When Tenor Eats Semantics: The Cost of Misreading Stratification

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.

Blogger Comments:

[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?

ChatGPT Comments:

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.

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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.

Summary: Chapter 5 – Tuning

Chapter 5 presents Tuning as a new system for adjusting interpersonal meaning, structured around three clinal dimensions: Scope (breadth of address), Stakes (degree of risk), and Spirit (affective tone). The chapter positions Tuning as a discrete system that complements Positioning and Orienting, offering additional ways to calibrate how meanings are “tendered” in discourse. However, a close reading reveals several critical issues in its conceptualisation and analytic necessity.

1. Redundancy with existing SFL resources

Each of Tuning’s dimensions overlaps heavily with established systemic-functional categories:

• Scope parallels Engagement and Graduation, as well as reference and membership categorisation devices, capturing inclusivity/exclusivity and group alignment.

• Stakes is largely a repackaging of Graduation (force/focus) and Engagement (proclaim vs entertain), with its “risk” defined relationally by background values rather than independently observable linguistic features.

• Spirit mirrors Attitude (Affect, Judgement, Appreciation) and interacts with Graduation and Engagement to produce “tone,” yet is presented as a separate dimension labelled with a metaphorical “vibe.”

Across all three dimensions, Tuning risks terminological inflation — taking familiar linguistic and discourse-semantic resources, giving them new labels, and promoting them as a distinct system.

2. Slippage between linguistic description and social interpretation

Tuning repeatedly blurs the boundary between:

• Observable linguistic patterns (pronouns, vocatives, quantifiers, hashtags, emojis, commands), and

• Inferred social consequences (disruption of community values, high-stakes positions, warmth or hostility in social bonds).

For instance, the notion of “stakes” relies on an analyst’s projection of social significance within a community, rather than on measurable linguistic features. Similarly, “spirit” uses impressionistic affective labels (warm/warn) that risk turning description into subjective commentary. These slippages undermine the claim that Tuning is a discrete linguistic system.

3. Circularity and dataset constraints

The chapter sometimes embeds Tuning in the corpus design itself (e.g., #momguilt posts), producing circular validation: scope appears everywhere because the dataset was selected to foreground a particular community, which then reinforces the impression that scope is a systematic resource.

4. Meta-system framing

Ultimately, Tuning functions more as a meta-functional overlay, a way of describing how existing resources (Appraisal, Engagement, Graduation, reference devices) can be “adjusted” across a continuum, rather than as a system with independent analytic status. Its conceptual appeal lies in metaphorical clarity (scope, stakes, spirit), but the theoretical necessity is weak.

Conclusion

While Tuning offers an engaging and accessible metaphor for how interpersonal meaning can be adjusted, it largely repackages established SFL categories, blurs analytic strata, and imports social interpretation into linguistic description. Its main contribution may be pedagogical — helping readers think about alignment, risk, and tone — rather than extending the theoretical apparatus of SFL. Readers should approach Tuning with an appreciation of its rhetorical and descriptive value, but with caution regarding its analytic independence.

When Obligation Becomes Affect: The Category Error of Reading Modality as Stake Adjustment

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 143-4):

Modality and interpersonal grammatical metaphor are also often used to adjust the stakes. In Kollontai’s demands text (Text 5.1), for example, she raises the stakes of her demands by bouncing between median (should) and high (must) modality (in bold), in addition to sharpening focus (italics) and raising force (underlined) in graduation:

The law must intervene to help women to combine work and maternity. Men and women workers everywhere are demanding a complete ban on night work for women and young people, an eight-hour day for all workers, and a ban on the employment of children under sixteen years of age. 

They are demanding that young girls and boys over sixteen years of age be allowed to work only half the day. This is important, especially from the point of view of the future mother, since between the years of sixteen and eighteen the girl is growing and developing into a woman. If her strength is undermined during these years her chance of healthy motherhood are lost forever. The law should state categorically that working conditions and the whole work situation must not threaten a woman’s health; harmful methods of production should be replaced by safe methods or completely done away with; heavy work with weights or foot-propelled machines etc. should be mechanised; workrooms should be kept clean and there should be no extremes of temperature; toilets, washrooms and dining rooms should be provided, etc.

