Tuesday 28 January 2020

Misconstruing Continuity As Internal Consequence

Martin & Rose (2007: 139):
In the spoken mode, so is commonly used for internal consequence:
Landlady: So, you're off. (on entering room)
Coetzee: — Yes.
Landlady: — Well I hope you enjoyed your stay. Did you get what you wanted from the Grootbooms?
Coetzee: — Yes.
Landlady: — So, what is your connection with that family? Really?
Coetzee: — Good-bye. Their son Daniel didn't die in a car hijacking. He was a freedom fighter and I killed him. At the time I was in the police force. But it was murder.


Blogger Comments:

To be clear, neither instance of so marks a logical relation of consequence. This can be demonstrated by substituting the 'consequence' marker consequently for the continuative so:
Consequently, you're off.
Consequently, what is your connection with that family? 
To be clear, conjunctive relations obtain to preceding text, and the absence of such for the first instance suggests that the authors have little grasp of the original model they are rebranding as their own.  In SFL Theory, each instance of so is a continuative. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 107):
A continuative is one of a small set of words that signal a move in the discourse: a response, in dialogue, or a new move to the next point if the same speaker is continuing. The usual continuatives are yes no well oh now. See Halliday & Hasan (1976: Chapter 5).

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