Tuesday, 10 November 2020

Confusing Modal Responsibility With Moral Responsibility

Martin & Rose (2007: 234-5):
Technically speaking, what we are saying is that a move is a ranking clause, including any clauses embedded in it, and in addition any clauses dependent on it. So we can tag the main clauses in the examples below; they are negotiable. Coetzee makes others responsible for the torture facility, not his role in it:
And Sannie makes the village gossipmongers responsible, not her family:
The underlined clauses are not directly negotiable; to make them so would require an additional initiating move in which they are promoted from a subordinate to an arguable position.


Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. Once again, Martin & Rose are misrepresenting Halliday's model of speech function as their own theoretical creation.

[2] To be clear, this confuses moral responsibility (for the torture facility) with modal responsibility (whether or not it is valid to state they had a facility outside Capetown…). 

[3] To be clear, the modal responsibility here is for the validity of the claim they'll say we're selling the house.

[4] To be clear, the projected clause we're selling the house can be challenged in a response move, as exemplified by But we're not (selling the house). Moreover, not only is this possible, it is more likely than a challenge to the projecting clause: But they won't say that.

In short, on the authors' model, the move But we're not (selling the house) would not be analysed as a responding move to they'll say we're selling the house, but would instead be analysed as a new initiating move.

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