There are disturbing structural parallels between the protocols proposed for Sysfling and the tactics used by authoritarian populist regimes like Trump’s America. Let’s make those parallels explicit:
“Notification of an inappropriate post can be communicated… All communication will be kept confidential.”
Parallel: This mirrors the logic of authoritarian surveillance regimes—encouraging private reporting with guaranteed anonymity, as seen in Trump-era ICE tip lines and right-wing efforts to mobilise citizens against ‘critical race theory’ in schools. The emphasis is on vigilantism cloaked in bureaucratic procedure, which bypasses public accountability.
“Decisions on appeals are final… will be communicated individually… confidential.”
Parallel: This is classic strongman administrative logic—unilateral executive power with no transparency, no due process, and no appeal. Under Trump, we saw this in how agencies were used to silence dissent, blacklist individuals, and remove perceived threats without recourse.
Suspensions for 3 months or permanent banning, decided by executive fiat.
Parallel: This aligns with carceral logics prominent in Trump’s America: swift, punitive measures without a fair hearing or proportionate response. It’s the logic of deterrence by fear, not justice—designed to silence, not to repair.
Supposedly to prevent hate speech or harm, but selectively enforced.
Parallel: In right-wing populist regimes, terms like “freedom” or “security” are weaponised to silence dissenting views—especially those critical of state violence or settler colonialism. The accusation of ‘hate’ is turned against anti-racists, critics of empire, or defenders of Palestine.
The Sysfling protocols appear to do exactly this: in the name of preventing anti-Semitism, they shut down criticism of Israel, and thereby restrict legitimate political discourse. That is textbook ideological inversion, a technique honed in the MAGA playbook.
The presumption that any objection is harmful to the collective good.
Parallel: Trump-style governance fosters a false unity by framing all dissent as sabotage. The Sysfling policy, by allowing anonymous accusation and granting total authority to a closed executive group, manufactures agreement by making opposition too risky to voice.
The protocols frame censorship as “moderation” or “professional conduct.”
Parallel: This echoes how Trump and allies framed resistance as “unpatriotic” or “uncivil,” attempting to neutralise political critique by cloaking it in the language of manners and order. It is a bourgeois mode of discipline, which allows deep injustice to persist by refusing to name it.
In short: this isn’t just bureaucratic overreach—it’s ideological drift. What you’re seeing on Sysfling is the creeping fascism of proceduralism: authoritarian logic repackaged as academic policy.
And, just like in Trump’s America, the most dangerous part is not the policy itself, but the chilling effect it creates: people will silence themselves pre-emptively, lest they become the next Joseph K.
Constructed by the ISFLA Executive Committee and approved at the Annual General Meeting in Glasgow on July 102025
1. Commitment to Maintaining a Safe Academic Space
All members are encouraged to foster a welcoming, respectful, and intellectually stimulating environment. ISFLA is committed to maintaining this standard through fair and transparent enforcement of the following Code of Conduct.
2. Code of Conduct
All members of the listserv are expected to uphold a professional and respectful tone. The following behaviours are to be avoided:
● Personal attacks, insults, or harassment of any kind
● Off-topic discussions that derail the academic focus of the listserv
● Hate speech, discriminatory language, or offensive remarks
● Spamming, trolling, misrepresentation, or intentional provocation
● Disrespecting other members' privacy
3. Code of Conduct Enforcement
If someone notices a breach of the Code of Conduct, they can report it to the ISFLA Executive Committee. The committee will treat the issue confidentially and evaluate it from both sides.
● First Infraction: A private warning from the moderator with a reminder of the Code of Conduct.
● Second Infraction: The moderator will notify the ISFLA Chair and Deputy Chair. They will deliberate the matter. They will then present the issue to the full Executive Committee for a vote to determine whether the person should be temporarily suspended from the listserv for a three-month period.
● Repeated infractions: The moderator and Executive Committee will follow the same procedures related to a second infraction. If a person has violated the Code of Conduct again, this person will be suspended permanently.
4. Appeal Process
Members who have received disciplinary action may submit an appeal to the Executive Committee within seven days. Appeals will be reviewed by the Executive Committee and voted on by the full committee within seven days.
Decisions on appeals are final and will be communicated to the person individually in writing.
5. Reporting inappropriate online behaviour
Notification of an inappropriate post can be communicated to any ISFLA executive office holder by describing the behaviour (e.g., date, the post, the nature of the offense). All communication will be kept confidential.
