SFL Attitude as Symbolic Overlay: Reading Affect, Appreciation, and Judgement Through Coordination

In systemic functional linguistics, the appraisal system — affect, appreciation, and judgement — has long been used to categorise attitudes expressed in language. These categories help analysts identify feelings, evaluations of objects, and social assessments. But what if we looked at them through a different lens? What if, rather than reflecting capacities in themselves, these categories are symbolic overlays on underlying coordination systems?

Affect: Symbolic Readiness

Affect labels emotions like happiness, fear, or anger. Yet these feelings are inseparable from embodied systems tuned to their environments. Through this lens, affect in discourse is not a direct index of internal states but a symbolic representation of readiness or relational alignment. When a speaker says “I am pleased,” the appraisal system models a socially intelligible projection of a body already attuned to opportunity, risk, or cooperation.

Appreciation: Symbolic Ecological Assessment

Appreciation evaluates objects, artefacts, or phenomena (beautiful, valuable, functional). Here, the appraisal system models how symbolic meaning is layered onto ecological or perceptual judgements. Calling a landscape “beautiful” or a design “functional” encodes an interpretive overlay on interactions that are already being guided by attention, perception, and ecological sensitivity. The symbolic evaluation compresses these dynamic interactions into shareable, communicable meaning.

Judgement: Symbolic Social Capacity

Judgement assesses people’s behaviour (ethical, admirable, normal). Competent social interactions often occur before or outside symbolic codification. Judgement overlays moral and social meaning onto these interactions, translating coordination into culturally intelligible categories. What is flagged as “deviant” may not indicate incapacity but a misalignment with symbolic expectations.

Illustrative Example

Consider a classroom scenario:

• A student hesitates before answering a question (competence/readiness in action).

• The teacher comments, “I’m disappointed you didn’t speak up” (judgement overlay).

• Another student notes, “That was a clever way to think about it” (appreciation overlay).

• A peer observes, “You seemed nervous” (affect overlay).

Each appraisal does not measure the student’s raw coordination; it projects symbolic meaning onto the student’s embodied, situational capacities. This illustrates how appraisal captures the overlay of meaning, not the underlying competence.

Why This Matters

Reading the SFL attitude system as a symbolic overlay clarifies several patterns:

• It explains why appraisal can feel moralising or inflated: the system captures the overlay, which can outpace actual competence.

• It shows that affect, appreciation, and judgement are tools for coordinating meaning, not raw indices of internal or ecological capacities.

• It suggests a methodological principle: analysts should distinguish symbolic representation from embodied coordination to understand what discourse reveals about underlying competence.

A Practical Takeaway

SFL’s attitude system is powerful precisely because it formalises the very overlay our recent series on meaning identified as both enabling and potentially hazardous. By recognising that appraisal categories sit above competence rather than in it, we can:

• better interpret discourse without over-attributing internal states,

• understand symbolic inflation and its social consequences, and

• design analyses that respect the separation between readiness and symbolic evaluation.

In short, affect, appreciation, and judgement are not simply measures of what people feel, value, or do; they are instruments projecting meaning onto the systems that actually make action and coordination possible.

Repositioning Attitude: Rebalancing Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation in Appraisal Theory

Appraisal theory, as developed within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), offers a powerful framework for understanding interpersonal meaning. At the heart of the system is Attitude, the subsystem through which speakers and writers enact stances of evaluation. The conventional model of Attitude includes three regions: Affect (emotional evaluation), Judgement (moral evaluation), and Appreciation (aesthetic or valuative evaluation). While this tripartite model has provided a useful scaffold for textual analysis, it has also given rise to interpretive challenges—especially concerning the distinctiveness and relational logic of these categories.

In this post, we revisit the system of Attitude, focusing in particular on the status of Affect. We argue that the current configuration gives insufficient weight to the distinctiveness of affect as a semiotic resource, leading to confusions between interpersonal stance and experiential content. We propose a reconceptualisation in which Affect is treated as the central category, with Judgement and Appreciation reframed as more socially mediated enactments of stance rather than as mere projections or institutionalised forms of affect.

