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.

Tuning Conclusion

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 149):

This chapter has introduced the role of tuning in the orchestration of interpersonal meaning. We have explored some of the key meanings made in a corpus of #momguilt tweets within which mothers vent their frustrations over contravening community expectations about the behaviour and temperament of 'good moms'. As we have seen, whether the vibe is convivial or conflictual, the meanings tendered in social media posts may be adjusted via the TUNING system by modifying their relation to other meanings already tendered in a previous post or with broader background values positioned by a particular community. This might involve adjusting the amount of risk or controversy they engender (STAKES), the breadth of the voices they include or assume (SCOPE), or their level of approachability or reproach they enact (SPIRIT). These distinctions in meaning are encapsulated as the TUNING system (Figure 5.1).

ChatGPT Comments:

In their conclusion, the authors present the TUNING system as orchestrating interpersonal meaning through stakes, scope, and spirit. They emphasise that social media posts can be “adjusted via the TUNING system by modifying their relation to other meanings already tendered…or with broader background values positioned by a particular community.” On the surface, this captures the relational dynamism of online interaction.

The problem lies in how the empirical coordination of resources is treated as if it constitutes the contextual systems of tenor. Throughout the chapter, we see emoji, appraisal, punctuation, vocatives, and hashtags appearing in complex combinations. These are co-deployed resources, empirically observable, and they do interact with stakes, scope, and spirit. But the authors present them as if each combination instantiates the tenor system itself — that is, as if context is being directly “written into” the posts rather than being construed through them.

This conflation collapses a critical stratification distinction. Tenor is a system of context, representing social roles, relations, and participant alignments. It exists independently of any particular token of language, emoji, or other semiotic resource. Treating empirical co-occurrences as direct instantiations of tenor blurs the line between what users do in interaction and the contextual plane of social relations.

In short, the chapter’s conclusion risks flattening the semiotic hierarchy: language, paralinguistic signs, and contextual strata are treated as equivalent, rather than recognising the nested, interacting nature of strata. The empirical evidence of co-deployment is fascinating and illuminates how tuning operates in practice — but it does not absolve the need for theoretical precision about what resides in context versus what resides in language or multimodal semiotic resources.

The Mood of Misplaced Modality

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 146):

Looking multimodally, spirit is also the realm of colour in images and sound quality in film (Painter, Martin, & Unsworth, 2013; Van Leeuwen, 1999). These resources work to tinge the scenes being presented in ways that make them eery and dark or happy and cheerful and form a crucial resource for setting the mood and ambience of a text. Exploring this takes us further than we can go in this book, but it indicates that a major area of work in terms of our understanding of tenor resources will be to flesh out how these feelings are built across modalities.

ChatGPT Comments:

Here, “spirit” is expanded beyond language into visual and sonic media — colour in images, sound quality in film — as if all mood phenomena across modalities could be gathered under the same interpersonal rubric. The move appears intuitive: warmth in colour, brightness in sound, or cheerfulness in tone all seem to parallel friendliness in linguistic tenor. Yet this extension rests on a categorical conflation: it treats affective ambience (a semiotic effect) as equivalent to interpersonal tenor (a contextual variable).

The problem is structural. “Spirit” is already misplaced as a system of tenor rather than semantics; the multimodal move compounds this by dissolving the stratification boundaries entirely. The authors move from contextual tenor (social relations) to semantic mood (interpersonal meaning) to perceptual colouring (semiotic effect) without distinguishing between levels of realisation. Mood in music and colour in image are not tenor resources — they are ideationally construed affective tones, realised through distinct mode-specific systems (hue, saturation, timbre, tempo). Their affective force belongs to the phenomenal domain of sensory construal, not to the interpersonal semantics of linguistic exchange.

This is the terminal stage of the “spirit” slippage: what began as interpersonal alignment in language becomes a free-floating “vibe” across all media. In collapsing the semiotic architecture into an affective continuum, the model abandons its own theoretical stratification. Meaning dissolves into mood, context into feeling, tenor into tone. 