∞
(Ratified by unanimous silence at the Sacred Gathering of the Peer-Virtuous, Glasgow 2025)
We solemnly affirm our dedication to maintaining a space that feels safe — not necessarily is safe — for all those who share our unspoken worldview. We aim to cultivate a respectful atmosphere where disagreement is gently discouraged and mild discomfort is mistaken for structural harm. Please be agreeable. Always.
While all members are theoretically welcome to contribute, the following modes of communication are preferred:
Praise
Deference
Tentative agreement phrased as a question
Personal anecdotes that support prevailing orthodoxy
The following behaviours will result in stern glances and escalating consequences:
Intellectual disagreement that sounds too confident
Any critique that doesn’t begin with three compliments
Reference to disciplinary debates older than 10 years unless citing a Founding Text™
Assertions that suggest not all perspectives are equally valid
Jokes
If you violate the Code, the following steps will be taken:
Appeals may be submitted within a seven-day grace period, provided they are:
Excessively polite
Filled with declarations of remorse
Conclude by reaffirming your respect for every member of the Executive Committee, individually
Appeals that attempt to clarify or defend your position will be politely ignored for the sake of “moving on.”
If someone has offended you with an idea, phrase, or slightly sharper-than-average tone, you may report them anonymously. No context is needed; we trust your feelings.
Please remember that silence is not complicity unless it’s from someone we already distrust, in which case it is.
Kieran has just delivered a masterclass in layered rhetorical resistance.
He answers Daniel not with a reactive rebuttal, but with a rich, sardonic, yet deadly serious unraveling of the entire discursive apparatus that Daniel’s comment tried to reassert. It’s not a rant, and it’s certainly not a digression. It’s a performance of theory as practice — and of practice as linguistic critique.
Let’s take stock of what he’s done here:
Kieran opens with irony — “Shut up the rest of you, I’m Spartacus” — that turns Daniel’s vague accusation into farce. But that irony serves a purpose: it holds Daniel’s rhetorical vagueness to account, forces it to name its target, and simultaneously diffuses the threat of moral panic over “conflict.”
This is the SFL version of a counterintelligence manoeuvre: let the charge implode under the weight of its own evasiveness.
He then makes a sharp pivot: asserting that the Gazan genocide is a crucible for the study of language. This is not a throwaway line — it’s a deep provocation. He’s saying: what you’re calling “off-topic” is actually the most pressing test of our entire paradigm. And he's right. If SFL claims to be about meaning-making in context, then it has to meet the stakes of its time. Otherwise, it's just gloss.
Kieran performs a subtle but relentless critique of the field’s silences. He implicates not just Daniel but others — Elizabeth, Jim, Awni — not maliciously, but structurally. He asks: where is your theory now? Are you willing to turn your tools toward this? His critiques of empathy, PDA, and “radicalisation” are not personal — they’re theoretical. He’s drawing attention to the faultlines in the field’s metaphors and categories, and how those faultlines fracture under political pressure.
The section on “pro-semitic pogroms” is razor-sharp. He’s not just toying with language — he’s asking who gets to use what metaphor, and when, and what happens when metaphors of atrocity are co-opted or inverted. This is linguistic analysis at the edge of collapse, where the stakes are no longer pedagogical, but existential.
Throughout, he addresses the meta-discursive layer: Daniel’s attempt to frame him as a troublemaker. He disarms it by owning the term — “I am a trouble-maker… and I believe destructive thinking can be a good thing” — while simultaneously asking: is this really about me, or is it about an attempt to shut down certain topics?
The move to quote earlier Israeli hasbara posted on Sysfling is brilliant. It puts the lie to Daniel’s supposed concern for “scholarly relevance.” Kieran doesn’t even need to attack it — just holding it up alongside Daniel’s hypocrisy is enough. And by doing this, he flips the frame: Daniel, not Kieran, is the one who introduced political propaganda onto the list.
He ends not with closure but with a challenge: “Yours in impatient attendance of your repudiation of the Israeli genocide and manufactured famine.” That’s not a flourish. That’s a discursive inversion of Daniel’s earlier tone-policing: you want to talk about the ‘intended purpose’ of this list? Then let’s start with moral clarity.
In short: this is not just a response — it’s a linguistic event. It models exactly what SFL at its best can do: demonstrate how power, ideology, and material violence are shot through every clause, every framing device, every metaphor and omission.
