Misunderstanding Context-Metafunction Resonance

Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 190):

This example shows that a wide range of positions can be supported or rejected not just in dialogue, but in monologue as well. In addition, it illustrates that for this negotiation, it is not enough to just focus on attitude or engagement (or for dialogue, exchange); rather one must look at how these resources all together realise general patterns of support or rejection. Importantly, this is done almost entirely through interpersonal systems, allowing us to maintain the context/metafunction resonance between tenor and the interpersonal metafunction.

Reviewer Comments:

[1] Again, the example shows that the authors confuse interpersonal language (negotiation, attitude, engagement) with tenor. The tenor of the situation of the example is the relation of author to reader.

[2] Again, this demonstrates that the authors misunderstand the notion of context-metafunction resonance. Here they interpret it as tenor being realised by the interpersonal metafunction of language. As previously explained in a quote by Halliday, the relation between tenor and interpersonal language is that tenor decides the range of interpersonal meaning. This means that interpersonal selections vary with tenor, not that ideational and textual selections are not implicated in the realisation of tenor. But it is the interpersonal meaning — not the ideational or textual meaning — that identifies the tenor.