Cred Street

External Vs Internal Temporal Conjunction

1. External Temporal Conjunction

Halliday & Hasan (1976: 239, 240):

… it is a relation between events […] first one thing happens then another.  The time sequence […] is […] in the content of what is being said. 

… the cohesion has to be interpreted in terms of the experiential function of language; it is a relation between meanings in the sense of representations of ‘contents’, (our experience of) external reality. 

… those which exist as relations between external phenomena …

2. Internal Temporal Conjunction

Halliday & Hasan (1976: 239, 240):

The time sequence is in the speaker’s organisation of his discourse. … a relationship between different stages in the unfolding of the speaker’s communication role — the meanings he allots to himself as a participant in the total situation. 

… the cohesion has to be interpreted in terms of the interpersonal function of language; it is a relation between meanings in the sense of representations of the speaker’s own ‘stamp’ on the situation — his choice of speech role and rhetorical channel, his attitudes, his judgements and the like. 

… those which are as it were internal to the communication situation.

Internal Vs External Enhancing Relations

1. Clause Complexes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 419):

… the enhancing relation may be internal rather than external; that is, the beta-clause may relate to the enactment of the proposition or proposal realised by the alpha-clause rather than to the figure that it represents. For example, if it is not too personal an inquiry, what limits do you set… means ‘if it is not…, I ask you…’; that is, the condition is on the act of questioning, not on the content of the question.

2. Cohesive Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 545):

Many temporal conjunctives have an ‘internal’ as well as an ‘external’ interpretation; that is, the time they refer to is the temporal unfolding of the discourse itself, not the temporal sequence of the processes referred to. In terms of the functional components of semantics, it is interpersonal not experiential time.

By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

Wishful Thinking

Modulation smuggles desideration into cognition.

eg They think science should aggrandise humanity.

Interpersonal Iconicity: Semiotic And Social Distance

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 629):

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.

Logical Vs Experiential Structure

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 520): 

… the logical system, within the ideational metafunction, engenders a different type of linguistic structure from that of the experiential system. In the logical world, the parts are not constituents of an organic configuration, like the process, participants and circumstances of the clause. They are elements standing to each other in a potentially iterative relationship; and each element represents an entire process.

Dependent Clauses Vs Circumstances

A dependent clause is a logical expansion (or projection) of another clause within a (univariate) complex.

A circumstance is an experiential element of the (multivariate) function structure of a clause.