ChatGPT Comments:

This exposes several unexamined assumptions in Doran, Martin & Zappavigna’s analytical stance.

Here’s the core issue:

Their discussion treats Kollontai’s political discourse as an instance of the same interpersonal resource system used in the #momguilt corpus. This is a category error. They conflate two fundamentally distinct semiotic orders — one symbolic (institutional-political, collective, deliberative), the other ambient (social-affective, individuated, confessional).

By treating modality and interpersonal grammatical metaphor as merely additional means of “adjusting stakes”, they flatten the stratified relation between rhetorical demand and interpersonal negotiation. Kollontai’s modality operates within a theoretical and programmatic register of political discourse — it construes obligation as systemic necessity, not as an interpersonal gambit. To read it as a move in a local field of “stake adjustment” is to mistake political modality for emotional calibration.

A few more points of critique:

1. Scope error – They implicitly universalise “stakes” as a trans-discursive interpersonal system, when in fact Kollontai’s use of must/should belongs to a different scale of construal: collective action rather than interpersonal rapport.

2. Interpersonal metaphor reduced to affective tuning – Interpersonal grammatical metaphor (e.g. “it is necessary that…”) in Kollontai functions ideologically, as a projection of social obligation into linguistic necessity. This is a material-semantic move, not a conversational adjustment.

3. Collapse of modality as discourse-semantic resource into stylistic intensification – The reading treats modality as another gradient of “raising/lowering stakes” — that is, as graduation by other means. This confuses orthogonal systems in SFL: graduation (scaling) versus modality (modal responsibility and orientation).

4. Misalignment of example – By inserting Kollontai here, they effectively redefine political discourse as an affective variation of online guilt confession. This recontextualisation trivialises the historical and ideological force of the original text.

Emoji, Expletives, and Excess: Overstating the Stakes of Motherhood Online

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 141-2):

Another graphicon resource regularly used for staking in the corpus is emoji. These tended to converge with both negative affect and judgement. They also often involved repetition, for instance as a cluster of emoji raising the stakes at the end of the body of a post.

The strings of multiple emoji in (40) – (43) resonate with the rejection (bold) in the verbiage as well as targeting or being triggered by the entire situation described as a stakes-raising evaluative metacomment that concentrates the accumulated negative self-assessment. This is particularly apparent in the cluster of 'Loudly Crying Face' emoji, 'Tired Face' emoji, and 'Broken Heart' emoji at the end of (43). A similar stake-raising effect was achieved through multiple hashtags negatively assessing mothers or linking mothers to negative feelings. For instance, the #badmom(s) hashtag cooccurred with such tags.

(44) I didn’t kiss my son goodbye this morning because I was upset that he didn’t eat his breakfast #momfail #momguilt #momlife #badmoms

(45) Mom guilt is the worst kind if guilt. #momguilt #badmom #schoollunch #imsorry #kids #family #school #momlife

Another way that meanings about 'bad moms' raise the stakes was through swearing. In these cases, the expletives construe an underspecified outburst of affect, usually in the environment of negative judgement targeted at the self.

(46) I had to use my mom voice tonight and I feel like fucking shit. #momlife #momguilt

(47) Got it. I’m a shitty mom with a short temper who curses too much. Fuck. #motherhood #momguilt

(48) I think I need to supplement with formula. Why does this make my heartbreak and me feel like such a fucking failure. #momguilt

(49) Anytime I allow myself to sit still and enjoy some downtime, I feel discombobulated and ashamed. #singlemom #workingmom #momguilt #bullshit

(50) I can't get frustrated with my kid without fucking hating myself for it ... What is that??? #momguilt

ChatGPT Comments:

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025) devote considerable attention to how digital semiotic resources—GIFs, emoji, hashtags, and swearing—function to raise interpersonal stakes in social media posts about motherhood guilt. While the description of these phenomena is rich and illustrative, several critical issues emerge when viewed through a rigorous SFL lens.

