Rebranding Speech Function (Rejection Of Offer) As Tenor (Render: Reject)

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 38-9):

However in dialogue, tendering and rendering are regularly realised together in the same move. Indeed this is often the preferred method in conversation as it allows the chat to flow smoothly from one turn to the next, with each move both ‘looking backward’ in terms of rendering something that has been said and ‘looking forward’ by tendering something to be negotiated (related to what Eggins (1990, p. 271) calls ‘Janus’ moves, that relate both forward and backward in a conversation). For example …

 … the mother’s well how about I get you dressed instead functions in two ways – rendering Kristy’s proposal by rejecting it, and tendering a new proposal (that Kristy subsequently also rejects).

The possibility of both rendering and tendering at the same time allows conversations to unfold smoothly, by reducing the number of explicit rejections. This is important for affiliation. In discourse aiming to maintain solidarity, it obviously helps to minimise rejection and maximise agreement.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] Here again the authors confuse the languaging of interlocutors with the tenor relations between the interlocutors (context).

[2] As previously explained, tendering and rendering are speech function (semantics) rebranded as tenor (context). Tendering is an initiation, whereas rendering is a response, either expected or discretionary. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 137):

To be clear, the structure of the exchange in (10) is offer ^ rejection/offer ^ rejection. That is, Kristy initiates with an offer, her mother makes a discretionary response, a rejection, by initiating an alternative offer, to which Kirsty also makes a discretionary response, a rejection.