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.

---

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.