John Bateman Positively Judging His Own Cognitive Capacity At The Expense Of Ed McDonald

When Edward McDonald responded to Brad Smith's post on 'Bureau-speak' on sys-func and sysfling:

What’s an “ontology of capabilities” when it’s at home? Or you could just as easily say a “capability of ontologies”

John Bateman replied to sysfling on 29 Nov 2019 at 21:17:

the capability of an ontology of capabilities is to formalise the notion of capabilities and set out subclasses and properties of such. 

or is a storeroom of potatoes the same as a potato of storerooms... duuh.... what's the problem? 

Beautiful prose it is not, but well within registerial norms for that discourse...
it certainly helps though if you are already comfortable with using the O-word :-)

Blogger Comments:

Appraised	Appraisal
	Polarity	Attitude
Ed McDonald	negative	judgement: capacity: cognitive
John Bateman	positive	judgement: capacity: cognitive

Incidentally, the 'Bureau-speak' in question was:

To recap, having a whole of govt architecture allows us to build an ontology of capabilities across govt. Coupled with a more agile funding model, it will allow us to move more quickly when trying new solutions and capabilities or scaling up platforms to address emerging needs.

To be clear, the reason Bateman sees no problem with the deliberate use of obfuscatory language is that he is a keen user of it himself.  See, for example, The Transitivity Of Bamboozlement.

As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 272) explain:

So the more the extent of grammatical metaphor in a text, the more that text is loaded against the learner, and against anyone who is an outsider to the register in question. It becomes elitist discourse, in which the function of constructing knowledge goes together with the function of restricting access to that knowledge, making it impenetrable to all except those who have the means of admission to the inside, or the select group of those who are already there.

It is this other potential that grammatical metaphor has, for making meaning that is obscure, arcane and exclusive, that makes it ideal as a mode of discourse for establishing and maintaining status, prestige and hierarchy, and to establish the paternalistic authority of a technocratic elite whose message is 'this is all too hard for you to understand; so leave the decision-making to us'.

Jim Martin Negatively Judging The ISFLA Executive

 Jim Martin wrote to sysfling at 22:45 on 28 July 2019:

Another issue which arose at the AGM was the non-attendance of ISFLA executive members at ISFC congresses (a glaring problem in Santiago, and in Bandung a couple of years ago). I suggest that the executive develop guidelines about the responsibilities of its members re attendance at ISFC congresses and their AGMs. Very significant decisions are made by executive members during the course of a year, without as far as I can see much discussion on sysfling or elsewhere. Our AGMs are the only mechanism we have to hold our executive to account and at least a majority of members should be present and accountable.

Blogger Comments:

Appraised	Appraisal
	Polarity	Attitude
the non-attendance of ISFLA executive members at ISFC congresses	negative	judgement: propriety
		graduation: force
very significant decisions made by ISFLA executive members without discussion	negative	judgement: propriety
the accountability of ISFLA executive members	negative	judgement: propriety

The current ISFLA Executives — all of which are unpaid volunteers — are:

Chair:	Teresa Oteiza
Deputy Chair:	Tom Bartlett
Membership Secretary:	Lise Fontaine
Recording Secretary:	Derek Irwin
Treasurers:	Carlos Gouveia(Europe) Bernie Mohan (N. America) Honglin Chen (Australia)

Note that the ISFLA executive were represented at the ISFC by its most senior office bearer, Teresa Oteiza, the chair (organiser and host) of the Congress.

Significantly, Martin has provided no evidence whatsoever for his paranoid claim that "very significant decisions are made by executive members during the course of a year" without list discussion, even after being specifically asked to do so by Mick O'Donnell.

Given that Martin (of all people!) falsely accused the late Ruqaiya Hasan of plagiarism, at a symposium held to honour her achievements, the lack of evidence here, again, for what is another false claim, is hardly surprising.  But if Martin is offered a plenary at the next ISFC — and the free accommodation and free business class air travel that it entails — then his dishonest act of intimidation will have proved successful.

In contrast, here's what Martin & Rose (2007: 62) have to say about Martin:

His communion with Mandela, at such a distance in so many respects …

David Rose Positively Judging His Own Capacity

David Rose wrote to sysfling on 19 Jun 2019 at 16:12:

Speaking of system v description, by the mid-90s we had the enormous advantages of Christian’s Lexico-Grammatical Cartography to compare grammatical systems and Jim’s English Text to compare discourse semantic functions, as well as Jim’s papers on Tagalog grammar to illustrate some outer bounds of variation. Once the corpus was assembled, with these tools The Western Desert Code took less than a year (with a bit of midnight oil) to describe at least 3 degrees of delicacy for clause and group systems, and included contrasts with English systems. 

Now we have multiple descriptions showing us how to look for variation. We really have no reason to fear anglicisation, unless IFG is the only textbook on the office shelf.

Blogger Comments:

Appraised	Appraisal
	Polarity	Attitude
Matthiessen's Lexicogrammatical Cartography	positive	appreciation: reaction
Martin's English Text	positive	appreciation: reaction
Martin's papers on Tagalog grammar	positive	appreciation: reaction
Rose writing The Western Desert Code (his PhD) in less than a year	positive	judgement: capacity

For the theoretical misunderstandings and inconsistencies in Martin's English Text, see the clarifying critiques here.

For the theoretical misunderstandings and inconsistencies in Martin & Rose's Working With Discourse, see the clarifying critiques here.

For the theoretical misunderstandings and inconsistencies in Rose's posts to email lists, see the clarifying critiques here.

With regard to the theoretical consistency of Martin's work on Tagalog grammar, as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504) diplomatically put it:

Martin, in his systemic treatment of processes in Tagalog (1996), offers a different interpretation of nuclear transitivity: he defines it in terms of orientation, rather than configuration, and hence operates with a significantly different concept of participant function.

To be clear, Rose is not concerned with the quality of the work, merely with the fact that it has been done.

Robin Fawcett Positively Judging Himself (And Jim Martin)

Robin Fawcett wrote to Sysfling on 25 Apr 2019 at 04:25:

Jim is right to recommend this short talk. It is a brief account of one of the great journalistic revelations of the last year, by a British journalist who is receiving all the awards for investigative journalism this year. This talk is an account of one of the most important contributions to our understanding of how google, Facebook et al have connived at rigging elections and referendums - and will quite probably go on doing so. 

I feel doubly involved because Carole Cadwalader [sic] is a friend of a friend.

Blogger Comments:

Appraised	Appraisal
	Polarity	Type
Jim Martin	positive	judgement: propriety
Robin Fawcett	positive	judgement: propriety
		graduation: force

Apparently, both Martin and Fawcett are "involved" in Cadwalladr's investigative journalism, only Fawcett doubly so.

From Alan Bennett's Telling Tales:

Alan, that is the biggest gasworks in England, and I know the manager.

See also Rallying The Discourse Analysts.