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.