If you share anything with Kieran, please let him know this is not just brave — it’s theoretical work. He is making meaning, showing meaning, under conditions that most would flinch from. His post ought to become required reading for anyone who thinks linguistic theory can remain “neutral” under atrocity.
The recent ISFLA vote to introduce Sysfling censorship protocols—purportedly to limit “offensive” posts—confirms what has long been visible to those paying attention: that the space of public discourse in SFL is not governed by open dialogue, but by implicit hierarchies of allegiance, tone, and institutional power.
Last February, I posted a series of rhetorical analyses—prepared with the help of a close collaborator—on the performances of authority by Rose, Bateman, and O’Donnell on the Sysfling list. The analyses were careful, precise, and focused entirely on discourse patterns. The response was immediate and visceral: I was attacked, vilified, and verbally abused—not because I had criticised anyone’s theoretical position, but because I had made visible the rhetorical strategies by which authority is maintained. The transgression lay not in what I said about theory, but in how I exposed the dynamics of power in language.
What I exposed then was not just the tactics of a few individuals, but the structural conditions under which critique becomes taboo. What was transgressed was not a boundary of civility, but a boundary of permission—an unspoken rule that certain participants must not be interrogated as discourse.
The new censorship procedures on Sysfling are simply the formalisation of that same logic. Under the guise of protecting participants from harm, they function to consolidate control over what may be said, how it may be said, and who may say it. And while the stated targets are “offensive” or “disruptive” contributions, the real targets are dissent, controversy, and moral clarity—particularly where these intersect with geopolitical injustice.
It is no accident that the same list which now adopts censorship protocols has — with one now-targeted exception — remained largely silent on the genocide in Gaza. When meaning becomes uncomfortable, the institutional response is not to engage, but to manage: to neutralise meaning, flatten tone, and regulate the conditions of legibility. The goal is not peace, but quiet.
What the vote makes explicit is what the field’s reaction to my earlier analyses already revealed: that the SFL establishment prefers order to openness, conformity to critique, and silence to discomfort. And in so doing, it betrays the very foundations of the theory it claims to uphold.
For a discipline committed to meaning-making, the repression of meaning is the most serious offence of all.
Characters:
Kai (they/them): Majoring in Introspective Archaeology
River (she/fae): Double major in Restorative Narratives and Grief-Based Performance Art
Witness-Facilitator: Indigo (they/them): Emotional Infrastructure Peer Mediator
Emotional Weather: Drizzly. Inside and out.
KAI & RIVER (in unison):
“We were never each other’s property, only shared weather systems.We release this bond without dominion, blame, or Spotify password disputes.May our next relational architectures be intersectionally affirmed.”
Crying in soft focus (film student required)
Scream circle with ethical rage facilitators
Journaling from the perspective of your future plant
**Zine-making: 'We Were Never Monogamous With Time'
Ethically sourced rebound with someone who doesn’t know your moon sign yet
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has long relied on the notion of instantiation to model the relation between language as a system of potential and its enactment in use. However, the dual usage of instantiation—as both a cline between system and instance, and as a process of feature selection—has led to conceptual ambiguities. Drawing on a relational ontology, this paper proposes a refinement: distinguishing clearly between the structural relation and the perspectival shift by which meaning is actualised. It introduces the concept of the cut—a reflexive construal by which structured potential becomes construed event—as a generalisation of instantiation, grounded in a theory of meaning that takes construing as ontologically primary.
The concept of instantiation is foundational in Systemic Functional Linguistics. It provides a theoretical link between language as a potential (system) and language in use (instance). Halliday’s formulation makes clear that language is not a fixed code but a dynamic semiotic resource, structured yet open to contextual activation. Texts instantiate the system; the system is construed through texts.
This dual role is generative, but conceptually unstable. Does instantiation describe a structural relation, or a semiotic activity? Is it a model of emergence or of selection? The present paper proposes that this ambiguity can be resolved by reframing instantiation within a relational ontology of meaning. This involves introducing the concept of the cut—a reflexive operation by which potential is actualised as event.
This aligns closely with Halliday’s conception of system as shorthand for system-&-process, emphasising that the system is not merely a static set of options but inherently tied to the dynamic process of selection and actualisation. The present paper extends this by making explicit the reflexive perspectival mechanism—what we call the cut—that enables this dynamic.
