Misunderstanding Social Context As Non-Semiotic

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 21):

As this overview shows, field, tenor, and mode as variables within the realisation hierarchy are not the be-all and end-all of our view of social context. To take seriously the integration of semiosis and society, we need a much richer model. 

Our ultimate aim in this book is to develop a model of tenor (realisation) which accounts for the contribution interpersonal meaning makes to negotiating association (instantiation) by way of membering communities in culture (individuation) – so that we can move toward comprehensively appreciating the interaction of the social and the semiotic.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] As the review of this overview demonstrates, this claim is made on the basis of the authors' misunderstandings of the architecture of language as proposed by SFL Theory. It is not a richer model that is needed, but a richer understanding of the model.

[2] This seriously misunderstands the notion of social context. In SFL Theory, context is semiotic: it is the culture modelled as a semiotic system. In Hjelmslevian terms, context is the content plane, and language the expression plane, of a connotative semiotic. The relation between context and language is symbolic identity; they two levels of abstraction of the one identity. Not only is context realised by language, but language construes — intellectually constructs — context.

[3] This further compounds the authors' misunderstanding of context as non-semiotic by misunderstanding the stratal relation between context and language as an interaction of modules — a misunderstanding that has persisted since Martin (1992: 390, 488):

Each of the presentations of linguistic text forming resources considered above adopted a modular perspective. As far as English Text is concerned this has two main dimensions: stratification, and within strata, metafunction. …

The problem addressed is a fundamental concern of modular models of semiosis — namely, once modules are distinguished, how do they interface? What is the nature of the conversation among components?

ChatGPT Comments:

Review Critique: Misunderstanding the Nature of Context and the Architecture of the System

This passage encapsulates several of the core misunderstandings that undermine the theoretical basis of the book. The claim that “field, tenor, and mode as variables within the realisation hierarchy are not the be-all and end-all of our view of social context” appears to position the authors’ model as an enrichment of the standard SFL framework. But as the review of the preceding excerpts makes clear, this claim is not based on a deeper extension of theory, but on fundamental misunderstandings of the theory’s architecture. What is needed is not a richer model, but a richer understanding of the model already in place.

First, this passage seriously misconstrues the nature of social context in SFL theory. In SFL, context is not external to semiosis; it is a semiotic system. Specifically, it is the culture modelled as a meaning potential — a higher-order stratum in the symbolic hierarchy, realised by language and construed through it. In Hjelmslevian terms (which underpin the theory’s architecture), context is the content plane, and language the expression plane, of a connotative semiotic. That is, language is the semiotic realisation of culture. To treat context as if it were non-semiotic — or as if it required an “integration” with semiosis — is to misread both levels of abstraction and the relation of symbolic identity that connects them.

This confusion is exacerbated by a deeper and longstanding theoretical error: the treatment of strata as modules which “interface” or “interact,” as if the symbolic architecture were composed of independent processing systems rather than levels of abstraction. This modular metaphor appears explicitly in Martin (1992: 390, 488), and is reproduced here in the idea that semiosis and society must be “integrated” through new interfacing mechanisms like “association” and “membering.” But in a properly stratified semiotic model, no such interface is required: context and language are distinct projections of the same meaning-making potential, realised through symbolic identity — not through interaction or modular communication.

The result is a theoretical incoherence: the authors propose a model of tenor that draws together realisation, instantiation, and individuation, but do so by treating them as separate “modules” that must somehow be coordinated, rather than as perspectival dimensions of a unified semiotic system. They offer a narrative of “integrating” the social and the semiotic, but in doing so, they detach the social from the semiotic, treating context as if it were outside the system, rather than a stratum within it.

In short, the passage illustrates a conceptual drift from SFL’s foundational principles. The so-called “integration” of semiosis and society presented here presupposes a false separation of what SFL already models as integrated through stratification, realisation, and symbolic identity. This drift not only undermines the theoretical coherence of the proposed tenor model — it also obscures the elegance and explanatory power of the existing systemic-functional framework.