The Diminutive Fallacy

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 146):

As we have seen above, another regular resource for spirit involves naming. When Kristy tries to explain to her mother that she doesn’t want to go out, she used the Vocative mummy – which, when contrasted with mum or the markedly formal mother – makes clear that although she is rejecting her mother’s attempts at getting her to leave the house, she is saying these rejections with love (Poynton 1990).

(67) Kristy Mummy… I don’t want to go away from you.

As Poynton notes, naming in this regard offers a highly nuanced set of gradations of warming and warning. Crudely speaking, this means we can order names of people in terms of the degree to which they show warmth – from full names to shortened personal names to nicknames to nicknames with iterated suffixes. To return to Chapter 1 and take the names of the first author that his mother uses for him as an example, we can arrange the names from least warmth to most: Yaegan John Doran, Yaegan John, Yaegan, Yaeg, Yaegy, Yaegy-J, Yaegy-JJ, Yaegy-JJJ, Yaegy-JJJJJ.

ChatGPT Comments:

This passage exposes most clearly the slippage that sustains “spirit” as a pseudo-system: the conflation of cultural folk models of warmth with semiotic organisation. The authors propose that naming “offers a highly nuanced set of gradations of warming and warning,” citing Poynton (1990) — but what they take from Poynton is not a systemic account of tenor, but a commonsense psychology of affection reinterpreted through a Hallidayan idiom.

1. The regression to folk affect

The notion that “Yaegan John Doran” is “less warm” than “Yaegy-JJJJJ” is not an observation about semiotic potential, but a retrospective reading of interpersonal intimacy within a particular sociocultural setting (Anglo middle-class family discourse). It mistakes a local affective convention for a universal semiotic gradient, presenting social familiarity as if it were a parametric axis of meaning. In doing so, it transforms registerial variation into mood ornamentation — a drift from systemic potential to the micropsychology of personal tone.

2. From tenor to temperament

Crucially, the authors again misplace the system. Naming belongs to the lexicogrammar as a realisation of tenor (context), not as a manifestation of a separate “system of spirit.” Tenor variables (status, contact, affect) are realised through the lexicogrammatical resources available — including vocatives — which means there is no additional stratum in which these are recombined as “spirit.” To treat “Mummy” or “Yaegy-JJJJJ” as evidence of a separate semiotic system of warmth is to reify affective interpretation as if it were systemic structure.

3. The iterative joke and the semiotic cut

The “Yaegy-JJJJJ” example, intended humorously, inadvertently demonstrates the absurdity of this model. The playful iteration of suffixes is not a continuous scaling of warmth; it is a metapragmatic parody of intimacy — a reflexive construal of how naming indexes closeness. That is, the example itself makes visible the distinction between sign and meta-sign, between interpersonal meaning and its commentary. Yet the authors conflate these layers, treating the parody as a natural extension of affective warmth.

4. The anthropological blind spot

Underlying this whole reasoning is an unexamined anthropological assumption: that “warmth” is a universally legible social-affective dimension. This presupposes a monosemic affective space, erasing the cultural and interpersonal specificity of naming practices. In many languages, morphological elaboration or diminutives do not correspond to affective warmth at all, but to irony, mitigation, or even insult. The model thus projects a local cultural intuition as if it were a general systemic law.

5. Semiotic misplacement: spirit as epiphenomenon

Naming patterns are not carriers of spirit; they are one among many resources through which tenor is construed. The warmth or warning that Doran, Martin, and Zappavigna attribute to these vocatives does not pre-exist as a distinct stratum — it is an interpretative effect arising from tenor relations. “Spirit” therefore functions not as a theoretical system but as a label for folk affective interpretation, positioned above the lexicogrammar but below context, without any systemic justification for its existence. 

