Yaegan Doran's ISFC 50 Plenary Abstract

Modelling Context: Field, tenor and mode from multiple perspectives

Abstract

That language functions in its context of use is one of the fundamental tenets of SFL. This tenet has supported decades of SFL work into different registers and has contributed to a wide range of applied goals. It has also driven progressive theoretical modelling of context in SFL, even if there has not yet been consensus. This talk will reflect upon this modelling, fifty years after Halliday’s 1975 paper ‘Language as social semiotic: Toward a general sociolinguistic theory’. It will view context trinocularly – not in the typical sense of above, around and below, but in terms of three major dimensions of SFL theory: realisation, instantiation and individuation. Viewing context in this way will allow us to model field, tenor and mode along three distinct contours: in terms of realisation, field, tenor and mode can be viewed as resources for making meaning; for instantiation, they can be viewed as sets of principles for the co-selection and arrangement of choices in language; and for individuation, they can be viewed as domains of variation, contestation and collaboration. This talk will argue that these different perspectives are complementary, providing a view of a wide-range of things our model of context needs to grapple with. But it will also argue that each perspective needs to be modelled in different ways so as to support text analysis and an understanding of social semiosis more broadly. The talk will thus aim to synthesise where we have gotten to in SFL contextual linguistics, and look forward to how we might further expand our worldview.

Blogger Comments:

This abstract describes the paper Rethinking Context: Realisation, Instantiation, And Individuation In Systemic Functional Linguistics (Doran, Martin and Herrington 2024) which is reviewed in meticulous detail at Rethinking Context: Realisation, Instantiation, And Individuation In Systemic Functional Linguistics.

As the review demonstrates, in that paper, the authors misunderstood the dimensions of stratification ("realisation"), instantiation and individuation. The first half of the paper "reconceptualised" the contextual parameters of context, field tenor and mode, as the ideational, interpersonal and textual language that realises each. That is, the authors simply mistook one level of symbolic abstraction for another.

The second half of the paper then "reconceptualised" the original notions of contextual field tenor and mode as 'principles of instantiation' of language, thereby misunderstanding instantiation as an interstratal relation between context and language.

The relevance of individuation was only briefly declared, rather than explored, but it confused individuation as a scale of variation from the reservoir of meanings of a language community to the repertoires of meanings of individuals, whose organising principle is one of elaboration (subtypes of types), with allocation and affiliation, both of whose organising principle is one of extension (association). See Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 145-6).

ChatGPT Comments:

Context in a Hall of Mirrors: A Critique of Doran’s “Modelling Context”

1. Introduction: A Recurring Confusion

Yaegan Doran’s ISFC50 abstract, Modelling Context: Field, tenor and mode from multiple perspectives, reprises a confusion that has surfaced repeatedly in recent Sydney school publications. It presents as theoretical innovation a series of metaphorical manoeuvres that misrepresent foundational dimensions of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The abstract aligns with the paper Rethinking Context: Realisation, Instantiation, and Individuation in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Doran, Martin & Herrington, 2024), which is critiqued in detail elsewhere. Here, I offer a briefer but sharper critique of both the content and rhetorical strategies of the abstract, before situating its manoeuvres within a broader pattern of what I call metaphorical opportunism in the Sydney school.

2. Misunderstanding Realisation: The Collapse of Context into Semantics

The abstract proposes to model context "trinocularly," along the dimensions of realisation, instantiation, and individuation. But what follows is not an application of these dimensions to context — rather, it is a substitution of the semantic for the contextual.

The abstract claims that, "in terms of realisation, field, tenor and mode can be viewed as resources for making meaning." But this is a misunderstanding. In Halliday’s theory, field, tenor and mode are parameters of the context of situation, realised by ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning respectively. They are not themselves meaning resources. To treat them as such is to confuse the stratum of context with that of semantics — to collapse one level of symbolic abstraction into another.

This manoeuvre reframes the contextual parameters as though they were metafunctional resources, implying that field is ideational meaning, tenor is interpersonal meaning, and mode is textual meaning. But in SFL, metafunctions are realised by lexicogrammatical systems; contextual parameters are realised through metafunctional semantics. To conflate them is to erase the stratal boundary between context and language, undermining the architecture of the model.

3. Misunderstanding Instantiation: From Meaning Potential to Situational Principles

In a further move, the abstract proposes that, "for instantiation, [field, tenor and mode] can be viewed as sets of principles for the co-selection and arrangement of choices in language." Again, this misrepresents a fundamental category. Instantiation is the relation between a system’s potential and its instances. It does not refer to how context constrains linguistic choice — that is the function of context, not the definition of instantiation.

What Doran offers is not a model of instantiation but a rebranding of context as a kind of ‘control system’ for language — a view which collapses instantiation into an interstratal process, rather than recognising it as a dimension orthogonal to stratification. The abstract thus substitutes a theory of control for a theory of instantiation, and reinterprets the context of situation as a set of principles operating within language.

