Summary of Chapter 4

1. Conflation of tenor and language

Throughout Chapter 4, the authors repeatedly frame ORIENTING resources as enacting social relations, implying that linguistic choices themselves are social positioning. For instance, they describe ORIENTING as helping to “enact our social relations by acknowledging the nature of the feelings and the range of people involved” (4.5). This conflates tenor—the social configuration of participants and roles—with the linguistic system used to realise it. In Hallidayan SFL, tenor is context, not language; language realises tenor. By presenting ORIENTING as a system that enacts social positions, the chapter risks reifying social relations as properties of linguistic form rather than seeing language as a semiotic tool that represents or negotiates them.

2. Rebranding SFL resources with LCT terminology

The chapter imports Legitimation Code Theory concepts (axiological constellations, bonding icons, axicons) and maps them onto SFL interpersonal resources without fully clarifying the mapping. ORIENTING resources—sourcing, convoking, opposing, likening, encapsulating—are presented as novel linguistic mechanisms, yet they largely repackage well-known SFL constructs such as:

• Sourcing → attribution heteroglossia

• Convoking → vocatives and engagement with audience

• Opposing / likening → internal connexion / appraisal oppositions

• Encapsulating → periodicity, thematic progression, or evaluative summation

The innovation here is more rhetorical than analytic: SFL constructs are rebranded using LCT’s sociological vocabulary. The chapter gives the impression of novelty while largely translating familiar SFL phenomena into LCT-inflected terms.

3. Empirical grounding and generalisation

The chapter relies on a limited set of texts (primary school discussions, analytical and hortatory expositions, historical demands texts) to illustrate ORIENTING. While illustrative, these examples do not substantiate the broader claims that ORIENTING resources are “fundamental” to all interpersonal genres. In particular:

• Micro-level dialogue examples (Kristy and her mother) are used to make claims about community-scale axiological constellations, which is a substantial leap without additional evidence.

• Genre examples, while clear, are formulaic and often simplified, limiting insight into how ORIENTING functions in complex, multimodal, or contested texts.

4. Ideational vs interpersonal meaning

The authors repeatedly emphasise that ORIENTING is concerned with interpersonal, not ideational, meaning. Yet many examples (butterflies, advertisements, water use) conflate the two: ideational content drives the evaluative positioning, and evaluative meanings are inseparable from ideational framing. The chapter underplays this interplay, which may mislead readers into assuming a clean analytical separation that rarely exists in practice.

5. Conceptual clarity and methodological implications

The conceptual layering—SFL → ORIENTING → LCT axiological constellations → iconisation / bonding icons—creates opacity. It is often unclear whether claims about social positioning are linguistic or sociological.

Terms such as bonding, iconisation, axicons, and axiological constellations are presented as essential to understanding interpersonal organisation, but they may obscure the linguistic principles they purport to illuminate.

6. Summary

While the chapter provides a systematic framework (ORIENTING) for analysing relational organisation of meaning, its strengths are overshadowed by:

• Conceptual confusion between tenor and language.

• Rebranding of established SFL resources with sociological terminology from LCT.

• Overgeneralised claims about fundamental functions of ORIENTING across genres.

• Limited empirical support for claims about macro-scale constellations of values.

• Underdeveloped discussion of the interplay between ideational and interpersonal meanings.

In effect, the chapter reads less as a genuine advance in SFL analysis and more as an attempt to retrofit SFL concepts into a LCT-inspired vocabulary. While the examples are pedagogically useful, critical readers must remain vigilant about the conceptual slippage and analytic overreach.

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Addendum: The deeper issue

The problem is not simply technical missteps in mapping SFL categories to new terms. At a deeper level, the chapter is engaged in a systematic rebranding project. By importing LCT’s notion of axiological constellations and redescribing familiar appraisal phenomena in its terms, the authors subtly shift the ground of analysis:

• Context and semantics blur — what Halliday treated as distinct strata (tenor vs interpersonal meaning) are collapsed into a single plane.

• SFL becomes subordinate — appraisal resources are recast as illustrations of sociological constructs rather than developed on their own terms.

• Terminological inflation obscures clarity — “axiological constellation” is treated as interchangeable with “network of attitudes,” but axiology traditionally refers to the bases or grounds of evaluation, not to evaluative stances themselves.

The result is not theoretical synthesis but rhetorical displacement. SFL’s achievements in modelling evaluative meaning are effectively renarrated under borrowed sociological terminology. For readers and practitioners, the risk is clear: what appears to be innovation may in fact be conceptual repackaging, one that unsettles foundational distinctions while offering little genuine analytic gain.

From System to ‘Resources’: Evading Systemic Accountability

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 127):

This concludes our discussion of ORIENTING RESOURCES. As we have seen, they are fundamental to organising sets of positions into coherent frameworks, and function to realise a number of more interpersonally-oriented genres.

ChatGPT Comments:

The conclusion overstates the fundamentality of ORIENTING without accounting for genre variation, risking theoretical inflation. More significantly, no system network for ORIENTING is presented. By speaking of “orienting resources” — misleadingly in upper case, as though it were a system — rather than an “orienting system,” the authors sidestep the systemic requirements of SFL theory, leaving the construct theoretically underspecified.

Stratification Collapse in Persuasive Genres

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 123):

Resources for orienting are fundamental for realising a range of genres. As we’ve seen throughout this and previous chapters, this is particularly the case for persuasive genres that aim to organise different positions into arguments where they regularly work in conjunction with choices in both tendering and rendering.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

This move exemplifies a persistent mis-stratification in Martin’s model of context and language. The claim is that ORIENTING resources are “fundamental for realising a range of genres,” with persuasive genres given as the key example. But the formulation quietly smuggles semantic systems into the contextual stratum. In canonical SFL, genre is a contextual category — rhetorical MODE — realised through semantic choices.

Three major problems follow:

1. Level confusion: ORIENTING (together with tendering and rendering) is a semantic resource. To treat it as realising genre is to confuse strata—elevating semantic choice to the level of context. In Halliday’s canonical model, this is not permissible: genre (MODE) is realised through the entire semantic system, not through a cherry-picked subsystem.

