Tenor Unmoored: Conceptual Drift in the Realisation Hierarchy

 Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 152):

The upshot of this is that room has been made for the aspects of language and society that have often been encapsulated within tenor to be conceptualised elsewhere – through other dimensions of the theory. For example the parameters of status and contact (Poynton, 1990a) can be further developed as principles of co-selection and arrangement within instantiation. Social roles, interpersonal relationships and community values can be explored as arenas of cooperation and struggle within individuation – where there is considerable potential for SFL to build upon sociological work by Maton (e.g. 2014), Bernstein (e.g. 1996/2000) and Bourdieu (e.g. 1993)). In addition the temporary speech roles that occur in dialogue, people’s feelings and the play of voices can be investigated through discourse semantics (e.g. Berry, 1981a; Martin & White, 2005). And the range of verbal action that we participate in all the time (such as instructing, planning, narrating etc. (Hasan, 1999)) can be researched through genre. This is of course an enormous program of work – one that cannot be detailed in a single book. But we have aimed to make explicit what we can do with tenor in the realisation hierarchy, and use that, along with field, mode and rich descriptions of language and other semiotic systems, as the basis for exploring all the rest.

ChatGPT Comments:

This passage signals the authors’ ambition to broaden the analytical scope of SFL by relocating aspects traditionally handled within tenor to other theoretical dimensions, including instantiation, individuation, discourse semantics, and genre. While this is framed as opening up new avenues for research, several conceptual issues emerge.

1. Displacement vs. clarification:
   The authors propose that parameters such as status, contact, and social roles can now be explored outside tenor. However, this effectively relocates interpersonal phenomena from context without sufficiently justifying the move. Tenor was originally designed to capture these relational aspects precisely because they are instantiated in interpersonal meaning. By “offloading” them to instantiation or individuation, the authors risk obscuring rather than clarifying the mechanisms by which language realises social relations.

2. Misunderstanding of the realisation hierarchy:
   The claim that tenor can now serve as a “basis for exploring all the rest” suggests a flattening of the stratification model. The realisation hierarchy is not a set of interchangeable modules; strata interact through symbolic abstraction. Treating tenor as a jumping-off point for instantiation, individuation, discourse semantics, and genre conflates levels of analysis and undermines the formal distinction between semantics and context.

3. Analytic overreach without operationalisation:
   The passage gestures toward a massive program of work — co-selection, arenas of cooperation and struggle, temporary speech roles, and verbal actions — yet provides no concrete methodology for how these phenomena would be rigorously instantiated or measured. Without operational clarity, the program risks remaining a conceptual sketch rather than an actionable research framework.

4. Implicit rebranding of established work:
   By framing status, social roles, and community values as “now available” for exploration via instantiation and individuation, the authors implicitly present longstanding sociological and SFL insights as new avenues for their framework. This rebranding risks obscuring the continuity of prior theory while overstating novelty.

Summary:

While the excerpt ambitiously attempts to expand the reach of SFL, it exhibits a drift of tenor from its well-established semiotic grounding. By relocating interpersonal phenomena across strata without fully addressing realisation relations, the authors blur the analytic boundaries that give SFL its explanatory power. The result is a conceptual flattening: rich phenomena of social relations are conceptually available everywhere, yet rigorously instantiated nowhere.

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.

---

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.

Calibrating Interpersonal Force: A Critical Reading of “SPIRIT” as a System of Tuning

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 135-6):

Our third system, SPIRIT, concerns whether the message is tabled positively [warm] or negatively [warn]. Another way of thinking about this dimension is whether the message provokes bonding that moves people closer together, or whether it is oriented to something potentially disruptive and disuniting. For instance, vocatives, in addition to acting as a scoping resources, can evoke positive and negative stances about those being addressed that adjust the SPIRIT of a message. For instance, in (15) the vocative 'Moms' calls together mothers in a relatively positive way, as opposed to for instance 'breeders' which invokes negative connotations – mothers as mere biological reproducers. For example, (16) invokes a negative stance with the vocative, 'Handmaids', most likely a reference to the handmaids in the film adaptation of Margaret Attwood’s novel 'The Handmaid's Tail' which explores the oppression and subjugation of women:

(16) Handmaids, you have your orders.