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1. Affect as Central to Attitude

Affect, in the standard model, is defined as evaluation by reference to emotion. It includes expressions of happiness, security, satisfaction, fear, anger, etc. Yet affect is frequently treated not as an interpersonal enactment, but as an experiential category: a mental process, a feeling, or a state. This confuses the metafunctions. While experiential meanings may include emotions, Affect in Appraisal theory belongs to the interpersonal metafunction—it enacts stance. To say "I’m delighted" is not just to report an internal state; it is to position oneself in relation to others, inviting alignment or disalignment.

Recognising Affect as the core enactment of interpersonal stance helps clarify its function within Attitude. Unlike Judgement or Appreciation, Affect directly enacts the self in relation to an experience. It is the primary resource for interpersonal positioning, from which more socially codified or institutionally patterned evaluations may emerge.

We propose distinguishing three broad interpersonal orientations of Affect:

• Enacting the self toward an experience (e.g. I love this book)

• Enacting a relationship to others' evaluations (e.g. That must have felt awful for her)

• Enacting alignment or disalignment with communal feelings (e.g. We all mourn his loss)

These orientations help preserve the interpersonal role of Affect without reducing it to mental states.

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2. Rethinking Judgement and Appreciation

In the conventional model, Judgement evaluates behaviour and character by social norms, while Appreciation evaluates objects, performances, and processes aesthetically. These are often described as institutionalised forms of Affect—Judgement as affect shaped by moral codes, and Appreciation as affect shaped by cultural values.

But this view raises problems. One is metafunctional: if Affect enacts stance, then Judgement and Appreciation must also be interpersonal enactments, not experiential classifications. Another is empirical: it is possible to evaluate people aesthetically (a beautiful woman) and objects morally (a corrupt system)—blurring the supposedly strict experiential divide.

More importantly, this framing suggests that Affect is somehow more ‘primitive’ or personal, while the other two are evolved or systematised forms. But a child can just as easily say My teacher is ugly (Appreciation) or My teacher is unfair (Judgement) as they can say I hate my teacher (Affect). All three are interpersonal enactments of stance. What differs is not the degree of institutionalisation but the social domain of evaluation:

• Affect: stance enacted via feeling

• Judgement: stance enacted via moral positioning

• Appreciation: stance enacted via valuative positioning

None of these is reducible to the others; all three are resources for enacting stance.

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3. Reframing Institutionalisation within Attitude

In earlier formulations of appraisal theory, Judgement and Appreciation have often been described as institutionalised forms of Affect—that is, interpersonal evaluations shaped by social norms (Judgement) or cultural values (Appreciation). While this account captures something important about how evaluative meaning is patterned in discourse, it risks conflating interpersonal enactment with experiential representation. For instance, describing Appreciation as an “institutionalised affect” seems strained when evaluating something like “a beautiful painting” or “a chaotic system,” where emotion is not being enacted but rather attributed to or inferred from phenomena.

To clarify this, we propose a reframing: rather than treating Judgement and Appreciation as institutionalised Affect, we can say they are evaluative enactments that may draw on, but are not reduced to, affective orientation. They are not affect displaced into cultural or moral realms, but distinct interpersonal resources for enacting stance. The key metafunctional difference is that Affect enacts an emotional position (a relation to feelings), while Judgement and Appreciation enact social and aesthetic positions—still interpersonal, but not necessarily affective in origin.

This distinction helps explain why a child might say, “My teacher is unfair” (Judgement) or “My teacher is ugly” (Appreciation) without necessarily expressing or enacting a personal feeling, as they would with “I hate my teacher” (Affect). The former evaluate according to norms and values; the latter enacts a subjective stance.

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4. Toward a Reconfigured System Network

Repositioning Affect as the central interpersonal system allows us to reconceive Attitude as a system of stance enactment, not merely a catalogue of evaluations. In this light, Judgement and Appreciation become adjacent resources for stance that differ in domain rather than in derivation:

• Affect: enacts stance via emotion

• Judgement: enacts stance via moral evaluation

• Appreciation: enacts stance via aesthetic or valuative evaluation

This repositioning also clarifies boundaries. If Affect enacts emotional stance, then its subtypes should be defined not experientially (types of emotion), but interpersonally (types of enacted stance). For instance:

• Security/Insecurity: stance of stability vs threat

• Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction: stance of fulfilment vs frustration

• Inclination/Aversion: stance of attraction vs repulsion

These are not internal states but intersubjective enactments—how one positions oneself emotionally in relation to an experience, a proposal, or a social value.