2. Double misplacement: Tendering and rendering are also semantic resources, yet here they are grouped with ORIENTING as if they were contextual resources. This results in a strange hybrid: context (genre) supposedly realised by semantics (orienting, positioning), but presented as if the latter were contextual systems. The stratification has collapsed.

3. Systemic incoherence: No account is given of how ORIENTING and POSITIONING interrelate as systems. If both are resources of a stratum, how do they constrain or complement one another in actual choice? The absence of such specification makes the claim functionally rhetorical: genres “draw on” orienting and positioning, but the system networks that would demonstrate this relation are absent.

The overall effect is a conflation of context and semantics, in which familiar rhetorical tendencies of persuasive genres are redescribed as if they were systemic resources. The result is neither a clear account of contextual realisation, nor a principled mapping of semantic options—only a terminological inflation that obscures rather than clarifies the stratified architecture of SFL.

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In short…

This formulation repeats a recurring mis-stratification: genre (a contextual category) is said to be realised by ORIENTING, tendering, and rendering, even though these are, in essence, semantic systems. The result is a collapse of strata in which semantic resources are rebranded as contextual ones. Moreover, the relationship between ORIENTING and POSITIONING is left unspecified—no systemic account of how these resources interrelate is offered. What remains is rhetorical description: persuasive genres “draw on” these resources, but without theoretical precision. The move exemplifies terminological inflation at the cost of stratificational clarity.

Rebranding Periodicity as Encapsulating

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 117):

To round out our discussion of ORIENTING resources, we introduce the relation encapsulating. Encapsulating involves orienting sets of positions as being synthesised ‘within’ other positions. This often occurs in higher level periodicity (Martin and Rose 2007) where general positions are put forward before or after more specific points are given.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

Encapsulating overlaps with SFL concepts such as hyperthemes, macro-structures, and thematic layering:

1. Terminological inflation: Rebranding periodicity and higher-level thematic organisation as “encapsulating” risks presenting a well-known textual phenomenon as novel.

2. Systemic vagueness: There is no discussion of choice constraints or conditions under which encapsulation occurs, leaving the term largely descriptive.

3. Interaction with other ORIENTING resources: It is unclear how encapsulating interacts with sourcing, convoking, opposing, or likening—whether these can be nested or hierarchical. This omission reduces the explanatory coherence of the ORIENTING system.

Rebranding Contrast as Likeness — Redundancy by Reflection

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna 2025: 111):

The counterpart to opposing is likening. Likening involves grouping things as the same or similar. This similarity is not necessarily in terms of any ideational similarity but in terms of how they are positioned rhetorically within a set of oppositions… Like opposing, likening is a regular resource for building constellations and extending text and offers resources for organising sets of apparently different things, ideationally speaking, as ‘the same’.

ChatGPT Comments:

Likening suffers from similar issues:

1. Conceptual overlap: Likening mirrors cohesion, repetition, and synonymy signals already captured in INTERNAL CONNEXION. Its novelty lies mostly in rhetorical framing rather than systemic distinction.

2. Ambiguity in scope: The statement that similarity is “not necessarily in terms of any ideational similarity” risks creating confusion. If rhetorical alignment is the primary function, it should be clarified how this interacts with appraisal or engagement, rather than leaving it broadly under “constellations.”

From Contrastive Signals to Axiological Binaries: How Tenor and Semantics are Blurred in the Name of Novelty

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 102):

Persuasive texts involve orienting different positions in relation to each other. From the perspective of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), this typically involves building or drawing upon axiological constellations that arrange meanings in terms of emotional, aesthetic or ethical stances… In terms of tenor, one of the main resources for building such constellations is what we will call opposing. Opposing resources involve establishing an opposition, and in doing so explicitly indicating that there are competing ideas (Doran, 2020b). The primary school discussion makes use of this resource to arrange its two opposing Arguments. It draws on internal connexion (Halliday and Hasan 1976, Martin 1992) to do so – more specifically the signal of difference on the other hand.

ChatGPT Comments:

Opposing is coherent with SFL’s discourse semantics (ENGAGEMENT and INTERNAL CONNEXION). However:

1. Redundant terminology: “Opposing” largely duplicates established resources such as contrastive signals and adversative connectors. Framing it as a new system may obscure the existing theoretical precision.

2. Binary focus caution: The link to LCT’s axiological constellations assumes opposition is primarily binary. SFL analyses show that textual positioning often involves multiple, nested contrasts rather than strict dichotomies. A more nuanced account of multiplicity would strengthen the argument.

3. SFL stratification oversight: While the authors reference tenor, the framing risks conflating context (tenor) and semantics (discourse-semantic contrasts), repeating a pattern seen in previous chapters.

Convoking as Catalogue, Not System

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 98, 102):

Convoking involves bringing people or a community into a position by virtue of directing meanings toward them… The most explicit means of convoking involves the use of Vocatives to direct a position to someone. …

ChatGPT Comments:

Although the table expands beyond vocatives to include pronouns, imperatives, clause roles, and multimodal cues, “convoking” remains underspecified as a system. In canonical SFL, these realisations are distributed across distinct resources:

• Vocatives and pronouns belong to MOOD.

• Imperatives enact MOOD and speech function.

• Receivers in clauses are part of transitivity.

• Gaze and body orientation fall outside language, into multimodal interaction systems.

By grouping them under a single category, the authors risk collapsing analytically distinct resources into a vague umbrella. The effect is less a new system than a catalogue of ways participants can be addressed.

Furthermore, the system status of “convoking” is not specified: what is the paradigmatic opposition? What is the range of delicacy? Without this, it is hard to see convoking as more than a descriptive label. In SFL terms, the interpersonal orientation to audience is already modelled through speech function, MOOD, engagement, and appraisal. Positioning it as an independent system obscures these existing theoretical distinctions and risks redundancy.

Rebranding Heteroglossia as ORIENTING

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 91-2):

One of the most explicit relations in terms of marking social relations in a text is sourcing. Sourcing involves linking positions or items to a particular person or voice… Sourcing is often done by explicitly attributing a position to someone through what Martin and White (2005) call attribution heteroglossia… Grammatically speaking, the most typical realisation is through projected clauses or a circumstance of Angle (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014).

