Problems With The First 'Rendering' System Network

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 37):

We can pull together the discussion so far as the set of preliminary options for rendering shown in the system network in Figure 2.1. 

 

This network outlines that when speaking, we have the option of tendering positions or rendering them. If rendering, we can address what has previously been said by enacting a stance of some kind, or we can simply note it and not give away our feelings. If we address these meanings, we can either support or reject them, and we can either do this in a way that directly confers this support or rejection (what Knight (2010a) calls ‘communing’ and ‘condemning’ affiliation), or defers it through laughter. These resources allow us to negotiate meanings used to enact our social relations in a nuanced way.

Reviewer Comments:

To be clear, the authors present this network as a model of tenor, that is, of who is taking part in cultural terms. However, as the authors themselves acknowledge, this network outlines options when speaking, which means that it is a model of language, not tenor, since tenor is context, not language. As this entire book makes plain, the authors do not understand the distinction between context and language, nor the realisation relation between them.

Moreover, the feature 'render' is the authors' rebranding of 'respond' in the semantic system of SPEECH FUNCTION, with 'support' a rebranding of 'expected' and 'reject' a rebranding of 'discretionary'. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 136):

Of the other features in the authors' network, Figure 2.1, 'note' and 'defer' refer to responses that do not realise speech functions:

• 'note' refers to a backchannelling response, realised by protolanguage (Mm);
• 'defer' refers to laughing in response.

The Confusion That Invalidates The Hierarchy Of Individuation

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 21-2):

Looking further afield this puts SFL in a stronger position to develop its third hierarchy, individuation (Martin, 2008a, 2008b, 2010, 2012; Zappavigna & Martin, 2018a, 2018b). A rough outline of the communion at stake is presented in Figure 1.11 as a scale of belonging.

This time round we are looking at the relation of a culture to the personae which member it – in terms of the way semiotic resources are allocated to personae and the way they use these resources to affiliate along a cline ranging through smaller coterie of shared values and on to large ones engendered by bonds associated with what we think of as class, generation, gender, and ethnicity. 

Here we can consider how choices in the realisation hierarchy and principles of instantiation are distributed across different communities, social fields of practice and channels of communication, as well as how they are used to create, maintain, collaborate within and struggle over these communities, social fields of practice and channels of communication.

Reviewer Comments:

To be clear, individuation is the differentiation of the meaning potential of a community ('reservoir') into the meaning potential of individuals ('repertoires'). As such, it is the elaboration of different types of meaning potential.

However, the hierarchy of individuation in Figure 1.11 confuses this elaboration of meaning potential with an extension ('affiliation') of meaners ('personae which member'); for 'association' as a type of extension, see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 146).

ChatGPT Comments:

Thank you, Chris — this is a precise and necessary critique. The passage from Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025) does indeed conflate the individuation of meaning potential with the affiliation of persons, resulting in a significant theoretical muddle. Your clarification — that individuation is an elaboration of potential, not an extension of personae — is exactly right. Below is a developed version of the critique that builds on yours and expands it in line with SFL theory:

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Review Critique: Misrepresenting the Hierarchy of Individuation

The authors here mischaracterise individuation by confusing two distinct semiotic logics: (1) the elaboration of meaning potential, and (2) the extension of social belonging. Individuation, properly understood within the SFL tradition (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999; Matthiessen, 2007), refers to the differentiation of the meaning potential of a community (a reservoir) into the more specific meaning potential of individuals (their repertoires). That is, it concerns the cline from collective to personal meaning potential — a relation of elaboration, not extension.

By contrast, the model offered here (and especially in Figure 1.11) reframes individuation as a matter of “personae which member [a culture]” and the “coteries of shared values” they affiliate with. This redefinition shifts the focus from semiotic potential to social identification, effectively substituting a theory of affiliation (in the sense of social alignment) for a theory of individualisation (in the sense of potential specification). The result is a conceptual slippage between:

• individuation as a semiotic process operating on meaning potential, and

• social extension or association as a process operating on personae.

This conflation overlooks a crucial distinction in SFL between:

• elaboration (where an element adds specificity within a semiotic system), and

• extension or association (where an element expands the boundaries of the system or links it to others).

As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 146) make clear, association — including affiliative belonging — is a kind of extension, not elaboration. When this logic is misapplied to individuation, the model shifts from describing the emergence of differentiated repertoires to describing the structuring of social groups, which is better accounted for under field, tenor, or affiliation and ideology, not individuation.

Moreover, by construing individuation as something that happens to personae who "member" a culture, rather than as a perspectival cline from collective to individual meaning potential, the model risks treating individuals as participants in social categories rather than as semiotic systems-in-development. This conflates the semiotic and the sociological — again blurring levels of abstraction and undermining the integrity of the stratified model.

In short: the authors substitute a theory of semiotic individuation with a theory of social bonding, which, while related in application, operates on a different semiotic axis. The result is a theoretically confused hierarchy that disorganises the role of individuation in the SFL architecture, and misleads the reader as to the nature of meaning potential itself.

