RSSa question of realisation
Apr 13
i was commenting on a student’s work the other day and i happened to make a remark regarding her discussion of appraisal.
i said:
“Also, do not forget that appraisal is not grammar, it is discourse semantics. It is not part of the interpersonal metafunction – this, I believe.”
to which she replied:
B-b-but Martin and White (2005) opens with the sentence: “This book is concerned with the interpersonal in language…”, and at the bottom of the same page, they say: “Our purpose in the book is to develop and extend the SFL account of the interpersonal by attending to three axes along which the speaker’s/writer’s intersubjective stance may vary.” (those being Affect, Engagement and Graduation). Do you mean: appraisal is an extension (rather than a part) of the interpersonal metafunction (which is concerned with grammar) into the domain of discourse semantics? I.e., is it just a question of formulation?
hmmmm. i was running out the door, but i just had to at least confirm a distinction between “the interpersonal in language” and the interpersonal metafunction. there’s more to say, but i’m worried i will muddy rather than clarify, when an MA is being written-up.
the issue was, for me, that we cannot say attitude is realised by the interpersonal grammar. this suggests a way of ‘reading off’ attitude from the grammar, and the system…
what we are really doing is classifying instances of attitude when we do an appraisal analysis – classifying these instances as representative of a number of common categories. the categories are in effect ad hoc: they of borne out of previous analysis and an intuition regarding the conventions (system?) of language that we have experienced.
because of this, i cannot bring myself to say that the grammar – in these instances – actually realises the attitudes – i.e. the term ‘realisation’ and its variations have a more specific meaning.
i thus pose my question of realisation for comment
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