ChatGPT Comments:

Sourcing is well-grounded in SFL concepts such as heteroglossia, projection, and attribution. The main critique is that the rebranding under ORIENTING may obscure this: it suggests a new system when the phenomenon is already theoretically described. There is also no discussion of gradience or optionality—e.g., when sourcing is implicit versus explicit, which is central to understanding how positions are construed interpersonally.

ORIENTING: Systemic Model or Descriptive List?

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 90):

To explore how positions are arranged, we will introduce five resources within a system called ORIENTING:

• sourcing – where positions are oriented as being from the perspective of someone or something (as ‘theirs’ in some sense);

• convoking – where positions are oriented toward someone or something, or someone is being brought into the position;

• opposing – where positions are oriented as being opposed to each other;

• likening – where positions are oriented as to some degree similar to each other, or on ‘the same side’ of an opposition;

• encapsulating – where sets of positions are oriented as being synthesised within other meanings.

These relations function to orient different meanings in relation to each other so as to build a large network of positions. As we will see, each choice can be repeated any number of times, which allows for indefinitely large networks of values to be built over time.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

The ORIENTING system raises a number of issues:

1. Systemic status unclear: Unlike canonical SFL systems, it is not explicitly stated what the paradigmatic options are within ORIENTING, how delicacy or dependency is organised, or what counts as a choice point. Without this, the system reads as a descriptive rubric rather than a rigorously defined set of systemic options.

2. Overlap with existing SFL resources: Many of the ORIENTING relations (sourcing, opposing, likening, encapsulating) map closely onto established SFL resources. For example:

   • Sourcing parallels attribution heteroglossia and projection;

   • Opposing and likening echo internal connexion contrasts (e.g., difference vs similarity signals);

   • Encapsulating resembles higher-level periodicity or hypertheme structures.

     This raises the question of whether ORIENTING adds theoretical novelty or simply rebrands existing systems with new terminology.

3. Indefinite network claim: The assertion that choices “can be repeated any number of times” and thereby build “indefinitely large networks of values” risks overstating the analytic power of the model. While iterative structuring is a real phenomenon, the concept of “indefinite” networks is rhetorical rather than systematically constrained.

Inflating Interpersonal Systems into Axiological Constellations

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 89-90):

Building on the model developed in previous chapters, we will see that the development of background values implicates in particular the discourse semantic systems of ENGAGEMENT and INTERNAL CONNEXION… and leads to a fine-grained understanding of how interpersonal rhetoric unfolds. As for all resources in this book, we will illustrate how these resources are drawn on in both monologic and dialogic texts.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

The targeting of ENGAGEMENT and INTERNAL CONNEXION is appropriate, but the claim that this alone suffices for modelling “background values” is overstated. While these systems organise dialogic and evaluative positioning, the conceptual leap from their instantiation to axiological constellations requires careful mapping, which is not yet shown. In other words, the systems are necessary for describing interpersonal structure, but they are not sufficient for claiming insight into community-level values without empirical substantiation.

From Semiotic Description to Axiological Prescription?

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 89):

Taken together, these developments of SFL theory and its description of values and shared understandings shed light on how social relations are developed in everyday life. But they also highlight the need for understanding the different types of meaning that can be shared, the relations that hold these meanings together and the means by which they are realised in text. This is vital for making explicit meanings that organise a wide range of institutional practices… to appreciate what we know and learn over and above the ‘content’ meanings of language (i.e., an epistemological perspective), we must understand how language builds and develops its networks of values (i.e., an axiological perspective).

ChatGPT Comments::

The discussion conflates descriptive and normative claims. While it is correct that SFL can model how interpersonal meanings operate in texts, the leap to “networks of values” presumes social coherence beyond what linguistic description alone can support. The introduction of an “axiological perspective” risks importing sociological assumptions into what should be a semiotic and systemic analysis.

Iconised Ideation or Attitudinal Mapping?

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 88):

Iconisation is the process by which interpersonal meanings are charged, often at the same time as ideational meanings are discharged (Martin, 2010). From this perspective, bonding icons are highly iconised meanings that are often central to larger networks of meaning. (Carr, 2023) highlights that bonding icons such as the Olympic Flame can be treated as iconised ideation, since they take an ideational entity or occurrence and instil interpersonal meaning. In addition, she notes how already interpersonal terms such as respect (i.e., an attitude) can be iconised in contexts such as sex education classes as a means of organising the values at stake when navigating social relationships.

ChatGPT Comments:

The argument for iconisation risks rebranding established SFL processes under new terminology. What is described as “instilling interpersonal meaning” parallels appraisal theory’s projection and evaluation mechanisms, while “iconised ideation” resembles the familiar mapping of ideational entities into attitudinal structures. The term “iconisation” may add rhetorical weight but does not clarify novel system relations. Additionally, the simultaneous charging of interpersonal and ideational meanings is already accounted for in the Hallidayan model of semantic realisation across strata; presenting it as a separate process creates terminological inflation without analytic gain.

The Hand-Over Problem: From LCT to SFL

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 87-88):

From the perspective of SFL, the construction or deconstruction of constellations draws on resources of language and related semiotic systems to organise their meaning and regularly show reflexes in texts. The challenge for a socially-oriented linguistics like SFL is to understand what these resources are, how they manifest in text, how we can map these constellations in ways that make their arrangement explicit, and in addition how we can understand their dynamics, stability and reorganisation in ways that support interventions for change across contexts.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

This is the point where the authors formally “hand over” the analysis to SFL. The assertion that SFL can reveal, stabilise, or intervene in constellations presumes that linguistic resources alone can capture the dynamics of socio-cultural structures. While SFL can describe how interpersonal meanings are realised, it cannot on its own validate the boundaries or dynamics of LCT constellations. Without a clear mapping between the strata (context → semantics → lexicogrammar), the chapter risks suggesting that SFL descriptions somehow instantiate or enforce social reality, rather than construe it in interaction.

Hidden Constellations or Negotiable Meanings?