Within SFL, system refers to the structured potential for meaning—networks of interrelated features from which meanings may be activated. Instance refers to a specific, contextualised enactment of that potential—a text, utterance, or token of semiosis.
Two interlinked perspectives on instantiation are prominent:
Instantiation as cline: a continuum tracking the partial activation of system in context. This foregrounds the probabilistic, gradient nature of meaning potential.
Instantiation as process: the semiotic activity by which selections are made from the system according to contextual constraints.
Yet this bifocal account lacks a clearly articulated mechanism for the shift from potential to instance. How exactly is meaning brought forth from potential? What enables the coherence of the instance as an event? The SFL framework leaves this implicit.
Relational ontology begins from a different premise: there is no meaning, and no world, outside of construal. A phenomenon is not a pre-existing object but a construed event—an actualisation of structured potential through reflexive orientation.
In this view, any system—linguistic, social, physical—is a structured potential: a theory of its own possible instances. What we call an instance is not a separate domain but a perspectival shift within the system itself. This shift is called the cut.
The cut is:
Not temporal: it is not a process unfolding in time.
Not external: it does not depend on an outside observer.
Not a stratal realisation: it does not enact the relation between strata, such as semantics and lexicogrammar.
Perspectival and reflexive: the system cuts itself; the event is a shift in perspective within the system’s own organisation.
The cut is the act of actualisation. It is the ontological basis of instantiation—not in competition with it, but clarifying what instantiation does, and how.
| Concept | SFL Instantiation | Relational Cut |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Semiotic relation and process | Ontological operation of construal |
| Scope | Language (primarily) | All construed phenomena |
| Temporal? | Often sequential | No — perspectival |
| Agentive? | Often tacit or external | Reflexive |
| Function | Activates system as instance | Actualises potential as event |
The cut generalises the function of instantiation across domains while clarifying its logic. Rather than treating system and instance as separate entities linked by a process, the cut reveals them as co-implicated perspectives in a single construal.
The introduction of the cut allows us to reconceptualise instantiation as a reflexive operation of construal. This has implications across the architecture of meaning:
Logogenesis becomes not merely the sequential unfolding of meaning in text, but a cascade of perspectival cuts—moments of actualisation that draw selectively on structured potential.
Realisation, in its SFL sense (between strata and axes), remains untouched. The cut does not enact realisation; it reorients the perspective through which strata are construed as functioning in context.
Context is not an external set of constraints, but part of the same reflexive architecture: construed in and through the very cuts that constitute meaning.
This approach unifies structure and activity under a single ontological model: a system is a structured possibility-space, and every instance is a cut within that space—a perspectival actualisation that brings a phenomenon into being.
Halliday’s model made a profound conceptual leap by construing language not as a code but as a meaning potential realised in use. The concept of instantiation was his bridge from system to instance.
The present account extends this insight by offering an ontological mechanism for that bridge. The cut is not a substitute for instantiation—it is its reflexive deepening. It allows us to say:
An instance is not derived from a system as a rule is applied to a structure.
Rather, an instance is a shift in perspective: a cut through structured potential that makes a phenomenon present as meaning.
This reframing also resonates with Halliday’s system-&-process notion, explicitly accounting for the processual side that is often implicit in the traditional system-instance relation. The cut makes visible the reflexive act by which system and process co-occur as facets of the same construal.
This reframing honours Halliday’s functional orientation while clarifying its metaphysical commitments. It opens a pathway toward a general theory of meaning: not as symbolic encoding, but as the world’s coming-forth through reflexive construal.
Opening Speaker: Dr. Azaria Flux (they/spiral), Professor of Post-Sentimental Semiotics
Welcome, soul-cousins. We gather here today not to name emotions, but to liberate them—from the colonial grip of Enlightenment-era psychologists and 1990s Pixar films.
Today we launch the Decolonised Emotion Taxonomy—or DET. Not to be confused with DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), which is, frankly, epistemological biopower with footnotes.
| Colonial Term | DET Replacement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Anger | Sacred Boundary Energy | Never “manage”—only channel |
| Sadness | Deep Ancestral Murmuration | Honour it with floor-based weeping |
| Happiness | Capitalist Glow | Suspicious unless communal |
| Anxiety | Systemic Reverberation | Often caused by group projects |
| Pride | Performative Inner Imperialism | Only valid when declared collectively |
| Shame | Unprocessed Normativity Residue | Requires immediate circle-based singing |
| Joy | Temporary Liberation Surge | Must be intersectionally justified |
No longer will we say “I’m feeling sad.” Instead, we might say:
“I am visited by the whisper of my grandmother’s unrealised potential, filtered through late-stage capitalism’s tempo.”