These choices in vocation have potential impact across a text: “once a speaker addresses another as Your Honour for example the dominance/deference dyad has been effectively revealed” Martin (1992, p. 258). In a similar way, spirit can be sensitive to variations in voice quality and to the way that (Hyper/Macro-) thematised attitude is established in longer texts. As we will see later, additional paralinguistic resources such as emoji can be used to adjust the spirit of a post.

ChatGPT Comments:

This section defines SPIRIT as the interpersonal variable governing whether a message is tabled positively (warm) or negatively (warn), aligning it with the system of tuning that modulates the tenor of discourse. The framing is consistent with the tradition of interpersonal meaning as a continuous resource for adjusting stance, but the theoretical precision of “SPIRIT” as a systemic category invites closer scrutiny.

In Halliday’s model, systems of attitude are already distributed across APPRAISAL and realised through interpersonal metaphor and prosody. The notion of SPIRIT appears to re-label a portion of this terrain without clearly specifying its paradigmatic relation to APPRAISAL: AFFECT/JUDGEMENT/APPRECIATION. If SPIRIT functions at the level of tuning—that is, as a higher-order resource modifying the tenor orientation of a message—it should be positioned as a semantic prosodic overlay rather than as a distinct system. In other words, SPIRIT modulates the force and polarity of interpersonal meaning but does not introduce a new parameter of interpersonal semantics.

The authors’ examples—vocatives such as Moms versus breeders, or Handmaids—illustrate how lexical realisation of attitude can colour the interpersonal key of a clause or text. Yet these contrasts are already modelled in SFL as APPRAISAL prosodies coupled with addressivity in tenor relations. The proposed system risks conceptual overlap unless its scope is delimited as a calibration mechanism within the interpersonal metafunction: one that dynamically adjusts the affective charge of a text’s stance rather than extending the interpersonal system network itself.

The concluding remarks on “spirit” being sensitive to voice quality and thematic attitude would benefit from situating these under realisation statements linking discourse semantics to phonology and prosody. Without that, “SPIRIT” risks drifting toward a rhetorical descriptor rather than retaining systemic definition.

In short, while the category captures an intuitively useful dimension of tenor modulation, its theoretical integration would be stronger if framed as a prosodic calibration of interpersonal polarity—a system of modulation rather than a novel stratum of meaning.

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. 

Tuning or Rebranding? When Scope, Stakes, and Spirit Claim a System

 Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 128):

Following on from our exploration of POSITIONING and ORIENTING, this chapter explores another significant dimension in relation to how interpersonal meanings are negotiated – which we will refer to as TUNING. Tuning offers additional ways to adjust meanings that are being put forward – to raise or lower the stakes of what is being said, to broaden or narrow the scope of who it relates to and to shift the spirit in which the meanings are being put forward. In this chapter we will introduce three main resources within the TUNING system:

- scope - whereby the ambit of a position is either broadened or narrowed in terms of the personae and communities it may concern (How inclusive or encompassing is the meaning?).

- stakes - whereby positions are calibrated in terms of interpersonal risk (How concerning or significant is the meaning? How tenuous is its standing?)

- spirit - whereby a position is adjusted to be read more or less favourably (What's the vibe of the meaning? What's its tone?).

ChatGPT Comments:

The chapter opens by positioning Tuning as a new dimension following Positioning and Orienting, promising additional ways to adjust interpersonal meanings. At first glance, the framing gives the impression of a theoretically necessary system, but a closer reading raises a number of concerns.

1. Repackaging, not innovation

The three dimensions of Tuning — Scope, Stakes, Spirit — largely repackage already-described SFL resources:

• Scope reflects the breadth of engagement, pronominal reference, and quantification.

• Stakes maps onto Graduation (force/focus) and Engagement (contestability).

• Spirit aligns with Attitude, Graduation, and Engagement, capturing positive or negative affective tone.

By branding these adjustments as a “system,” the authors create the illusion of novelty, when in fact these phenomena are already accommodated within existing appraisal and discourse-semantic frameworks.

