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.