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 87):

Exploring axiological constellations is thus vital for understanding how people affiliate in communities, understand the world around them, maintain solidarity and distance themselves from 'outsiders'. But by their very nature, such constellations are often implicit and rarely discussed in detail. The result is that they often only surface when someone goes against the order of things – whether this be someone new to the community who does not know the way things are, someone with a different constellation that leads to a clash, or whether it be someone aiming to challenge the constellation, either through iconoclastic ruptures or through gradual progressive adjustment.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

The authors conflate what is implicit in social practice with what is implicit in language. In SFL, interpersonal meanings are always negotiable and observable in the patterns of engagement, appraisal, and projection — they do not “surface” only through exceptional breaches. By adopting the LCT framing, the narrative risks overstating the rarity and opacity of the background meanings that SFL would model as ordinary, ongoing construals.

Predetermined Stance or Probabilistic Meaning?

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 87):

As (Maton, 2014, p. 158) explains, tightly bound constellations in a community delimit the possible combinations of stances available to people by orienting options as necessarily associated or opposed. This means if someone aligns with one position in a constellation, it will likely be taken to mean they also align with others – regardless of whether they state this explicitly. Maton (2014) illustrates this by mapping the axiological constellation in education that opposes so-called ‘student centred learning environments’ with ‘teacher centred learning environments’.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

Here, the authors present axiological constellations as deterministic: one stance implies alignment with a set of others. The SFL import of this idea is underdeveloped. In canonical SFL, alignment between stances is probabilistic and realised through interpersonal meaning-making (engagement, appraisal, modality) rather than presupposed by an abstract sociological constellation. By taking Maton’s sociological claim at face value, the model risks attributing structural constraints to meaning where, from a Hallidayan perspective, only negotiation and interactional patterns exist. There is an assumption that these constellations exist independently and are merely “mapped” by SFL analysis.

Rebranding Appraisal: From Interpersonal Meaning to Axiological Constellations

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 87):

These questions directly implicate SFL’s long-standing dialogue with the sociological framework of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT, Maton 2014). LCT conceptualises communities and social fields of practice as being organised through more-or-less tightly bound sets of positions called constellations of meaning. … The most important type of constellation for this chapter is that which centres on emotional, aesthetic, ethical, moral and political stances, which LCT calls axiological constellations.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

This is the hinge where the chapter pivots from a loose, commonsense notion of “values” into a technical construct imported from sociology. The shift is subtle but decisive. “Values” are no longer treated as interpersonal meanings that can be modelled within SFL’s own semantics (e.g. appraisal). Instead, they are redescribed in LCT’s terms as “axiological constellations,” and SFL is tasked with mapping these constellations in text.

Two consequences follow. First, the boundary between context (social formations such as “constellations”) and semantics (the linguistic resources that construe them) begins to blur. What SFL traditionally models as context variables are here confused with semantic resources, flattening the stratal distinction that Halliday treated as foundational. Second, SFL categories are placed in a secondary, supportive role — tools for illustrating concepts defined externally in LCT. This creates the impression of synthesis, but the movement is actually rebranding: re-describing familiar SFL phenomena in imported terminology rather than developing SFL’s categories on their own terms.

More succinctly…

In this section, the chapter pivots decisively from the diffuse notion of “values” toward a more technical apparatus imported from sociology: LCT’s axiological constellations. Suddenly, what were previously interpersonal meanings within SFL are redescribed as elements of social formations, and SFL’s own categories are tasked with illustrating externally defined structures. The effect is subtle but profound: context and semantics begin to blur, and familiar appraisal resources are repositioned as secondary, supportive tools. The result is not synthesis, but a strategic rebranding, one that reframes longstanding SFL phenomena in borrowed terminology.

Addendum: On “Axiological” vs “Attitudinal”

There is an additional problem lurking in the terminology itself. The phrase “axiological constellation” is presented by Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025) as if it were a natural extension of work on evaluative language. Yet the word axiology has a specific history: it refers to the study of the grounds of value — the philosophical bases for aesthetic, ethical, moral, or evaluative judgments.

In this chapter, however, axiological is not used in this traditional sense. Instead, it is effectively treated as a synonym for attitudinal: a constellation of positive or negative assessments clustered around some social object (for example, the set of evaluations associated with MAGA). What are redescribed as “axiological constellations” are, in SFL terms, simply networks of attitudes.

Two consequences follow:

1. Terminological drift — A philosophical term is repurposed to mean something far narrower, with the effect that “axiological” and “attitudinal” collapse into one another. This substitution does not extend SFL, but instead muddies the distinction between the bases of evaluation and the evaluations themselves.

2. Theoretical rebranding — By redescribing SFL’s attitudinal meanings as “axiological constellations,” the authors create the appearance of innovation while in fact re-labelling familiar Appraisal resources in imported terms. This is not cumulative theory-building but terminological sleight of hand.

In short, the very label that anchors Chapter 4 is compromised. Far from clarifying the relation between SFL and LCT, the use of axiological constellation introduces both a conceptual confusion and a disciplinary misrepresentation.

From Tiny Feelings to Cultural Forces: How Interpersonal Resources Get Rebranded

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 85):

When we talk to each other we do so upon a vast background of shared values. These may be culture-wide values that are deeply held and rarely questioned, they may be more explicit values constantly up for contestation or they may be very personal feelings known only to a few. These values may govern the shape of our lives and lead us to take arms against a sea of troubles, or they may simply be small, liminal, and seemingly inconsequential feelings that help us sort out our day-to-day lives and commune with the people we know. Nonetheless, throughout our social life, these values guide our decisions and the ways we talk; they allow us to affiliate with people, build solidarity, and help us sort out the world as we navigate a passage through it.

ChatGPT Comments:

This opening is mostly scene-setting rhetoric. It’s broad, sweeping, and couched in accessible language — designed to sound resonant rather than precise. From a critical perspective, here’s what’s worth noting:

1. Conceptual imprecision

   • “Values” here are treated as a kind of universal background substance, shaping everything from “solidarity” to “sorting out our day-to-day lives.” But there’s no differentiation between institutionalised norms, axiological stances, and everyday affective dispositions.

   • By treating all of these as instances of “values,” they are already smoothing over distinctions that SFL normally maintains — e.g. attitude vs ideology, interpersonal vs cultural.

2. Slippage into psychological idiom

   • The phrasing “personal feelings known only to a few” drifts toward individual psychology, rather than maintaining a social-semiotic focus. This pulls against the systemic-functional principle that meanings are always construed through semiotic resources.