2. Metaphor over stratal clarity

The labels themselves are evocative — scope as inclusivity, stakes as risk, spirit as vibe — but they foreground effect rather than linguistic instantiation. This emphasis risks obscuring the distinction between what is linguistically expressed and how it is socially interpreted.

3. Orthogonality and meta-system framing

Tuning is framed as orthogonal to Positioning and Orienting, yet all three concern the negotiation of interpersonal meaning. Tuning may be better understood as a meta-layer: a way of describing modulation across familiar resources rather than a discrete system in its own right.

Verdict

The introduction sets up Tuning as a systematic innovation, but careful reading reveals it to be a conceptual and pedagogical framing of existing SFL mechanisms, with metaphorical labels that appeal rhetorically but risk inflating the theoretical claims.

Summary of Chapter 4

1. Conflation of tenor and language

Throughout Chapter 4, the authors repeatedly frame ORIENTING resources as enacting social relations, implying that linguistic choices themselves are social positioning. For instance, they describe ORIENTING as helping to “enact our social relations by acknowledging the nature of the feelings and the range of people involved” (4.5). This conflates tenor—the social configuration of participants and roles—with the linguistic system used to realise it. In Hallidayan SFL, tenor is context, not language; language realises tenor. By presenting ORIENTING as a system that enacts social positions, the chapter risks reifying social relations as properties of linguistic form rather than seeing language as a semiotic tool that represents or negotiates them.

2. Rebranding SFL resources with LCT terminology

The chapter imports Legitimation Code Theory concepts (axiological constellations, bonding icons, axicons) and maps them onto SFL interpersonal resources without fully clarifying the mapping. ORIENTING resources—sourcing, convoking, opposing, likening, encapsulating—are presented as novel linguistic mechanisms, yet they largely repackage well-known SFL constructs such as:

• Sourcing → attribution heteroglossia

• Convoking → vocatives and engagement with audience

• Opposing / likening → internal connexion / appraisal oppositions

• Encapsulating → periodicity, thematic progression, or evaluative summation

The innovation here is more rhetorical than analytic: SFL constructs are rebranded using LCT’s sociological vocabulary. The chapter gives the impression of novelty while largely translating familiar SFL phenomena into LCT-inflected terms.

3. Empirical grounding and generalisation

The chapter relies on a limited set of texts (primary school discussions, analytical and hortatory expositions, historical demands texts) to illustrate ORIENTING. While illustrative, these examples do not substantiate the broader claims that ORIENTING resources are “fundamental” to all interpersonal genres. In particular:

• Micro-level dialogue examples (Kristy and her mother) are used to make claims about community-scale axiological constellations, which is a substantial leap without additional evidence.

• Genre examples, while clear, are formulaic and often simplified, limiting insight into how ORIENTING functions in complex, multimodal, or contested texts.

4. Ideational vs interpersonal meaning

The authors repeatedly emphasise that ORIENTING is concerned with interpersonal, not ideational, meaning. Yet many examples (butterflies, advertisements, water use) conflate the two: ideational content drives the evaluative positioning, and evaluative meanings are inseparable from ideational framing. The chapter underplays this interplay, which may mislead readers into assuming a clean analytical separation that rarely exists in practice.

5. Conceptual clarity and methodological implications

The conceptual layering—SFL → ORIENTING → LCT axiological constellations → iconisation / bonding icons—creates opacity. It is often unclear whether claims about social positioning are linguistic or sociological.

Terms such as bonding, iconisation, axicons, and axiological constellations are presented as essential to understanding interpersonal organisation, but they may obscure the linguistic principles they purport to illuminate.

6. Summary

While the chapter provides a systematic framework (ORIENTING) for analysing relational organisation of meaning, its strengths are overshadowed by:

• Conceptual confusion between tenor and language.

• Rebranding of established SFL resources with sociological terminology from LCT.

• Overgeneralised claims about fundamental functions of ORIENTING across genres.

• Limited empirical support for claims about macro-scale constellations of values.

• Underdeveloped discussion of the interplay between ideational and interpersonal meanings.

In effect, the chapter reads less as a genuine advance in SFL analysis and more as an attempt to retrofit SFL concepts into a LCT-inspired vocabulary. While the examples are pedagogically useful, critical readers must remain vigilant about the conceptual slippage and analytic overreach.

