Mistaking Ethical Behaviours For Tokens Of Appreciation

Martin & Rose (2007: 41):

For this analysis we’ve concentrated on items that don’t directly involve judgement. But the following paragraph gives us pause:

AND SINCE the Constitution states that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation

Here the Act systematically opposes what we treated as appreciation above to terms which more explicitly involve ethical considerations, i.e. judgements about impropriety of people’s behaviour:

appreciation (healing)      judgement (impropriety)

understanding                vengeance

reparation                       retaliation
ubuntu                            victimisation

Afro-Christian values are constructed as transcending western justice.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Grammatically, this portion of the Explanatory memorandum to the Parliamentary Bill construes a replacive relation between pairs of nominalised processes (with ubuntu interpreted as 'behaving with humanity towards others'):

a	need	for understanding	but not for vengeance
a	need	for reparation	but not for retaliation
a	need	for ubuntu	but not for victimisation
Deictic	Thing	Qualifier
		1	+ 2 extension: variation: replacive

Lexically, the nominalised processes are pairs of ethical and unethical behaviours:

ethical	unethical
understanding	vengeance
reparation	retaliation
ubuntu	victimisation

That is, lexicogrammatically, in this portion of the text, the author proposes replacing unethical behaviours with ethical behaviours — these nominal groups being metaphorical realisations of proposals of what needs to be done.

If these lexical choices are tokens of attitude, then they are all assessments according to ethical values, and as such, are all tokens of judgement.  However, the question here is whether mentioning a positively valued quality, such as 'goodness', functions as an appraisal, as when something is assessed as 'good'.

[2] This again mistakes an appraisable process ('healing') for a standard by which to appraise (e.g. propriety).

[3] This ineffable twaddle misrepresents the inability of the authors to apply appraisal theory consistently as an insight into the different cultural values of an "other" community.