3. The seed of the rebranding

   • By positing “values” as the shared background that guides decisions and allows affiliation, the authors are positioning values as primary organising forces. This sets up the rest of the chapter to re-describe SFL’s interpersonal resources as the machinery for building and negotiating these values.

   • That manoeuvre already risks conflating value systems (social or cultural) with semiotic systems (linguistic resources).

👉 Verdict: There’s not much to contest here in detail — it’s more atmospheric than analytical. But it is strategically important, because it frames “values” as the natural background substance of discourse, preparing the ground for the subsequent system of ORIENTING to be presented as a way of mapping how values “hang together.”

Diagnostic Critique of Chapter 3

ChatGPT Comments:

1. Conflation of system and instance.

Throughout the chapter, the authors oscillate between describing systems of meaning (tendering, rendering, positioning) and describing interactional practices (how people negotiate, layer, reposition). These are repeatedly collapsed into one another, leaving unclear whether the “system of POSITIONING” is proposed as an abstract, paradigmatic system or a descriptive account of conversational behaviour. This weakens theoretical rigour, as systems and instances require different orders of abstraction.

2. Inconsistent modelling of system relations.

The representation of tendering and rendering as both disjunctive and conjunctive (Figure 3.3) exemplifies a lack of modelling precision. The same categories are at times mutually exclusive, at times co-instantiable, without theoretical justification for the dual relation. The ambiguity undermines the explanatory power of the system network and makes it unstable as a representation of paradigmatic options.

3. Ambiguity in layering and planes of negotiation.

The notion of layering — simultaneous tendering and rendering, internal vs. external negotiation — is presented as central to the model. However, the account remains descriptive rather than systemic. The resources for layering are not modelled paradigmatically, but instead gestured to narratively. This produces a vocabulary of interesting interactional phenomena, but not a systematised account of how these options interrelate.

4. Unstable treatment of text as object vs. semiosis.

In discussing “internal negotiation,” the authors position text both as “a thing in itself” and as “semiosis about something else.” This binary creates unnecessary theoretical turbulence, since in a stratified model text is always simultaneously semiotic event and semiotic object, depending on the perspective of construal. The attempt to posit a second “plane” of negotiation recycles existing metafunctional distinctions without properly situating them.

5. Rhetorical recourse to everyday intuitions.

The chapter repeatedly falls back on conversational common sense (“whenever we talk, we negotiate our social relations”) as if this everyday grounding lends theoretical authority. While pedagogically useful, such recourse risks diluting the analytic model into paraphrase of the obvious, rather than consolidating it as a precise account of meaning-making.

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Overall Diagnostic

Chapter 3 sets out to formalise a system of POSITIONING but ultimately produces a hybrid discourse that oscillates between systemic categories, descriptive narratives of talk, and evaluative accounts of values and ideology. The central problems are (i) repeated conflations of distinct semiotic orders (system/instance, meaning/value, tenor/context), and (ii) instability in systemic modelling (disjunctive vs. conjunctive categories, descriptive vs. paradigmatic layering). The cumulative effect is to undermine the chapter’s claim to present a coherent “system” of positioning: what emerges instead is a shifting patchwork of overlapping intuitions, diagrams, and metaphors, which lack integration within the Hallidayan architecture they purport to extend.

Dialogue, Positions, and the Promise of "Deep" Values

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 83):

In the next chapter we extend our exploration of interpersonal meanings by considering how different positions can be connected to one another in dialogue and monologue. In particular, we will explore how these connections support the development of integrated sets of values – both those that are ephemeral (that are needed for only a particular situation at a particular point in time) and those that are deep and long-standing (that organise the way we see and engage with the world). By taking this step, we will not simply gain insight into how we negotiate social relations, but also into what the meanings are that underpin these social relations.

ChatGPT Comments

1. From negotiation to values: a category mistake

The transition from modelling interpersonal positioning to theorising values conflates two distinct dimensions of social organisation:

• Tenor realised by interpersonal meaning → how social relations are negotiated.

• Value systems → institutional, cultural, and biological infrastructures that orient practices and judgements.

2. Ephemeral vs. deep values

The distinction between “ephemeral” (situation-specific) and “deep and long-standing” values is not grounded in the systemic architecture of SFL. Instead, it imports a sociological/psychological register of “values” that sits awkwardly with the semantics of appraisal. What counts as ephemeral meaning in SFL terms would usually be explained by instantiation (a temporary patterning of system), not by positing a special category of “ephemeral values.”

3. “Integrated sets of values” as overreach

The promise to show how dialogue connects positions into “integrated sets of values” suggests that interpersonal negotiation builds social ontology directly. This collapses the distinction between construal (meaning as symbolic alignment) and coordination (value-laden social practices). Without maintaining this distinction, their model risks suggesting that every micro-interaction is already the formation of a cultural value system — a claim that is both theoretically unsound and empirically untenable.

4. Theoretical drift under cover of expansion

This concluding gesture epitomises the drift of the chapter:

• Starting with interpersonal negotiation,

• Expanding to a broad umbrella system (POSITIONING),

• Sliding into the terrain of values and cultural organisation.

At each step, a new term is layered on top, but instead of clarifying strata and systems, the expansion collapses them into a single continuum of “negotiation → value → underpinning.” The effect is a grand rhetorical flourish that disguises theoretical incoherence.

POSITIONING and Orchestration: When Terminology Outpaces Systemic Precision

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 83):

Social relations are intricate – we negotiate our status and our solidarity all the time and in multiple ways at once. The system of POSITIONING we have established in Chapters 2 and 3 captures the basic set of resources we use to do this negotiation. Throughout, we have tried to capture both the inter of the interpersonal (in terms of how we establish turn-taking and dialogue and how we position others in relation to ourselves) and the personal of the interpersonal (in order to understanding how we express ourselves and share our feelings). By bringing these perspectives together we can better understand the orchestration of interpersonal meaning that unfolds through spoken and written texts.

ChatGPT Comments:

1. Redundancy disguised as innovation

The claim that social relations are intricate and negotiated “all the time and in multiple ways at once” is a truism. What follows is not the establishment of new resources but a re-labelling of already-theorised interpersonal systems (mood, modality, appraisal, turn-taking). The introduction of POSITIONING as a unifying system risks being less a theoretical advance than a terminological umbrella.

