Tuesday, 22 December 2020

Reactance

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 27-8):
The concept of reactance is particularly significant for our purposes where it involves a relationship between an ideational category and features of other metafunctions, interpersonal or textual. For instance, the interpersonal grammar provides for participants, within the ideational dimension of the clause, to function as Subjects; but this potential is not in general open to circumstances, and this is a principal reason for distinguishing these two classes within the ideational metafunction. Among reactances from the interpersonal and textual components of the grammar, we could mention the following:
interpersonal:
can/ cannot serve as Subject
can/ cannot serve as 'focus' of alternative question
can/ cannot serve as Wh element

textual:
can/ cannot serve as Theme
can/ cannot serve as 'focus' of theme predication (it is... that...)
can/ cannot be presumed by substitution/ ellipsis