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Conclusion: From Attitude to Stance

The standard tripartite model of Attitude—Affect, Judgement, Appreciation—has served Appraisal theory well, but its internal logic has often been opaque. By recentring Affect as the fundamental interpersonal enactment of stance, and reframing Judgement and Appreciation as parallel resources rather than institutionalised projections, we move toward a more coherent account. This reconceptualisation foregrounds the interpersonal metafunction, clears up confusion with experiential classifications, and invites a more dynamic understanding of how stance is enacted in discourse.

A final consequence of this repositioning is terminological: Attitude is no longer a fully satisfactory name for the system. If our interest is in how meaning-makers position themselves interpersonally through language, then Stance may be the more accurate term. Stance foregrounds interaction rather than evaluation, enactment rather than attribution—a subtle but necessary shift.

Such reframing does not undermine the utility of the original model, but enhances its descriptive and explanatory power by bringing the system into closer alignment with its semiotic function.

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Appendix:  Diagnosing Theoretical Tensions in Appraisal Theory

In the course of developing a revised account of Attitude within appraisal theory, we encountered multiple challenges in sustaining a coherent, stratified, and metafunctionally consistent model. This companion post outlines those difficulties—not as flaws in our process, but as symptoms of deeper tensions within the original framework of appraisal theory. In doing so, it points to directions for theoretical development.

1. Asymmetry within the Attitude System

The first and most persistent difficulty concerns the asymmetry between the subsystems of Affect, Judgement, and Appreciation. While Affect is grounded in emotional stance—typically realised by mental processes or behavioural tokens of feeling—Judgement and Appreciation are construed as socially conventionalised, even institutionalised evaluations. This disjuncture introduces two problems:

• It misaligns the categories with the interpersonal metafunction, whose purpose is not to catalogue experience but to enact social stance.

• It presupposes a one-way derivation from Affect to Judgement and Appreciation, rather than modelling them as distinct yet interdependent forms of evaluative meaning.

2. Slippage Between Metafunctions

The model often confuses interpersonal meanings with experiential ones. Affect is frequently treated in terms of transitivity—who feels what and why—rather than how those feelings are enacted as interpersonal positioning. This is particularly problematic for an appraisal system that ought to operate primarily in the interpersonal metafunction. Our solution was to reframe Affect in terms of stance enactment rather than emotional description—recovering its metafunctional integrity.

3. Weakly Theorised Individuation

Appraisal theory assumes shared categories of social valuation but pays little attention to the cline of individuation—how evaluations vary among speakers, and how norms themselves evolve. The theoretical tools needed to track a speaker’s position relative to social consensus, ideology, or genre are only gestured at in the current model. This creates difficulties in distinguishing Judgement from Affect when, for instance, an evaluation like “He’s unfair” is both personally felt and socially situated.

4. Unbalanced System Network Development

The internal elaboration of Attitude subsystems is uneven. Appreciation is highly detailed, Judgement reasonably so, but Affect is underdeveloped and inconsistently differentiated. This has encouraged practitioners to import experiential taxonomies of emotion (e.g. Plutchik, Ekman), which may not align with the interpersonal function of language. We proposed a systematisation of Affect into three interpersonal subtypes:

• Affect towards self (self-positioning)

• Affect towards others (relational stance)

• Affect towards values (value-affiliation)

This restores balance while avoiding experiential slippage.

5. The Problem of "Institutionalisation"

The metaphor of Judgement and Appreciation as "institutionalised" forms of Affect has intuitive appeal but lacks theoretical rigour. It implies a unidirectional scale from personal to social meaning, which doesn't hold up under scrutiny. For example, a child saying “My teacher is unfair” expresses Judgement without any sophisticated social norm being institutionalised. To avoid this, we reframed institutionalisation not as a historical process, but as a degree of alignment with socially recognisable patterns of evaluation—a form of intersubjective accountability, rather than derivation.

6. Terminological Drift

Terms like emotion, feeling, value, and evaluation are used variously and often ambiguously in the literature. This creates slippage not only between strata (e.g. semantics and lexicogrammar), but also between metafunctions. For example, value can mean a principle in social semantics, a positive evaluation in discourse semantics, or a token of affiliation in engagement theory. Greater terminological stratification is required.

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Toward a More Coherent Appraisal Model

The challenges we've encountered are not unique to this attempt; they reflect limitations in the original formulation of appraisal theory. By engaging with them—drawing on stratification, metafunction, instantiation, and individuation—we've moved toward a more consistent, semiotically grounded account of Attitude as a system of stance.

