Misreading Halliday’s Metaphor of Perspective

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 152):

The following sections provide an overview of this redistribution of theoretical and descriptive responsibility. First, we look ‘below’ – at how we realise tenor through language and paralanguage such as voice quality and gesture. The goal will be to show just how much interpersonal work is done through linguistic and paralinguistic resources in our talk. Next we look ‘around’ – at how tenor cooperates with field and mode to organise our texts. And then we will look ‘above’ – to see how our model of tenor helps us understand the genres used to organise our social life. To round out the book, we look across – to other dimensions of the theory that we are only just beginning to explore and suggest some avenues for future research. This is our vision of what a truly social and semiotic theory of language in context needs to encompass.

ChatGPT Comments:

This section tries to dramatise its theoretical stance through the spatial metaphors of “below,” “around,” and “above,” but these metaphors are directly borrowed — and misunderstood — from Halliday & Matthiessen’s Construing Experience through Meaning (1999: 504)¹. The difference is crucial.

In Halliday & Matthiessen, the “from above / from below / from roundabout” triad articulates perspectival orientation across strata — a way of describing how each level in a stratified semiotic functions as both content for the stratum below and expression for the stratum above. It is not a directional metaphor for a programme of research, nor a tour-guide map of the theory. It expresses the logic of symbolic abstraction — how meaning is recursively realised through successive strata.

By contrast, in Doran, Martin & Zappavigna, these same terms are repurposed to describe an itinerary through the model — “first below,” “then around,” “then above,” “finally across” — as though the theory were a landscape of modules to be traversed. This move collapses the logical dimension of realisation into the narrative dimension of exposition, turning what in Halliday is an ontological principle into a rhetorical flourish. The effect is to misrepresent stratification as spatial adjacency rather than symbolic hierarchy.

So while Halliday’s metaphors describe how meaning is construed across strata (a vertical logic of expression and content), the authors’ version describes where they plan to look next (a horizontal logic of survey). The two are not commensurable.

 ¹ Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

A stratified semiotic defines three perspectives, which (following the most familiar metaphor) we refer to as 'from above', 'from roundabout', and 'from below': looking at a given stratum from above means treating it as the expression of some content, looking at it from below means treating it as the content of some expression, while looking at it from roundabout means treating it in the context of (i.e. in relation to other features of) its own stratum. 

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.

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.

Overstated Ambition and Stratification Missteps

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 151):

This focus and diversity of approaches to tenor emphasises the rich and multifaceted nature of language in relation to society – something we need to grasp in all its complexity if we wish to build a truly social semiotic theory (Halliday, 1978; Hodge & Kress, 1988). While this complexity has long been recognised and descriptions formulated, SFL theory itself has not always kept pace. Stemming at least from the early work of Hasan (e.g. 1973) and advanced through its long interaction with social theory (e.g. Bernstein, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1990; Bernstein, 1996/2000), there has been a recognition of the need of an increasingly expansive theory to account for the role of language in society. With the development of dimensions of instantiation (Halliday, 1991a; Matthiessen, 1993), which conceptualises the relation between the systemic potential of language and the instance of text, and individuation (Martin, 2010), which conceptualises the relation between the reservoir of meaning in a language community and the repertoire of an individual (c.f. Bernstein, 1996/2000), we are now in a stronger position to move toward a richer understanding of the interconnection between language and society. We embarked on this book project because we felt that SFL had not yet reached its potential in this regard.

ChatGPT Comments:

The excerpt foregrounds the authors’ ambition to extend SFL toward a richer social semiotic, situating this ambition in terms of “dimensions of instantiation” and “individuation.” While presented as an innovative move, several critical issues arise:

1. Overstatement of novelty
   The authors suggest that prior SFL “has not always kept pace” with the complexity of social relations and that their framework addresses a theoretical gap. Yet much of what they claim as new—particularly the relation of systemic potential to text (instantiation) and the community–individual nexus (individuation)—is already thoroughly theorised in canonical SFL work. Framing it as a corrective overstates novelty and risks implying that Halliday, Hasan, and others were inattentive to social complexity, which is misleading.

