Misrepresenting Exchange Responses As Tenor

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 33, 34):

Another resource for rendering involves the use of positive or negative attitude that targets the tendered proposition. This is illustrated in the following sequence from a high school physics class in which a student tenders a description of a physics principle known as Bohr’s first postulate. The teacher renders this move with the positive evaluation Good (what in a pedagogical context Rose (2018) calls an Affirm move).

In classrooms, teachers will often render support for a students’ response simply by replaying it – (3) for example follows the teacher asking: ‘And what did Maxwell say that accelerating charges do? They emit…’.

In conversational texts, someone can render a position by replaying the evaluative attitude, rather than the ideational meanings themselves – as in the text message exchange in (4).

These examples highlight the parallels between polarity in the lexicogrammar (Mood Adjuncts such as yes and no, not and never) and 'polarity' in discourse semantics (realised through positive or negative attitude, e.g., good vs bad; (Martin, 2020)). Both can be used to support or to reject a tendered proposition. …

Tendering and rendering offer a basic choice for negotiating meaning in tenor – as speakers put a position forward or to react to that position. Both tendering and rendering can be enacted in a number of ways to perform a wide range of functions.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is language (exchange), not context (tenor). The 'tender' by the student is the authors' rebranding of an initiating statement, and the 'render' by the teacher is their rebranding of a responding acknowledgement, a statement realised by an ellipsed clause that's good.

[2] Again, this is language (exchange), not context (tenor). The 'tender' by the student is the authors' rebranding of an initiating statement, and the 'render' by the teacher is their rebranding of a responding acknowledgement, a statement.

[3] Again, this is language (exchange), not context (tenor). The 'tender' by Jessie is the authors' rebranding of an initiating statement, and the 'render' by Alex is their rebranding of a responding acknowledgement, a statement realised by an ellipsed clause that's pretty unexpected.

[4] To be clear, it is the speech function realised by the ellipsed clause that acknowledges or contradicts the initiating proposition. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 137):

[5] To be clear, this confuses language (negotiating meaning in discourse) with context (tenor: who is taking part in terms of the culture).