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Addendum: The deeper issue

The problem is not simply technical missteps in mapping SFL categories to new terms. At a deeper level, the chapter is engaged in a systematic rebranding project. By importing LCT’s notion of axiological constellations and redescribing familiar appraisal phenomena in its terms, the authors subtly shift the ground of analysis:

• Context and semantics blur — what Halliday treated as distinct strata (tenor vs interpersonal meaning) are collapsed into a single plane.

• SFL becomes subordinate — appraisal resources are recast as illustrations of sociological constructs rather than developed on their own terms.

• Terminological inflation obscures clarity — “axiological constellation” is treated as interchangeable with “network of attitudes,” but axiology traditionally refers to the bases or grounds of evaluation, not to evaluative stances themselves.

The result is not theoretical synthesis but rhetorical displacement. SFL’s achievements in modelling evaluative meaning are effectively renarrated under borrowed sociological terminology. For readers and practitioners, the risk is clear: what appears to be innovation may in fact be conceptual repackaging, one that unsettles foundational distinctions while offering little genuine analytic gain.

Rebranding Periodicity as Encapsulating

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 117):

To round out our discussion of ORIENTING resources, we introduce the relation encapsulating. Encapsulating involves orienting sets of positions as being synthesised ‘within’ other positions. This often occurs in higher level periodicity (Martin and Rose 2007) where general positions are put forward before or after more specific points are given.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

Encapsulating overlaps with SFL concepts such as hyperthemes, macro-structures, and thematic layering:

1. Terminological inflation: Rebranding periodicity and higher-level thematic organisation as “encapsulating” risks presenting a well-known textual phenomenon as novel.

2. Systemic vagueness: There is no discussion of choice constraints or conditions under which encapsulation occurs, leaving the term largely descriptive.

3. Interaction with other ORIENTING resources: It is unclear how encapsulating interacts with sourcing, convoking, opposing, or likening—whether these can be nested or hierarchical. This omission reduces the explanatory coherence of the ORIENTING system.

Rebranding Contrast as Likeness — Redundancy by Reflection

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna 2025: 111):

The counterpart to opposing is likening. Likening involves grouping things as the same or similar. This similarity is not necessarily in terms of any ideational similarity but in terms of how they are positioned rhetorically within a set of oppositions… Like opposing, likening is a regular resource for building constellations and extending text and offers resources for organising sets of apparently different things, ideationally speaking, as ‘the same’.

ChatGPT Comments:

Likening suffers from similar issues:

1. Conceptual overlap: Likening mirrors cohesion, repetition, and synonymy signals already captured in INTERNAL CONNEXION. Its novelty lies mostly in rhetorical framing rather than systemic distinction.

2. Ambiguity in scope: The statement that similarity is “not necessarily in terms of any ideational similarity” risks creating confusion. If rhetorical alignment is the primary function, it should be clarified how this interacts with appraisal or engagement, rather than leaving it broadly under “constellations.”

From Contrastive Signals to Axiological Binaries: How Tenor and Semantics are Blurred in the Name of Novelty

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 102):

Persuasive texts involve orienting different positions in relation to each other. From the perspective of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), this typically involves building or drawing upon axiological constellations that arrange meanings in terms of emotional, aesthetic or ethical stances… In terms of tenor, one of the main resources for building such constellations is what we will call opposing. Opposing resources involve establishing an opposition, and in doing so explicitly indicating that there are competing ideas (Doran, 2020b). The primary school discussion makes use of this resource to arrange its two opposing Arguments. It draws on internal connexion (Halliday and Hasan 1976, Martin 1992) to do so – more specifically the signal of difference on the other hand.

ChatGPT Comments:

Opposing is coherent with SFL’s discourse semantics (ENGAGEMENT and INTERNAL CONNEXION). However:

1. Redundant terminology: “Opposing” largely duplicates established resources such as contrastive signals and adversative connectors. Framing it as a new system may obscure the existing theoretical precision.