The Paralinguistic Projection: When Warmth Replaces Architecture

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 146):

In spoken language, voice quality and facial paralanguage are key carriers of spirit. A relatively high-pitched, loud voice with a smile will tend to indicate warmth, no matter what is being said, while a relatively low and soft voice with a narrow range of pitch and a frown will tend to indicate warning (or negative spirit in general) (Ariztimuño, Drefyus, & Moore, 2022; Ngo et al., 2022). In written language these voice quality features are often replaced by other paralinguistic features, including emoji as shown above. Punctuation is also a key resource in this regard, though this seems to vary by generation. For a millennial such as the first author for example, the following three text messages from a parent have very different spirit.

(64) Ok!

(65) Ok

(66) Ok.

The first is said, as it were, with a smile – the exclamation mark indicating a warm, happy response. The second, without any punctuation, is relatively neutral. The third with a full stop indicates something is wrong – whatever was said previously means they are now in trouble (whether or not the parent intends this!).

🧩 ChatGPT Comments:

This passage enacts a subtle but telling confusion between modality of expression and mode of meaning. The authors collapse paralinguistic phenomena (voice quality, gesture, emoji) into a single continuum of “spirit,” as though all were functional equivalents distributed across channels. Yet this move erases the semiotic distinctness of each medium — and with it, the stratified architecture of meaning that Halliday’s model was built to protect.

First, the leap from voice quality and facial paralanguage in speech to emoji and punctuation in writing assumes a direct substitutive relation — as if emoji were “replacements” for prosody. But prosody and punctuation do not occupy homologous positions in the semiotic hierarchy. Prosody is a phonological realisation of interpersonal meaning within spoken language; punctuation is a graphological convention governing textual cohesion and rhythm in writing. Emoji, by contrast, are iconic adjuncts drawn from the visual modality — not linguistic realisations but co-deployed images that stand in relation to language rather than within it. To claim these three operate as equivalent carriers of “spirit” is therefore to conflate phonology, graphology, and imagery — three distinct semiotic systems.

Second, the authors’ casual notion that the “Ok!” / “Ok” / “Ok.” triad expresses different spirit values reveals a slippage from empirical description to idiolectal intuition. These differences are indeed conventionally interpretable in digital discourse, but their interpretation depends on sociolectal norms, not paralinguistic universals. To treat this as generational (“for a millennial such as the first author”) is to further mistake cultural patterning for linguistic encoding — an indexical effect is treated as a semantic system. This is precisely the kind of category error that occurs when contextual correlates of meaning are mislocated within language.

Finally, the authors invoke “negative spirit” as though it were a measurable interpersonal feature — but “spirit,” as they deploy it, is neither a system nor a stratum. It is an experiential metaphor for the affective ambience of a message, not a semiotic function in its own right. The result is a flattening of ontological depth: language, paralanguage, and context are treated as interchangeable vectors of tone, all carrying the same mysterious essence called “spirit.”

In short, this passage exemplifies the paralinguistic projection error — projecting features of embodied performance onto writing, then mistaking their correlates for linguistic functions. It repeats the earlier stratification error (collapsing semantics into context) and compounds it with a modality conflation (collapsing sound, writing, and image).

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Reflective Coda: The Soft Ontology of Feeling

Across this chapter, the same pattern recurs: a gradual erosion of semiotic boundaries in the name of empathy. Each time “spirit” or “tone” is invoked, distinctions between language, image, and context blur — as if warmth of feeling required ontological softness. But empathy does not arise from flattening structure; it arises from inhabiting difference. When we conflate strata to explain “feeling,” we lose not only theoretical clarity but the very relational depth that meaning depends upon. 

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.”

The Spirited Misstep: When Emojis and GIFs Stand in for Context

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 145):

ChatGPT Comments:

In their discussion of spiriting, the authors continue to treat emoji, GIFs, exclamation marks, and hashtags as resources of tenor, implying they primarily function as contextual markers of social stance. 

