Dialogic, Multilogic, and Ambient Affiliation: Conceptual Variety vs. Systemic Modelling

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 130-1):

As we saw in the previous chapter when dealing with monologue, direct interaction is not a prerequisite for “communion of feeling” (Firth, 1964, p. 112). Dialogic exchanges are possible on social media platforms, although "the unfolding is more often a ‘multilogue’ of simultaneous voices that, at times, can seem more a of cacophony than a conversation" (Zappavigna, 2018, p. 44). Early research into computer-mediated communication focused on exploring the differences between synchronous and asynchronous communication. However, a more pertinent variable from the perspective of tenor is whether the interaction is dialogic or multilogic (many to many) and whether it also affords ambient affiliation. In other words, an important dimension is whether direct exchanges between participants are a prerequisite for interactive social bonding or whether communion can occur through other means. These include the coordination possibilities afforded by features of digital environments that support different ways of creating connection, both on a localized and aggregated levels. Concepts that have been used to study how such groupings are formed discursively online include online affinity spaces (Gee, 2005) and conviviality (Varis & Blommaert, 2015), as well as the kind of ambient affiliation we will consider in this chapter.

ChatGPT Comments:

This paragraph gestures towards important issues but remains imprecise at the theoretical level. The appeal to Firth’s “communion of feeling” provides a historical anchor, yet it is mobilised only rhetorically; the term is neither re-specified nor related to tenor as a system. Instead, it serves as a way to sidestep the real analytical problem: how collective affect and alignment are instantiated semiotically in mediated environments.

The proposed variable of “dialogic versus multilogic” interaction risks falling into the same typological trap as the previous paragraph. Systemic-functional theory demands that options be modelled in terms of system networks, yet “dialogue,” “multilogue,” and “ambient affiliation” are invoked as descriptive categories without integration into a systemic model. This results in a proliferation of terms that orbit around the problem without structuring it.

Similarly, the list of conceptual imports—“affinity spaces,” “conviviality,” “ambient affiliation”—reflects eclectic borrowing rather than theoretical consolidation. These constructs, drawn from disparate traditions, are simply juxtaposed without clarifying how they correspond to SFL’s account of meaning potential. The notion of “ambient affiliation” is announced as the chapter’s focus, but its relationship to field, tenor, and mode is not specified, leaving unclear whether it is an expansion, a sub-type, or an orthogonal dimension.

The net effect is that the paragraph substitutes conceptual variety for systemic precision. It raises useful questions—whether bonding requires direct exchange, how communion may be mediated—but does not provide the categories needed to address them within SFL’s framework.