Misrepresenting Appraisal Analysis

Martin and Rose (2007: 40):

The key term for Tutu, judging from the title of his book, is forgiveness, which seems in this context to comprise aspects of both judgement and appreciation. Judgement in the sense that someone is generous enough to stop feeling angry and wanting to punish someone who has done something wrong to them; appreciation in the sense that peace is restored. It also seems that for Tutu, forgiveness involves a spiritual dimension, underpinned by his Christianity; the concept transcends ethical considerations towards a plane of peace and spiritual harmony. In appraisal terms what this means is that the politicised aesthetics of appreciation has recontextualised the moral passion plays of judgement.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This purports to be an appraisal analysis of a text, but instead, is a reverie on the meaning of the word forgivenesss on the basis of the book title No Future With Forgiveness.

[2] No such judgement by Tutu is cited.  The only excerpt from the text that is cited is the title No Future With Forgiveness.  This might be analysed by treating it as an elliptical rendering of we have no future without forgiveness, which can be interpreted as metaphorical for something like we must forgive.  If so, this is a proposal, not a proposition — Tutu is telling his readers what they must do, rather than judging 'someone'.

[3] No such appreciation by Tutu is cited.  This is merely an unsupported inference made by Martin & Rose.

[4] No such considerations, expressed by Tutu, are cited.  Martin & Rose here use the fact that the author is a Christian clergyman to imagine what he might have in mind.

[5] This is a vacuous obfuscation.  This can be demonstrated by the following grammatical analysis of the clause.

in appraisal terms	what this means	is	that the politicised aesthetics of appreciation has recontextualised the moral passion plays of judgement
Matter	Identified Value	Process	Identifier Token

The analysis shows that the clause is identifying, but marked in terms of voice and the direction of coding, being:

• receptive, rather operative, and
• encoding, rather decoding.

The clause construes an identity that encodes what this means by reference to an embedded fact: that the politicised aesthetics of appreciation has recontextualised the moral passion plays of judgement.

The embedded fact is itself another identifying clause, but one which is the opposite of the ranking clause in terms of voice and coding: it is operative and decoding.  It also differs from the ranking clause in being circumstantial rather an intensive.

the politicised aesthetics of appreciation	has recontextualised	the moral passion plays of judgement
Identified Token	Process: identifying: circumstantial: spatio-temporal	Identifier Value

The embedded clause construes an identity that decodes the politicised aesthetics of appreciation by reference to the moral passion plays of judgement.  However, because Martin & Rose have not explained what they mean by either nominal group, this identity decodes an unknown by reference to an unknown.

Consequently, the identity construed by the ranking clause encodes what this means by reference to an identity that decodes an unknown by reference to an unknown.  This is the experiential grammar of obfuscation.

(Since the concern here is not with appraisal analysis, the Matter circumstance in appraisal terms is unwarranted.)