David Rose Falsely Vilifying A Friend Whose Mother Had Just Died Tragically

On 9 January 2012 at 22:51 David Rose wrote on the sysfling list:

Dear Lise and colleagues Chris' behaviour has certainly discouraged me from participating in our list discussions. I was concerned some months ago about his health, but he seems fine and quite deliberate.) …  

I imagine he is also "LOL" over Lise's distress and the publicity it is giving him. (An interesting perspective on propriety.) sorry to everyone David …

David Rose soon followed this with a false apology on the sysfling list on Jan 10 at 00:10:47:

Dear colleagues What was I thinking? … Whatever the transgression I should not have taken advantage of another's vulnerability and made this private conversation public. I apologise to Chris and everyone who reads this for years to come David

Appraised	Appraisal
	Polarity	Attitude
Chris' behaviour	negative	judgement: propriety
Chris' deliberate behaviour	negative	judgement: propriety
Chris' behaviour in David’s imagination	negative	judgement: propriety
Chris' perspective on propriety	negative	judgement: propriety
Chris' transgression	negative	judgement: propriety

Sarcastically Ironic Self-Appraisal

Appraised	Appraisal
	Polarity	Attitude
David	negative	judgement: propriety

Blogger Comments:

Six months ago, I moved in with parents because my mother was distressed that she was too ill to care for my invalid father. She couldn't eat and had difficulty breathing. In July, she had her lung drained twice while she was shunted around from specialist to specialist trying to diagnose the cause of the illness. In August, she underwent surgery (pleurodesis) which was unsuccessful and almost killed her. It was about this time that she was diagnosed as having mesothelioma, the cancer caused by asbestos — my father had worked in the James Hardie factory making fibro, and she had washed his overalls. She spent the next 4 months in a nursing home, throwing up most of her food and water, and gradually losing so much weight she came to look like an inmate of Auschwitz or Changi. She was admitted to hospital before Christmas and died there on December 29. Her funeral was 5 days ago on January 4. There is no "LOL" going on here.

Postscript:

When David Rose sent his post to sysfling, he was fully aware that I had been caring for my dying mother and invalid father. My partner had responded to his email to her telling him so "some months ago" when he was "concerned" about my "health". My father has since died from grief and the guilt he wrongly felt; he stopped taking his heart medication, after pleading with me several times to kill him.

Incidentally, this email thread was begun by Jim Martin, who also knew my mother was dying of mesothelioma when he posted it. I had previously helped Jim Martin through his marriage break up, and had helped more than a dozen of his PhD students with their theses, including, in one case, providing the three big ideas that sold the thesis to at least one of the examiners. 

Jim Martin later went on to falsely accuse the late Ruqaiya Hasan of plagiarism at a symposium convened, after her death, to honour her lifelong work, and when pressed (off-list) to retract, he only acknowledged the falsehood of his claim; he made no apology for his behaviour.

On the question of plagiarism, see here (English Text), here (Working With Discourse) and here (paralanguage).

Moreover, at the time, neither I or my partner had any income, and we were more than $8,000 in debt, paying credit card rates of interest. We had been forced to move in with my partner's elderly father, 100 kms away, and to put all our possessions into storage. (Because I inherited a neurological impairment from my father, I am unable to earn a living from lecturing or even tutoring.)

Keep all this in mind next time you hear someone extol the virtues of Jim Martin and David Rose. Truth will out, eventually.

Robin Fawcett Dishonestly Misrepresenting The Content Of CLÉiRIGh's SFL Blogs

Robin Fawcett on 9 January 2012 wrote to sysfling:

I have checked on those blogs that refer to the model of language known as 'the Cardiff Grammar' … they show no understanding of the alternative SFL framework that they criticise; and they are almost completely lacking in reasons for their critical stance, simply presenting quotations from IFG as a self-evident proof that the IFG approach is the correct one, so assigning it an unquestioned authority.

Appraised	Appraisal
	Polarity	Attitude
the blogs now merged as Thoughts That Cross My Mind	negative	judgement: capacity

Blogger Comments:

The only comments on the derived Cardiff model are those made by Halliday and Matthiessen (1999, 2004), and these are presented explicitly as quotes.  Readers can decide for themselves whether Halliday and Matthiessen understand the Cardiff model by viewing their comments here.

All the critiques of Fawcett, then and since, focus exclusively on his understanding of Halliday's original theory.  These can be viewed here.

Readers can decide for themselves whether or not Fawcett knew that he was publicly misrepresenting the content of the blogs.

This message was one of a barrage I was subjected to on sysfling during the week of my mother's funeral, which came at the end of six months of caring for her and my invalid father.  She died of mesothelioma, the cancer caused by asbestos, from washing my father's factory overalls in the 1960s, as she was required to by his employer, Jamies Hardie.  My distraught father has since died, by discontinuing his heart medication — that is, from grief and the guilt he wrongly felt.

One of my original motivations for creating the blogs was Fawcett's previous dishonest treatment of me on Sysfling in the very week I moved in with my parents to care for them.  This can be viewed here.  Critiques of this, and Fawcett's previous relevant sysfling post, can be viewed here.