Rebranding And Circular Reasoning

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 46):

As these examples show, the use of engagement can produce a text that is very interpersonally nuanced – rendering a proposition that may or may not have been stated, while at the same time tendering a new proposition. 

This gives some insight into why humanities texts, which regularly draw heavily on engagement, can at times be such ‘heavy going’ (i.e., why they can have such strong interpersonal mass (Martin, 2017/2020) – they are responding to a range of stances in their academic community while at the same time trying to put forward a stance themselves (Doran, 2020a, 2020b; Hood, 2010, 2022).

Reviewer Comments:

[1] To be clear, these examples have simply illustrated the interpersonal semantic systems of ENGAGEMENT and SPEECH FUNCTION. The authors, however, have recategorised such propositions using the paradigmatic features 'rendering' and 'tendering', and misunderstood these semantic moves as parameters of the contextual system of tenor, despite 'tenor' referring to 'the statuses and role relationships; who is taking part in the interaction' (Halliday 1994: 390).

[2] To be clear, the authors’ explanation here is circular: humanities texts are said to be ‘heavy going’ because they exhibit strong ‘interpersonal mass’, which in turn is defined by their reliance on ENGAGEMENT resources — the very thing that supposedly makes them heavy going. No independent criterion is offered for identifying or measuring ‘interpersonal mass’ apart from the difficulty it is invoked to explain. As such, the term functions as a rebranding of the problem, not an explanation of it — offering semantic tautology in place of theoretical insight.