Sunday 10 December 2017

Misunderstanding Projection

Martin & Rose (2007: 50-1):
In Helena’s narrative, projection doesn’t just happen within sentences, from ‘saying' to ‘what is said'. It can also happen across whole texts and text phases. For example Helena begins by presenting herself as narrator (my story begins):
My story begins in my late teenage years as a farm girl in the Bethlehem district of Eastern Free State.
The rest of her story then is what she tells. And she closes her story by handing over to her second love (a few lines…):
I end with a few lines that my wasted vulture said to me one night
In both cases Helena’s sentence ‘projects’ the sentences that follow, just as the SABC ‘projected’ Helena’s story:
they broadcast substantial extracts
And Tutu in turn projects the SABC broadcast:
The South Africa Broadcasting Corporation's radio team covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission received a letter from a woman calling herself Helena
So ultimately we have Tutu saying that the SABC said that Helena said that her second love said what he said. This is managed between sentences by naming ‘speech acts’, such as my story, a few lines, a letter, substantial extracts. This kind of projection between sentences is often associated with the beginning and end of texts.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misconstrues the projection relation between the author and her text as a projection relation within the text projected by the author.

[2] This misunderstands projection, which is a relation between different orders of experience.  In the text, the opening sentence and "the rest of her story" are construed as the same order of experience.  That is, "what she tells" includes the opening sentence, not just "the rest of her story".

[3] This misconstrues an Actor (Agent) they as a Sayer (Medium), a material Process broadcast ('transmitted') as a verbal Process, and a Goal (Medium) substantial extracts as Verbiage (Range).

[4] This misconstrues the projection relation between the speaker and his text as a projection relation within the text projected by the speaker.

[5] The naming of "speech acts" (speech functions) metaphorically construes verbal processes as participants, and as such, does not construe projection relations between "sentences".

[6] This misconstrues the names of projected locutions (my storya few linesa lettersubstantial extracts) as the naming of "speech acts" (speech functions) — the latter being the naming of the processes that project locutions.  The confusion is thus between orders of experience.

[7] This unsupported claim is invalidated by the misunderstandings identified in [5] and [6].

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