Interpersonal And Textual Elements Outside Mood-Residue Structure

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 66-7):

Some elements of clause structure fall outside the Mood + Residue (+ Moodtag) structure. These include (i) interpersonal elements which are not part of the proposition or proposal being negotiated and (ii) textual elements which have no interpersonal role at all:

(i) Interpersonal elements:

(ii) Textual elements:

Structural conjunction, such as and, but, or; when, while, if (cf. IFG2: 100; IFG3:160-1).

Semantically, the fact that all these fall outside the Mood-Residue structure means that these elements are not part of the proposition or proposal being negotiated. They relate to it by indicating its textual relevance as a message (by means of continuatives and conjunctions) and by indicating the addressee (by means of the Vocative) and by indicating speaker stance (by means of an Expletive), but they do not form part of what is being negotiated.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this omits the most significant of the interpersonal elements outside the Mood-Residue structure: the comment Adjunct (e.g. of course, admittedly, frankly etc.).

[2] To be clear, this omits the most significant of the textual elements outside the Mood-Residue structure: the conjunctive Adjunct (e.g. for example, moreover, consequently etc.).

(Trivially, the continuative yes is accidentally mislabelled 'Vocative' in the clause analysis.)

‘Hypotactic’ Clause As Theme

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 37):

A different kind of long Theme can be found if we extend the thematic principle beyond the clause to the ‘clause complex’ (the ‘sentence’ of the written language). This can be illustrated by comparing the following:

Were you lonely in Paris, || when I was in the concentration camp?

When I was in the concentration camp, || were you lonely in Paris?

The first example can be regarded as an unmarked ordering of clauses, where a ‘main’ clause is followed by a modifying clause. It will simply be analysed as shown above. In the second example, the when clause in its entirety can be regarded as functioning as an orienting context for the question Were you lonely in Paris? The when clause thus provides a marked Theme to which the second clause is Rheme (IFG2: 56-7; IFG3: 392-33) …

Note that it is only ‘hypotactic’ (i.e. dependent, modifying) clauses which have the possibility of occurring in this initial position as a marked Theme of the clause complex. Non-finite clauses are one such type of hypotactic clause. Here are some examples of non-finite clauses functioning as marked Theme of a clause complex:

To strengthen his knee, he did the exercise routine twice daily.

Blinking nervously, he tried to think of something to say.

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading. To be clear, such dependent clauses function simply as Theme, not marked Theme. For there to be a marked option, there has to be an agnate unmarked option (unmarked ordering is not unmarked Theme). Cf. IFG2 (Halliday 1994: 57):

and IFG3 (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 393):

Textual vs Interpersonal Adjuncts

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 30):

It is easy to confuse initial Adjuncts which have a textual, linking function and those which have an interpersonal, modal function (see further Chapter 3). Some of the Adjuncts most frequently confused are given below (See IFG2:49, IFG3: 82 for fuller lists):

 

Blogger Comments:

This is potentially misleading. In fact, even in initial position, the Adjunct in fact can function either textually or interpersonally. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 614-5):

Certain items that serve as ‘elaborating’ conjunctions that are ‘internal’ only in orientation may also serve as modal adverbs (e.g. actually, in fact, indeed, as a matter of fact), functioning either as mood Adjuncts of intensity or as comment Adjuncts of factuality.

Ellipsed Topical Theme

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 29):

Where two clauses are linked by coordination – in a paratactic structure – the Subject of the second clause may be ellipsed or ‘understood’:

He roared in fury || and ( ) struggled with all his might

In such a case the ellipsed Subject of the second clause counts as the (ellipsed) topical Theme. Consequently, the Process (struggled) is not the Theme.

Blogger Comments:

This is potentially misleading. The ellipsed Subject would have been topical Theme, if it hadn't been ellipsed. Since the Subject is ellipsed, it is not topical Theme. In such clauses, the topical Theme is omitted. Importantly, the function of ellipsis is remove an element from textual prominence, and so to assign it thematic status is to contradict the textual function of ellipsis. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 635):

Ellipsis marks the textual status of continuous information within a certain grammatical structure. At the same time, the non-ellipsed elements of that structure are given the status of being contrastive in the environment of continuous information. Ellipsis thus assigns differential prominence to the elements of a structure: if they are non-prominent (continuous), they are ellipsed; if they are prominent (contrastive), they are present. The absence of elements through ellipsis is an iconic realisation of lack of prominence.

 

Topic Sentence ("HyperTheme") And Introductory Paragraph ("MacroTheme")

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 28):

In a similar way, the initial clause complex of a paragraph may be seen as functioning as a kind of ‘paragraph Theme’ (the Topic Sentence of traditional accounts), while the introductory paragraph itself has a thematic status vis-a-vis the text as a whole.

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading, because it misrepresents writing pedagogy (proposals for how to write) as linguistic theory (propositions about the nature of language). Even ignoring this, such an analysis can only apply to written texts, and of these, only to those that conform with such writing instructions.

Is Language 'All There Is'?

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 20):

Once the labels are under control, then you will be empowered and a whole new way of reading texts is opened up to you – one in which you see texts as semiotic entities that make meaning, rather than as formal entities that pass pre-formed thoughts and feelings from one human being to another. You’ll start to see language as having a far more central place in human existence than you may have imagined before, and may even go through a phase of thinking that language is all there is – since it shapes and categorises everything around us the moment we try to say anything about anything at all. This radical Whorfian phase can be a trying one for peers from other disciplines; some of us never recover from it!

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this relates to the epistemological tradition with which SFL Theory aligns. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 416):

meaning is seen as immanent — something that is constructed in, and so is part of, language itself. The immanent interpretation of meaning is characteristic of the rhetorical-ethnographic orientation, including our own approach.

So, on the one hand, language is 'all there is' in the sense that 'all there is' is meaning construed of experience by language. And because, in this view, the content plane of language constitutes the content of consciousness, this epistemological stance is broadly consistent with the philosophy of George Berkeley, who claimed that the material constituents of the world have no subsistence without a mind, and with Quantum Theory, which has demonstrated, in the words of John Wheeler, that 'no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon'. 

But on the other hand, language is not 'all there is' in the sense that the meaning that language construes distinguishes language from other domains of experience, distinguishing, most fundamentally, a material order of phenomena from a semiotic order of metaphenomena — the meanings of language and other semiotic systems.

[2] It is not impossible that this is Matthiessen having an 'under-the-radar' dig at his co-author Martin, who even models the cultural context of language as language (register and genre).

Word Rank Choices

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 17):

The relation of ranked units ranging from clause to word is outlined in Figure 1.17.

Blogger Comments:

Importantly, the final row of Figure 1.17 does not represent word rank choices realising group functions. To be consistent with the rest of the table, this row would feature the function labels of the morphemes that constitute each of the words in the row above.

Instead, the final row represents the language data to which theoretical labels are assigned.