Misconstruing Imaginary Elaboration As Similarity

Martin & Rose (2007: 144):

This type of diagram drawing connections between elements is known as a reticulum. In this example, Then explicitly signals succession between the second and third clauses. This is external succession of events in the story, so we have drawn the connection on the right. But there is also an implicit connection between the first and second clauses. The Orientation My story begins in my late teenage years.. . is elaborated by the first event As an eighteen-year-old I met.. so the logical relation between these clauses is one of similarity: reworking. To show this we have inserted an implicit conjunction in brackets (that is), and the connection is drawn on the left.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this misrepresents the text under analysis:

My story begins in my late teenage years as a farm girl in the Bethlehem district of Eastern Free State. 

As an eighteen-year-old, I met a young man in his twenties. He was working in a top security structure. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. We even spoke about marriage. A bubbly, vivacious man who beamed out wild energy. Sharply intelligent. Even if he was an Englishman, he was popular with all the 'Boer' Afrikaners. And all my girlfriends envied me. 

Then one day he said he was going on a 'trip'. 'We won't see each other again... maybe never ever again.’ I was torn to pieces. So was he. An extremely short marriage to someone else failed all because I married to forget.

[2] To be clear, there is no implicit elaborating relation between these two messages, as demonstrated by the fact that the second message is not a restatement or clarification of the first; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 615-6).

[3] To be clear, if the second message had been an elaboration of the first, the relation between them would have been elaboration, not similarity, which for Martin & Rose is a subtype of comparison. In SFL Theory, comparison is a subtype of enhancement, not elaboration.