2. Binary focus caution: The link to LCT’s axiological constellations assumes opposition is primarily binary. SFL analyses show that textual positioning often involves multiple, nested contrasts rather than strict dichotomies. A more nuanced account of multiplicity would strengthen the argument.

3. SFL stratification oversight: While the authors reference tenor, the framing risks conflating context (tenor) and semantics (discourse-semantic contrasts), repeating a pattern seen in previous chapters.

Rebranding Heteroglossia as ORIENTING

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 91-2):

One of the most explicit relations in terms of marking social relations in a text is sourcing. Sourcing involves linking positions or items to a particular person or voice… Sourcing is often done by explicitly attributing a position to someone through what Martin and White (2005) call attribution heteroglossia… Grammatically speaking, the most typical realisation is through projected clauses or a circumstance of Angle (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014).

ChatGPT Comments:

Sourcing is well-grounded in SFL concepts such as heteroglossia, projection, and attribution. The main critique is that the rebranding under ORIENTING may obscure this: it suggests a new system when the phenomenon is already theoretically described. There is also no discussion of gradience or optionality—e.g., when sourcing is implicit versus explicit, which is central to understanding how positions are construed interpersonally.

ORIENTING: Systemic Model or Descriptive List?

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 90):

To explore how positions are arranged, we will introduce five resources within a system called ORIENTING:

• sourcing – where positions are oriented as being from the perspective of someone or something (as ‘theirs’ in some sense);

• convoking – where positions are oriented toward someone or something, or someone is being brought into the position;

• opposing – where positions are oriented as being opposed to each other;

• likening – where positions are oriented as to some degree similar to each other, or on ‘the same side’ of an opposition;

• encapsulating – where sets of positions are oriented as being synthesised within other meanings.

These relations function to orient different meanings in relation to each other so as to build a large network of positions. As we will see, each choice can be repeated any number of times, which allows for indefinitely large networks of values to be built over time.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

The ORIENTING system raises a number of issues:

1. Systemic status unclear: Unlike canonical SFL systems, it is not explicitly stated what the paradigmatic options are within ORIENTING, how delicacy or dependency is organised, or what counts as a choice point. Without this, the system reads as a descriptive rubric rather than a rigorously defined set of systemic options.

2. Overlap with existing SFL resources: Many of the ORIENTING relations (sourcing, opposing, likening, encapsulating) map closely onto established SFL resources. For example:

   • Sourcing parallels attribution heteroglossia and projection;

   • Opposing and likening echo internal connexion contrasts (e.g., difference vs similarity signals);

   • Encapsulating resembles higher-level periodicity or hypertheme structures.

     This raises the question of whether ORIENTING adds theoretical novelty or simply rebrands existing systems with new terminology.

3. Indefinite network claim: The assertion that choices “can be repeated any number of times” and thereby build “indefinitely large networks of values” risks overstating the analytic power of the model. While iterative structuring is a real phenomenon, the concept of “indefinite” networks is rhetorical rather than systematically constrained.

Iconised Ideation or Attitudinal Mapping?

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 88):

Iconisation is the process by which interpersonal meanings are charged, often at the same time as ideational meanings are discharged (Martin, 2010). From this perspective, bonding icons are highly iconised meanings that are often central to larger networks of meaning. (Carr, 2023) highlights that bonding icons such as the Olympic Flame can be treated as iconised ideation, since they take an ideational entity or occurrence and instil interpersonal meaning. In addition, she notes how already interpersonal terms such as respect (i.e., an attitude) can be iconised in contexts such as sex education classes as a means of organising the values at stake when navigating social relationships.

ChatGPT Comments:

The argument for iconisation risks rebranding established SFL processes under new terminology. What is described as “instilling interpersonal meaning” parallels appraisal theory’s projection and evaluation mechanisms, while “iconised ideation” resembles the familiar mapping of ideational entities into attitudinal structures. The term “iconisation” may add rhetorical weight but does not clarify novel system relations. Additionally, the simultaneous charging of interpersonal and ideational meanings is already accounted for in the Hallidayan model of semantic realisation across strata; presenting it as a separate process creates terminological inflation without analytic gain.

