Mistaking Range For Medium And Medium For Agent

Martin & Rose (2007: 92):

Amnesty is construed here as a commodity that is given or refused to various recipients, by an implicit giver (the Commission), and is also demanded by potential recipients (police officers). The central elements in this construal are the processes of exchanging (given, not given, refused, applied for), the nuclear element is the commodity exchanged (amnesty), and the marginal elements are its givers and recipients. We can represent these nuclear relations in Figure 3.10.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] Here Martin & Rose use the terms of speech function (enacting interpersonal meaning) — exchanging (giving or demanding) commodities (goods–&–services or information) — as the basis for determining the relative involvement of participants in a process, in their rebranding of Halliday's ergative model of transitivity (construing experiential meaning) as a discourse semantic system. The confusion is thus one of metafunction.

[2] To be clear, Martin & Rose provide no argument as to why processes are central, why the commodity (Range misinterpreted as Medium) is nuclear, or why givers (Medium misinterpreted as Agent) and recipients (Beneficiaries) are marginal.  This confirms that Martin & Rose do not understand the ergative principle on which Halliday's model of clause nuclearity is based.

[3] To be clear, Martin & Rose misinterpret the ergative functions of these clauses, mistaking Range for Medium and Medium for Agent:

the Commission	may grant	amnesty	to those who plead guilty
Medium	Process	Range	Beneficiary

the Commission	does not give	amnesty	to innocent people
Medium	Process	Range	Beneficiary

the Commission	does not give	amnesty	to those who claim to be innocent
Medium	Process	Range	Beneficiary

the Commission	refused	amnesty	to the police officers
Medium	Process	Range	Beneficiary

the police officers	applied for	amnesty
Medium	Process	Range

That is, it is through the Commission and the police officers that the processes of 'granting' etc. are actualised, with amnesty as the domain of such processes.

These errors invalidate the model in Figure 3.10, even in its own terms.  In Halliday's original model, the Commission and the police officers are nuclear, with amnesty outside the nucleus:




[4] To be clear, Martin & Rose construe nuclear relations

• as lexical (and discourse semantic), even though the relations obtain between elements of grammatical structure, and
• as nuclear, even though, in their understanding, it is not the nucleus to which other elements are related.

∞

The bigger picture here is that Martin & Rose are taking Halliday's ergative model of clause grammar and rebranding it as part of Martin's model of discourse semantics.  Yet, in doing so, they demonstrate that they do not understand the principle on which Halliday's model is based, and that they cannot apply it accurately to data.