The GIF, high-five emoji, and middle-finger emoji are semantically and semiotically active, contributing affective and attitudinal meaning. They are not linguistic realisations of tenor; they are visual, gestural, and multimodal resources that accompany text. Similarly, hashtags encode evaluation, political alignment, and social positioning simultaneously — they are not “pure context,” but meaning-bearing devices that shape the interpretation of the post.

By framing these semiotic resources as tenor, the authors repeat the stratification error: conflating the semantic system of interpersonal meaning with the contextual stratum. They also commit a semiotic error, treating cross-modal signs — visual, gestural, or pictorial — as if they were linguistic. The result is a flattening of the meaning-making process, where tone, evaluation, and alignment are reduced to a single, ill-defined dimension. In short, the “spirited” post is not social context; it is a multimodal semantic performance, one that cannot be shoehorned neatly into tenor without collapsing the distinctions that make stratal analysis meaningful.

More precisely:

This excerpt continues the pattern we identified in the previous discussion of spiriting, and there are some points worth noting from a critical perspective, though the issues are subtler here.

1. Stratification confusion persists. The authors continue to present emoji, exclamation marks, vocatives, and hashtags as if they instantiate a system of tenor (“spiriting”), implying that these resources exist in the contextual stratum rather than in the semantic stratum. Yet, these items are clearly meaning-bearing resources within the post. For instance, the high-five GIF, the exclamation marks, and the middle-finger emoji are semantically expressive — they contribute affective and attitudinal meaning, not just social positioning. The authors’ framework again risks collapsing semantics into context, flattening the stratal hierarchy.

2. Emoji as cross-modal semiotic resources. Just as with the heart and kiss-face emoji earlier, the GIF, high-five emoji, and middle-finger emoji are pictorial or gestural signs that co-deploy with text. They do not have grammatical or semantic properties of language itself; they are visual/affective accompaniments. Treating them as linguistic realisations of “spiriting” once more blurs the boundary between language and non-language semiotics.

3. Hashtags as hybrid resources. The hashtags #momknowsbest and #VoteBlueToSaveAmerica are doing multiple things simultaneously: they contribute to scoping, position the speaker, and provide affective alignment. They are not contextual; they are semantically active, encoding evaluative, social, and political meaning. The authors’ framing risks treating multifunctional semantic resources as simple markers of tenor, which is theoretically misleading.

4. Polarity of spiriting and scope. While the excerpt acknowledges positive and negative spiriting (e.g., supportive high-five vs. middle-finger warning), the same critique applies: these resources are semantic and semiotic, not contextual. The political and evaluative hashtags suggest a broader social scope, but the meaning is still realised within the post — meaning is not “context,” it is instantiated via semiotic resources.

Summary:

This excerpt reinforces the dual error noted earlier: the stratification error (misplacing semantic meaning in context) and the semiotic error (treating multimodal signs as linguistic). The GIFs, emojis, exclamations, and hashtags are not purely contextual markers but semantically potent, cross-modal resources. Conceptually, the authors conflate scope, evaluation, and affect with social positioning. The analytical consequence is a flattening of meaning, where tone, alignment, and social stance are reduced to a single “tenor” dimension rather than being recognised as emergent from the interplay of semantic and semiotic strata.

The Emoji Error

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 145):

ChatGPT Comments:

In their discussion of spiriting, the authors introduce a category that purports to “shift the tone” of a message — for instance, through vocatives or emoji that make a post appear more positive or negative in tenor. Their example reads:

@User That's a hard thing to remember these days, the #momguilt is real! Thx for saying so! ❤️😘

They argue that the heart and kiss-face emoji “colour the position overall in positive feelings,” while emphasising that, unlike rendering, these do not target anything in particular. 

The problem is that spiriting is situated in the wrong stratum. The authors treat it as a system of tenor — and thus of context — when it is clearly a resource of semantics. If something modulates tone, feeling, or interpersonal alignment, it operates within the interpersonal semantic system, not above it. To locate spiriting in tenor is to confuse the semiotic realisation of feeling with the contextual variable that construes social relations. This is a classic instance of the stratification error: mistaking the patterns of meaning within language for the conditions around it.

