Deconstructing The Authors' Notion Of Field, Tenor, And Mode As Guiding Principles For Instantiation

Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 182):

In essence, what we are proposing in this paper is that given the significant expansion in the architecture of SFL in recent decades – in terms of more clearly distinguishing the hierarchies of realisation, instantiation, and individuation – we have an opportunity to rethink our understanding of field, tenor, and mode. In particular, we will suggest that given the wide-range of things field, tenor, and mode have been asked to account for, a fruitful avenue for exploration is to consider them from multiple angles. Rather than just considering them as components of a single stratum within the hierarchy of realisation, we can also consider them in terms of guiding principles for the probabilistic co-selection and arrangement of choices in instantiation (linking more closely to Halliday’s ‘register’ and Gregory’s [and our] ‘diatype’). We can also consider them from the perspective of individuation as arenas of variation, contestation, and collaboration (though this latter perspective will only briefly be touched upon in this paper). In short, field, tenor, and mode are asked to do a lot in SFL theory, and we propose it is time to give SFL the theoretical space it needs to do so.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] This is a mere pretext. Realisation has been part of the theory since its inception more than 50 years ago, instantiation has been clearly distinguished from realisation for about 40 years, and individuation is not explored in this paper.

[2] This demonstrates an ignorance of the architecture of language already proposed by SFL Theory. To be clear, Halliday's register is a point of variation on the cline of instantiation, at the level of language content, from system (potential) to text (instance). Registers differ by instantiation probabilities, with each register realising a situation type, which is a point of variation on the cline of instantiation, at the level of context, from culture (potential) to situation (instance). 

That is, the probabilistic instantiation that distinguishes registers varies with the contextual configuration (Hasan) of field, tenor and mode variables that define a situation type. It is in this sense that field, tenor and mode are already "guiding principles" for the instantiation of the linguistic features that distinguish registers. Situation type, however, does not feature in the authors' model.