Misapplying The Trinocular Perspective: 'From Above'

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 58, 59, 60):

Looking from ‘above’, proposals and propositions also allow us to distinguish different types of genre. Looking at persuasive texts, for example, analytical expositions such as Text 3.1 argue for a stance of some sort – in this case that the world’s best animal is a butterfly. That is, analytical expositions argue for a proposition. … 

By contrast, hortatory expositions argue for action … . Hortatory expositions therefore argue for a proposal. … 

Texts in the political sphere in particular often tender multiple proposals. … 

Moving beyond persuasive texts, the distinction between proposition and proposal allows us to distinguish different types of factual text as well. Procedures, for example, put forward series of activities as proposals, in order to step through how to do something. … 

By contrast, explanations present activities as sets of interconnected propositions …

Reviewer Comments:

To be clear, 'looking at a given stratum from above means treating it as the expression of some content' (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 504). So looking at the semantic stratum from above means treating proposals and propositions as the expression of field, tenor and mode, the systems of the stratum above the semantic stratum. The authors' however, skip this stratum and treat proposals and propositions as the expression of genre. In their model, it is field, tenor and mode, not proposals and propositions, that are the expression of genre.

In Halliday's original stratification, however, what the authors model as a genre stratum is modelled as rhetorical mode, the textual dimension of context. Viewed this way, looking at proposals and propositions from above means looking at them, coherently, as the expressions of mode.

Cf. Halliday (1994: 363):

Context in Crisis: Theoretical Faultlines in Genre Modelling

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 49, 53):

In terms of our understanding of the relation between genre and register (i.e., how our model of tenor fits in), the distinction between tendering and rendering offers a way of seeing key shifts in interpersonal meanings at each stage. … Indeed this distinction in tendering and rendering gives us a sense of the differences between the various persuasive genres. Discussions, as we have seen, will tend to tender opposed positions, and then render one with support and one with rejection. Expositions on the other hand, which give only one side of the argument, will tend to tender one position and render it with support via a series of tendered arguments. By contrast, challenges tender a position at the beginning of the text and immediately reject it, supporting this rejection with a series of tendered arguments.

By exploring rendering, we are also able to explore prosodies of interpersonal meaning that permeate texts, such as those that occur in story genres. … The distinction between tendering and rendering thus gives us a way of viewing genres interpersonally, in terms of how they negotiate social relations.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] This raises the problematic nature of the authors' model of genre and register, first articulated in Martin (1992). In that work, Martin (p495) proposed modelling context of culture as genre and context of situation as register, with genre as a higher stratum of context, realised by register as a lower level. The main problems with this framework are as follows:

1. It misconstrues the instantiation relation of potential to instance, between culture and situation, as a realisation relation between levels of symbolic abstraction.
2. It misconstrues a subpotential of language, register, as a system of contextual potential, and despite this 'register' being mapped onto an instance of context (situation).

Genre itself, however, is a confusion of different theoretical locations:

1. As a type of text, it corresponds to 'text type' — that is, to register viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation.
2. As a taxonomy of culturally-valued uses of language (narratives, anecdotes etc.), it corresponds to the contextual system of (rhetorical) mode.
3. As structure (e.g. Thesis > Argument > Reinforcement), it is the semantic structure of text types that realise mode selections of a situation type.

ChatGPT Comments:

[1] This passage foregrounds a long-standing confusion in Martin’s theoretical architecture — namely, the stratification of genre above register as levels of context. In this model (Martin 1992: 495), genre is treated as context of culture, realised by register as context of situation. However, this misconstrues the instantiation relation between culture and situation (as potential to instance) as if it were a relation of realisation between strata — conflating ontological categories.

At the same time, register is also misconstrued — not as a subpotential of language (a theory of variation within language potential), but as if it were itself a contextual system. Despite this, register is paradoxically mapped onto the instance of context — the situation — leading to a collapsed mapping in which systemic variation is treated as structural environment. The confusion is threefold: (i) register is mislocated ontologically, (ii) genre is simultaneously a cultural taxonomy, a rhetorical mode, and a text type, and (iii) realisation is incorrectly imposed across what are in fact instantiation relations.

[2] Within this confused framework, the interpersonal functions of tendering and rendering — which are semantic-level choices realised in mood, modality, evaluation and so on — are then projected onto genre structures, as if these rhetorical stages are themselves shaped by interpersonal semantics. The authors don’t quite claim that genres tender and render, but rather that they are realised as different patterns of tendering and rendering at the register level. Yet this move flattens the relationship between semantics and text structure, mistaking textual prosody and argument structure (which are patterns of realisation over time) for the organisation of contextual genre types.

[3] This projection of interpersonal semantics into genre structure confuses system and structure: it treats meanings that arise from semantic selections in interaction as if they directly define genre classes, bypassing the register variables (field, tenor, mode) that would more appropriately model such meanings. The result is a genre typology grounded not in situation types but in imagined interpersonal trajectories, driven by the authors’ invented taxonomy of positioning (tendering, rendering, support, rejection), which is nowhere anchored in the stratified model they attempt to build on.

[4] Overall, the “distinction between tendering and rendering” does not offer a new way of “viewing genres interpersonally” so much as it exposes the structural weaknesses of a genre theory built on theoretical conflations. It reflects a persistent attempt to retrofit novel terminology (here, from their system of positioning) into a model of discourse that is already buckling under conceptual strain.

[5] Social relations (e.g. mother-child) are not negotiated; they are semiotically enacted. Meanings are negotiated.

Some Of The Problems With Genre And Register As Strata Of Social Context

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 8):

In addition we will treat social context as involving two strata: genre and register. For practical purposes genre can be interpreted as modelling context as a system of staged, goal-oriented social processes realised through register – the latter comprising field, tenor and mode (Martin, 1992; Martin & Rose, 2008). More technically, genre is a supervenient system realised through choices in register (after Martin, 1984, 1992, 1999, 2014).

Reviewer Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, Martin's contextual stratum of genre confuses mode (textual context), semantic structure (non-metafunctional language) and text type (register of language viewed from the instance pole of the cline of instantiation).

The confusion of genre with mode, the role played by language in terms of the culture, can be seen in genre systems, such as the following from Martin & Rose (2008: 7), where each feature is a role played by language:

The confusion of genre with semantic structure can be seen in genre structure, where each stage is an element of text structure. For example, Martin & Rose (2008: 52):

The confusion of genre with text type is explicit in Martin's characterisation of 'genre'. Martin & Rose (2007: 7):

We use the term genre in this book to refer to different types of texts that enact various types of social contexts.

In short, Martin's stratum of genre, in SFL terms, is concerned with semantic structures that vary for text types (registers) that realise different modes.

[2] To be clear, in rebranding context as register, Martin confuses functional varieties of language (registers) with the contextual parameters that they realise.

[3] For evidence of the above, see the reasoned arguments in the meticulous reviews of Martin (1992) and Martin & Rose (2007).

[4] To be clear, this is a misunderstanding and misapplication of 'supervenient'. See, for example here.

[5] To be clear, this proposes that the choice between recount and narrative, for example, is realised by choices in field (what's going on in terms of the culture), tenor (who's participating, in terms of the culture) and mode (the role of language, in terms of the culture). That is, the choice between recount and narrative is realised by choices such as biology vs chemistry (field), boss vs employee (tenor), and written vs spoken (mode).