Misconstruing Subclasses Of Elaboration (And Modal Assessment) As Subclasses Of Comparison (Enhancement)

Martin & Rose (2007: 135-6):

However there are many other variations on internal similarity, including reformulating, exemplifying, generalising and specifying. Ideas may be reformulated with that is, i.e. In this book we often state something in commonsense terms, and then reformulate it more technically:

Attitudes have to do with evaluating things, people's character and their feelings.
Such evaluations can be more or less intense,
that is they may be more or less amplified.

Exemplification uses for example, for instance, e.g. to rework a general statement with a specific instance. Here Tutu gives an example of a condition under which an application would not be heard in public:

The Act required that the application should be dealt with in a public hearing
unless such a hearing was likely to lead to a miscarriage of justice
(for instance, where witnesses were too intimidated to testify in open session).

But exemplifying is just one way of reworking a statement as more specific or more general. Other related conjunctions include in general, in particular, in short. Here are some examples from this book:

Attitudinal lexis plays a very important role in Helena's narrative,
as it does in general across story genres. 

Layers of New develop the point of a text,
in particular they focus on expanding the ideational meanings around a text's field

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the authors' 'reformulating' is the subclass of appositive elaboration known as exposition: 'in other words' 'P i.e. Q' (Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 397-8, 542).  Here Martin & Rose have misconstrued this relation as a subclass of comparison, which, in SFL Theory, is a subclass of enhancement, not elaboration, and rebranded their misunderstanding of Halliday's grammatical relation as Martin's discourse semantic relation.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the authors' 'exemplifying' is the subclass of appositive elaboration known as exemplification: 'for example' 'P e.g. Q' (Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 397-8, 542). Here Martin & Rose have misconstrued this relation as a subclass of comparison, which, in SFL Theory, is a subclass of enhancement, not elaboration, and rebranded their misunderstanding of Halliday's grammatical relation as Martin's discourse semantic relation.

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the authors' 'generalising' is not a subclass of any subclass of expansion, and is not a feature of either clause complexing (logical lexicogrammar) or cohesive conjunction (textual lexicogrammar). Instead, in general functions interpersonally as a comment Adjunct of validity in the system of modal assessment; see Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 129-32).

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the authors' 'specifying' is the subclass of clarifying elaboration known as particularising (Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 542). Here Martin & Rose have misconstrued this relation as a subclass of comparison, which, in SFL Theory, is a subclass of enhancement, not elaboration, and rebranded their misunderstanding of Halliday's grammatical relation as Martin's discourse semantic relation.

[5] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the authors' in short marks the subclass of clarifying elaboration known as summative (Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 542). Here Martin & Rose have misconstrued this relation as a subclass of comparison, which, in SFL Theory, is a subclass of enhancement, not elaboration, and rebranded their misunderstanding of Halliday's grammatical relation as Martin's discourse semantic relation.

∞

Again, in misunderstanding these relations and rebranding them as discourse semantic, Martin & Rose have created incongruent relations between semantics and grammar, even in the absence of grammatical metaphor, thereby undermining the model.