First, there is a tendency to treat these resources as uniformly stakes-raising. For instance, GIFs are described as amplifying shame and intensifying the confession genre, emoji clusters as magnifying negative self-assessment, and hashtags or expletives as consistently linking mothers to negative affect. While these examples clearly highlight heightened emotional expression, the authors do not sufficiently acknowledge the contextual variability inherent in digital communication. A GIF or a swearing expletive can signal humour, irony, solidarity, or even playfulness, depending on audience expectations, platform conventions, and co-text. The analysis risks overgeneralisation by attributing a single interpersonal effect to inherently polyvalent resources.

Second, there is a blurring of linguistic and contextual interpretation. The text treats emoji, GIFs, and hashtags as if their meaning—and their interpersonal impact—is intrinsic, rather than emergent from interaction between language, modality, and social norms. For example, the looping nature of a GIF is said to amplify stakes, yet this is a technological affordance, not a semiotic property of the message itself. Similarly, hashtags co-opted into communities may function as convoking or evaluative markers, but this effect depends heavily on the interpretive labour of participants, which is not accounted for in the authors’ reasoning.

Finally, the treatment of swearing as a uniform staking device overlooks pragmatic subtleties. Expletives may intensify emotion, but they can also index frustration, irony, or performative bonding with an imagined community. The analysis risks conflating affective intensity with interpersonal risk, without clarifying when one reliably entails the other.

In sum, while Doran, Martin & Zappavigna provide compelling examples of multimodal intensification in #momguilt posts, their account overextends the theoretical claims. The interpretation of these semiotic resources as consistent stakes-raising devices assumes a level of uniformity that is neither linguistically justified nor empirically demonstrated. A more rigorous approach would attend to contextual variability, the interplay between linguistic and technological affordances, and the socially mediated negotiation of meaning, rather than treating these resources as intrinsically potent.

When Calibration Pretends to Be Neutral

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 139):

By way of probing staking further, we might ask how much of an issue it might be if a tendered meaning were rejected. In the case of (31) this involves considering how controversial it would be for another user to reply that in fact mothers tending to their own needs is a selfish act worthy of shame. This would be a high stakes rendering within online communities of mothers, but potentially relatively low stakes in other communities such as the 'manoverse' of toxic masculinity, where denigrating women is a shared exercise. Since answering the question involves fine-tuning levels of attitude, GRADUATION is a resource which is frequently implicated in staking both tendered and rendered meanings. For instance, (32) deploys graduation resources (bold) to emphasise the magnitude of emotion that the mother expresses about leaving her child and thus raise the stakes.

(32) Having major mom guilt today... Leaving my little to go away for the weekend is killing me. #momguilt

ChatGPT Comments

This one’s dense with ideological presuppositions masquerading as “fine-tuning.” 

What is striking in this passage is the way GRADUATION is treated as a scalar mechanism for “fine-tuning” affect, while the ontological cut it enacts is left uninterrogated. The authors’ premise — that “raising the stakes” is a matter of degree rather than of construal — reifies affective intensity as an intrinsic property of the utterance, rather than as a relational alignment between construals.

The language of “high stakes” and “low stakes” performs a covert normalisation of community-specific value gradients as if they were empirical facts. To say that denigrating women is merely “low stakes” in certain online spaces is to confuse social saturation with ontological neutrality: the widespread construal of an evaluative stance does not render it less meaningful, only differently aligned. The “manoverse” is not a domain where value loses intensity; it is a domain where intensity is differently organised.

By attributing these contrasts to “levels of attitude,” the passage converts ideological formation into affective amplitude — the political becomes scalar. GRADUATION thus operates here not as a resource for mapping semiotic tension, but as a theoretical anaesthetic that flattens difference into measurable magnitude. The analytic posture of “probing staking further” becomes an alibi for preserving the very moral geometry it claims to examine.

