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).

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[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.