These revisions do not dismantle appraisal theory; they refine it. In clarifying its scope and internal logic, they open new possibilities for meaning analysis across genres, cultures, and ideologies.

Appraisal And Rhetorical Strategy Analysis Of An Image By ChatGPT

Appraisal Analysis

1. Affect (Emotion & Reaction)

   • The image is designed to provoke disgust (negative affect). Cockroaches are commonly associated with filth, infestation, and an inability to be eradicated, which transfers these connotations onto Trump.

2. Judgement (Ethical & Personal Character)

   • Tenacity (negative, invoked): Cockroaches are notoriously difficult to eliminate. The image implies Trump is similarly persistent, but in an unwanted way.
   • Propriety (negative, invoked): The cockroach metaphor suggests an undesirable or even parasitic presence, framing Trump as something that exists against the will of others.
   • Capacity (negative, invoked): While cockroaches survive, they are not admired for their intelligence or skill. The implication is that Trump's endurance is not due to merit but to an almost mindless resilience.

3. Appreciation (Evaluation of Things & Events)

   • Valuation (negative, amplified): The choice of an upturned cockroach—often seen as a sign of something dying or defeated—suggests a critique of Trump’s political return. He may be ‘back,’ but the framing implies it is unnatural, unwanted, or should have been prevented.
   • Composition (negative, visual contrast): The grotesque blending of a human face with an insect body is deliberately jarring, reinforcing the sense of unnaturalness and repulsion.

Rhetorical Strategy Analysis

1. Intertextuality & Cultural Codes

   • The image taps into popular culture and collective disgust toward cockroaches. Viewers immediately recognize the metaphor and the intended critique.
   • The Kafkaesque transformation recalls The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, where the protagonist wakes up as a monstrous insect. The parallel suggests dehumanization, alienation, and grotesque absurdity.

2. Irony & Visual Hyperbole

   • The grotesque fusion of Trump’s head with an insect body is hyperbolic—an exaggeration of his perceived persistence and undesirability.
   • Irony: A political leader is normally depicted with dignity, yet here he is framed as an unwanted pest. The image mocks his return to power by framing it as an infestation rather than a democratic event.

3. Engagement & Alignment

   • Reader Positioning: The image assumes the viewer shares or will accept its negative stance. It does not present an argument but positions the audience to react emotionally.
   • Tokenization: Trump is not depicted as a complex figure but reduced to a single, powerful metaphor—a cockroach. This simplification amplifies the message but eliminates nuance.

Conclusion

The image operates through visual metaphor, affective disgust, and dehumanization to frame Trump’s political resurgence as an unwanted infestation. Its effectiveness depends on the viewer’s prior stance—those already critical of Trump will likely find it reinforcing, while his supporters may see it as disrespectful or absurd.

A Close Examination Of Martin's 2023 ISFC Plenary Abstract

Mapping Feeling: Attitudinal Relations

In this presentation I will review issues arising from the description of attitudinal relations proposed in Martin & White's The Language of Evaluation (2005). This will include issues having to do with 

• stratification (developing discourse semantic systems), 
• instantiation (multiple coding, the inscribe/invoke continuum, technicalisation and iconisation) and 
• individuation (bonds and bondicons). 

In doing so I will stress the importance of interpreting appraisal systems in relation to the Systemic Functional Linguistics theory that underpins the description and the challenge of dealing with applications and critiques of the framework which in effect disembody the description from this theoretical ground.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, stratification is the construal of language as different levels ('strata') of symbolic abstraction. Strata are thus different perspectives on the same phenomenon, like thespians and the roles they play are different perspectives on the same phenomenon. The relation between any two adjacent strata is one of (intensive) identity: a relation of realisation between a lower level Token and a higher level Value. As such, each level can be used to identify the other. For example, for the two strata of the content plane, the higher stratum, semantics, can be used to identify the lower stratum, lexicogrammar (decoding); and the lower stratum, lexicogrammar, can be used to identify the higher stratum, semantics (encoding).