Compounding this confusion is a semiotic misstep: the authors treat emoji as if they were linguistic. Yet emoji are not language; they are pictorial accompaniments that co-deploy with language to evoke or supplement its meaning. The heart emoji, for instance, represents an image of positive affect, while the kiss-face represents body language. Both are cross-modal signs, drawing on the visual and affective resources of image and gesture rather than the grammatical and semantic resources of language. To treat them as linguistic realisations of “tone” is to blur the semiotic boundary between language and its paralinguistic co-instantiations.

In short, the emoji error is twofold: the stratification error (misplacing a semantic system in context) and the semiotic error (treating a multimodal accompaniment as linguistic realisation). The result is an ontological flattening — language, image, and gesture are conflated; semantics and context are collapsed. The “spirit” of discourse is lost not in tone but in translation — between modes, strata, and the very orders of meaning themselves.

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.

Clarifying Scope: Individualising, Collectivising, and the Limits of Tuning

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 130):

In addition to the various ways that the positions in this exchange are put at risk and the extent to which they are cast in more or less threatening terms, we also need to consider the personae and communities for whom they are positioned as relevant. Even though shared background values about motherhood are leveraged at points in this interaction (as we have seen in the previous two chapters), the mother-child dyad remains the primary locus for establishing the relevance of the meanings construed. In other words, in terms of what we refer to as SCOPE, the negotiation is mainly individualising rather than collectivising. As we saw when considering vocatives, the proposals in the exchange are directly targeted at the interlocutor – making their ambit very clear and giving the children little wiggle room in which to get out of doing what the mother wants them to do. Also relevant to how scope is regulated is the way in which the source of feelings is directly ascribed to the children by the mother, rather than making general statements about pushing legs or going out (e.g., 'she doesn't want her leg pushed'; 'you'll have a lovely day'). There are some instances of collectivising, for instance the 'we' in 'we'll get Kristy dressed; but these are bounded by the limited scope of the mother-child dyad. As this example shows, the scope, stakes and spirit are constantly being nuanced, all at the same time, and often through the same language resources (such as Vocatives – Mummy, pet, Ruth etc.) as Kristy, her mother and Ruth all try to get what they want.

ChatGPT Comments:

What stands out in this passage is how the authors move rather fluidly between three distinct dimensions — (i) the social scope of interlocutors (dyad vs. community), (ii) the discursive targeting of vocatives and pronominal choices, and (iii) the experiential construal of affective sources. These are not the same kind of thing, yet they are grouped together under the single heading scope.

The effect is that “scope” becomes a grab-bag for any linguistic move that seems to delimit or extend relevance, whether in terms of participants, meanings, or values. This is convenient, but conceptually imprecise. It blurs the difference between scope as social distribution (how broadly a meaning is ratified across a community) and scope as interpersonal reference (how narrowly a meaning is addressed in the moment).

The invocation of collectivising vs. individualising is also problematic. On the one hand, the authors claim that the dyad is the “primary locus,” yet they acknowledge shared background values around motherhood as shaping the negotiation. But this is precisely the point: scope cannot be treated as a binary between dyadic vs. collective. Meanings always operate across multiple intersecting planes of scope — immediate interlocutors, proximate kinship group, wider community norms. To collapse these into a single sliding scale misses the layered way in which interpersonal meaning distributes.

Finally, the claim that “scope, stakes and spirit are constantly being nuanced … often through the same language resources” points to another difficulty. If every feature of language potentially adjusts all three dimensions at once, then the proposed distinctions risk dissolving into redundancy. Without a principled basis for separating them, we are left with overlapping redescriptions of interpersonal dynamics, rather than an organised system.

In short, the analytic apparatus here risks conflating the distribution of meanings across social formations with the addressivity of utterances within interaction, while also failing to maintain clear criteria for what counts as a scope-adjusting resource.

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.