Questions regarding a suspected dangling modifier

Question

I recently came across a sentence that goes “As a father, it's my job to respect my son's opinion.” In this sentence, the prepositional phrase “as a father” is describing me (the noun “I”). However, this prepositional phrase is not placed right before the noun “my”. Is this sentence ungrammatical? Is there a dangling modifier?

I have another two sets of examples below. Am I right that e.g. 1 is correct whereas e.g. 2 is ungrammatical (ungrammatical in the sense that there is a dangling modifier)?

E.g. 1 As a politician, Johnny should not respond to citizens on the other side of the political spectrum in this way.
E.g. 2 As a politician, the way Johnny responded to citizens on the other side of the political spectrum was unacceptable.

How about this set of sentences? am I right that e.g. 3 is ungrammatical whereas e.g. 4 is grammatical?

e.g. 3 As a die-hard fan of Barack Obama, it is my honour to have a personal chat with him.
e.g. 4 As a die-hard fan of Barack Obama, I am honoured to have a personal chat with him.

Answer 1

On page 38 of Fowler's Modern English Usage (2nd edition revised by Sir Ernest Gowers), we can read:

7. As = in the capacity of. When this is used, care must be taken to avoid the mistake corresponding to what is called the UNATTACHED PARTICIPLE; we can say He gave this advice as leader of the opposition, or This advice was given by him as leader, he and him supplying the point of attachment; but we cannot say The advice which he tendered to the Peers was given as leader of the opposition. The writer of the following has fallen into this trap through being in too great a hurry with his that: I should like to say that as a social worker in this field, without exception, no contraceptive technique had been applied by any of the young women who came to me for assistance.

According to Fowler, for the appositive to be correct the referent has to be the subject or the agent of the same clause. I'd add that the referent can also be the object, as in: This advice was given to me as a junior.

In:

As a politician, the way Johnny responded to citizens on the other side of the political spectrum was unacceptable.

"Johnny" is the subject of a relative clause (the way (in which) Johnny responded...) and "as a politician" is thus unattached or dangling because it belongs to the main clause.

I have found no references to possessives functioning as antecedents, but I think anteposed "as"-phrases are acceptable with nouns like job, position, role, goal, etc. because they complementize such nouns, the only peculiarity being that, unlike normal complements, those phrases appear before the nouns they refer to:

• My job as a father ...
• As a father, my job ...

That is why I find this sentence:

As a father, it's my job to respect my son's opinion.

(= It's my job as a father to respect my son's opinion.)

more acceptable than this one ("as a die-heart fan..." does not complementize "honour"):

As a die-heart fan of Barack Obama, it is my honour to have a personal chat with him.

Answer 2

To add to Gustavson's answer, "as a(n) X" is not an appositive phrase. An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that provides an alternative description of the subject and stands side by side with it:

John, a politician, was fond of speaking to the public. (John is a politician, and he's fond of speaking to the public)

"As a(n) X" is a prepositional phrase and doesn't just alternatively describe the subject, but also implies causality between being X and the rest of the sentence:

John, as a politician, was fond of speaking to the public. (John is fond of speaking to the public because he's a politician)

So, your googling got you a bit of a red herring.