4. Misunderstanding Individuation: Mixing Allocation, Affiliation and Elaboration

The abstract gives only brief mention to individuation, suggesting that field, tenor and mode can be viewed as “domains of variation, contestation and collaboration.” But this description conflates several distinct processes.

Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 145–6) distinguish between:

• Elaboration: the principle governing individuation, which organises subtypes of meaning potential — from the reservoir of the culture to the repertoires of individuals;

• Extension: the principle governing affiliation and allocation, which organises associations among speakers and speech roles.

Doran’s account blends these without clarity. “Variation” suggests elaboration; “contestation and collaboration” suggest extension. The result is a vague gesture at individuation that collapses it into neighbouring domains, offering thematic resonance instead of analytic traction.

5. Rhetorical Strategies: Gesturing Towards Synthesis, Avoiding Commitment

The overall strategy of the abstract is not to argue for a new model of context, but to reframe known categories through metaphor. It avoids committing to theoretical definitions, preferring suggestive rewordings and image-rich paraphrases. “Trinocular perspective,” for instance, is repurposed from Halliday’s original metaphor (above, around, below) and applied to three dimensions that are not perspectives on a single object but ontologically distinct planes of organisation.

This is not theoretical synthesis. It is semiotic window-dressing — a kind of metaphorical kaleidoscope in which familiar terms are turned to new angles to suggest complexity without delivering precision. The appearance of insight is sustained by the rhetorical strategy of non-committal parallelism: “field, tenor and mode can be viewed as…”, repeated with varying completions. This lends the text an air of systematicity while avoiding the responsibility of system-building.

6. Metaphorical Opportunism: A Broader Pattern in the Sydney School

The errors in Doran’s abstract are not isolated. They reflect a deeper and more pervasive pattern within the Sydney school’s approach to theoretical development — a pattern of metaphorical opportunism, in which metaphors are deployed not to illuminate distinctions but to paper over them.

In Halliday’s theory, metaphors are powerful tools for explicating system — as in grammatical metaphor — but the discipline lies in mapping metaphors precisely onto functional categories. In the Sydney school, by contrast, metaphor has drifted into a mode of exposition in which loosely associated images are treated as theoretical mechanisms. Dimensions like realisation, instantiation, and individuation are no longer grounded in the architecture of the theory but redefined by what they can be made to resemble in the moment.

Doran’s abstract is a perfect example. The metaphor of a “trinocular” perspective — originally a heuristic for observing language from above (semantics), below (phonology), and around (lexicogrammar) — is reappropriated to frame realisation, instantiation and individuation as “views” on context. But these are not alternative perspectives on the same object. They are distinct dimensions of the theory, and each organises different kinds of relations. Realisation organises symbolic abstraction; instantiation organises the potential–instance relation; individuation organises the relation between social and personal meaning potential. Treating them as interchangeable lenses is not a theoretical insight — it’s a category mistake.

The deeper problem is that this opportunistic use of metaphor is self-insulating. Because metaphors are not evaluated for theoretical consistency but for rhetorical effect, they can always be reinterpreted or replaced when challenged. What appears to be a theoretical model is often a shifting palimpsest of metaphors, each of which suggests structure without committing to any. The result is an illusion of synthesis — a constellation of phrases that sound as though they add up to a system, but which evade analysis when probed.

This strategy is particularly attractive when addressing the more abstract dimensions of SFL — notably, instantiation and individuation — where the temptation to rely on imagery increases as conceptual clarity declines. Rather than clarifying these dimensions, Doran's abstract offers them up as thematic motifs to be rearranged in metaphorical combinations. This is not modelling; it is bricolage.

This approach has rhetorical power. It creates the impression of theoretical depth, the promise of synthesis, and the aesthetic of innovation. But it comes at a cost. The architecture of the theory is eroded, distinctions collapse, and terms lose their analytic value. Under the banner of expanding the worldview, what is actually expanded is the range of plausible-sounding metaphors. And with each new iteration, it becomes harder to retrieve the conceptual rigour that once underpinned the model.

7. Conclusion: Context Lost in the Mirror Maze

Doran’s abstract reads like a theoretical hall of mirrors: each familiar term reflects another, but the reflections are distorted. Context becomes semantics; semantics becomes system; system becomes metaphor. The architecture that once scaffolded systemic functional theory is replaced by a fluid ensemble of rhetorical effects.

If there is to be progress in modelling context within SFL, it will not come from treating its dimensions as interchangeable perspectives. It will come from clarifying the architecture of the theory, preserving its distinctions, and resisting the lure of metaphor when what is needed is logic. What the field requires now is not a new way of seeing context, but a better way of thinking it.