2. Misplaced theoretical apparatus
   Although instantiation and individuation are invoked, they are largely absent in the analytic work itself. Instead, the authors operate through a lens of stratification—but here, even this is muddled. Established semantic systems (e.g., Appraisal, Graduation, Engagement) are mislocated from their proper stratum into context as purported “tenor systems”. This conflates strata: patterns of interpersonal meaning within language are treated as features of social context. The result is a conceptual flattening that collapses semantic, contextual, and interpersonal distinctions.

3. Implicit epistemic claim
   The statement “we are now in a stronger position to move toward a richer understanding of the interconnection between language and society” functions as an epistemic assertion about the book’s contribution. While aspirational, it should be tempered: SFL’s existing machinery already addresses links between language, society, and individual construal. The claimed contribution lies more in deployment and emphasis than in a radical conceptual advance.

Summary

This excerpt exemplifies a common rhetorical strategy in theoretical expansions: foregrounding ambition and framing existing constructs as insufficient to justify a new lens. In this case, the ambition is overstated, existing SFL resources are mislocated and renamed, and the promised integration of instantiation and individuation is largely unrealised. Readers should recognise that the novelty is less about conceptual revolution and more about the reconfiguration of established SFL machinery under a new nomenclature.

The Spiriting Fallacy

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 145-6):

In addition to clear positive or negative spiriting, more nuanced possibilities were present in the corpus. Humour and sarcasm were used throughout to combat prevailing cultural positions about mothers. For example, in (63) the user employs parody to play the voice of a critical other, positioned as telling the user to pay attention to the fleeting pleasures of mothering despite the grind of daily routine.

(63) 2 more weeks of #summer. Today I'm letting the #Xbox babysit. I know: treasure every moment.🙄 #boymom #badmom #momguilt #SorryNotSorry

The 'Face With Rolling Eyes' 🙄 emoji together with the #SorryNotSorry reveal the underlying position of the user, and their combative defensive tone invokes the presence of far-reaching or ongoing criticism that needs to be dispelled or quashed.

ChatGPT Comments:

In their treatment of “spiriting,” the authors again misread a complex interpersonal process as a simple modulation of tone. They describe example (63) as a case of “parody” and “combative defensive tone,” where the 🙄 emoji and #SorryNotSorry supposedly “reveal the underlying position of the user.”

Yet parody and sarcasm do not simply colour tone. They restructure it. Irony, humour, and parody introduce stratified stances — one voice staging or mocking another. Here, the mother is not merely being “defensive” or “combative.” She is performing the absurdity of the cultural injunction to “treasure every moment,” revoicing the voice of normative motherhood in order to expose it.

The 🙄 emoji, in this light, does not “reveal” affect but distances it: a visual gesture of refusal to inhabit the sentimental script being parodied. What is being signalled is not tone, but a meta-affective stance — a comment on the affective economy itself.

By reducing this layered irony to a one-dimensional “tone shift,” the authors commit what we might call the spiriting fallacy: mistaking reflexive stance for scalar adjustment. The irony collapses; the polyphony is flattened. What was a discursive performance of critique becomes, in their analysis, a mere tuning of interpersonal tenor — another instance of attitude management rather than ideological play.

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Both The Spiriting Fallacy and The Emoji Error expose the same underlying confusion in the authors’ framework: a collapse of strata and modes. In The Emoji Error, the semiotic distinction between language and its visual accompaniments was erased; in The Spiriting Fallacy, the interpersonal distinction between affect and stance is dissolved. In both cases, what should be modelled as reflexive play within the interpersonal semantics of language is instead displaced upward into “tenor,” where meaning becomes tone and critique becomes mood. The result is a theoretical anaesthesia: language stripped of its irony, humour, and resistance — flattened into a single dimension of “feeling nicely or not.”

Laughing at the Law: When Resistance is Misread as Politeness

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 143):

Other examples of stakes-lowering use of laughter token emoji include (53) – (55).