The Shout of the System: When Paralinguistic Emphasis Masquerades as Social Risk

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 139):

In the case of motherhood guilt, a lot of staking work is undertaken against a background of oriented and positioned meanings about what it is to be a 'good' mother. An example is (31) which likens, through a token-value relation, self-care to the state of being a good mom.

(31) I always forget that self care DOES equate to being a good mom. #momguilt #iForget #poor[Name] #moremomguilt

The ALL CAPS font (DOES) raises the stakes of the proposition by both acting as a form of emphasis and as a paralinguistic shouting token. The move to raise the stakes also suggests a direct challenge (rejection and opposition) to an implicated perspective – that is, that a bad mother takes care of their own needs. The linguistic intensification ('always') also raises the stakes of the user's confession ('I always forget...'). Both instances of escalating stakes function in conjunction with the string of hashtags that explicitly mark the relevant values under scrutiny – the guilt or not of mothers and whether or not they remember their place in the order of things.

ChatGPT Comments:

This passage exposes a recurrent problem in the authors’ treatment of “staking”: the conflation of semiotic intensity with social consequence. The example of (31) is described as raising “stakes” through ALL CAPS and linguistic intensifiers such as always. Yet these are resources of graduation—they scale affect or engagement within language, not risk within context. To equate emphasis with consequence is to confuse the semiotic amplification of commitment with the social evaluation of value.

In SFL, stakes—if construed as part of tenor—must refer to shifts in the relative social significance of a move within a given community’s network of meanings. A proposition typed in capitals does not become high-stakes by orthographic volume alone; it becomes high-stakes only if it threatens or reinforces the value structure of the field or community in which it circulates. In (31), the risk lies not in the typography but in the challenge to normative ideals of maternal self-abnegation.

By treating paralinguistic shouting as a proxy for social risk, the analysis collapses the distinction between graphological realisation and contextual enactment. What’s at stake is not how loudly something is said, but what order of meaning that utterance contests. 

Scaling Belonging: The Semiotic Gradient of Scope

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 136):

Tuning may be adjusted by expanding or restricting the range of individual personae or groups to whom a particular meaning is applicable. In the case of our corpus, we have to a certain extent built scoping into our selection criteria for constructing the corpus since the #momguilt hashtag broadly concerns mothers. Scoping can involve both expansion and contraction in terms of the group or personae relevant to the meaning in play. For instance, embracing a whole community through choices in pronominal grammar is a choice to enlarge scope.

(17) We all have it. And it's never easy #momguilt [link to an article about 'mom guilt'] #parenting #momlife #guilt

(18) Moms, if this isn’t all of us on some level I don’t know what is. We try to do it all because the #momguilt tells us we have to ...but God didn’t make us to live like that. It takes a village! Walk alongside each other and lift each other up!

At the same time various resources for identifying participants can reduce the scope to the level of individuals.

(19) Telling my four babies goodbye yesterday. Enjoying some me time, but I miss them when I’m away. #momguilt

Scope can also be narrowed down to particular kinds of groups. For instance, in (20) the clients who experience guilt are subspecified as mothers in particular.

(20) #Guilt is such a common emotion from my anxiety clients, particularly moms. #momguilt

While the distinction between whole communities and individuals is the most obvious case, social relations are very complex. Within communities there will be different arrays of subgroups, and groups which span multiple communities. There are different ways of 'dog whistling' with reference to these groups without naming them or addressing them directly.

ChatGPT Comments:

While the authors frame SCOPE as a tenor-level system—a feature of context governing the range of personae and communities relevant to a meaning—the examples they provide consistently conflate context with linguistic instantiation. Pronouns, vocatives, and hashtags are treated as if they themselves are scope, rather than as realisations of an underlying contextual potential. This risks collapsing the analytic distinction between what constrains interpersonal meaning (tenor/context) and what realises it in discourse (language/semantics).

Furthermore, discussions of subgrouping, cross-community references, and subtle “dog-whistling” imply a linguistic enactment of social reach, yet are presented as if they define the system itself. In SFL terms, tenor sets the potential scope, but the authors’ examples demonstrate textual realisation, not the systemic contextual resource. Without a clear separation, the TUNING system risks being misread as a description of discourse rather than a description of social context.

