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.