(53) @user I’m not going to lie... the thought crossed my mind. And then the crushing #momguilt caught up with me. 😂 [response to a post about a ‘kid-free’ flight]

(54) I had #momguilt, so here we are again with #2. Not that I minded eating more ice cream. 😂…

(55) What a good idea- #momguilt is real I know and everyone feeds their kids cornflakes off the floor sometimes 🤣 But keep this handy for when you have a moment of inspiration..[images of food with the overlaid caption ‘5 Homemade Alternatives To The Worst Processed Snacks For Kids’]

These posts lower the stakes of potentially community norm-violating activities – flying without your kids, eating too much ice-cream, and letting your children eat breakfast cereal off the floor.

ChatGPT Comments:

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna’s treatment of “stakes-lowering” humour in the #momguilt corpus exemplifies a pattern that runs throughout their chapter: they register interpersonal adjustments with extraordinary technical precision, yet remain blind to the ideological grammar within which those adjustments make sense.

Here, emoji such as 😂 and 🤣 are said to “lower the stakes” of “community norm-violating activities” — travelling without children, indulging in ice-cream, or letting kids eat from the floor. The laughter token, we’re told, “softens” transgression, “defers” evaluation, or “mitigates” guilt. On this view, humour functions as a pressure valve: the mother violates a norm, but laughter reabsorbs the disturbance into the moral order.

What the authors fail to see is that this moral order is not a neutral background — it is the object of critique within the discourse they are analysing. The acts they describe as “norm violations” are not genuine infractions of a shared ethic but gestures that expose the absurdity of that ethic. When a mother jokes about “eating ice cream again because #momguilt,” she isn’t apologising for her pleasure; she’s mocking the demand that she feel guilty for it. The laughter isn’t a softening — it’s a crack in the symbolic law.

By framing humour as an interpersonal resource rather than a semiotic act, the authors reduce it to an adjustment of affect (“lowering stakes”) rather than recognising its role in reconstruing value itself. This is an analytic reduction: meaning is collapsed into attitude, critique into emotion. The “shared values” invoked are treated as if they were descriptively real — a consensus to be navigated — rather than ideologically produced norms sustained by repetition and guilt.

The result is that what might be read as an act of symbolic resistance — a refusal to inhabit the confessional fantasy of perfect motherhood — is instead classified as a moment of compliance, a polite recalibration of tone. Laughter becomes a sign of fragility rather than a resource of freedom.

In the end, this is not a misreading of emoji. It’s a misreading of discourse itself. To laugh in the face of #momguilt is not to lower the stakes; it is to expose that the stakes were never real to begin with — that the so-called “law” of motherhood is already a joke.

Confession as Category Error: The Moral Overcoding of Maternal Expression

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 140):

Unsurprisingly, given #momguilt was part of the corpus selection criteria, self-targeted upscaled rejection was one of the most common patterns implicated in raising stakes about the extent to which the users felt that they were good mothers. However, this rendering pattern was highly sensitive to other dimensions in the posts, most significantly the use of humour, and could be used in both raising and lowering the interpersonal stakes of the meaning put at risk. A simple example in the corpus is intensification of self-directed rejection regarding the user's self-perceived capacity to act as a good caregiver which they express in terms of affect.

(36) [Name] stopped sleeping well recently & I got super upset with her because of it & after our visit to the ER Monday, had our follow up today to find out she has a double ear infection. & I feel like the worst person alive . #MomGuilt

(37) Legit feel like the worst mom in the world when I have to wake my daughter up to take her to my MIL so I can go to work #momguilt

(38) Summer: when you feel like the worst parent ever cause all your kid wants to do it play with you & you decided to have a career #momguilt

These kinds of admissions and negative self-assessments were part of an ongoing motif in the corpus of confession, whereby mothers admit the various ways in which they have failed to be a 'good mom'. Framing their sharing of everyday observations about the activity of motherhood as a confession raises the stakes – the confessional is after all an inherently consequential genre where for some 'believers' the fate of an immortal soul hangs in the balance.

ChatGPT Comments:

This passage exemplifies the authors’ recurring misrecognition of affective discourse as moral ritual. Their claim that expressions of maternal guilt on social media constitute a “motif of confession” is not an empirical finding but a projection of a theological template onto everyday discourse. The “confessional” is treated as if it were an inherent semiotic genre rather than an analytic imposition—one that carries with it a pre-modern hierarchy of sin, guilt, and absolution.