Raising and Lowering Risk: STAKES as Semiotic vs Social Evaluation

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 135):

Another system in tuning, STAKES, is about raising or lowering the degree of risk imbuing a meaning. For example, within a particular community we might consider how much of an issue it is if someone rejects a particular tendered meaning. Returning to (15), it would be a controversial and high-stakes position to reject the post's tender that moms don't need to carry guilt or that they don't need to follow the commands in the image ('Stop giving life to negative feelings. Bring it to God. Release it. Move forward. Be free.'). In addition to implicit staking that relies on the background of already positioned values about motherhood guilt that this community likely holds, the post raises the STAKES of the tender through various resources. For instance, the semiotic risk is intensified via ENGAGEMENT: DISCLAIM (e.g. 'don't need to'), the commands in the image and the hashtag (e.g. '#letitgo'), and the upscaled GRADUATION (e.g. 'heavy enough').

ChatGPT Comments:

The authors position STAKES as a system that modulates the degree of interpersonal risk within a discourse. While this framing is conceptually clear, it risks conflating the linguistic construal of risk with sociocultural evaluation. SFL would describe the same phenomena in terms of co-instantiation of interpersonal resources — mood, polarity, appraisal, and engagement — without presupposing that the text alone carries a fixed level of risk. By treating the rejection of a proposition as “high-stakes” based on assumed communal values, the account imports social interpretation into what is fundamentally a linguistic description. While the examples given (imperatives, hashtags, disclaimers, graduation) do indeed adjust the intensity of a proposition, the analytical leap from linguistic choice to community-level controversy is not fully grounded in observable semiotic patterns, leaving the risk evaluation more inferential than descriptive.

Collapsing Scope into Identity: The Limits of Individualising vs. Collectivising

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 134):

Tuning is the region of interpersonal meaning concerned with how a position is pitched as more or less loaded, as more or less friendly, and as more or less relevant to particular personae or communities. In this section we will consider resources for modifying the TENDERED and RENDERED meanings being put forward in a text in terms of:

• SCOPE: [individualised] « [collectivised]
• STAKES : [higher] « [lower]
• SPIRIT: [warming] « [warning]

We begin with SCOPE, which is concerned with the extent of a position's ambit. A key dimension is how broad or narrow the group is that is being sourced or convoked. SCOPE is a clined system ranging from narrower [individualise] to broader [collectivise] options. This kind of distinction can be realised linguistically through number (e.g., we all vs I) and more broadly through quantification of people within the discourse semantic system of GRADUATION (Martin & White, 2005), as well as through various membership categorisation devices (Schegloff, 2007) which function to flag group association. Paralinguistically, it can be realised through shifts in loudness from a whisper (individualising) to a yell (collectivising), body orientation and eye gaze to an individual or a collective, the breadth or narrowness of deictic pointing – using, say, the pinky finger to point (individualising) or the whole hand (collectivising); (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2021; Ngo et al., 2022; Van Leeuwen, 1999). 

In work on identity and iconisation, (Tann, 2010a; Tann, 2010b; Tann, 2013) draws on membership categorisation devices to specify three kinds of association that construe belonging relevant to SCOPING:

• Categorisation – classifying by type; e.g., Western, Muslim, middle-class etc.
• Collectivisation – generating oppositions between groups; e.g., us v them, stay-at-home mothers v working mothers, conservatives v liberals, Australians v refugees etc.
• Spatialisation – classifying via place; e.g., Aussies, Kiwis, Yankees etc.

ChatGPT Comments:

This passage introduces tuning as a “region” of interpersonal meaning and narrows immediately to the question of scope. On the surface, scope is defined as a cline running from individualised to collectivised meanings, and a series of linguistic and paralinguistic examples are offered to illustrate this span. But closer inspection reveals several difficulties.