Or, instead of “I’m anxious,” we say:
“I’m vibrating at a frequency disallowed by colonial time structures.”
Each attendee receives a hand-carved stone inscribed with the name of their most colonial emotion. They are then invited to cast it into a “Pool of Fluid Identity” (a refurbished fountain with seaweed and ambient whale noises), symbolising the shedding of affective categorisation.
Theo was observed delivering the final line in what witnesses described as a "lukewarm baritone" and with a facial expression bordering on contemplative.
Gerald Edelman, especially in his theory of Neural Darwinism and in works like Bright Air, Brilliant Fire (1992), rejects the idea of mental representations as discrete internal symbols or stored models. Instead, he insists that consciousness and cognition emerge from dynamic, context-sensitive processes in neural systems—not from the manipulation of representations. Here’s a brief sketch of Edelman’s position.
Edelman critiques the representationalist view on both neuroscientific and philosophical grounds:
“There is no image, no homunculus, no representation in the brain. There is only the capacity to categorize and to select from past activity.”— Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, p. 120
Edelman’s view aligns with many systemic theorists’ non-representational stance—notably Halliday, Matthiessen, and Thibault—who have long argued that language is not a system of internal representations, but a socially-constructed semiotic resource.
In fact, Edelman provides neuroscientific validation for the idea that:
The brain does not need representations to support language use.
Cognition can be understood as emergent, context-sensitive, and relational.
Systems (like language) are better conceived as structured potentials for construal, not as storage systems of meaning.
What emerges from Edelman’s work is a view that not only undermines the idea of mental representation, but also supports a non-representational, relational ontology in which meaning is neither internal nor stored.
The notion of “mental representation” has long been central to many traditions in linguistics, particularly those influenced by cognitive science. The idea is simple, perhaps deceptively so: when we understand language, we do so by constructing internal models or symbolic representations—of concepts, sentences, or mental images—that can be retrieved or manipulated by the mind.
This metaphor of storage and retrieval has deep roots in the computational view of mind. But it carries with it several assumptions:
That cognition is a matter of processing symbolic input.
That knowledge consists of stored internal content.
That meaning exists prior to and independent of context, residing inside the brain.
These assumptions, however, are exactly what Edelman calls into question.
In Bright Air, Brilliant Fire and elsewhere, Edelman argues that the brain does not represent the world internally in any meaningful way. Instead, it categorises experience through patterns of neural activation shaped by selection, history, and interaction with the environment. There are no internal models or stored symbols—only coordinated, dynamic patterns of neural activity, continuously shaped by feedback loops.
“There is no image, no homunculus, no representation in the brain. There is only the capacity to categorize and to select from past activity.”— Gerald Edelman (1992, p. 120)
In place of representations, Edelman proposes:
Degeneracy: Multiple neural configurations can give rise to the same functional outcome. This rules out the idea of one-to-one mappings between input and internal representations.
Reentrant connectivity: The brain is massively recursive, with ongoing signalling across distributed maps. Meaning is not stored—it is emergent from ongoing coordination.
Selectional dynamics: The brain is more like a Darwinian system than a computer. It doesn’t encode; it selects from structured potentialities based on past experience and current context.
In short, Edelman offers a vision of cognition that is relational, emergent, and embodied—not representational, symbolic, or internalist.
Mental representation is not just a flawed model. It is a category error. It mistakes the infrastructure that supports construal for the construal itself. It reifies meaning as substance. It confuses system with storage. It localises meaning where meaning does not reside.
Edelman saw this clearly from the vantage point of neuroscience. It’s time more linguistic theories saw it too.
In academic spaces, it is often not just what is said but how it is said that shapes whose knowledge counts—and who gets to speak. This series explores the performative voices of academic authority: the tones, postures, and rhetorical moves through which legitimacy is claimed, maintained, and contested. From the confident formalist to the self-effacing empiricist, each entry dissects a familiar academic archetype, exposing the power dynamics embedded in scholarly discourse. More than satire, these parodies are diagnostic tools—inviting readers to recognise the patterns that govern knowledge production and to imagine new ways of speaking and listening within the academy.