2. The system of POSITIONING: systemic or descriptive?

While framed as a system, it remains unclear what the paradigmatic options are, how delicacy is organised, or how choices are instantiated in text. In Hallidayan terms, a system is defined by explicit choices with probabilities of occurrence. Here, POSITIONING functions instead as a broad metaphor for interpersonal negotiation, lacking the systemic rigour it claims.

3. The “inter of the interpersonal” vs. “personal of the interpersonal”

This dichotomy is rhetorically appealing but theoretically imprecise. The “inter” is said to concern dialogue and turn-taking; the “personal” concerns expressing self and feelings. Yet these map loosely onto established categories: dialogue management → exchange structure; expression of affect → appraisal. The binary adds poetic flourish but no additional explanatory power, and risks obscuring the fact that these are not two perspectives on the same metafunctional plane but distinct sets of semantic resources already modelled.

4. Misrepresentation of appraisal’s scope

By assigning the “personal of the interpersonal” to POSITIONING, the authors obscure appraisal’s central role in handling affect, judgement, and appreciation — all of which are already designed to theorise “how we express ourselves and share our feelings.” Instead of extending appraisal theory, they overwrite it with new branding.

5. “Orchestration” as vague unifier

The term “orchestration” promises an integrated view of interpersonal meaning but is never pinned down analytically. In canonical SFL, orchestration across strata is already modelled: systems operate simultaneously, with realisation across strata accounting for their alignment in text. Without a technical definition, “orchestration” becomes a rhetorical gesture toward wholeness, rather than a contribution to systemic modelling.

6. Collapse of contextual and semantic levels

The excerpt slips between “social relations” (contextual tenor), “turn-taking and dialogue” (discourse semantics), and “sharing our feelings” (appraisal systems). By subsuming all of these under POSITIONING, the stratified model of SFL is flattened. Instead of clarifying how tenor is realised by semantics, the analysis conflates strata into a single bundle of interpersonal negotiation.

7. Net effect: theoretical opacity through rhetorical polish

The passage’s surface coherence — balancing inter/personal, status/solidarity, orchestration — masks theoretical imprecision. By introducing POSITIONING as an overarching system, the authors risk generating an all-encompassing but analytically shallow category, one that obscures the finer systemic distinctions on which SFL’s explanatory power depends. 

Layering, Repositioning, and Rendering: When Jargon Outpaces Theory

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 82-3):

This negotiation is enabled not simply through the different ways in which we can tender and render positions, but also the possibility of layering these meanings. In the previous chapter we explored that people may tender and render meanings at the same time, reacting to something that has happened (or may happen) while putting something else forward to be negotiated. We saw that this was a key resource for extending conversation indefinitely, and in doing so, we offered a view on chat from the perspective of tenor. In addition, we saw that when engaging with meanings through rendering or nuancing meanings through purview, we can do so for the propositions or proposals being discussed (external negotiation), or we can alternatively do so for the speech acts themselves (internal negotiation) – in the latter case commenting on how language itself is being used. This allows for a second plane of discussion that takes the reality of text as a thing in itself, rather than just semiosis about something else. Finally, we saw all of these resources could be repositioned, with one position standing for another. This offers a third avenue through which people may negotiate their social relations along multiple lines.

ChatGPT Comments:

1. Terminological inflation: “layering” without systemic specification

The authors introduce layering as an enabling resource for negotiation but do not specify its systemic status. Is layering a distinct system, a metafunctional overlap, or simply the simultaneity of meanings across strata? Without clarification, the term risks functioning as descriptive rhetoric rather than theoretical category, duplicating what Halliday already models through rankshift, embedding, and metafunctional interplay.

2. The simultaneity of tendering and rendering

The claim that meanings can be tendered and rendered “at the same time” simply restates the well-established principle that interpersonal moves are often co-instantiated (e.g. offering while qualifying, demanding while conceding). Systemic functional linguistics has long accounted for this simultaneity through mood and modality working in tandem with appraisal. By presenting simultaneity as a new discovery, the model obscures rather than extends the canonical framework.

3. “Indefinite extension of conversation” as explanatory overreach

The assertion that layering is a key resource for extending conversation indefinitely is overstated. Conversation can continue due to a wide range of discourse-semantic resources — topic management, cohesive chaining, politeness, repair — not merely because tendering and rendering can be layered. The explanation risks narrowing a complex phenomenon to the rebranded categories the authors have introduced.

4. The tenor framing of “chat”

Positioning this as a “view on chat from the perspective of tenor” misapplies SFL’s stratification: tenor is a contextual variable realised by semantics, not a discourse-semantic system in itself. The analysis thereby collapses levels, treating tenor as if it were directly constituted by conversational strategies, rather than mediated by semantic systems.

5. External vs internal negotiation: duplication of appraisal resources

The external/internal distinction (propositions/proposals vs. speech acts themselves) echoes the canonical contrast between engaging with experiential content and engaging with dialogic positioning (e.g. heteroglossic resources for acknowledging or contesting speech acts). By rebranding this as internal vs external negotiation, the authors obscure existing appraisal theory while introducing redundant terminology.

6. Text as object vs text as semiosis

The claim that internal negotiation opens a “second plane of discussion” in which the reality of text as a thing in itself is taken up conflates reflexivity with stratification. Reflexive commentary on language is already theorised in SFL through projection, modality, and appraisal (particularly metadiscourse and attribution). Invoking a new “plane” suggests ontological novelty where there is in fact an already-mapped systemic pathway.

7. Repositioning and substitution: vague but familiar

Finally, the claim that resources can be repositioned, with one position standing for another is not unpacked theoretically. If this refers to metaphor (e.g. mood metaphor, interpersonal metaphor), it is already central in SFL. If it refers to substitution of one stance for another, then appraisal covers this territory. Without clear mapping, “repositioning” risks being a catch-all label rather than a defined system.

8. General tendency toward rhetorical accumulation

Across the passage, a pattern emerges: new terminology (layering, internal/external negotiation, repositioning) is piled onto the tendering/rendering model, but without showing clear systemic relations or offering criteria for delimiting one resource from another. The effect is rhetorical accumulation rather than theoretical integration. 

