Interpretive Ventriloquism

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 47):

As noted above, we removed the I think from example (29) to simplify the analysis. This is because I think often marks what Halliday calls an interpersonal metaphor (or more specifically, a modality metaphor enacting explicit subjective modality; (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014, pp. 686-687). In (32) we have included it along with the previous line that includes I don’t think.

As noted above, you’re really upset about me going and you’re upset because the TV wasn’t working each tender a proposition of you’re upset… and you’re really upset that in turn source rejections to Kristy of me going and the TV wasn’t working. These analyses are shown in the two columns on the right in (32).

Reviewer Comments:

[1] To be clear, grammatical metaphor is a junctional phenomenon since it includes the meanings of both the congruent and metaphorical expressions. Accordingly, both need to be included in text analysis. Moreover, by removing the metaphor of modality from the instance, the authors not only misrepresent the text as unmodalised, but also remove the proposition realised metaphorically by the projecting clause.

[2] In example (32), the analysis becomes entangled in its own invented categories. The mother is said to tender Kristy’s emotional state ("you’re upset") while sourcing to Kristy competing reasons for that state ("me going" vs. "the TV wasn’t working"). These are then evaluated by the authors as if Kristy were herself rejecting or supporting these reasons — and as if the mother were in turn supporting or rejecting Kristy’s supposed rejections. The result is a bizarre recursive loop: the mother rejects Kristy’s rejection of “me going” and supports Kristy’s rejection of “the TV wasn’t working.” Yet Kristy expresses no such stances. The entire analysis depends on stances attributed to her by the mother and then projected back onto her by the analyst. This is not interpersonal analysis; it is interpretive ventriloquism.