Confusing Graduation With Attitude

Martin & Rose (2007: 65):

(4) How are the feelings graded: towards the lower valued end of a scale of intensity, towards the higher valued end or somewhere in between? We don’t wish at this stage to imply that low, median and high are discrete values (as with modality, cf. Halliday 1994: 358-9), but expect that most emotions offer lexicalisations that grade along an evenly-clined scale.

low             the boy liked the present
'median'      the boy loved the present
high            the boy adored the present

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this scale is concerned with GRADUATION, a system that is distinct from — parallel with — the system of ATTITUDE.  Here Martin & Rose present it as the fourth means of classifying affect (ATTITUDE).

Misconstruing The Construal Of Emotion As 'Undirected' Affect

Martin & Rose (2007: 65):

(3) Are the feelings construed as directed at or reacting to some specific external agency (typically conscious) or as a general ongoing mood for which one might pose the question ‘Why are you feeling that way?’ and get the answer ‘I’m not sure.’ 

reaction to other       the boy liked the teacher/the teacher pleased the boy
undirected mood      the boy was happy

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is manifestly untrue.  Agency is not a necessary feature of the appraised, as demonstrated by the boy liked the teacher.

[2] This is manifestly untrue.   'Conscious' is at least as typically not a feature of the appraised, as demonstrated by instances of the following types:

• the boy loved chocolate [unconscious thing]
• the boy enjoyed riding his bike [act]
• the boy liked the fact that his team had won [fact]

[3] This once again confuses the ideational construal of emotion — as Process or qualitative Attribute — with affect: the interpersonal enactment of an appraisal by reference to emotion.  The confusion is thus in terms of metafunction.

Confusing Ideational Construals With Interpersonal Enactments

Martin & Rose (2007: 64):

(1) Are the feelings popularly construed by the culture as positive (good vibes that are enjoyable to experience) or negative ones (bad vibes that are better avoided)? We are not concerned here with the value that a particular psychological framework might place on one or another emotion (cf. It’s probably productive that you’re feeling sad because it’s a sign that...’).

positive affect           the boy was happy

negative affect          the boy was sad

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confuses the appraisal of emotions by a culture with appraisal by reference to emotions (affect).

[2] Neither proposition enacts an appraisal by emotion (affect).  Neither the boy nor the author is making an appraisal.  The author is merely attributing qualities of emotion to the boy.  Genuine examples of positive and negative affect would be:

positive affect           the boy was happy that his teacher had been arrested

negative affect          the boy was sad that the death penalty had been abolished

In each instance the boy appraises a fact by reference to an emotion.

On Martin's "Communion With Nelson Mandela In So Many Respects"

Martin & Rose (2007: 61-3):

We’ll close this section with an example of stance shifting from one of Jim’s papers where he tried to figure out what he found so moving about the final couple of pages of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (a text we’ll return to in Chapter 7). …

By the end of this study however he was still feeling a little mystified about why the text he was analysing was so moving. His communion with Mandela, at such a distance in so many respects, seemed to transcend the sum of the analyses he had undertaken, however focused he tried to make them on what was going on.  In exasperation, he decided to shift stance and wrote:

… In a sense then, Mandela is promoting socialism in the name of freedom; … We need, in other words, more positive discourse analysis (PDA?) alongside our critique; and this means dealing with texts we admire, alongside those we dislike and try to expose (Wodak 1996). (Martin 1999a: 51-2)

… [Jim] evaluates the text as graceful, he’s charmed by it, he admires it and of course the man who wrote it. … Allowing himself a reaction got him thinking about how Mandela finesses his radical politics, disarming people [a]round the world into communities of admiring fans. And it allowed Jim to make a further point about the importance of focusing on heartening discourses of this kind instead of being so depressingly critical all the time by focusing solely on hegemony and all that’s wrong with the world. … These guys are heroes; let’s see how they move the world along’. … 

Just as we’ve been changing voices here; we’ll pull back now, in case our scholarly credentials are wearing a little thin.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Since this section is neither an exposition of Appraisal theory, nor an application of Appraisal theory to text analysis, it is useful to consider the function it serves.

[2] Here Martin & Rose are informing the reader that one of them, Jim Martin, has much in common with Nelson Mandela — in terms of shared mental or spiritual experience.  (The word 'communion' means the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially on a mental or spiritual level, or shared participation in a mental or spiritual experience.)