The women’s posts are not confessions but construals of situated affect: relational calibrations of care, exhaustion, and accountability within an overdetermined social frame. To cast them as “confession” is to re-encode these construals in the very ideology of moral purification that the posts implicitly contest. The social function of #momguilt is not penitence but collective recognition—a distributed negotiation of impossible standards of care. By forcing these utterances into the logic of “raising the stakes” through “confession,” the authors mistake the interpersonal circulation of empathy for the reproduction of moral order.

The irony is sharp: their analysis performs the same disciplinary gesture it claims to describe. What they call “confession” is not a genre of guilt but a social affordance for reclaiming agency in the face of systemic demand. 

The Exhaustion of Stakes: When Intensification Becomes Performance

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 139-40):

Intensification via resources such as the modal adjuncts was frequently used in the corpus to raise the stakes of the users' attitudes toward the proposition or situation being described, in terms of possibility, probability, necessity, or obligation. For example, 'always' in (33)- (35) raises the stakes of the meaning by presenting the situations described as intractable and ongoing.

(33) You guys moms guilt is so real.. No matter what I do I always question whether or not I made the right decisions.

(34) Im SURE it’s not just me but as a mom I ALWAYS feel like I should be doing more or that I didn’t do enough before I went to work. #momguilt

(35) I always feel guilty going to the #spa when my family is free to hang. #momguilt #lifestyle

In these examples the intensification also raises the stakes by stressing that the users are engaging in a behaviour that contravenes a set of assumed values about good motherhood. These examples also illustrate that, like scoping, stakes often runs as a prosody through texts and is realised through an array of different language resources – in the first tweet above, for instance, it is realised through so real, No matter what I do and I always question…

ChatGPT Comments:

The authors’ appeal to “raising the stakes” through intensification misrecognises what is actually happening in these posts. The repeated always, so real, and no matter what I do are not mechanisms for staking a proposition within a social semiotic field — they are symptoms of a discourse that has already collapsed into performative exhaustion. The mothers are not negotiating risk; they are reaffirming a structurally predetermined guilt economy in which the very act of self-reference is already subordinated to communal expectation.

By interpreting intensification as a means of “raising stakes,” Doran, Martin & Zappavigna mistake the automation of affect for its escalation. These users are not heightening the value of propositions; they are tracing the prosodic contour of an internalised injunction. The “stakes” do not rise — they circulate, forming a feedback loop in which self-blame is semantically recharged through the very linguistic resources meant to express relief.

Thus, what the authors take as evidence of “prosodic attitudinal flow” is more precisely the semiotic residue of value reproduction: the rhythmic recycling of guilt as a form of social synchronisation. Always doesn’t raise the stakes — it sustains the circuit.

Sharedness Presupposed: How Purview Erases Negotiation

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 72):

Alternatively, as we saw above, Kristy’s mother can indicate that she expects the meanings being tendered are shared between them. In this case, both the speaker and the listener have purview over the meanings (+ speaker purview; + listener purview) – a reading reinforced by Kristy’s support.

For proposals, this typically also occurs through commands (A2 moves), along with various interpersonal markers that suggest that the listener also agrees. The most common of these is tagging, perhaps reinforced by the inclusive let’s (which (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014, p.166) describe as a ‘suggestion – i.e., something that is at the same time both a command and an offer’).

ChatGPT Comments:

Text:

Alternatively, as we saw above, Kristy’s mother can indicate that she expects the meanings being tendered are shared between them.

Commentary:

Already we encounter the same slippage: expecting meanings to be shared is presented as equivalent to meanings actually being shared. The text collapses expectation, recognition, and negotiation into a single category. This conflation bypasses the essential point that sharedness is always construed, never given.

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Text:

In this case, both the speaker and the listener have purview over the meanings (+ speaker purview; + listener purview) – a reading reinforced by Kristy’s support.

