On The "Coupling" Of Ideational And Interpersonal Meaning

Martin & Rose (2007: 70):

Of these dimensions, valuation is especially tied up with field, since the criteria for valuing a text/process are for the most part institutionally specific. But beyond this, since both judgement and appreciation are in a sense institutionalisations of feeling, all of the dimensions involved will prove sensitive to field. An example of this coupling of ideational and interpersonal meaning is presented in Table 2.11 for appreciations of research in the field of linguistics.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confuses the appraised with the system of appraisal (appreciation).  It is the appreciated that varies according to the field being realised in language-as-register, not the means of appreciating.  This is shown by the fact that the terms of appreciation in Table 2.11 are not limited to a specialised field like linguistics, and by the fact that the positive and negative values of the terms are also not limited to a specialised field like linguistics.

[2] The reason the authors link 'institutionalisation' to 'field' is because Martin (1992: 180-1, 292, 527, 536) mistakenly identifies 'institution' with only the ideational dimension of context (misconstrued as register).  In SFL theory, on the other hand, 'institution' is 'situation type' viewed from the potential pole of the cline of instantiation, such that institution variation is realised by register variation.

[3] The notion of "this coupling of ideational and interpersonal meaning" — ideational context and interpersonal semantics — betrays the authors' misunderstanding of strata and metafunctions as interacting modules of meaning (Martin 1992: 390); see, for example Misconstruing Strata And Metafunctions As Modules. 

On Appreciation As The Evaluation Of Products And Performances

Martin & Rose (2007: 69-70):

Appreciation can be thought of as the institutionalisation of feeling, in the context of propositions (norms about how products and performances are valued). Like affect and judgement it has a positive and negative dimension corresponding to positive and negative evaluations of texts and processes (and natural phenomena). The system is organised around three variables: reaction, composition and valuation.  Reaction has to do with attention (reaction: impact) and the emotional impact it has on us with the degree to which the text/process in question captures our attention (reaction: impact) and the emotional impact it has on us (reaction: quality).  Composition has to do with our perceptions of proportionality (composition: balance) and detail (composition: complexity) in a text/process. Valuation has to do with our assessment of the social significance of the text/process.

Blogger Comments:

Here Martin & Rose limit appreciation to the assessment of 'products and performances', and 'texts and processes (and natural phenomena)', leading some to conclude that appreciation does not apply to humans or human behaviour, despite the fact that humans and behaviours can be assessed as

• 'surprising' (reaction: impact),
• 'dull' (reaction: quality),
• 'sloppy' (composition: balance),
• 'complicated' (composition: complexity) and 
• 'shallow' (valuation).

Confusing Orientation Distinctions With Judgement Distinctions

Martin & Rose (2007: 68-9):

The kinds of judgement speakers take up is very sensitive to their institutional position. For example only journalists with responsibility for writing editorials and other comment have a full range of judgmental resources at their disposal; reporters writing hard news that is meant to sound objective have to avoid explicit judgements completely (Iedema et al 1994; Martin and White 2005). The distinction between social esteem and social sanction in other words has important implications for the subjective or objective flavour of an appraiser's stance.

Blogger Comments:

This simply confuses two distinct dimensions of orientation:

• subjective vs objective, and
• explicit vs implicit

with the judgement distinction between social esteem and social sanction.

To be clear, none of the following three oppositions between social esteem and social sanction enacts the distinction between subjective and objective orientation:

• Trump is stupid (social esteem) vs Trump is dishonest (social sanction)
• I think Trump is stupid (social esteem) vs I think Trump is dishonest (social sanction)
• It is widely acknowledged that Trump is stupid (social esteem) vs It is widely acknowledged that Trump is dishonest (social sanction).

Major Inconsistencies In The Martin & Rose Interpretation Of Judgement

Martin & Rose (2007: 68):

Each of these varieties of judgements are exemplified in Table 2.9. For each set, examples are given that express various types of judgement (e.g. lucky, normal, fashionable), and different degrees of intensity within each type (e.g. lucky, fortunate, charmed).

Blogger Comments:

[1] Many of the distinctions in Table 2.9 that are used to classify types of judgement do not survive close scrutiny.

As already mentioned, the opposition between 'admire/criticise' and 'praise/condemn' does not characterise the opposition between social esteem and social sanction.  For example, assessing someone as cowardly (esteem) is as much a condemnation (sanction) as a criticism (esteem).

The opposition between 'venial' (pardonable) and 'moral', also, does not characterise the opposition between social esteem and social sanction, nor is it a valid opposition.  On the first point, for example, what makes 'brave' (esteem) pardonable, rather than moral (sanction)?  On the second point, the distinction between 'venial' (pardonable) and 'moral' is not a mutually exclusive opposition within a superordinate category, and 'venial' is irrelevant for positive values of esteem, since they are not transgressions of a moral code.

Within social esteem, as already mentioned, the term 'normality' — the state of being usual, typical, or expected — is problematic because it represents a midpoint on any scale of variation rather than a scale itself, and so the authors' (conservative) presumption that normal is positive and abnormal is negative is itself invalid; cf. SNAFU.

The glossing of 'normality' as 'fate' — the course of someone's life, or the outcome of a situation for someone or something, seen as outside their control — is inconsistent in terms of the meanings of the two words, and invalid for 'normality' categories that are not outside someone's control, such as 'fashionable' and 'avant garde'. 

Moreover, the examples provided demonstrate that this category is a set of leftover subtypes that don't fit either of the other two categories, 'capacity' or 'tenacity', since it subsumes various different types of scalar values, as shown by the oppositions of 'lucky/unlucky' and 'fashionable/(unfashionable)' — with 'fashionable' presumed to be a positive judgement; cf. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.

Within social sanction, the glossing of 'propriety' as 'ethics' is problematic, because 'ethics' is a superordinate term — like the gloss of social sanction: 'moral' — that subsumes its hyponym 'veracity'.  That is, the opposition between 'truth' (veracity) and 'ethics' (propriety) is a false dichotomy, since it presents two different levels of a hyponymic taxonomy as an opposition at the same level.

[2] Again, the system of GRADUATION ('degrees of intensity') is confused here with a system of ATTITUDE — this time with JUDGEMENT, rather than AFFECT.