Misunderstanding Context-Metafunction Resonance

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 16):

A key motivation for this reconsideration was that many of the features typically considered as part of mode (e.g., context-dependency) and field (e.g., the specialisation and complexity of meaning) are realised across metafunctions. This clashes with the principle that there should be a link between metafunctions and register variables – field tending to be realised by ideational meaning and mode tending to be realised by textual meaning. The conceptualisation of mass and presence as transmetafunctional concepts allows for field and mode to be reconfigured in a way that maintains this register-metafunction hook-up (for what this looks like for field, see (Doran & Martin, 2021)).

Reviewer Comments:

[1] As previously explained, context-metafunction resonance ("hook-up") means

• differences in field are realised by differences in ideational meaning,
• differences in tenor are realised by differences in interpersonal meaning, and
• differences in mode are realised by differences in textual meaning.

Here, as before, the authors misunderstand context-metafunction resonance to mean an exclusive relation between context and language on the basis of metafunction.

[2] As previously explained, the notion of 'transmetafunctional concepts' derives from misunderstanding the dimension of metafunction as a scale of delicacy.