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.”