Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 152):
Accordingly in this book we have taken a step towards mobilising the full power of SFL theory as a genuinely social theory of language. Rather than trying to account for all of social relations in one place in the model (as in many previous accounts), it has focused on tenor as a resource for enacting social relations. In doing so, it has privileged the need for a model of tenor that can explicitly link with interpersonal resources in language and with genre patterns.
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[1] To be clear, SFL Theory models language as a social semiotic. Halliday (1978: 2, 55, 123):
It means interpreting language within a sociocultural context, in which the culture itself is interpreted in semiotic terms - as an information system, if that terminology is preferred.
… the notion of language as part of the social semiotic: the concept of the culture as a system of meaning, with language as one of its realisations.
… an interpretation of the social system as a social semiotic: a system of meanings that constitutes the ‘reality' of the culture. This is the higher-level system to which language is related: the semantic system of language is a realisation of the social semiotic.
Socio-semiotic systems contrast with bio-semiotic systems: those that interface with the content plane of language, those that interface with the expression plane of language, and the brain that materially realises language (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 605-7).
[2] To be clear, in this book, the authors have renamed semantic systems and relocated them out of language and into context as tenor systems, thereby making tenor do the work of language as well as context. This confusion resulted from not understanding the realisation relation between strata as one of symbolic abstraction, and misunderstanding strata as interacting modules (at the same level of abstraction) — a misunderstanding that has persisted since Martin (1992: 390, 488):
Each of the presentations of linguistic text forming resources considered above adopted a modular perspective. As far as English Text is concerned this has two main dimensions: stratification, and within strata, metafunction. …
The problem addressed is a fundamental concern of modular models of semiosis — namely, once modules are distinguished, how do they interface? What is the nature of the conversation among components?
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This excerpt encapsulates the self-congratulatory claim that this book “mobilises the full power of SFL as a genuinely social theory,” while in practice doing so by inverting the Hallidayan architecture that already made SFL a social semiotic.
The passage frames the book’s project as a decisive “step toward mobilising the full power of SFL as a genuinely social theory of language.” However, this rhetorical flourish obscures several conceptual inversions that weaken, rather than strengthen, the systemic-functional model they claim to advance.
1. Misrepresentation of SFL’s foundation
The claim that this book newly mobilises SFL as a social theory of language overlooks that Halliday’s (1978) Language as Social Semiotic already defines SFL precisely as such. The notion that language is a social semiotic — a meaning-making system situated within, and realising, the culture-as-semiotic — is not an ancillary claim but the very premise of the theory. What the authors present as a “step toward” has in fact been the foundation for nearly fifty years.
This rhetorical framing subtly repositions the canonical SFL project as incomplete, thereby legitimising their own intervention as an overdue correction — a move that is both historically inaccurate and theoretically misleading.
2. Relocating semantics into context
The authors describe their contribution as focusing on “tenor as a resource for enacting social relations” that can “explicitly link with interpersonal resources in language and with genre patterns.” Yet this “explicit link” is achieved not through relational integration but by displacement: systems that in the canonical model belong to the semantic stratum (e.g., appraisal, engagement, graduation) are redefined as contextual tenor systems.
In doing so, the book effectively removes the semantic mediation that Halliday (1978, 2014) insisted upon. The semiotic architecture collapses: instead of a symbolic abstraction (context → semantics → lexicogrammar), we get modular adjacency (tenor ↔ interpersonal ↔ genre), with each “module” treated as a coequal interactive system. This reorganisation violates the realisation relation that defines stratification and makes SFL’s social ontology coherent.
3. From stratification to modular confusion
The problem stems from Martin’s reinterpretation of strata as modules in dialogue rather than levels of abstraction in realisation. Once strata are conceived as interacting rather than realising, the notion of “linking” tenor with interpersonal and genre becomes intelligible — but only within a confused ontology. The relation between language and context is no longer symbolic but cybernetic, flattening Halliday’s architecture into a network of “systems talking to systems.”
This is the conceptual hinge of the book’s entire framework: tenor ceases to be a contextual configuration realised through semantic systems, and instead becomes a quasi-linguistic module that contains those systems under new names. Hence the authors can claim novelty while in fact rebranding semantic work as contextual.
4. Rebranding and rhetorical erasure
By reclassifying established semantic systems as “tenor systems,” the authors appropriate the descriptive achievements of SFL’s interpersonal semantics — particularly Appraisal — and re-present them as their own contribution to “tenor modelling.” This amounts to terminological rebranding rather than theoretical innovation. The language of “mobilising the full power of SFL” thus functions rhetorically to erase the semiotic work already done by Halliday and Hasan, and to naturalise a model that obscures the realisation relations on which the social-semiotic edifice depends.
Summary
In short, this passage crystallises the book’s central confusion: it claims to make SFL more social by dismantling the very stratified relation that defines language as a social semiotic. By relocating semantics into context and treating strata as interactive modules, it replaces relational abstraction with modular adjacency. What emerges is not an expansion but a contraction of the theory — a semiotic architecture that has lost its semiotic principle.
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