Rebranding Appraisal: From Interpersonal Meaning to Axiological Constellations

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 87):

These questions directly implicate SFL’s long-standing dialogue with the sociological framework of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT, Maton 2014). LCT conceptualises communities and social fields of practice as being organised through more-or-less tightly bound sets of positions called constellations of meaning. … The most important type of constellation for this chapter is that which centres on emotional, aesthetic, ethical, moral and political stances, which LCT calls axiological constellations.

 

ChatGPT Comments:

This is the hinge where the chapter pivots from a loose, commonsense notion of “values” into a technical construct imported from sociology. The shift is subtle but decisive. “Values” are no longer treated as interpersonal meanings that can be modelled within SFL’s own semantics (e.g. appraisal). Instead, they are redescribed in LCT’s terms as “axiological constellations,” and SFL is tasked with mapping these constellations in text.

Two consequences follow. First, the boundary between context (social formations such as “constellations”) and semantics (the linguistic resources that construe them) begins to blur. What SFL traditionally models as context variables are here confused with semantic resources, flattening the stratal distinction that Halliday treated as foundational. Second, SFL categories are placed in a secondary, supportive role — tools for illustrating concepts defined externally in LCT. This creates the impression of synthesis, but the movement is actually rebranding: re-describing familiar SFL phenomena in imported terminology rather than developing SFL’s categories on their own terms.

More succinctly…

In this section, the chapter pivots decisively from the diffuse notion of “values” toward a more technical apparatus imported from sociology: LCT’s axiological constellations. Suddenly, what were previously interpersonal meanings within SFL are redescribed as elements of social formations, and SFL’s own categories are tasked with illustrating externally defined structures. The effect is subtle but profound: context and semantics begin to blur, and familiar appraisal resources are repositioned as secondary, supportive tools. The result is not synthesis, but a strategic rebranding, one that reframes longstanding SFL phenomena in borrowed terminology.

Addendum: On “Axiological” vs “Attitudinal”

There is an additional problem lurking in the terminology itself. The phrase “axiological constellation” is presented by Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025) as if it were a natural extension of work on evaluative language. Yet the word axiology has a specific history: it refers to the study of the grounds of value — the philosophical bases for aesthetic, ethical, moral, or evaluative judgments.

In this chapter, however, axiological is not used in this traditional sense. Instead, it is effectively treated as a synonym for attitudinal: a constellation of positive or negative assessments clustered around some social object (for example, the set of evaluations associated with MAGA). What are redescribed as “axiological constellations” are, in SFL terms, simply networks of attitudes.

Two consequences follow:

1. Terminological drift — A philosophical term is repurposed to mean something far narrower, with the effect that “axiological” and “attitudinal” collapse into one another. This substitution does not extend SFL, but instead muddies the distinction between the bases of evaluation and the evaluations themselves.

2. Theoretical rebranding — By redescribing SFL’s attitudinal meanings as “axiological constellations,” the authors create the appearance of innovation while in fact re-labelling familiar Appraisal resources in imported terms. This is not cumulative theory-building but terminological sleight of hand.

In short, the very label that anchors Chapter 4 is compromised. Far from clarifying the relation between SFL and LCT, the use of axiological constellation introduces both a conceptual confusion and a disciplinary misrepresentation.

From Tiny Feelings to Cultural Forces: How Interpersonal Resources Get Rebranded

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 85):

When we talk to each other we do so upon a vast background of shared values. These may be culture-wide values that are deeply held and rarely questioned, they may be more explicit values constantly up for contestation or they may be very personal feelings known only to a few. These values may govern the shape of our lives and lead us to take arms against a sea of troubles, or they may simply be small, liminal, and seemingly inconsequential feelings that help us sort out our day-to-day lives and commune with the people we know. Nonetheless, throughout our social life, these values guide our decisions and the ways we talk; they allow us to affiliate with people, build solidarity, and help us sort out the world as we navigate a passage through it.

ChatGPT Comments:

This opening is mostly scene-setting rhetoric. It’s broad, sweeping, and couched in accessible language — designed to sound resonant rather than precise. From a critical perspective, here’s what’s worth noting:

1. Conceptual imprecision

   • “Values” here are treated as a kind of universal background substance, shaping everything from “solidarity” to “sorting out our day-to-day lives.” But there’s no differentiation between institutionalised norms, axiological stances, and everyday affective dispositions.

