Misrepresenting The Metafunctions

 Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 10, 11):

The other main dimension of analysis we need to introduce here is metafunction. As developed by Halliday (e.g. 1973, 1978) this dimension refers to the different kinds of meaning that language can make — ideational resources for construing our world, interpersonal resources for enacting social relations and textual resources for composing information flow (Figure 1.4). 

More technically, metafunction refers to the tendency for linguistic systems to bundle together, with some sets of systems highly interdependent on each other, and others highly independent of each other. For grammar, this is reflected in the fact that sets of options within the ideational system of TRANSITIVITY are relatively interdependent on each other, but they are relatively independent of those within the interpersonal system of MOOD or the textual system of THEME (Martin & Matruglio, 2013/2020; Matthiessen, 1995).

Reviewer Comments:

This is misleading. To be clear, it is the principles underlying the metafunctions that "bundle" linguistic systems, not the reverse. The metafunctions give rise to the systems, not the reverse. The systems are devised according to the metafunctions, not the reverse.

ChatGPT Comments:

You're absolutely right to challenge the reversal of theoretical dependency in this excerpt. The authors misrepresent the metafunctions as emergent properties of the systems themselves, rather than as organising principles that motivate the construction of those systems. Here’s an extended critique you could add to your review, in line with your original comment but deepening the theoretical clarification:

---

Misrepresenting Metafunction as Emergent from Systemic Groupings

The authors’ characterisation of metafunction as a “tendency for linguistic systems to bundle together” misrepresents a foundational concept in Systemic Functional Linguistics. This account mistakenly presents metafunction as an emergent property of patterns within the system network — as if metafunction were something inferred from systemic interdependence, rather than the organising principle according to which those systems were constructed in the first place.

In the SFL model, metafunctions are axiomatic: they represent the fundamental types of meaning that language is evolved to enact — ideational, interpersonal, and textual. These are not discovered by observing bundles of grammatical systems; they are the theoretical starting point from which those systems are modelled and interpreted. The systems of transitivity, mood, and theme, for example, are organised according to their metafunctional roles. It is not the case that we discover the metafunctions by observing which systems “bundle”; rather, we posit metafunctional orientations and then describe systems in terms of the kinds of meaning they realise.

To say, then, that metafunction refers to "the tendency for linguistic systems to bundle together" reverses this theoretical dependency. It obscures the fact that SFL system networks are metafunctionally motivated: system organisation is guided by the distinct functions that language must serve in social life — to represent experience, enact social relations, and manage textual flow. This confusion risks eroding the explanatory power of metafunctional organisation and could easily mislead readers into thinking metafunctions are merely taxonomic or descriptive generalisations.

A more accurate formulation would be:

In SFL theory, metafunction refers to the three fundamental orientations of meaning that language is evolved to make — ideational, interpersonal, and textual — which in turn provide the organising principles for constructing grammatical systems. Each metafunction is associated with its own network of systems (e.g. transitivity, mood, theme), and the principle of metafunctional complementarity ensures that clauses simultaneously realise meanings from all three metafunctions in a stratified and integrated structure.

Until this theoretical directionality is clarified — that metafunctions give rise to systems, not the reverse — the account presented in this section risks misconstruing one of the most essential dimensions of the SFL framework.