Confusing Language With Theory

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 39):

More generally, the relatively simple distinctions we have introduced so far help us deal in broad terms with two of our main concerns with regard to dialogue. First, the options in rendering offer a set of resources for negotiating feelings in dialogue, and so bring together attitude and exchange in discourse semantics. Second, the conflation of tendering and rendering offers a resource for chaining stretches of dialogue together and realising prosodic and indefinitely extended phases of chat.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] As previously demonstrated, the relatively simple distinctions the authors have introduced are those of Halliday's interpersonal semantics, rebranded and misunderstood as tenor.

[2] This confuses language with theory. These resources are those of language. The conflation of tendering and rendering is a way of modelling these resources. Moreover, this conflation merely acknowledges that responses can initiate further responses.