguage is language, not paralanguage, and it is divergent from phonology and convergent with the lexicogrammar that prosodic phonology realises, not with discourse semantic systems.

Trinocular Perspective And Metaredundancy

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 11):

A model of this trinocular perspective on levels of language is presented in Figure 1.4.

In SFL the co-tangential circles of increasing diameter have been designed to capture what is technically referred to as metaredundancy — the ‘pattern of patterns’ principle whereby discourse semantics is conceived as a pattern of lexicogrammatical patterns and lexicogrammar is in turn conceived as a pattern of phonological ones (Matthiessen and Halliday, 2009).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands the notion of 'trinocular perspective'. To be clear, taking a trinocular perspective means viewing one specific level of symbolic abstraction (i) from a higher level of symbolic abstraction, (ii) from its own level, and (iii) from a lower level. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

A stratified semiotic defines three perspectives, which (following the most familiar metaphor) we refer to as ‘from above’, ‘from roundabout’, and ‘from below’: looking at a given stratum from above means treating it as the expression of some content, looking at it from below means treating it as the content of some expression, while looking at it from roundabout means treating it in the context of (i.e. in relation to other features of) its own stratum.

[2] This confuses the notion of a 'series of redundancies' with the notion of 'metaredundancy'. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 25) explain stratification as a series of redundancies:

When we say that language is stratified in this way, we mean that this is how we have to model language if we want to explain it. A language is a series of redundancies by which we link our ecosocial environment to nonrandom disturbances in the air (soundwaves). … The relationship among the strata — the process of linking one level of organisation with another — is called realisation.

This is distinct from metaredundancy, which is a redundancy on a redundancy, as exemplified by the redundancy of one stratum on the redundancy of the other two. As Halliday (1992: 24) explains:

… it is not that (i) meaning is realised by wording and wording is realised by sound, but that (ii) meaning is realised by the realisation of wording in sound. We can of course reverse the direction, and say that sounding realises the realisation of meaning in wording.

Meaning Beyond The Clause And Sonovergent Paralanguage

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 11):

The second major advantage of stratifying the content plane has to do with meaning beyond the clause. This allows SFL to move beyond a lexicogrammatical conception of text as a bag of clauses and set up systems and structures dealing with cohesive relations of indefinite extent (Martin, 2015b). These discourse semantic systems will be introduced in Section 2.2. They are crucial to our work on paralanguage since in our model it is these systems rather than lexicogrammatical ones that converge with paralanguage in spoken discourse.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is seriously misleading, especially to the intended readership of this section: those unfamiliar with SFL Theory. Firstly, "text as a bag of clauses" is not a "lexicogrammatical conception" of SFL Theory; it is merely Martin's longstanding misunderstanding. In SFL Theory, text is a semantic unit, and semantics is realised by — not composed of — lexicogrammar, both by its systems that are realised by structures, and systems of the textual metafunction that are realised by cohesive relations. Moreover, cohesive relations, in themselves, do not warrant the stratification of the content plane. As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237) point out:

Of course, what we are recognising here as two distinct constructions, the semantic and the grammatical, never had or could have had any existence the one prior to the other; they are our analytic representation of the overall semioticising of experience — how experience is construed into meaning. If the congruent form had been the only form of construal, we would probably not have needed to think of semantics and grammar as two separate strata: they would be merely two facets of the content plane, interpreted on the one hand as function and on the other as form.

Secondly, the discourse semantic systems that Martin (1992) set up to deal with cohesive relations are merely the systems in Cohesion In English (Halliday & Hasan 1976) rebranded as Martin's systems of IDENTIFICATION (cohesive reference and ellipsis), CONJUNCTION, now CONNEXION (cohesive conjunction) and IDEATION (lexical cohesion).

[2] Here again, the authors remind the reader that Cléirigh's model of body language is their model of paralanguage. The plagiarism in this work is effected through myriad small steps.

[3] To be clear, this flatly contradicts the authors' definition of sonovergent paralanguage as 'phonologically convergent' (p22). Moreover, sonovergent paralanguage is neither sonovergent nor paralanguage. Sonovergent paralanguage is the authors' rebranding of Cléirigh's linguistic body language, in which gestures serve the same function as prosodic phonology. That is, sonovergent paralanguage is language, not paralanguage, and it is divergent from phonology and convergent with the lexicogrammar that prosodic phonology realises.

To be absolutely clear, one of the authors' two types of paralanguage is not paralanguage — because it is language. This alone invalidates the authors' model of paralanguage.

Ideational Grammatical Metaphor

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 10-1):

Ideational grammatical metaphors can be interpreted along similar lines. In (19), for example, what is construed verbally in (17) and (18) is construed nominally as her desire for restoration of her hair colour and her visit to Target. The nominal groups in (19) thus encode occurrences as if they were entities.

(17) She wanted to get her hair colour back,
(18) so she headed to Target.
(19) Her desire for restoration of her hair colour prompted her visit to Target.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, (17) and (18) are congruent because a sequence (semantics) is realised by a clause complex (lexicogrammar), and each figure in the sequence (semantics) is realised by a clause (lexicogrammar).

In contrast, (19) is metaphorical because the sequence (semantics) is realised by a clause (lexicogrammar), and each figure in the sequence (semantics) is realised by a nominal group serving as participant (lexicogrammar), with the relation of cause between the figures in the sequence (semantics) realised by a verbal group serving as Process (lexicogrammar).