   • By treating all of these as instances of “values,” they are already smoothing over distinctions that SFL normally maintains — e.g. attitude vs ideology, interpersonal vs cultural.

2. Slippage into psychological idiom

   • The phrasing “personal feelings known only to a few” drifts toward individual psychology, rather than maintaining a social-semiotic focus. This pulls against the systemic-functional principle that meanings are always construed through semiotic resources.

3. The seed of the rebranding

   • By positing “values” as the shared background that guides decisions and allows affiliation, the authors are positioning values as primary organising forces. This sets up the rest of the chapter to re-describe SFL’s interpersonal resources as the machinery for building and negotiating these values.

   • That manoeuvre already risks conflating value systems (social or cultural) with semiotic systems (linguistic resources).

👉 Verdict: There’s not much to contest here in detail — it’s more atmospheric than analytical. But it is strategically important, because it frames “values” as the natural background substance of discourse, preparing the ground for the subsequent system of ORIENTING to be presented as a way of mapping how values “hang together.”

POSITIONING and Orchestration: When Terminology Outpaces Systemic Precision

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 83):

Social relations are intricate – we negotiate our status and our solidarity all the time and in multiple ways at once. The system of POSITIONING we have established in Chapters 2 and 3 captures the basic set of resources we use to do this negotiation. Throughout, we have tried to capture both the inter of the interpersonal (in terms of how we establish turn-taking and dialogue and how we position others in relation to ourselves) and the personal of the interpersonal (in order to understanding how we express ourselves and share our feelings). By bringing these perspectives together we can better understand the orchestration of interpersonal meaning that unfolds through spoken and written texts.

ChatGPT Comments:

1. Redundancy disguised as innovation

The claim that social relations are intricate and negotiated “all the time and in multiple ways at once” is a truism. What follows is not the establishment of new resources but a re-labelling of already-theorised interpersonal systems (mood, modality, appraisal, turn-taking). The introduction of POSITIONING as a unifying system risks being less a theoretical advance than a terminological umbrella.

2. The system of POSITIONING: systemic or descriptive?

While framed as a system, it remains unclear what the paradigmatic options are, how delicacy is organised, or how choices are instantiated in text. In Hallidayan terms, a system is defined by explicit choices with probabilities of occurrence. Here, POSITIONING functions instead as a broad metaphor for interpersonal negotiation, lacking the systemic rigour it claims.

3. The “inter of the interpersonal” vs. “personal of the interpersonal”

This dichotomy is rhetorically appealing but theoretically imprecise. The “inter” is said to concern dialogue and turn-taking; the “personal” concerns expressing self and feelings. Yet these map loosely onto established categories: dialogue management → exchange structure; expression of affect → appraisal. The binary adds poetic flourish but no additional explanatory power, and risks obscuring the fact that these are not two perspectives on the same metafunctional plane but distinct sets of semantic resources already modelled.

4. Misrepresentation of appraisal’s scope

By assigning the “personal of the interpersonal” to POSITIONING, the authors obscure appraisal’s central role in handling affect, judgement, and appreciation — all of which are already designed to theorise “how we express ourselves and share our feelings.” Instead of extending appraisal theory, they overwrite it with new branding.

5. “Orchestration” as vague unifier

The term “orchestration” promises an integrated view of interpersonal meaning but is never pinned down analytically. In canonical SFL, orchestration across strata is already modelled: systems operate simultaneously, with realisation across strata accounting for their alignment in text. Without a technical definition, “orchestration” becomes a rhetorical gesture toward wholeness, rather than a contribution to systemic modelling.

6. Collapse of contextual and semantic levels

The excerpt slips between “social relations” (contextual tenor), “turn-taking and dialogue” (discourse semantics), and “sharing our feelings” (appraisal systems). By subsuming all of these under POSITIONING, the stratified model of SFL is flattened. Instead of clarifying how tenor is realised by semantics, the analysis conflates strata into a single bundle of interpersonal negotiation.