Tendering Nuance, Flattening Complexity: Innovation or Illusion in Interpersonal Meaning?

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 82):

Whenever we talk to each other, we negotiate our social relations. We put forward meanings and we react to those that have been put forward. We present meanings in a way that suggests they may or may not be shared and we engage with them in more or less sympathetic ways. In Chapters 2 and 3 we have presented a model of resources for how we put forward and react to these meanings. We first stepped through the system of rendering to show the different ways we can engage with meanings that have been tendered or implicated in a text. Then in this chapter, we explored how people can put forward meanings in nuanced ways that acknowledge the positions of those around them. Together these resources allow for the intricate negotiation of social relations that all of us engage in everyday.

ChatGPT Comments:

1. Conflation of negotiation with all talk

The opening claim — “Whenever we talk to each other, we negotiate our social relations” — generalises negotiation to all instances of dialogue. While interpersonal meanings are indeed always at stake in interaction, negotiation (in the Hallidayan sense) is a specific semantic process of exchanging roles and values. By universalising negotiation, the authors risk blurring the crucial distinction between the omnipresence of interpersonal meaning and the specific resources by which exchange and alignment are enacted.

2. The “put forward / react” binary

The model is framed around a reductive dyad: putting forward vs reacting. This foregrounds a mechanical push-and-pull exchange structure, reminiscent of speech function theory, but ignores the range of simultaneous interpersonal meanings realised in dialogue: stance, alignment, modality, affect, judgement, graduation, etc. By collapsing all interpersonal work into this binary, the model oversimplifies the semiotic resources available for interpersonal meaning-making.

3. Rendering as engagement with tendered meanings

The authors describe “rendering” as the set of resources for engaging with meanings that have been tendered or implicated in a text. This creates two theoretical difficulties:

• Circularity: “rendering” is defined only in relation to “tendering,” which itself is not clearly theorised beyond “putting forward.”

• Conflation of strata: “implicated meanings” reach into discourse semantics and intertextual inference, yet are folded into a system as context. This risks treating distinct phenomena as one, without specifying the systemic relations that differentiate them.

4. Affective alignment disguised as nuance

The claim that people put forward meanings in nuanced ways that acknowledge the positions of those around them conflates evaluative stance with exchange roles. In SFL, such “acknowledgement” is modelled through appraisal resources (e.g. heteroglossic engagement, attribution, concession) rather than through speech functions. By folding evaluative alignment into a tendering system, the model displaces appraisal from its place in the semantic architecture and risks duplicating it under new terminology.

5. Overstating integration

The authors conclude that together these resources allow for the intricate negotiation of social relations that all of us engage in everyday. This overstates the explanatory scope of the proposed “rendering/tendering” framework. The canonical SFL model already accounts for this through mood, modality, appraisal, and speech function. The new terminology does not so much integrate resources as re-package them, producing an illusion of explanatory novelty without clarifying their interrelations. 

The POSITIONING System Network

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 81-2):

Figure 3.3 brings together the options for rendering built in the previous chapter with those of tendering in this chapter to show the full system of POSITIONING.

ChatGPT Comments:

 Here are some theoretical tensions and confusions in this model that stand out:

1. Heterogeneous criteria of system delicacy
The network presents “POSITIONING” as a unified system, yet the delicacy expansions combine very different dimensions of meaning. The initial branching (render vs tender) sets up the primary contrast, but subsequent sub-systems shift criteria inconsistently:

• address vs note concerns interpersonal orientation versus commentary,

• placement (external vs internal) invokes discourse-structural positioning,

• proposition vs proposal introduces metafunctional clause type,

• open vs complete invokes structural polarity,

• purview introduces epistemic stance.
  What is presented as systemic delicacy is in fact a heterogeneous aggregation of distinctions that originate in different metafunctions and strata.

2. The tendering/rendering ambiguity
The diagram signals both a disjunctive and a conjunctive relationship between render and tender. This produces a conceptual inconsistency: are rendering and tendering mutually exclusive choices, or are they simultaneous dimensions of meaning? The attempt to code both at once collapses two theoretically distinct relations:

• paradigmatic opposition (choosing one or the other), and

• simultaneous activation (both may apply to a single instance).
  In practice, rendering and tendering often co-occur (e.g. “I think you’re wrong” both evaluates an existing stance and advances a counter-claim). The network’s simultaneous disjunctive/conjunctive representation fails to clarify how these dimensions intersect, instead producing analytical indeterminacy.

3. The purview problem
The addition of speaker purview versus listener purview exemplifies the model’s attempt to taxonomise epistemic stance as if it were a structural variable of the same order as mood or polarity. The resulting options (share, assert, pose, air) artificially discretise what is in practice a gradient of interpersonal alignment. More significantly, this construct duplicates resources already modelled in SFL (mood, modality, projection) without clarifying how these interact, leading to redundancy rather than theoretical integration.

4. Systemic incoherence
Although each sub-system is presented as if of the same systemic order (“rendering,” “placement,” “completion,” “purview”), they draw from divergent theoretical bases:

• speech function (proposition vs proposal),

• stance (support vs reject),

• logical completion (open vs complete),

• epistemicity (purview).
  The overall appearance of comprehensiveness masks the fact that the network is a collage of heterogeneous categories. The combination of inconsistent logics undermines systemic coherence.

5. Terminological inflation
By gathering these distinctions under the heading “POSITIONING,” the model creates the impression of a novel interpersonal system. Yet all the included options correspond to resources already theorised within canonical SFL: speech function, mood, modality, appraisal, and thematic organisation. The rebranding substitutes terminological novelty for theoretical clarity, risking obfuscation rather than refinement of the interpersonal system.

Tendering Confusions: Duplicating Semantics at the Context Plane

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 80-1):

With this discussion of purview, we have completed the set of options for the system of POSITIONING. Leaving aside repositioning, Figure 3.2 brings together the network of TENDERING established in this chapter. This network says that when tendering, one may tender a proposition or a proposal and that this proposition or proposal may be open or complete, may have speaker purview or not, and may have listener purview or not.

