On The Heteroglossic Function Of Obligation

Martin & Rose (2007: 55-6):

The Act, because it is concerned with what should happen, is mainly concerned with obligation (how obliged people are to act):

AND SINCE it is deemed necessary to establish the truth in relation to past events as well as the motives for and circumstances in which gross violations of human rights have occurred, and to make the findings known in order to prevent a repetition of such acts in future; 

AND SINCE the Constitution states that the pursuit of national unity, the well-being of all South African citizens and peace require reconciliation between the people of South Africa and the reconstruction of society; 

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; 

AND SINCE the Constitution states that in order to advance such reconciliation and reconstruction amnesty shall be granted in respect of acts, omissions and offences associated with political objectives committed in the course of the conflicts of the past

The last example here makes use of what we might call legislative’ shall to signal incontestable obligation. By Chapter 2 of the Act, this use of shall becomes dominant as the various processes around the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are prescribed:

(3) In order to achieve the objectives of the Commission -

(a) the Committee on Human Rights Violations, as contemplated in Chapter 3, shall deal, among other things, with matters pertaining to investigations of gross violations of human rights;

(b) the Committee on Amnesty, as contemplated in Chapter 4, shall deal with matters relating to amnesty;

(c) the Committee on Reparation and Rehabilitation, as contemplated in Chapter 5, shall deal with matters referred to it relating to reparations;

(d) the investigating unit referred to in section 5(d) shall perform the investigations contemplated in section 28(4)(a); and

(e) the subcommittees shall exercise, perform and carry out the powers, functions and duties conferred upon, assigned to or imposed upon them by the Commission.

Blogger Comments:

The claim here (e.g. p59) is that the instances of obligation in these texts signal heteroglossia, the acknowledgement of other points of view.  As might be expected of a text of this type, this is about as monoglossic as a text can get.  No other positions on any of the proposals are acknowledged, as Martin & Rose should have realised in using the term 'incontestable obligation'.

The general misunderstanding of Martin & Rose in discussing modality as a resource for heteroglossia can be traced to a misunderstanding of why it is that one type of modality, probability, can acknowledge other voices.

The reason why probability can acknowledge other voices is that the explicit subjective form, 'I think', is agnate with circumstances of Angle: viewpoint (just as 'I say' is agnate with circumstances of Angle: source).

However, Martin & Rose have mistaken probability to acknowledge other voices through the selection of one value — low, median or high — rather than another, with the unselected values mistaken for other voices.  This sort of logic can also be misapplied to the selection of one Subject, rather than other, one mood, rather than another, and so on, right through every system in the language.