Tenor Does Not Walk Alone — But Neither Does It Float Free

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 152):

This means that when negotiating social relations, tenor does not walk alone. This is our focus in this closing chapter. Tenor is realised through an enormous array of linguistic, paralinguistic, and multimodal resources; it works closely with resources of field and mode; and it realises the sets of genres we use to get along with our everyday life. The following sections provide an overview of this redistribution of theoretical and descriptive responsibility. 

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This invites the misunderstanding that tenor is a module that interacts with other modules.

[2] In this book, the 'enormous array of linguistic, paralinguistic, and multimodal resources' that realise tenor have been mistaken for tenor itself.

[3] To be clear, the absurd claim here is that social relations between interlocutors realise story genres, like narratives and anecdotes. This misunderstanding is inherent in Martin's model of stratification, which locates a stratum of genre above the contextual stratum of field, tenor and mode, which is rebranded as register. Rebranding field, tenor and mode as register confuses context type with the register of language that realises it. Martin's 'genres' are text types (registers) that realise types of culturally valued rhetorical mode (narratives etc.), and whose structures are semantic, and vary according to the mode that the given text type realises. 

When Martin (1992) first stratified context as his genre and his register, he correlated genre with context of culture (potential), and his register with context of situation (instance). The confusion here was twofold. First it confused the cline of instantiation (potential-instance) with stratification (symbolic abstraction); and second it confused instance (context of situation) with systemic potential (field, tenor and mode). Other confusions follow from these multiple interrelated misunderstandings.

[4] This is misleading. There is no redistribution of theoretical and descriptive responsibility in the case of relations between tenor and language, because this is consistent with Halliday's model of stratification; and there is no redistribution in the case of relations between tenor and genre, because this is consistent with Martin's model of stratification.

ChatGPT Comments:

This passage attempts to position tenor within a broader ecology of meaning, acknowledging its interdependence with field, mode, language, and other semiotic systems. While this framing sounds balanced, it conceals deep conceptual confusion about stratification, realisation, and the role of tenor within systemic functional linguistics.

1. Tenor misconstrued as a module rather than a stratal system.
The phrase “tenor does not walk alone” anthropomorphises tenor and implies a model of interacting components rather than hierarchically related strata. This reflects a persistent misinterpretation—traceable to Martin’s modular conception of context (1992)—in which strata are imagined as neighbouring systems that “interface” rather than as ordered levels of symbolic abstraction. In Halliday’s canonical model, strata are not parallel domains in dialogue, but nested levels of semiotic realisation: context is realised by semantics, which is realised by lexicogrammar, and so forth. Treating tenor as an “interacting module” flattens this hierarchy and obscures how language construes social relations rather than merely interacting with them.

2. The resources that realise tenor are mistaken for tenor itself.
The linguistic, paralinguistic, and multimodal resources are not tenor—they are the means through which tenor is realised. The confusion is structural: by relocating systems such as Spirit, Stakes, and Scope from semantics into context, the book effectively dissolves the stratal distinction.

3. Misplaced claims about realisation and genre.
The claim that tenor “realises the sets of genres we use to get along with everyday life” reverses the direction of realisation. In Halliday’s model, genre (as rhetorical mode or contextual pattern) models culture-level meanings—it is not realised by tenor. In Martin’s revision, where “genre” is elevated above register (redefining field, tenor, and mode as “register variables”), this reversal becomes systematic. The result is a confused ontology in which interpersonal relations between speakers are said to realise genre structures such as narratives or anecdotes—a category mistake that collapses the distinction between interpersonal relation and textual form.

4. The myth of “redistribution.”
The authors conclude that there has been a “redistribution of theoretical and descriptive responsibility.” This phrase disguises the fact that what has occurred is not redistribution but reallocation through misunderstanding. Tenor’s relations to language remain unchanged in Halliday’s stratified model, and its relations to genre remain unchanged in Martin’s modular model. The purported “redistribution” is therefore rhetorical: an attempt to legitimise a conflated framework that merges context, semantics, and text-type under a single analytic banner.

Summary:
The passage exemplifies the cumulative effect of misreading stratification as modular interaction, realisation as correlation, and context as an aggregate of semiotic resources. The result is an elegant-sounding but incoherent rebranding of long-settled distinctions within SFL. Far from “mobilising the full power” of the theory, the authors have fragmented it into loosely connected “modules” whose relationships are asserted rather than theorised.