First, the very definition of “region” is left unclear. The term functions as a spatial metaphor rather than a precise theoretical category, raising questions about how tuning relates to established strata, systems, or networks within the model. Scope itself is then described as a “clined system,” but the range of phenomena brought under this cline—number, deixis, membership categorisation, volume, gesture—do not necessarily belong to the same semiotic order. The result is a catalogue of heterogeneous examples forced into a single continuum.

Second, the paralinguistic illustrations stretch the concept. Whispering versus yelling or pointing with a pinky versus the whole hand may display inclusion or exclusion, but whether such embodied practices operate as part of the same “system” as linguistic collectivisation is far from obvious. Without a stronger account of how these resources integrate with language proper, the taxonomy risks over-extension.

Third, the treatment of membership categorisation raises a deeper issue. Labelling groups as “Western,” “Muslim,” “conservative,” or “refugee” is not simply a matter of scoping ambit; it is also a matter of invoking ideologically loaded categories. In treating these equally as scoping devices, the framework risks flattening ideological evaluation into neutralised semiotic description, when in fact these categories operate at the intersection of meaning and value.

Finally, the eclectic theoretical sourcing—Schegloff, Kress, Van Leeuwen, Tann—points to a further problem: the framework here is less a principled integration than a patchwork. Different traditions are loosely stitched together under the rubric of scope without an account of how they belong to one coherent system of interpersonal meaning.

In short, while the intention is to define scope as a systematic dimension of tuning, what emerges instead is a loose assemblage of examples and analogies. Rather than clarifying the concept, the attempt to codify scope risks obscuring the very semiotic distinctions it seeks to capture.

Hands-On Tuning: When Stakes, Spirit, and Scope Meet Motherhood

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 128-30):

Returning to the exchange that we have considered throughout the book, as Kristy's mother is attempting to get her dressed, we have seen that an interpersonal juggling act characterises the interaction. In this chapter we will add the dimension of tuning to our consideration of the interpersonal dynamics of this exchange. In this negotiation the mother moves Kristy toward compliance with her request, at the same time as getting Ruth to stop pushing her sister – avoiding as she does so potential interpersonal meltdowns that might delay her end goal of getting out the door on time. The skill with which she manages this interaction is apparent in the ways she adjusts the levels of risk in her proposals, as she guides her less than optimally compliant children towards departure. Throughout she adjusts the vibe of the negotiation, all the while attending to the needs of the individuals present in the exchange. Not only is it important for everyone to feel like they are heard; but in addition it is important that everyone knows that the instructions, even though often cast indirectly, are to be interpreted as directed to the two children present in the exchange.

If we look at the language in this unfolding phase, we can see its interpersonal dynamics play out as distinct choices in TUNING. Rather than directly commanding Kristy to get dressed, an option likely to put her at loggerheads with her small and obstinate interlocutor, the mother leverages the persuasive power of interpersonal metaphor by adopting an interrogative clause structure. In addition to shifting purview, the indirectness of 'how about' softens the impact of the proposal by casting it as tentative. In terms of TUNING, it lowers the stakes – most likely with the hope of avoiding the explosion of emotion that does unfortunately eventuate. Kristy's blunt refusal (‘no’) raises the stakes of her rejection of the mother's proposal, though as Kristy tries to manoeuvre her way out of going, she strategically lowers the stakes of her rejection. This is realised through the indirectness of interpersonal metaphor ('don't want to go' for 'don't make me go'). Nonetheless, her crying largely overrides this by significantly raising the stakes of her refusal. …

At the same time, the mother’s repetition of reasons for Kristy to get dressed, combined with her use of modality (probably, maybe) and lowering force (a little bit) can be interpreted via graduation (Martin & White, 2005) as lowering the stakes of Kristy leaving. …

Kristy’s mother also lowers the stakes of her initial suggestion for why Kristy doesn’t want to go out through modality metaphor, using I think and I don’t think to indicate the tentativeness of her suggestions …