In SFL Theory, the stratum of lexicogrammar (wording) is lexicogrammatical form (modelled as a rank scale) interpreted in terms of its function: its function in realising meaning. For example, a verbal group is interpreted in terms of its function of realising the meaning 'process'. Because of this functional interpretation, lexicogrammar (wording) and semantics (meaning) are in agreement ('congruent') in the absence of grammatical metaphor. It is the disagreement ('incongruence') between wording and meaning in grammatical metaphor that motivates modelling the content plane as two strata, rather than as function and form.

[2] When Martin developed his discourse semantic systems (Martin 1992), he gave the false impression (Chapter 1 Discourse semantics: A proposal for triple articulation) that stratifying the content plane was his own initiative, despite the fact that such a stratification was explicitly identified in the main source of his work, Halliday & Hasan (1976: 5).

Importantly, Martin's development of his discourse semantic systems (ibid.) was based on serious misunderstandings of stratification. Specifically, he misunderstood strata as interacting modules (pp 55, 77-8, 90, 268-9, 390, 488) rather than different levels of symbolic abstraction, and he misunderstood all strata as levels of meaning — even phonology! This latter misunderstanding derived from his confusion of 'realising meaning' (stratification) with 'making meaning' (semogenesis).

Martin (1992) presented 3 motivations for setting up a stratum of discourse semantics: semantic motifs, grammatical metaphor and cohesion. By 'semantic motifs' (1992: 16), Martin meant commonalities shared by partially agnate clauses: behavioural, mental and relational. Having been set up as a justification for a discourse semantic stratum, this was not addressed in the remainder of the book, and Martin's discourse semantics provides no means of modelling the agnation.

Martin's second motivation for setting up a discourse semantics stratum, grammatical metaphor (1992: 16-7), was merely Halliday's motivation for setting up a semantic stratum. Importantly, however, Martin's discourse semantic stratum undermines the systematic description of grammatical metaphor because it does not set up congruent relations between strata by which to contrast the incongruent relations of grammatical metaphor, and it sets up incongruent relations in the absence of metaphor.

Martin's third motivation for setting up a discourse semantics stratum was cohesion (1992: 17-9). Ignoring lexical cohesion, ellipsis-&-substitution and reference, Martin's argument was that agnate manifestations of expansion relations, logically in clause complexing and textually in cohesive conjunction motivate a discourse semantic stratum. However, as with grammatical metaphor, this only motivates Halliday's original semantic stratum, not a new and distinct discourse semantic stratum.

The original four discourse semantic systems set up by Martin (1992) were NEGOTIATION, IDENTIFICATION, CONJUNCTION & CONTINUITY and IDEATION. (CONJUNCTION & CONTINUITY was later renamed CONNEXION). All of these are rebrandings of systems originally set up by Halliday ± Hasan. While NEGOTIATION is a rebranding of a previous semantic system, Halliday's SPEECH FUNCTION, and its development by other scholars, the remaining three are rebrandings of previous lexicogrammatical systems, the systems of cohesion in Halliday & Hasan (1976). Specifically:

• IDENTIFICATION is Martin's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's REFERENCE (and ELLIPSIS-&-SUBSTITUTION),
• CONJUNCTION & CONTINUITY, now CONNEXION, is Martin's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's CONJUNCTION, and
• IDEATION is Martin's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's LEXICAL COHESION.

In terms of metafunction, all the original systems of Halliday & Hasan are systems of the textual metafunction, but Martin distributes his discourse semantic rebrandings across the metafunctions, without providing supporting argument, thereby creating theoretical inconsistencies. While IDENTIFICATION, like REFERENCE (and ELLIPSIS-&-SUBSTITUTION), is presented as textual, CONJUNCTION & CONTINUITY, now CONNEXION, is presented as logical, and IDEATION is presented as experiential. 

Further theoretical misunderstandings in each of these discourse semantic systems serve to disguise the fact that they are indeed rebrandings of Halliday & Hasan's systems. For example, in setting up his textual IDENTIFICATION, Martin confuses REFERENCE with the interpersonal DEIXIS of nominal groups and confuses reference items with the nominal groups in which they occur, while also confusing REFERENCE with LEXICAL COHESION ('bridging').

In setting up his logical CONJUNCTION & CONTINUITY, now CONNEXION, Martin confuses cohesive CONJUNCTION (textual metafunction) with CLAUSE COMPLEXING (logical metafunction), and misinterprets and misapplies many of Halliday & Hasan's logical types. Moreover, because PROJECTION does not feature in Halliday & Hasan's model, since it does not function cohesively, Martin's logical discourse semantic system lacks a system of PROJECTION. This creates the theoretical inconsistency of a lexicogrammatical system with no meaning to realise, which has the further consequence that any grammatical metaphor involving projection cannot be accounted for.

