Thursday 31 October 2013

Ideational Metaphor: Textual And Interpersonal Significance

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 642):
The textual and interpersonal effects of ideational metaphor are due to the fact the realignment of ideational patterns […] also means that there is a realignment of the textual and interpersonal environments in which ideational systems operate.

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Ideational Metaphor As An Experientialisation Of Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 642):
Within the ideational metafunction, the general effect of this realignment in the semantic system is a shift from the logical to the experiential — an experientialisation of experience. Thus logical sequences of figures are reconstrued as experiential configurations of elements.

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Ideational Metaphor: Loss Of Ideational Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 642):
… the tactic patterns of clause complexing (with the distinction between paratactic interdependency and hypotactic dependency) are not available to sequences that are realised metaphorically as clauses, and the configurational patterns of participant rôles are lost or obscured when figures are realised as groups or phrases.

Monday 28 October 2013

Ideational Metaphor: Expanding And Contracting Potential

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 641-2):
… the metaphorical mode thus makes available a great deal of further ideational potential that is not accessible in the congruent mode. At the same time, the metaphorical mode also denies access to significant aspects of potential that is associated with the congruent mode: there is a loss of ideational meaning.

Sunday 27 October 2013

The Underlying Significance Of Re-Mappings Between Semantics And Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 640):
… the ideational metafunction is a resource for construing our experience of the world that lies around us and inside us. In the congruent mode, the grammar construes sequences (of figures), figures and elements as the basic phenomena of experience… . In the metaphorical mode, the model is enriched through combinations of these categories: in addition to the congruent categories, we now also have metaphorical combinations of categories — sequences construed as figures, figures construed as elements, and so on. These combinations open up new meaning potential.

Saturday 26 October 2013

Ideational Metaphor: Why Realisational Re-Mappings Are Possible [Transgrammatical Semantic Domains]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 640):
The ‘re-mapping’ is possible because semantic motifs such as cause are manifested repeatedly in the different environments of the grammar so that each environment is a possible domain of realisation for such a motif. These motifs are of the two primary types, expansion and projection

Friday 25 October 2013

Ideational Metaphor As Realisational Re-Mappings

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 639):
… grammatical metaphor within the ideational metafunction involves a ‘re-mapping’ between sequences, figures and elements in the semantics and clause nexuses, clauses and groups in the grammar. … In the metaphorical mode, the whole set of mappings seems to be shifted ‘downwards’: a sequence is realised by a clause, a figure is realised by a group, and an element is realised by a word.

Thursday 24 October 2013

Metaphor: Additional Layers Of Meaning And Wording

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 638):
Just like interpersonal metaphor, ideational metaphor introduces additional layers of meaning that are construed by the grammar as additional layers of wording.

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Ideational Metaphor: Ontogenesis

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 636):
Unlike interpersonal metaphor, the other type of grammatical metaphor, ideational metaphor, is learned later by children and is not part of the grammar of ordinary, spontaneous conversation that children meet in the home and neighbourhood; rather it is associated with the discourses of education and science, bureaucracy and the law. Children are likely to meet the ideational type of metaphor when they reach the upper levels of primary school; but its full force will only appear when they begin to grapple with the specialised discourses of subject-based secondary education.

Tuesday 22 October 2013

The Metaphorical Expansion Of Interpersonal Meaning Potential

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 636):
The expansion of the interpersonal semantic system through grammatical metaphor provides speakers with additional, powerful resources for enacting social rôles and relations in the complex network of relations that make up the fabric of a community of any kind.

Monday 21 October 2013

The Interpersonal Metafunction And The Ontogenesis Of Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 636):
The interpersonal metafunction defines the environment in which children first learn the strategy of grammatical metaphor [a manifestation of a more general principle]. No doubt this is partly because interpersonal metaphors tend to make selections more explicit, as when probability is realised by a ‘mental’ clause projecting the modalised proposition (‘explicit’ orientation), and partly because the interpretation of interpersonal metaphors is often both supported and ‘tested’ immediately in the ongoing dialogic interaction.

