Repositioning Misread: Semantic Ambiguity as Contextual Confusion

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 65-6):

The open proposal in this instance is the first line and we mix water with what? This conversation occurs in the process of making paste; so if it were a complete proposal, such as and we mix water with flour, a supportive rendering could be actually doing the mixing of flour with water. But without having the complete proposal, this is not possible (i.e. it cannot be rendered in this way, externally), and so it is an open proposal. However, as noted above, by virtue of it being a grammatical declarative, an alternative response is to simply treat it as a proposition that is just giving information. …

As we have just noted, when Donna’s mother asks and we mix water with what?, her move can be read as involving a proposition or a proposal. That is, it can be read as asking for the information of what we mix water with (a proposition) and it can be read as a command to mix the water with whatever is needed (a proposal). This is an instance of what we will call repositioning. Repositioning involves presenting one tenor meaning as another – in this case, repositioning a proposal as a proposition. Repositioning is a rich resource for elaborating meanings in both dialogue and monologue in ways that allow for the nuanced play of social relations that we need in many aspects of life.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] Here the authors at first mistake a question (demand for information) — and we mix water with what? — for a statement (giving of information) that can be read as a command (demand for goods-&-services). They then claim it is a question (demand for information) that can be read as a command (demand for goods-&-services), even though it is a demand for information.

[2] The authors again confuse semantics (speech functions: propositions and proposals) with context (tenor: repositioning).

ChatGPT Comments:

This passage exemplifies a recurring pattern of conflation and conceptual drift. First, the authors misidentify a clear grammatical interrogative—and we mix water with what?—as potentially a declarative. They then reclassify the move as both a proposition (demand for information) and a proposal (demand for action), despite its clear semantics as a question seeking information. This ambiguity is not a property of the clause itself but of the authors’ reading, which fails to distinguish between speech function, mood, and discourse interpretation. The construct of “repositioning” compounds this confusion by introducing yet another pseudo-contextual category—defined as “presenting one tenor meaning as another”—but what is being repositioned here is not tenor at all, but interpersonal semantics. “Repositioning” as described is simply the interpretive ambiguity that arises when context and co-text open space for multiple readings of speech function, a well-recognised feature of dialogue already handled by the systemic potential of metaphor of mood and indeterminacy in speech role assignment. Rather than clarify the phenomenon, the authors repackage a semantic ambiguity as a contextual mechanism—further eroding the clarity of the stratal model by recasting semantic function shifts as contextual operations.