Purview without System: Why ‘Share’ and ‘Air’ Misfire

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 74):

These four options of assert, share, pose and air, offer resources for seeing how speakers nuance meanings in text and talk, so as to build affiliation and minimise the risk of a negative response. As Table 3.1 shows, they can be seen as arising from two variables, namely ± speaker purview and ± listener purview.

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The table is presented as a two-variable system:

• ± speaker purview

• ± listener purview

This yields a four-cell typology: share, assert, pose, air.

At first glance, it looks neat. But there are two deep problems:

1. Category mistake in the dimensions themselves.

   • “Speaker purview” and “listener purview” are not interpersonal systems in Halliday’s sense. They are interpretations of stance and epistemic alignment—second-order construals of talk—rather than actual options available in the system network.

   • In other words: they treat what is negotiated in dialogue (who knows, who doesn’t) as if it were an input variable of the system. This is upside down: purview is construed in negotiation, not pre-given for system entry.

2. Misplaced systemics: projecting stance onto speech function.

   • The canonical SPEECH FUNCTION system already accounts for whether a speaker demands or gives information, and whether they do so congruently (declarative, interrogative) or metaphorically.

   • “Airing” and “sharing” are really evaluative stances realised by hedges, modal adjuncts, projection, or prosody—not distinct speech functions. To elevate them to the same systemic status as assert or pose is to flatten the delicate layering of semantics and conflate system with strategy.

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Where the table breaks down

• Assert and pose correspond roughly (if loosely) to canonical options in SFL: asserting propositions vs posing questions.

• Share and air are parasitic: they depend entirely on construing stance toward knowledge (epistemic solidarity, hedged ignorance). These are better treated as resources of appraisal, modality, or projection.

So the table looks like a “system,” but it’s actually a hybrid of speech function and stance alignment, mixing strata and ranks. That’s why it appears plausible at first, but collapses under theoretical scrutiny.

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A Square Peg Typology

When Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 74) finally formalise their four options in Table 3.1, the conceptual problem is exposed with striking clarity:

	Listener purview	No listener purview
Speaker purview	share	assert
No speaker purview	pose	air

On first glance, this looks like a neat systemic table. But an SFL reader will immediately see that “share” and “air” are not co-ordinates of the same order as “assert” and “pose.” They are not genuine options in a semantic system, but reformulations of stance or attitude toward participation.

The conflation is two-fold:

1. System and stance are treated as interchangeable. What belongs to the interpersonal system of SPEECH FUNCTION (assert/pose) is here combined with ways of orienting toward epistemic responsibility (share/air).

2. Dimensions of purview are mis-specified. “Speaker purview” is confused with the basic contrast of MOOD (declarative vs interrogative), while “listener purview” imports a participation effect that does not stratify with the system itself.

The table therefore produces a spurious typology. It suggests a system of four options where in fact two are categories and two are contextual glosses. The result is not a genuine systemic description but a square peg typology — forcing unlike phenomena into the same analytic frame.

What this shows is not the subtlety of affiliation, but the danger of confusing system with stance: once the orders of abstraction are collapsed, a table can be filled but theory is emptied.