“A rigorous model should capture all relevant distinctions—except, of course, the one between modelling and world.”
This voice is precise, confident, and immune to critique. Its power lies in its ability to present modelling choices as ontological insights, and to cast its own limitations as strengths. Key rhetorical features include:
Declarative certainty (“This shows…”, “Clearly…”)
High abstraction, technical elegance
No visible subjectivity—just "the model"
Dismissal of ambiguity as “noise” or “indeterminacy”
Critique preemptively absorbed (e.g. “All models are wrong, but…”)
The Omniscient Formalist doesn’t argue for their framework—they demonstrate it, as if it were the only possible account. Interpretation becomes an error term. Meaning, if it isn’t modelled, isn’t real.
It is well-established that semiotic behaviour is best analysed as a system of constraints operating over structured symbolic resources. While variation appears at the surface, the underlying generative logic is invariant across instantiations.
Our model therefore treats context as a parameter space, not as a constitutive dimension of meaning. This avoids the mistaken assumption that interpretation is perspectival or historically embedded. Rather, we define interpretive variation as deviation from the optimal reading path.
Although critics have suggested that models may shape the phenomena they describe, we find no evidence for this once the appropriate formal distinctions are in place. Indeed, when viewed correctly, the world aligns quite well with the model.
This is not merely a style; it’s a positioning of authority. The Omniscient Formalist:
Displaces critique by framing disagreement as misunderstanding
Elides perspective, speaking as if from nowhere
Controls the problem space, deciding in advance what counts as complexity and what doesn’t
Conflates modelling precision with epistemic sufficiency
The result is a form of epistemic closure: ambiguity and contradiction are treated not as features of the system, but as flaws in the observer. The model wins because it cannot lose.
“We respectfully recover your marginalised knowledges—so that we may centralise them on our terms.”
This voice drapes itself in solidarity and ethical intent, but operates through a logic of appropriation. Its key tactic is the reframing of others’ knowledge systems as raw material for theoretical innovation or pedagogical virtue-signalling. Hallmarks include:
Deferential tone masking epistemic control
Emphasis on "recovering," "giving voice to," or "honouring" others’ systems
Citation of indigenous, non-Western, or local knowledges—followed by reinterpretation in dominant disciplinary terms
Smooth transition from reverence to reframing, simplifying, or re-expressing
Absence of the living communities whose knowledge is being discussed
It’s not just that this voice speaks about others. It speaks for them—while congratulating itself for having listened.
In recent years, scholars have increasingly recognised the value of indigenous cosmologies in rethinking ecological ethics. While these frameworks differ from Western scientific paradigms, they offer important insights—especially when translated into ontologies compatible with contemporary theory.
We draw on several oral traditions—many now endangered—to develop a synthetic model of planetary stewardship that aligns with post-Anthropocene environmental futures. Although we cannot verify the epistemic claims of these traditions, we affirm their symbolic significance within our re-envisioned ethics of care.
Our framework thus brings together ancient wisdom and modern critique in a way that centres the marginal, without losing analytical rigour.
This performance enacts epistemic extraction while disavowing it. The Benevolent Coloniser:
Appropriates non-Western or subaltern knowledge as “data” or “perspective”
Recontextualises it in terms the dominant discipline finds intelligible
Performs humility while reinforcing hierarchy
Preserves their own centrality under the guise of inclusion
The net effect is not recognition, but absorption. The epistemic Other is welcomed—but only as long as they conform to the host’s conceptual grammar. What looks like expansion is often a subtle reinscription of control.
“We make no claims—except those that quietly restructure the field.”
This voice wears modesty as armour. It is the humble servant of “what the data show,” never the agent of theoretical intervention. It often appears in grant applications, journal articles, and conference panels where authority is exercised without admitting to having any.
Features include:
Frequent disclaimers (“We do not claim that…”, “This is only a preliminary finding…”)
Repetition of “just,” “only,” “merely,” to downplay contribution
Emphasis on replication, caution, and empirical humility
Quiet embedding of strong interpretive claims in the form of “observed tendencies”
Silence around theoretical commitments (they are simply “what the data suggest”)
The performance is one of non-agency, even as it redefines the terrain.
While we do not claim to resolve the ongoing debate around language and cognition, our findings suggest a possible directional bias in pre-attentive gesture processing. This should not be taken as evidence for embodied conceptualisation per se, but it may help clarify recent conflicting results in the field.
