It follows from this that systemic theory gives prominence to discourse, or 'text'; not — or not only — as evidence for the system, but valued, rather, as constitutive of the culture. The mechanism proposed for this constitutive power of discourse has been referred to as the 'metafunctional hookup': the hypothesis that
(a) social contexts are organic — dynamic configurations of three components, called 'field', 'tenor', and 'mode': respectively, the nature of the social activity, the relations among the interactants, and the status accorded to the language (what is going on, who are taking part, and what they are doing with their discourse); and
(b) there is a relationship between these and the metafunctions such that these components are construed, respectively, as experiential, as interpersonal, and as textual meanings.
Register, or functional variation in language, is then interpreted as systemic variation in the relative prominence (the probability of being taken up) of different options within these semantic components.
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