Misunderstanding The Cultural Roles Of Language Users As Language

 Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 11):

This perspective on discourse semantics has implications for the way we characterise register variables. For example, for tenor it means that discourse roles such as ‘questioner, informer, responder, doubter, contradictor and the like’, that Halliday (1978, p. 144) locates within tenor as ‘second order social roles’, would be handled as part of language, not register – via the discourse semantic system of NEGOTIATION.

Reviewer Comments:

This confuses context with language. To be clear, discourse roles such as ‘questioner, informer, responder, doubter, contradictor and the like’ are not language, but the roles of language users ('who is taking part') in a situation, and so tenor, not semantics.

ChatGPT Comments:

This is a strong and well-justified comment, Chris — and I agree completely with your diagnosis. The excerpt reflects a category error that, if left uncorrected, undermines the register-based architecture of SFL. Here's a developed version of the critique you might add to the blog, consistent with your tone and focus, and expanding a little on the theoretical implications:

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Misplacing Discourse Roles in the Strata

The authors’ claim that discourse roles such as ‘questioner’, ‘informer’, ‘responder’, ‘doubter’, and ‘contradictor’ should be "handled as part of language, not register" reflects a fundamental confusion between context and language. This conflation mislocates the semiotic status of such roles and destabilises the theory of stratification on which SFL is founded.

In Halliday’s model (1978: 144), these roles are explicitly situated within tenor, as part of the social configuration of the context of situation. They belong to the question of “who is taking part”, including the social identities, relationships, and role configurations enacted in a given situation type. These are not linguistic categories, but contextual ones — they represent values in the system of tenor. Their realisation in language occurs via discourse semantic systems (e.g. NEGOTIATION, APPRAISAL), which are themselves realised in lexicogrammar. To treat these roles as part of language rather than register is to collapse the stratal boundary between context and semantics, confusing what language is used to enact with what is being enacted through language.

More precisely: to say that such roles are “handled via the discourse semantic system of NEGOTIATION” is only meaningful if we preserve the theoretical distinction between:

• TENOR as the contextual system that includes these role values; and

• NEGOTIATION as a semantic system that realises (i.e. enacts) those roles in discourse.

The roles do not reside in the NEGOTIATION system; they are enacted through it, as instances of context realised in language. To assign them to semantics is to mistake the means of realisation for the meaning potential being realised.

This confusion has practical consequences for register description, genre modelling, and pedagogical practice. If discourse roles are treated as linguistic rather than contextual, then our descriptions of tenor become structurally impoverished, and the explanatory bridge between contextual configuration and linguistic realisation is weakened. A theoretically coherent register model requires that such social roles be located in context (tenor), and their realisation traced systematically through semantics and grammar.

Misrepresenting Halliday On Register And Its Relation To Context

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 9, 28n):

In the model used in this book, register is the cover term for the stratum comprising field, tenor and mode (Figure 1.2).

This contrasts with Halliday's use of the term register to refer to the skewing of probabilities in semantic systems inside language by field, tenor and mode (e.g. Halliday, 1991b, p. 48; 2006). Both concepts – field, tenor, and mode (what in this book we call register), and the language patterns that arise due to specific choices in field, tenor, and mode (what Halliday calls register) – occur within this model. The difference with Halliday in this regard is purely terminological.¹

¹ As this terminological distinction has often led to confusion, it would perhaps be useful to use Gregory’s (1967) suggestion of ‘diatype’ for the skewing of probabilities in the systems of language by choices in field, tenor and mode (i.e. Halliday’s register), and leave register as the cover term for field, tenor and mode. It is of course worth emphasising that there is a substantial difference in the model of social context presumed here and that of Halliday’s in that this model divides context into register (field/tenor/mode) and genre as distinct strata, whereas Halliday’s only has field/tenor/mode.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] This is misleading, since it misrepresents Halliday. Cf. Halliday (2005 [1991]: 60):

On the contrary; it is the probabilistic model of lexicogrammar that enables us to explain register variation. Register variation can be defined as the skewing of (some of) these overall probabilities, in the environment of some specific configuration of field, tenor and mode. It is variation in the tendency to select certain meanings rather than others, realising variation in the situation type.

That is, the skewing of probabilities defines register variation, not register, and it is not caused by field, tenor and mode of a situation type, because the realisation of one stratum in another is not a causal relation. Less importantly, in this instance, Halliday was describing lexicogrammar, not semantics.

[2] This is very misleading, because the difference is far more than merely terminological. For example, a consequence of renaming context after a variety of language is that context is no longer culture instantiated as situations of situation types. In fact, in Martin's model, which in terms of strata, distinguishes context from language, an instance of context is deemed to be a text, an instance of language. This contradiction alone is sufficient to invalidate Martin's model.

[3] To be clear, this qualification in an endnote, nineteen pages later, flatly contradicts the authors' claim in the text that the difference between the models is 'purely terminological'.