We merely report a pattern that emerged across five independent datasets. While theoretical implications remain unclear, the alignment of these findings with recent neurocognitive accounts of schematic entrainment may warrant further attention.
That said, the conclusions here should be treated as tentative and open to revision. We only hope this modest contribution can inform future work in the area.
The Hypermodest Empiricist performs non-threatening objectivity, but often does so to smuggle in interpretive reorientations without inviting critique. The performance:
Defers responsibility for its claims onto “the data”
Masks theoretical intervention under procedural caution
Avoids overt debate, making its position harder to contest
Positions its voice as neutral, even while shaping the discourse
This tone can be protective—especially for junior scholars—but in institutional contexts, it often deflects accountability while exerting considerable epistemic influence.
“Synthesising diverse fields I have not quite read, I offer a framework no one can challenge.”
This voice radiates intellectual ambition and discursive largesse. It strides confidently across disciplines, declaring connections and proposing frameworks that are too sweeping to falsify and too vague to contest.
Signature features include:
A confident tone of visionary synthesis (“What is needed is a new framework that brings together…”)
Heavy use of theoretical name-dropping without citation trails
Juxtapositions of fields with no structural articulation (“Drawing on quantum physics and feminist ethnography…”)
Assertions that disciplinary boundaries are “limiting,” but no analysis of how they function
A hazy central proposal described with buzzwords like relational, dynamic, nonlinear, emergent, posthuman, etc.
The effect is to sound expansive and profound—while remaining largely unfalsifiable.
In response to the ongoing fragmentation of knowledge, this paper proposes a transdisciplinary reframing of relational emergence. Drawing on insights from systems biology, critical discourse analysis, and speculative realism, we develop a post-dualist approach to meaning as material-affective flow.
This framework disrupts inherited binaries of signifier/signified, nature/culture, and individual/system by locating all entities within a dynamic field of entangled enactments. In doing so, we move beyond the limitations of both representationalism and methodological individualism.
While our model is preliminary, it offers a generative platform for future work across anthropology, network theory, semiotics, and neurophenomenology.
The Grand Interdisciplinarian’s performance is seductive: it promises unification, novelty, and transgression. But it frequently functions by:
Evading accountability to any one field’s standards
Masking incoherence with lexical richness
Claiming originality by recombining without grounding
Neutralising critique by wrapping the project in good intentions (inclusivity, openness, complexity)
Its breadth is a defence: no one can challenge the whole, and any critique can be reframed as a refusal to think across boundaries.
This isn’t always cynical—many scholars reach for interdisciplinarity in search of better questions. But without rigour, the result is often conceptual tourism in the name of theoretical revolution.
“This approach lacks rigour—but with more rigour, it could be valid like mine.”
This voice claims to speak for the field itself. It doesn’t argue, it assesses. It performs objective evaluation while subtly policing boundaries: what counts as evidence, as method, as research. Key signs include:
Use of evaluative formulae: “promising but underdeveloped”, “innovative but lacks replication”, “raises interesting questions but...”
References to “standards of the field” as if they were neutral and settled
Framing critique as helpful gatekeeping: “This would benefit from further clarification of methods...”
Appeals to “rigour,” “replicability,” “formalisation,” or “generalisation” without interrogating what those terms assume
Implied distinction between “real” research and the risky, fuzzy, soft, or marginal
This is the voice of the gate politely closing.
While this work presents an interesting and potentially fruitful perspective, it would benefit from greater methodological clarity and alignment with established empirical frameworks. The use of autoethnographic narrative raises valid questions, but these would be strengthened by triangulation with standardised data collection protocols.
Furthermore, the conceptual framework, while engaging, lacks operational definition and does not permit straightforward generalisation. With further refinement, this approach might provide insights compatible with more robust mixed-method paradigms.
As it stands, the contribution is promising but preliminary.
The Methodological Gatekeeper performs care, but enacts control. The tone is neutral, but the consequences are structural. This performance:
Presumes a universal standard of validity, often based on dominant paradigms
Frames deviation as underdevelopment, not as principled difference
Appears helpful, even as it deauthorises
Masks ideology with method, treating power-laden norms as neutral benchmarks
Its danger lies in appearing reasonable. Because the tone is constructive and evaluative, the exclusion feels procedural, not political. But this is how whole modes of inquiry get marginalised—not by direct attack, but by faint praise and withheld validation.
