Misrepresenting Extending Grammatical Relations As Elaborating Lexical Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 88):

Many such antonyms are construed in the principles motivating the Reconciliation Act, with the contrast emphasised by negative polarity not, and the contrastive conjunction but:

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;

Blogger Comments:

In terms of SFL theory, Martin & Rose here misconstrue extending relations between grammatical units as elaborating (antonymic) relations between lexical items (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 644).  In each of these instances, a variation: replacive relation (op. cit.: 471) obtains between two prepositional phrases in an embedded complex:

for understanding	but not for vengeance
for reparation	but not for retaliation
for ubuntu	but not for victimisation
1	+ 2

Misunderstanding The Text

Martin & Rose (2007: 88):

Finally Tutu rests his case on the contrast between retributive and restorative justice. Interestingly he argues that both types treat the converse roles of victim and perpetrator in some ways similarly. Retributive justice gives little consideration to either, whereas restorative justice classifies both as people:

Further, retributive justice - in which an impersonal state hands down punishment with little consideration for victims and hardly any for the perpetrator - is not the only form of justice. I contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which is characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment but, in the spirit of ubuntu, the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships. This kind of justice seeks to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator, who should be given the opportunity to be reintegrated into the community he or she has injured by his or her offence. This is a far more personal approach, which sees the offence as something that has happened to people and whose consequence is a rupture in relationships.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, retributive justice and restorative justice are nominal groups, not lexical items, and Tutu's argument is made by the grammar, not by the relation between the lexical items retributive and restorative.

[2] This misunderstands the text.  The two types of justice treat the victim and perpetrator in significantly different ways:

retributive justice … hands down punishment with little consideration for victims and hardly any for the perpetrator

whereas

restorative justice … seeks to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator … 

Misreading The Text

Martin & Rose (2007: 87-8):

And the contrast between innocence and guilt underlies his second Argument:

It is also not true that the granting of amnesty encourages impunity in the sense that perpetrators can escape completely the consequences of their actions, because amnesty is only given to those who plead guilty, who accept responsibility for what they have done. Amnesty is not given to innocent people or to those who claim to be innocent. It was on precisely this point that amnesty was refused to the police officers who applied for it for their part in the death of Steve Biko. They denied that they had committed a crime, claiming that they had assaulted him only in retaliation for his inexplicable conduct in attacking them. 

Here there is a double contrast implied, between the innocent and the guilty, and between those who confess their guilt and those who falsely claim innocence, thus compounding their crimes.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the argument is made through the grammar, not merely by the antonymic relation between the lexical items guilty and innocent, which is textual (cohesive) in function, not experiential.

[2] To be clear, the primary contrast here is between those who admit guilt and everyone else.  That is, the discourse analysts Martin & Rose have missed the main point of Tutu's argument: that amnesty is not primarily concerned with the contrast guilt vs innocence; it is given to those who admit their guilt, thereby taking responsibility for their actions.

Misrepresenting Grammatical Structure As Lexical Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 87-88):

Tutu uses contrasts frequently to mount his argument for reconciliation over retribution. For example, he uses an antonym in his Thesis to emphasise the significance of the debate:

So is amnesty being given at the cost of justice being done? This is not a frivolous question, but a very serious issue, one which challenges the integrity of the entire Truth and Reconciliation process.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the antonyms in this instance are frivolous and serious.  In SFL theory, the relation constitutes an example of lexical cohesion, a non-structural resource of the textual metafunction at the level of lexicogrammar.

Here Martin & Rose misrepresent the nominal groups a frivolous question and a very serious issue as lexical items and misinterpret the relation between them as construing experiential meaning.

The experiential meaning that the authors attribute to a lexical relation is actually construed by the ideational grammar as an extending replacive relation in a nominal group nexus realising an Attribute:

this	is	not a frivolous question, but a very serious issue
Carrier	Process: attributive	Attribute

not a frivolous question	but a very serious issue
1	+ 2

Moreover, unknown to Martin & Rose, Tutu here is using the rhetorical device known antithesis, wherein two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect.

Contrasts Between Lexical Items Constructing Arguments And Interpretations

Martin & Rose (2007: 87):

Contrasts are also an important resource for constructing arguments and interpretations, in which one position or set of behaviours and qualities is preferred over another. Helena used contrasts between her lovers’ behaviour and qualities before and after their ‘operations’ to make her point about the damage that has been done to them.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, mere contrastive relations between lexical items do not, of themselves, construct arguments and interpretations.  This can be demonstrated by isolating two contrastive lexical items, teacher and student.  The resource for constructing arguments and interpretations is the lexicogrammar that construes the semantics.

[2] To be clear, the differential assessment of 'one position or set of behaviours and qualities over another' is a stance, which is the concern of the interpersonal metafunction (the enactment of intersubjective relations as meaning) not the experiential metafunction (the construal of experience as meaning).  That is, Martin & Rose, having misinterpreted a textual system (lexical cohesion) as an experiential system (ideation), now add interpersonal meaning to the confusion.