Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 76):
As examples (39)–(43) illustrate the interplay between internal and external purview allows negotiation of different aspects of semiosis to occur at the same time – the proposition or proposal being put forward and the use of language itself. Aside from some examples associated with engagement below, we will not explore in more detail the distinction between internal and external purview here. Needless to say, this distinction opens the way for highly nuanced tendering in conversation.
Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 76) close their discussion by claiming that the distinction between internal and external purview “allows negotiation of different aspects of semiosis to occur at the same time – the proposition or proposal being put forward and the use of language itself.” They then suggest this opens the way for “highly nuanced tendering in conversation.”
But as the preceding examples show, the price of this nuance is the erosion of the very categories that make exchange structure coherent. By repeatedly redescribing proposals as propositions, or by multiplying roles under a “purview” scheme, their model creates complexity without explanatory gain.
Halliday’s system already accounts for the simultaneity they want to highlight: speech function specifies what is at stake in the exchange (information vs. goods-&-services), while mood systematises the grammatical resources for negotiating it. This dual articulation is the negotiation of “different aspects of semiosis.” There is no gap here that requires “purview” to fill.
In effect, the authors promise “nuanced tendering” but achieve it by muddling categories that were already designed to capture the delicacy of interaction. What looks like theoretical sophistication is in fact redundancy and confusion.
Taken together, examples (39)–(43) reveal a consistent pattern. The authors begin with a familiar, well-differentiated set of categories from the exchange system, but in the attempt to introduce “purview” they steadily blur the lines that keep propositions, proposals, roles, and moves distinct. At each step the analysis promises nuance, but delivers redundancy: what is already accounted for in the interplay of speech function and mood is redescribed in terms that add complexity but subtract clarity. By the time they summarise with the language of “highly nuanced tendering,” what is on offer is not delicacy of analysis but a proliferation of overlapping labels. The effect is less a refinement of systemic-functional description than a displacement of it.
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