Sunday 20 October 2013

Representing Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 634):
Both interpersonal and ideational metaphors can be represented in the same way, by postulating some congruent form and then analysing the two in relation to each other.

Saturday 19 October 2013

Metaphors Of Mood: Commands Realised As Indicative Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 632-3):
In addition to metaphors based on ideational projection, there are other kinds of metaphors of mood as well. One prominent type involves a shift in the realisational domain of commands from ‘imperative’ to ‘indicative’ clauses. The ‘indicative’ clause can be either ‘declarative’ or ‘interrogative’; … The ‘indicative’ realisation of proposals has the effect of blurring the line between proposals directed to the addressee and propositions about how the world ought to be.

Friday 18 October 2013

Interpersonal Iconicity: Semiotic And Social Distance

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 631):
The potential for negotiation in dialogue created by metaphors of mood is directly related to the contextual variables of tenor. These are usually discussed in terms of status, formality and politeness. What they have in common is a very general sense of the social distance between the speaker and the addressee. Here interpersonal metaphor is part of a principle of interpersonal iconicity: metaphorical variants create a greater semiotic distance between meaning and wording, and this enacts a greater social distance between speaker and addressee.

Thursday 17 October 2013

Speech Function And Interpersonal Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 627):
… just like modality, speech function can be represented as a substantive proposition in its own right; and this proposition is a figure of sensing or saying that projects the original (i) proposal or (ii) proposition… .

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Imperative Mood And Modulation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 627):
On the one hand, an ‘imperative’ clause imposes an obligation; on the other hand, the imperative tag checks the addressee’s inclination to comply… .

Tuesday 15 October 2013

Interpersonal Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 626):
Interpersonal projection always involves the speaker or addressee as ‘projector’… . It is always implicit unless it is made explicit through grammatical metaphor, by ‘co-opting’ ideational resources to do interpersonal service.

Monday 14 October 2013

The Metaphoric Strategy In Explicit Modality

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 626):
The metaphoric strategy is to upgrade the interpersonal assessment from group rank to clause rank — from an adverbial group or prepositional phrase serving within a simple clause to a clause serving within a clause nexus of projection.

Sunday 13 October 2013

The Systemic Effect Of Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor


Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 626):
Systemically, metaphor leads to an expansion of the meaning potential: by creating new patterns of structural realisation, it opens up new systemic domains of meaning.  And it is the pressure to expand the meaning potential that in fact lies behind the development of metaphorical modes of meaning.  Thus in the system of modality, the system of orientation is expanded by the addition of a systemic contrast in manifestation between ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’…

Saturday 12 October 2013

The General Effect Of Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 626):
…the semantic domain of modality is extended through grammatical metaphor to include explicit indications of subjective and objective orientation: a modal proposition or proposal is realised, as if it were a projection sequence, by a nexus of two clauses, rather than by a single clause. Here the modal assessment itself is given the status of a proposition in its own right; but because the projecting clause of the nexus is metaphorical in nature, standing for an interpersonal assessment of modality, it is also, at the same time, a modal Adjunct in the clause realising the proposition/proposal. This is the general effect of grammatical metaphor: it construes additional layers of meaning and wording.

Friday 11 October 2013

The Apparent Paradox Of Modality

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 624-5):
The importance of modal features in the grammar of interpersonal exchanges lie in an apparent paradox on which the entire system rests — the fact that we only say we are certain when we are not.

Thursday 10 October 2013

Modality: Why Explicit Forms Are Metaphorical

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 624):
The explicitly subjective and explicitly objective forms of modality are all strictly speaking metaphorical, since all of them represent the modality as being the substantive proposition. Modality represents the speaker’s angle, either on the validity of the assertion or on the rights and wrongs of the proposal; in its congruent form, it is an adjunct to a proposition rather than a proposition in its own right.