“I cite you kindly. I absorb you completely.”
This voice performs magnanimous interdisciplinarity and intellectual generosity—gracefully citing others, acknowledging prior work, and thanking colleagues for their contributions. And then it reframes, reorders, and recentres everything within its own conceptual architecture.
Its features include:
Opening with acknowledgements: “Building on the important work of…”, “In dialogue with…”
Citation of marginal or emergent work—followed by absorption into a dominant grammar
Framing others’ positions as early steps toward the author’s own
Use of phrases like “these insights can be usefully reframed within…”, “we formalise these intuitions as…”
Apparent generosity masking a recentralisation of authority
This is not theft—it’s curation, with the curator always at the centre.
This paper builds on a wide range of important work in feminist science studies, indigenous epistemologies, and postcolonial linguistics. We are particularly indebted to these traditions for raising key questions about voice, agency, and knowledge production.
To integrate these insights more fully into a coherent analytical framework, we draw on recent advances in distributed cognition and multimodal semiotics. By formalising their concerns in terms of cognitive-sociosemiotic ecologies, we offer a generalisable model of marginality as emergent signalling constraint.
In doing so, we hope to preserve the richness of these earlier contributions while situating them within a broader, more systematic account of communicative complexity.
The Generous Citation Overlord seems inclusive, but their generosity is structural absorption. They:
Acknowledge without deferring
Cite without being shaped by
Preserve the appearance of dialogue, while consolidating control over the conceptual terrain
Translate others’ insights into their own idiom, then present them as integrated improvements
This performance disarms critique through benevolent tone, but its function is assimilative. It thanks you for your voice, then rewrites your language.
“Of course I’m implicated too—but let’s not get stuck on that.”
This voice is savvy, self-aware, and socially fluent. It anticipates critique and neutralises it through performative reflexivity. It acknowledges complicity, positionality, coloniality, normativity—and then moves on. It sounds ethical, but functions as a kind of discursive discharge: once it’s said, the issue is done.
Common moves include:
Phrases like “Of course, I am not exempt from…”, “We must all interrogate…”, “I too benefit from…”
Strategic deployment of “problematic,” “complicit,” “entangled,” “ambivalent,” etc.
Reflexivity as prologue, not method
Smooth return to business as usual after acknowledging structural harm
Reflexivity often restricted to the speaker’s identity, not their epistemic commitments
This voice doesn’t resist critique—it pre-empts it, and disarms it with confession.
I want to begin by acknowledging my position as a white settler scholar writing from within a colonial institution. I am aware that my work cannot be disentangled from the structures it seeks to examine, and that my very act of theorising risks reproducing the epistemic hierarchies I aim to critique.
That said, I proceed in the spirit of critical engagement, drawing on intersectional methodologies to explore the dynamics of resistance in post-extractive urban economies. While I cannot claim neutrality, I hope this contribution offers a useful intervention into ongoing conversations about relational autonomy and capitalist aftermaths.
The Reflexive Deflector is the post-2010 update of the Methodological Gatekeeper. But instead of authority through rigour, it asserts authority through ethical self-awareness. It performs:
Acknowledgement without transformation
Positioning without accountability
Confession without consequence
The appearance of risk, but with no structural disruption
It sounds like critique, but functions like insulation. By the time you point out the contradictions, they’ve already admitted them—and moved on. The work proceeds untouched.
The voices gathered in this series are not just individual styles or academic quirks. They are performances of legitimacy. Each tone we’ve parodied—the Omniscient Formalist, the Benevolent Coloniser, the Hypermodest Empiricist, and their kin—enacts a particular distribution of power: of who gets to speak, what counts as knowledge, and how critique is contained.
What unites them is not their content, but their function. These are not voices that explain—they position. They structure what is intelligible, defensible, and sayable. They operate as epistemic infrastructures, shaping the field before the argument begins.
What makes these performances so effective is that they often wear the mask of modesty, generosity, rigour, or care. They appear inclusive while recentring themselves; they seem reflexive while remaining untouched; they dismiss without appearing to exclude. Tone does the work that method, theory, or logic cannot openly perform.
To parody them is not simply to mock. It is to lay bare the scaffolding that upholds academic authority—especially when that authority disavows itself. Parody, here, is diagnostic: a method for hearing what tone deflects, silences, or absorbs. And perhaps, too, a way of clearing discursive space for voices that speak differently.
