Clarifying The SFL Model Of Field, Tenor And Mode

Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 180):

Turning to register variables, field is concerned with what is going on, tenor addresses who is taking part, and mode deals with the role assigned to language (alongside attendant modalities of communication and behaviour). Halliday (in Halliday and Hasan 1985: 12) provides a little more detail:

field is concerned with “what is happening […] the nature of the social action that is taking place: what is it that the participants are engaged in, in which the language figures as some essential component?” (Halliday and Hasan 1985: 12) 

tenor addresses “who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles, including permanent and temporary relationships of one kind of another […] and the whole cluster of socially significant relationships in which they are involved.” (Halliday and Hasan 1985: 12) 

mode deals with “what part the language is playing […] including the channel (is it spoken or written or some combination of the two?)” (Halliday and Hasan 1985: 12)

These general characterisations offer a useful starting point for viewing language in relation to context.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] Importantly, for Halliday and Hasan, and SFL Theory, context is the culture modelled as a semiotic system that is realised as language. So it is important to understand that

• field is 'what is happening' in terms of the culture,
• tenor is 'who is taking part' in terms of the culture, and
• mode is 'what part the language is playing' in terms of the culture.

[2] It will be seen that the authors of this paper do not use these characterisations as a starting point, but instead misunderstand context as the language that realises it.