Comparing Abstractions

Martin & Rose (2007: ):

Comparison can also be used to distinguish types of abstractions, for example kinds of justice:

Further, retributive justice — in which an impersonal state hands down punishment with little consideration for victims and hardly any for the perpetrator — is not the only form of justice. 

I contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which is characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is reference in the sense of ideational denotation: a nominal group (form) realising a clause participant (function). The nominal group retributive justice does not include a reference item that presumes a recoverable identity.

[2] To be clear, this is a genuine instance of comparative reference. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 633):

In comparative reference, the reference item still signals ‘you know which’; not because the same entity is being referred to over again but rather because there is a frame of reference – something by reference to which what I am now talking about is the same or different, like or unlike, equal or unequal, more or less. Comparative reference items function in nominal and adverbial groups; and the comparison is made with reference either to general features of identity, similarity and difference or to particular features of quality and quantity.