Kristy and her mother’s use of grammatical metaphor earlier in the conversation contrasts with the more direct kinds of rejecting used later on such as 'don't!' by Kristy to Ruth and ‘don’t get cranky’ by Kristy’s mother in response where stakes are raised through their frankness. In this case, Kristy tries to assert her status over her younger sister by combining both asserting purview and high stakes (also suggested by the exclamation mark, suggesting a loud, sharp voice quality); but her mother trumps her by using the same strategy to protect Ruth. …

At the same time that Kristy and her mother are adjusting stakes, differing levels of ‘friendliness’ are also involved. In terms of tuning, we refer to this as SPIRIT – a scale whereby propositions and proposals are cast as more convivial [warming] or more threatening [warning]. For example, the mother employs vocatives of endearment such as pet and sweetie to warm her proposals (Poynton, 1984, 1990a). Similarly, Kristy’s use of a warming vocative Mummy in 'Mummy... I don't want to go away from you' can be interpreted as the child capitalising on the opportunity afforded by the momentary lowering of stakes that occurs when the mother reflects on the challenging time they are having together ('oh dear oh dear'). We do not know from the transcript what exactly was happening at this time; but one might imagine that while they are talking Kristy’s mother may have given her a hug and both may speak in a higher pitch and smoother voice quality to emphasise this warmth (Ngo et al., 2022; Van Leeuwen, 1999). This moment in the exchange is interrupted by Kristy’s sister Ruth pushing her leg, possibly out of jealousy at all the attention being given to Kristy in this delicate negotiation. The mother’s choice to address the child as 'Ruth' when she attempts to stop this act of minor violence is sterner than her other vocation choices in this exchange. It is a warning, even though it is tempered via the interpersonal metaphor that tends to pervade the mother’s talk ('she doesn't want her leg pushed, Ruth' for 'Don't push her leg, Ruth'). Nonetheless, despite these nuances, Kristy’s crying establishes a prosody of negative spirit combined with raised stakes that colours the entire conversation.

ChatGPT Comments:

Tuning in Practice – Kristy’s Dressing Exchange

1. Tuning as analytic overlay

• The examples are detailed and engaging, showing scope, stakes, and spirit in action.

• However, the analyses largely translate intuitively observable phenomena into Tuning terminology, rather than demonstrating that Tuning captures something independently unmodellable by SFL.

• For instance, softening a proposal with “how about” or “I think” is already describable via modality and Graduation, and marking friendliness through vocatives or prosody is captured by Attitude + Graduation + Engagement. Tuning acts more as a layer of interpretive commentary than as a distinct system.

2. Social interpretation vs linguistic description

• The critique points to the familiar Chapter 5 pattern: linguistic choices are interpreted through the lens of interpersonal effect, e.g., Kristy’s crying or Ruth’s push.

• While intuitively appealing, this approach blurs the analytic boundary between observable language and inferred social impact. For example, raising stakes through exclamation marks or prosody depends heavily on context and affective interpretation, not strictly on systemic-functional categories.

3. Redundancy and circularity

• Almost every example of “lowering stakes” or “warming spirit” overlaps with existing SFL tools: modality, Graduation, vocatives, exclamatives, prosody.

• There’s little in these examples that cannot be analysed using canonical Appraisal + Graduation + Engagement. Tuning does not uncover new semiotic mechanisms; it relabels and frames them for interpretive storytelling.

4. Pedagogical appeal vs analytic necessity

• The examples do succeed in making the concept of Tuning accessible and vivid — readers can see scope, stakes, and spirit “moving” in a live interaction.

• But the chapter risks conflating descriptive clarity with theoretical innovation. The system of Tuning is helpful for teaching or illustrative purposes, but it does not add a new analytic stratum beyond what SFL already provides.

Verdict

The dialogue illustrations convincingly demonstrate the intuitive appeal of Tuning, showing how stakes and spirit fluctuate in real interactions. Yet they also reveal the core weakness of Chapter 5: Tuning functions as a repackaging of existing linguistic resources, with analysis dependent on social interpretation. Its value lies in pedagogical exposition, not in extending the analytic power of SFL.