Misrepresenting The Embodiment Of The Textual Metafunction In The Verbal Group

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 172):

(iii) textual: a verbal group presents the interpersonal and ideational meanings as part of a message – it provides the resources (i) for indicating contrastive meanings in the environment of continuous meanings, as in those birds fly across the sky every day around sunset, but these don’t [ ], and (ii) for selecting some element of the verbal group as having newsworthiness (often implying contrast), as in those birds are flying across the sky vs. those birds are not flying across the sky, where the marker of the polarity has been selected, or as in those birds are flying across the sky, where the event itself has been selected.

Blogger Comments:

[1] The focus here is on textual semantics of the verbal group rather than on how the textual metafunction is embodied in the systems and structures of the verbal group. The confusion is again stratal (see previous posts).

[2] To be clear, it is the system of INFORMATION that makes such selections of newsworthiness.