For a reality check, see Jim Martin "Honouring" The Late Ruqaiya Hasan.

For an insightful portrait of the 'academic revolutionary', enjoy Rumpole And The Right To Silence by John Mortimer.

[3] A critique is a detailed analysis and assessment of something, especially a literary, philosophical, or political theory. It is 'critical' in the sense of critical thinking, as expressing or involving an analysis of the merits and faults of a work. Martin, however, relates 'critique' to the other, less scholarly meaning of 'critical' as simply expressing adverse or disapproving comments or judgements.

[4] This would appear to be the objective of Mandela's soul-mate as well. The choice of the word 'disarm' — deprive of the power to hurt — betrays the authors' interest in the power relation between the hero and his fans.

[5] Martin's focus on heroes (and on positive "critiques", and on communities of admiring fans) can be explained by his ideological orientation as a disciplinarian, rather than a libertarian.  Bertrand Russell explains the distinction in his History Of Western Philosophy (pp 21-2):

Throughout this long development, from 600 BC to the present day, philosophers have been divided into those who wished to tighten social bonds and those who wished to relax them. With this difference, others have been associated. 

The disciplinarians have advocated some system of dogma, either old or new, and have therefore been compelled to be, in greater or lesser degree, hostile to science, since their dogmas could not be proved empirically. They have almost invariably taught that happiness is not the good, but that ‘nobility’ or ‘heroism’ is to be preferred. They have had a sympathy with irrational parts of human nature, since they have felt reason to be inimical to social cohesion.

The libertarians, on the other hand, with the exception of the extreme anarchists, have tended to be scientific, utilitarian, rationalistic, hostile to violent passion, and enemies of all the more profound forms of religion. 

This conflict existed in Greece before the rise of we recognise as philosophy, and is already quite explicit in the earliest Greek thought.  In changing forms, it has persisted down to the present day, and no doubt will persist for many ages to come.

[6] As should be clear from this clause, and the authors' likening of Jim Martin to Nelson Mandela, this section of Martin & Rose's text is merely an exercise in managing the readers' perception of the authors.

If this critique of Martin & Rose (2007) has taken a bizarre and personal turn at this point, it is because the text under discussion has itself taken a bizarre and personal turn at this point.  See also Rose as a semiotic reincarnation of Benjamin Whorf.

Misconstruing Logogenetic Patterns Of Instantiation As Prosodic Structure

Martin & Rose (2007: 59-60):

Appraisal resources are used to establish the tone or mood of a passage of discourse, as choices resonate with one another from one moment to another as a text unfolds. The pattern of choices is thus ‘prosodic’. They form a prosody of attitude running through the text that swells and diminishes, in the manner of a musical prosody. The prosodic pattern of appraisal choices constructs the ‘stance’ or ‘voice’ of the appraiser, and this stance or voice defines the kind of community that is being set up around shared values.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is potentially misleading.  To be clear, the use of the terms 'tone' and 'mood' by Martin & Rose here is quite distinct from the technical terms 'tone' and 'mood' in SFL theory.  Theoretically, tone is an interpersonal system at the rank of tone group on the stratum of phonology, and mood is an interpersonal system at the rank of clause on the stratum of lexicogrammar.  Choices in the system of mood are realised in choices in the system of tone.  Martin & Rose have not theorised how choices in the system of appraisal (semantics) are realised in the realisation of mood (grammar) in tone (phonology).

[2] Here Martin & Rose confuse logogenetic patterns of instantiation ('patterns of choices') with a type of structure ('prosodic').  The confusion is primarily one of axis: paradigmatic choices are confused with syntagmatic structure.

[3] Here Martin & Rose confuse the prosodic structure type favoured by the interpersonal metafunction with the culminative structure type ('swells and diminishes') favoured by the textual metafunction; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 84-5).  The confusion of structure type is thus one of metafunction.

[4] Here Martin & Rose employ the logical fallacy known as false analogy, as demonstrated by the meaning of the term 'musical prosody':

In music, prosody is the way the composer sets the text of a vocal composition in the assignment of syllables to notes in the melody to which the text is sung, or to set the music with regard to the ambiance of the lyrics. For example, a songwriter might align downbeats or accents with stressed syllables or important words, or create musical accompaniment to the metre of the lyrics. Also, prosody can mean how the music supports the connotation, or emotive nature, of a song.