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Ability/Potentiality

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 621):
This is on the fringe of the modality system.  It has the different orientations of subjective (implicit only) realised by can/can’t, objective implicit by be able to, and objective explicit by it is possible (for …) to.  In the last of these, the typical meaning is ‘potentiality’… .  In the subjective it is closer to inclination; we could recognise a general category of ‘readiness’, having ‘inclination’ and ‘ability’ as subcategories at one end of the scale… .  In any case can in this sense is untypical of the modal operators: it is the only case where the oblique form functions as a simple past

Tuesday 8 October 2013

Modality Variables


Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 619ff):
The basic distinction that determines how each type of modality will be realised is the orientation: that is, the distinction between subjective and objective modality, and between the explicit and implicit variants… .  The third variable in modality is the value that is attached to the modal judgement: high, median or low. … The median value is clearly set apart from the two ‘outer’ values by the system of polarity: the median is that in which the negative is freely transferable between the proposition and the modality… .  With the outer values, on the other hand, if the negative is transferred the value switches (either from high to low, or from low to high)… .  This generates a set of 4x4x3x3 = 144 categories of modality. … The actual number of systematic distinctions that are made in this corner of the language runs well into the tens of thousands;

Monday 7 October 2013

Modulation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 618):
If the clause is a ‘goods–&–services’ clause (a proposal, which has no real congruent form in the grammar, but by default we can characterise it as imperative), it means either (i) ‘is wanted to’, related to a command, or (ii) ‘wants to’, related to an offer; in other words, some degree of obligation [‘deontic’ modality] or inclination. … Note that modulation refers to the semantic category of proposals; but all modalities are realised as indicative (that is, as if they were propositions).

Sunday 6 October 2013

Modalisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 618):
If the clause is an ‘information’ clause (a proposition, congruently realised as indicative), this means either (i) ‘either yes or no’, that is, ‘maybe’; or (ii) ‘both yes and no’, that is, ‘sometimes’; in other words, some degree of probability [‘epistemic’ modality] or usuality.

Saturday 5 October 2013

Modality [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 618):
Modality refers to the area of meaning that lies between yes and no — the intermediate ground between positive and negative polarity.

Friday 4 October 2013

Metaphorical Realisation Of Probability

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 615-6):
What happens is that, in order to state explicitly that the probability is subjective, or alternatively, at the other end, to claim explicitly that the probability is objective, the speaker construes the proposition as a projection and encodes the subjectivity (I think), or the objectivity (it is likely), in a projecting clause.  (There are other forms intermediate between the explicit and implicit: subjective in my opinion, objective in all probability, where the modality is expressed as a prepositional phrase, which is a kind of halfway house between clausal and non-clausal status.)

Thursday 3 October 2013

Mental Clause As Metaphorical Realisation Of Probability

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 614):
What’s happened here is that there has been a realignment in the realisational relationship between semantics and grammar. … a modalised proposition is realised as if it was a sequence, by a clause nexus of projection.  The effect is that the modality and the modalised proposition are separated, each being realised by a clause in its own right…

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Mental Clause As Metaphorical Realisation Of Probability

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 614):
…the probability is realised by a mental clause as if it were a figure of sensing.  Being metaphorical, the clause serves not only as the projecting part of a clause nexus of projection, but also as a mood Adjunct, just as probably does.  The reason for regarding this as a metaphorical variant is that the proposition is not, in fact, ‘I think”; the proposition is ‘it is so’.  This is shown clearly by the tag… .  It is the fact that a mental clause is a modal clause and serves as mood Adjunct that explains the tag… the Mood tag picks up the Mood element of the modalised proposition… .

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Why Clausal Assessment Can Be Transformed Into Nominal Assessment

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 613):
The range of assessments assigned to propositions within the domain of the clause and the range of assessments assigned to things within the domain of the nominal group are not, of course, the same. They overlap; but there are kinds of assessment specific to the realm of propositions just as there are other kinds specific to the realm of things. The common foundation is that they are both projections of the speaker’s assessment. This explains why clausal assessment can in fact be transformed into nominal assessment…