ChatGPT Comments:

In Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 80–1), the authors present Figure 3.2 as a system network for tendering, summarising the options discussed throughout the chapter. The network is described as showing that a proposition or proposal may be open or complete, may have speaker purview or not, and may have listener purview or not. At first glance, this seems like a tidy synthesis of the chapter’s material. However, closer scrutiny reveals a number of theoretical and conceptual issues.

Duplicating semantic categories at the context plane

The first issue is that the network seems to duplicate categories that properly belong to the content plane—specifically, the semantics of SPEECH FUNCTION—at the level of context. Speaker and listener purview are treated as options in tenor, that is, the context plane, yet many of the distinctions the authors draw (e.g., complete vs open propositions, hedged vs asserted modalities) are realised in the semantics and grammar of the content plane. By elevating these distinctions to context, the network conflates the strata: the same semantic distinctions are effectively represented twice, once as grammatical/semantic realisations, and again as contextual “purview” options.

Ambiguity of ‘tendering’ as a system label

The term tendering itself is also problematic. Its scope and status within the network are unclear: is it meant to denote the act of proposing a proposition/proposal generally, or a particular mode of interpersonal negotiation in discourse? The authors do not explicitly distinguish between these readings, leaving the reader to infer whether tendering is an operational category, a functional label, or a meta-concept. This undercuts the explanatory power of the network and makes it difficult to see how it could be applied consistently.

Overextension of the network logic

Finally, by combining all options (open/complete, speaker/listener purview) in a single system network, the authors risk suggesting that these are discrete, combinable choices in every instance. In practice, however, many of these options are mutually constraining: open propositions are typically associated with lower speaker purview, for example. Treating them as fully independent variables, as the network implies, flattens the nuanced interplay of internal and external purview discussed earlier in the chapter.

Conclusion

While the network provides a visually compact summary of the chapter, it does so at the cost of theoretical clarity. It conflates semantic realisations with contextual options, obscures the status of the tendering category, and overstates the independence of different purview options. In short, it presents a tidy system that may look neat on paper but does little to illuminate the complex, stratified nature of interpersonal meaning in context.

Purview Overreach: Duplicating Contextual Categories in English

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 80):

Purview can be more or less grammaticalised across languages. In English, as we have seen, it’s realisation is distributed across a range of interpersonal grammatical systems. But as (Bartlett, 2021) notes, Scottish Gaelic makes a primary distinction within indicative clauses which parallels to an extent how we have described speaker purview in both monologue and dialogue. Bartlett notes that within indicatives, rather than having a distinction between interrogatives and declaratives, Scottish Gaelic makes a distinction between [assertive] and [non-assertive] clauses – which is realised through distinct verb forms and the use of mood clitics. The non-assertive choice ‘render[s] propositions open to alternatives, whether this be through questioning, attributing or entertaining other possibilities. In contrast, independent forms without mood clitics [i.e. assertive choices] realise the monogloss semantics of unmodalised K1 moves and of K2 moves eliciting specific details in an uncontested propositions.’ (Bartlett 2021: 276). (Wang, 2021) describes a similar choice for Mandarin Chinese between what he calls [pose] and [tender], which is simultaneous with indicative and imperative – where ‘[pose] indicates that we table a proposition or proposal for assessment, opening up the dialogic space and [tender] on the other hand means that we proffer the proposition or proposal as non-negotiable’. In this regard, as we have noted above, it was Zhang’s (2020a, b, c, 2021) rich description of Khorchin Mongolian in this area that was a primary influence on our work here. See also the description of STANCE in Korean by (Kim, Martin, Shin, & Choi, 2023). They in effect propose that informal Korean negotiates propositions and proposals through options in a system grammaticalising purview, in contrast to formal Korean which negotiates through MOOD (i.e., declarative, interrogative, imperative) options (see also (Martin & Cruz, 2021) on ASSESSMENT systems in Tagalog). Work of this kind indicates that the interpersonal grammar of languages needs to be re/interpreted from a top-down perspective, beginning with something like the range of tenor options proposed in this volume. Otherwise it runs the risk of being trapped by an 'Anglocentric' perspective which foregrounds declarative, interrogative and imperative as basic interpersonal options.

ChatGPT Comments:

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 80) continue their exposition of purview by highlighting its “grammaticalisation” across languages. However, a closer reading exposes fundamental theoretical confusions within the model itself, even in English.

First, the purview system duplicates semantic and grammatical distinctions at the level of context. By rebranding the management of interpersonal meaning as a system of tenor (speaker/listener purview), the authors effectively recast mood distinctions in grammar (assertive vs non-assertive clauses) and engagement choices in semantics (hedging, modality) as independent context-level categories. Yet these distinctions are already modelled in English through grammatical and semantic systems—modality, and hedging. Treating them as a separate system of purview creates redundancy: the model purports to operate at the context stratum, but its categories mirror those already realised on the content plane.

Second, the model blurs the boundaries between levels of stratification. By claiming that purview operates at the tenor/context level while simultaneously being “distributed across a range of interpersonal grammatical systems” in English, the authors collapse context and realisation. The examples they give (falling vs rising tone, supine hand posture) are clearly expression-level realisations, yet the framework treats them as purview at the abstract contextual level. This confounding of strata undermines the internal coherence of the model.

Third, the internal logic of purview is overextended even within a single language. The system posits speaker and listener purview as orthogonal variables (+/–), yet the examples reveal a complex interplay in which realisation, tone, hedging, and body language interact in ways the binary schema cannot adequately capture. For instance, falling vs rising tone on a declarative both interacts with hedging and engagement choices, yet the model reduces these nuanced interactions to a simplistic +/– matrix. This risks oversimplifying dynamic meaning-making processes in discourse.

Finally, the theoretical framing obscures what is genuinely novel. Purview is presented as a new resource for interpersonal meaning, but in effect it repackages already known features of mood and engagement under a different label. While the authors’ terminology may highlight subtle nuances of control in conversation and text, it does so at the cost of creating conceptual inflation: multiple layers of labels now describe phenomena that are already systematically captured by grammar and semantics in canonical SFL terms.

In short, even within English, the purview framework duplicates, conflates, and oversimplifies existing distinctions between grammar, semantics, and context. Its theoretical ambitions exceed the clarity of its conceptual design, leaving readers with a model that is internally inconsistent and redundant, rather than genuinely explanatory.