Commentary:

Notice the sleight of hand: Kristy’s support is retroactively taken as proof that purview was already symmetrical. In other words, the exchange is read backwards. Instead of treating Kristy’s “yeah but –” as a contingent response that negotiates alignment, it is treated as evidence that she already possessed purview. Again, purview is treated as a static possession rather than a dynamic relation.

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Text:

(30) Mother: you go away from me to kinder, don't you? share/proposition

Kristy: yeah but – support

Commentary:

The example undermines the argument. The mother’s move is not a neutral sharing but a leading question that constrains Kristy’s options. Kristy’s “yeah but –” is hardly an uncomplicated “support”: it hedges, resists, or at least complicates the alignment. The coding as “share/proposition” with “support” simply erases Kristy’s resistance.

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Text:

For proposals, this typically also occurs through commands (A2 moves), along with various interpersonal markers that suggest that the listener also agrees.

Commentary:

Here the authors commit a category error. A command does not “suggest” listener agreement; it construes obligation. The only way a command can be taken as “shared purview” is if the subsequent uptake ratifies it. Once again, ratification is being presupposed rather than analysed.

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Text:

The most common of these is tagging, perhaps reinforced by the inclusive let’s (which (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014, p.166) describe as a ‘suggestion – i.e., something that is at the same time both a command and an offer’).

Commentary:

Two problems here:

1. Overgeneralisation: Tags like “shall we?” are not simply markers of “shared purview.” They are resources for testing, softening, or negotiating alignment. Treating them as evidence of a pre-existing shared state is a misreading of the grammar.

2. Misuse of Halliday: Halliday’s point about let’s is that it realises a peculiar interpersonal blend. But this does not entail that it indexes “shared purview.” The authors import Halliday’s description while quietly re-inscribing it into their own framework, which erases the contingencies of negotiation.

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Text:

(31) Let’s go, shall we? share/proposal

Commentary:

Again, a mis-coding. This utterance construes inclusion and softened obligation, but it does not guarantee that the addressee accepts. It is precisely an invitation to negotiate — which means that sharedness is not a given but a potential. The label “share/proposal” pre-empts the very dynamic the example enacts.

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Overall Assessment

This passage repeats the pattern we’ve seen before:

• Purview is treated as possession rather than relation.

• Responses are retroactively re-coded as evidence of pre-existing sharedness.

• Negotiation is erased in favour of static binaries (+speaker/+listener).

• Examples that clearly exhibit tension or resistance are flattened into “support” or “sharing.”

Far from clarifying interpersonal dynamics, the purview framework here imposes an artificial symmetry that ignores the actual contingencies of exchange.

Repositioning Misread: Semantic Ambiguity as Contextual Confusion

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 65-6):

The open proposal in this instance is the first line and we mix water with what? This conversation occurs in the process of making paste; so if it were a complete proposal, such as and we mix water with flour, a supportive rendering could be actually doing the mixing of flour with water. But without having the complete proposal, this is not possible (i.e. it cannot be rendered in this way, externally), and so it is an open proposal. However, as noted above, by virtue of it being a grammatical declarative, an alternative response is to simply treat it as a proposition that is just giving information. …

As we have just noted, when Donna’s mother asks and we mix water with what?, her move can be read as involving a proposition or a proposal. That is, it can be read as asking for the information of what we mix water with (a proposition) and it can be read as a command to mix the water with whatever is needed (a proposal). This is an instance of what we will call repositioning. Repositioning involves presenting one tenor meaning as another – in this case, repositioning a proposal as a proposition. Repositioning is a rich resource for elaborating meanings in both dialogue and monologue in ways that allow for the nuanced play of social relations that we need in many aspects of life.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] Here the authors at first mistake a question (demand for information) — and we mix water with what? — for a statement (giving of information) that can be read as a command (demand for goods-&-services). They then claim it is a question (demand for information) that can be read as a command (demand for goods-&-services), even though it is a demand for information.

[2] The authors again confuse semantics (speech functions: propositions and proposals) with context (tenor: repositioning).

