Subjunctively Telling God What To Do

Consider the following clauses (queried on sys-func) uttered by a priest as part of the Catholic mass:

The Lord	be	with you
Medium	Process	circumstantial Range
Subject: marked	Predicator	Adjunct
Mood	Residue

God	bless	you
Agent	Process	Medium
Subject: marked	Predicator	Complement
Mood	Residue

God	forgive	you	your sins
Agent	Process	Beneficiary	Medium
Subject: marked	Predicator	Complement	Complement
Mood	Residue

In terms of interpersonal semantics, these are instances of the minor speech function that Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 196) term 'well-wishing', which they group with salutations and valedictions as greetings.  (Subjunctive mood in English is theorised by Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 143) as a system of the verbal group, subjunctive mode, rather than of the clause.)

As wishes, they are topologically closer to the major speech function 'proposal', than to 'proposition', because the process of wishing projects proposals, rather than propositions. And this is shown by the fact that the clauses are realised grammatically by imperative mood, the congruent realisation of the proposal 'command'.

How then to explain the marked Subject (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 194-5) of these imperative clauses, through which a lowly priest is demanding (goods-&-)services of his Supreme Being? One way to explain it is in terms of tenor.

In the service of the Catholic mass, the priest acts as the earthly representative of the Christian God.  In enacting this tenor rôle, he reassures the congregation, on behalf of God, with meanings that would be congruently realised as:

the Lord is with you
God blesses you,
God forgives you your sins

The Lord	is		with you
Medium	Process		circumstantial Range
Subject	Finite	Predicator	Adjunct
Mood		Residue

 

God	blesses		you
Agent	Process		Medium
Subject	Finite	Predicator	Complement
Mood		Residue

God	forgives		you	your sins
Agent	Process		Beneficiary	Medium
Subject	Finite	Predicator	Complement	Complement
Mood		Residue

On this interpretation, the clauses spoken by the priest are instances of interpersonal metaphor in which statements — which are congruently realised by declarative clauses — are realised incongruently as imperative clauses.

This explains both the presence of the marked Subjects in the imperative clauses, and the inappropriate tenor of a human giving commands to a deity.

[This analysis was privately sent to the inquirer, Gareth Gilbert-Hughes, on 12 August 2019. Receipt was not acknowledged.]


Postscript:

Note that if the priest says, instead:

• May the Lord be with you
• May God bless you
• May God forgive you your sins

he risks losing the enactment of the superior tenor rôle of representing the Christian God, since these well-wishings can be exchanged by priest and parishioner alike; they are not necessarily wordings exclusive to the priest.

This explicitly identifies a further function of the metaphorical forms (implicit in the original analysis).