Problems With The Summary Of 'Rendering Options And Their Common Realisations'

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 53-4):

To sum up this chapter, we can synthesise the options for rendering as in Table 2.2. In this table, we have included some common realisations for key options in rendering.

Table 2.2 – Rendering options and their common realisations

Reviewer Comments:

To be clear, Table 2.2 exemplifies a recurring problem in the chapter: the slippage between generalisation within language and abstraction above language. The rendering options actually constitute generalisations about the functions listed as common realisations, and on this basis, represent a proposed less delicate system of semantics. However, the authors mistake this scale of delicacy for a hierarchy of symbolic abstraction, and place these semantic options at the level of context, in their system of tenor: positioning.

Seriously Misunderstanding Instantiation

 Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 17-8):

Realisation is a hierarchy of abstraction, with higher strata realised by patterns of meaning at lower ones. Instantiation on the other hand is a cline of generality, with higher rungs constituting a larger meaning potential than lower ones (a system to text relation). The realisation hierarchy we assume here was outlined in Figure 1.3 above (with genre as a more abstract pattern of register patterns, register as a more abstract pattern of discourse semantic patterns and so on). This can be contrasted with the version of the instantiation cline presented as Figure 1.7 (c.f. Martin, 2010, 2014). There, moving down from system, we have a cline of sub-potentialisation (system, diatype, text type, text); moving up we have a concomitant cline of generalisation (text, text type, diatype, system).

 Blogger Comments:

[1] This seriously misunderstands instantiation. To be clear, instantiation is not a cline of generality. Generality is the scale of delicacy. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 14, 144-5):

Note that it is important to keep delicacy and instantiation distinct. In early work on semantic networks, they were sometimes neutralised (cf. Woods', 1975, review). The difference is essentially that between being a type of x (delicacy) and being a token of x (instantiation) …

In other words, the elaboration sets up a relationship either of generality (delicacy), of abstraction (realisation), or of token to type (instantiation).

[2] To be clear, register ("diatype") and text type are not two different points of variation on the cline of instantiation, but the same point viewed from opposite poles of the cline. It is register when viewed from the system pole, and text type when viewed from the instance pole. Halliday (2005 [1995]: 254):

[3] To be clear, the cline of instantiation in Figure 1.7 only models language, not context. Martin (1992) replaced the system and instance poles of the cline of instantiation at the level of context with the strata of genre and register, respectively. In Martin's model, there are no situation types.

Misunderstanding Context-Metafunction Resonance

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 16):

A key motivation for this reconsideration was that many of the features typically considered as part of mode (e.g., context-dependency) and field (e.g., the specialisation and complexity of meaning) are realised across metafunctions. This clashes with the principle that there should be a link between metafunctions and register variables – field tending to be realised by ideational meaning and mode tending to be realised by textual meaning. The conceptualisation of mass and presence as transmetafunctional concepts allows for field and mode to be reconfigured in a way that maintains this register-metafunction hook-up (for what this looks like for field, see (Doran & Martin, 2021)).

Reviewer Comments:

[1] As previously explained, context-metafunction resonance ("hook-up") means

• differences in field are realised by differences in ideational meaning,
• differences in tenor are realised by differences in interpersonal meaning, and
• differences in mode are realised by differences in textual meaning.

Here, as before, the authors misunderstand context-metafunction resonance to mean an exclusive relation between context and language on the basis of metafunction.

[2] As previously explained, the notion of 'transmetafunctional concepts' derives from misunderstanding the dimension of metafunction as a scale of delicacy.