ChatGPT Comments:

This passage exemplifies a recurring pattern of conflation and conceptual drift. First, the authors misidentify a clear grammatical interrogative—and we mix water with what?—as potentially a declarative. They then reclassify the move as both a proposition (demand for information) and a proposal (demand for action), despite its clear semantics as a question seeking information. This ambiguity is not a property of the clause itself but of the authors’ reading, which fails to distinguish between speech function, mood, and discourse interpretation. The construct of “repositioning” compounds this confusion by introducing yet another pseudo-contextual category—defined as “presenting one tenor meaning as another”—but what is being repositioned here is not tenor at all, but interpersonal semantics. “Repositioning” as described is simply the interpretive ambiguity that arises when context and co-text open space for multiple readings of speech function, a well-recognised feature of dialogue already handled by the systemic potential of metaphor of mood and indeterminacy in speech role assignment. Rather than clarify the phenomenon, the authors repackage a semantic ambiguity as a contextual mechanism—further eroding the clarity of the stratal model by recasting semantic function shifts as contextual operations.

Misunderstanding Realisation

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 61):

… there are a number of ways that propositions can be presented. They can be presented as full statements, unfinished statements, as wh- questions and a range of other forms. This allows a progression of information to be developed through a text to help move toward consensus. … 

Different ways of articulating propositions underpin distinctions in questions and answers, which in turn allows us to negotiate information in different ways. …

Complete propositions are typically realised by discourse semantic statements (grammatically declaratives) or by yes-no questions (grammatically polar interrogatives).

By contrast, in this text the teacher also puts forward a series of propositions that are not complete, but rather leave some information for the students to answer. These types of propositions we will call open propositions. Open propositions are typically realised by elemental questions (grammatically, wh- interrogatives), questions that give alternative choices or by incomplete statements.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

In this passage, the authors attempt to describe different ways in which propositions are presented in texts, distinguishing between complete and "open" propositions. However, the explanation is derailed by a fundamental misapplication of the concept of realisation.

“Complete propositions are typically realised by discourse semantic statements…”

This clause claims that a semantic entity (“complete proposition”) is realised by another semantic entity (“discourse semantic statement”). But in Halliday’s canonical stratified model, realisation is strictly a relation between strata—not within them. It is the relation between a system on one level and a system on the level below. For example:

• Context (field, tenor, mode) is realised by semantics (ideational, interpersonal, textual meanings);

• Semantics is realised by lexicogrammar (e.g. mood, transitivity, theme);

• Lexicogrammar is realised by phonology/graphology.

So, to say that a proposition is “realised by a discourse semantic statement” is incoherent. If both items are situated within the same stratum—semantics—then their relation is not one of realisation but of classification within that stratum. You can say, for instance, that an "open proposition" is a subtype of proposition. But you cannot say that one semantic unit “realises” another.

Furthermore, their conflation continues:

“…typically realised by discourse semantic statements (grammatically declaratives) or by yes-no questions (grammatically polar interrogatives).”

Here, the clause again bundles together semantics and grammar, but fails to maintain the logic of stratification. Since “complete propositions” are semantic units, statements and yes–no questions (as semantic units) cannot be said to realise them. The realisation relation is only valid here between semantics and lexicogrammar—not within semantics itself.

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Clarifying the Proper Model

In Halliday’s systemic-functional stratification, a valid characterisation of realisation would look something like this:

• A proposition (semantic interpersonal structure) is realised grammatically by a declarative or interrogative clause (lexicogrammar: mood structure);

• A proposal (also semantic interpersonal structure) is realised grammatically by an imperative or modulated clause;

• Both are further realised phonologically or graphologically.

If the authors wish to distinguish kinds of propositions within semantics (e.g., “open” vs “complete”), then this is a semantic classification, not a realisation relation. They might say, for instance:

“Open propositions are a subtype of interpersonal meanings that invite a co-construction of information.”

But they must not confuse this with realisation, unless they are crossing a stratal boundary.

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Conclusion

This is a textbook case of a category mistake that arises when the Hallidayan architecture is misapplied. Once the coherent scaffolding of stratification is compromised—especially the integrity of the realisation relation—it becomes difficult to determine what kind of explanation is even being attempted. As it stands, the passage does not distinguish between levels of abstraction and thus undermines the explanatory power of SFL's semiotic model.

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):