Martin & Rose (2007: 101):
In other words, activity sequences are series of events that are expected by a field, as in meeting - relationship - marriage. The unmarked relation between events in such an expectant sequence is 'and', simply adding each event to the others in the series. So in oral personal recounts each clause commonly begins with ‘and’, illustrated in the following extract from testimony to the Australian National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families:
The circumstances of my being taken, as I recollect, were that
I went off to school in the morning
and I was sitting in the classroom
and there was only one room where all the children were assembled
and there was a knock at the door, which the schoolmaster answered.
After a conversation he had with somebody at the door,
he came to get me,
He took me by the hand
and took me to the door.
I was physically grabbed by a male person at the door,
I was taken to a motor bike
and held by the officer
and driven to the airstrip
and flown off the Island.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, here Martin & Rose confuse cultural practices (the life trajectory of meeting - relationship - marriage) with language (a sequence of clauses related by 'and').
[2] To be clear, nothing is expected by a field, because a field is not a conscious entity. If the metaphor is unpacked, the claim is that people expect certain cultural practices to occur. The question then is which people? — people who produce texts, people who read texts, linguists who analyse texts… .
For example, in the extract above, the producer of the text clearly did not expect the series of events they had previously been subjected to, whereas those who undertook the abduction clearly did. Likewise, a reader of the text who was not familiar with Australian history would not expect those series of events, either as cultural practices or as part of a text, whereas someone who was familiar, might.
Amusingly, the authors here treat marriage as the expected outcome of a relationship, thereby aligning themselves with a most conservative view of social expectations — a far cry from the view they would project of themselves as leftist radicals.
[3] To be clear, 'and' relations between clauses are logical relations within complexes at the level of lexicogrammar. The authors here present such relations as experiential rather than logical, and as discourse semantic (confused with contextual field) rather than lexicogrammatical. Moreover, despite here presenting these relations as experiential, the authors elsewhere interpret the same relations between clauses in terms of their logical discourse semantic system of conjunction.
[2] To be clear, nothing is expected by a field, because a field is not a conscious entity. If the metaphor is unpacked, the claim is that people expect certain cultural practices to occur. The question then is which people? — people who produce texts, people who read texts, linguists who analyse texts… .
For example, in the extract above, the producer of the text clearly did not expect the series of events they had previously been subjected to, whereas those who undertook the abduction clearly did. Likewise, a reader of the text who was not familiar with Australian history would not expect those series of events, either as cultural practices or as part of a text, whereas someone who was familiar, might.
Amusingly, the authors here treat marriage as the expected outcome of a relationship, thereby aligning themselves with a most conservative view of social expectations — a far cry from the view they would project of themselves as leftist radicals.
[3] To be clear, 'and' relations between clauses are logical relations within complexes at the level of lexicogrammar. The authors here present such relations as experiential rather than logical, and as discourse semantic (confused with contextual field) rather than lexicogrammatical. Moreover, despite here presenting these relations as experiential, the authors elsewhere interpret the same relations between clauses in terms of their logical discourse semantic system of conjunction.
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