7. Net effect: theoretical opacity through rhetorical polish

The passage’s surface coherence — balancing inter/personal, status/solidarity, orchestration — masks theoretical imprecision. By introducing POSITIONING as an overarching system, the authors risk generating an all-encompassing but analytically shallow category, one that obscures the finer systemic distinctions on which SFL’s explanatory power depends. 

Layering, Repositioning, and Rendering: When Jargon Outpaces Theory

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 82-3):

This negotiation is enabled not simply through the different ways in which we can tender and render positions, but also the possibility of layering these meanings. In the previous chapter we explored that people may tender and render meanings at the same time, reacting to something that has happened (or may happen) while putting something else forward to be negotiated. We saw that this was a key resource for extending conversation indefinitely, and in doing so, we offered a view on chat from the perspective of tenor. In addition, we saw that when engaging with meanings through rendering or nuancing meanings through purview, we can do so for the propositions or proposals being discussed (external negotiation), or we can alternatively do so for the speech acts themselves (internal negotiation) – in the latter case commenting on how language itself is being used. This allows for a second plane of discussion that takes the reality of text as a thing in itself, rather than just semiosis about something else. Finally, we saw all of these resources could be repositioned, with one position standing for another. This offers a third avenue through which people may negotiate their social relations along multiple lines.

ChatGPT Comments:

1. Terminological inflation: “layering” without systemic specification

The authors introduce layering as an enabling resource for negotiation but do not specify its systemic status. Is layering a distinct system, a metafunctional overlap, or simply the simultaneity of meanings across strata? Without clarification, the term risks functioning as descriptive rhetoric rather than theoretical category, duplicating what Halliday already models through rankshift, embedding, and metafunctional interplay.

2. The simultaneity of tendering and rendering

The claim that meanings can be tendered and rendered “at the same time” simply restates the well-established principle that interpersonal moves are often co-instantiated (e.g. offering while qualifying, demanding while conceding). Systemic functional linguistics has long accounted for this simultaneity through mood and modality working in tandem with appraisal. By presenting simultaneity as a new discovery, the model obscures rather than extends the canonical framework.

3. “Indefinite extension of conversation” as explanatory overreach

The assertion that layering is a key resource for extending conversation indefinitely is overstated. Conversation can continue due to a wide range of discourse-semantic resources — topic management, cohesive chaining, politeness, repair — not merely because tendering and rendering can be layered. The explanation risks narrowing a complex phenomenon to the rebranded categories the authors have introduced.

4. The tenor framing of “chat”

Positioning this as a “view on chat from the perspective of tenor” misapplies SFL’s stratification: tenor is a contextual variable realised by semantics, not a discourse-semantic system in itself. The analysis thereby collapses levels, treating tenor as if it were directly constituted by conversational strategies, rather than mediated by semantic systems.

5. External vs internal negotiation: duplication of appraisal resources

The external/internal distinction (propositions/proposals vs. speech acts themselves) echoes the canonical contrast between engaging with experiential content and engaging with dialogic positioning (e.g. heteroglossic resources for acknowledging or contesting speech acts). By rebranding this as internal vs external negotiation, the authors obscure existing appraisal theory while introducing redundant terminology.

6. Text as object vs text as semiosis

The claim that internal negotiation opens a “second plane of discussion” in which the reality of text as a thing in itself is taken up conflates reflexivity with stratification. Reflexive commentary on language is already theorised in SFL through projection, modality, and appraisal (particularly metadiscourse and attribution). Invoking a new “plane” suggests ontological novelty where there is in fact an already-mapped systemic pathway.

7. Repositioning and substitution: vague but familiar

Finally, the claim that resources can be repositioned, with one position standing for another is not unpacked theoretically. If this refers to metaphor (e.g. mood metaphor, interpersonal metaphor), it is already central in SFL. If it refers to substitution of one stance for another, then appraisal covers this territory. Without clear mapping, “repositioning” risks being a catch-all label rather than a defined system.

8. General tendency toward rhetorical accumulation

Across the passage, a pattern emerges: new terminology (layering, internal/external negotiation, repositioning) is piled onto the tendering/rendering model, but without showing clear systemic relations or offering criteria for delimiting one resource from another. The effect is rhetorical accumulation rather than theoretical integration.