Confusing Tenor With Interpersonal Semantics

Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 190):

Mukherjee (2022: 68–69) uses this resource [ENGAGEMENT and ATTITUDE] when recounting the discovery of archæa – the third main branch of organisms. In the example below, the positions that are being rendered (supported or rejected) are underlined, and the resources that render them are in italics for support and bold for reject.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] To be clear, following from the previous post, this example is meant to show that the tenor resources of tendering and rendering can also occur in monologue, and that they "draw on" the resources of ENGAGEMENT and ATTITUDE. Leaving aside the question of whether this is consistent with the authors' previous formulation of tendering and rendering, it can again be seen that tendering and rendering are language (semantic) choices, not context (tenor) parameters. As such, they are on the same stratum as the systems of ENGAGEMENT and ATTITUDE, and simultaneous with them.

[2] Regarding the authors' analysis, 'the positions that are being rendered' are said to be:

• we had misclassified not just some arcane microbe
• war
• Taxonomy wasn't just missing the point, it was missing a whole living domain.
• Archaea were not "almost like" bacteria or "almost like" eukaryotes.
• Woese's work
• his theory

the resources said to render support for the positions are:

• spirited
• accepted, validated and vindicated

and the resources said to render rejection of the positions are:

• mis-
• not
• lonely, bitter war that left him ragged at the edges
• wasn't
• missing
• not
• ridiculed or simply ignored