In setting up his experiential IDEATION, Martin confuses (textual) lexical cohesion with lexis as most delicate grammar (lexical sets), and misapplies logical relations to grammatical structures.

In later publications, Martin added two more systems to his discourse semantic stratum: PERIODICITY (textual) and APPRAISAL (interpersonal). In Martin (1992), what later became known as PERIODICITY was modelled as an interstratal interaction pattern, with strata misunderstood as modules, but in Martin & Rose (2007), for example, PERIODICITY is remodelled as a discourse semantic system. However, the theoretical validity of PERIODICITY is undermined by the fact that it is a rebranding of writing pedagogy, not linguistic theory:

• 'macro-Theme' is Martin's rebranding of the 'introductory paragraph' of traditional writing pedagogy,
• 'hyper-Theme' (a term taken from Daneš and misunderstood) is Martin's rebranding of the 'topic sentence' of traditional writing pedagogy,
• 'hyper-New' is Martin's rebranding of the 'paragraph summary' of traditional writing pedagogy,
• 'macro-New' is Martin's rebranding of the 'text summary' of traditional writing pedagogy.

Moreover, there are no macro- or hyper- Rhemes or Givens to contrast with these proposed elements and complete the proposed structures.

For the evidence on which the above assessments of Martin's discourse semantics systems are based, see the detailed review of Martin (1992) at English Text: System And Structure, the detailed review of John Bateman's review of Martin (1992) at Thoughts That Didn't Occur …, and the detailed review of Martin & Rose (2007) at Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause.

 

The systems of APPRAISAL, however, differ from all the other discourse semantic systems in that they were developed through the collective efforts of Martin's colleagues and PhD students, with a first, early version of the key subsystem of ATTITUDE set out in 1994 by Iedema, Feez and White in their monograph, Media Literacy. Martin is possibly often regarded as the founder of the theory on the basis of references he made to APPRAISAL in a 1997 paper ("Analysing Genre: Functional Parameters") and/or his fuller treatment in his 2000 paper ""Beyond Exchange: Appraisal Systems in English". (The 1997 chapter presented an account of the sub-system of APPRECIATION, which was also developed through collaboration, most notably through Rothery's work on visual arts education.) However, key elements of what is now the widely referenced version of the framework were first presented in White's 1998 PhD thesis and then in White's 2002 paper, "The Language of Evaluation and Stance" (Handbook of Pragmatics.)". The version of the framework now most widely deployed in textual analysis was outlined in Martin and White's 2005 The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. It includes accounts of the following sub-systems: AFFECT (drawing on earlier work by Martin), JUDGEMENT (collaboration by Martin, Iedema, Feez and White), APPRECIATION (collaboration by Martin and Rothery), ENGAGEMENT (from White's 1998 PhD thesis), GRADUATION (White and Martin collaboration).

Because of its distinct provenance, APPRAISAL, unlike other discourse semantic systems, is not merely Martin's rebranding of other people's work on semantics (NEGOTIATION), lexicogrammatical cohesion (IDENTIFICATION, CONNEXION and IDEATION) or writing pedagogy (PERIODICITY). In fact, Halliday (2008: 49) locates APPRAISAL within lexicogrammar, as representing more delicate options within the general region of evaluation, and characterises the system of ATTITUDE as 'a grammatical system that is realised by a selection of lexical items' where 'each such item is uniquely identified as a set of intersecting grammatical features' (ibid.: 179). Like all grammatical systems in SFL Theory, APPRAISAL realises the meaning of semantic systems, and in the absence of metaphor, is congruent with its semantics.

[3] To be clear, the process of instantiation is the selection of features and the activation of realisation statements in logogenesis, the unfolding of text. The cline of instantiation is the scale from potential to instance; that is, from system to register/text type to text.

Multiple coding, on the other hand, can refer either to indeterminacy in the instantiation of features in a text, or to accounting for indeterminacy in the analysis of instances. Indeterminacies include ambiguities, blends, overlaps, neutralisations, and complementarities.

To be clear, the 'inscribe/invoke' contrast is the distinction between explicit and implicit realisations of APPRAISAL system features, and to place these on a continuum is to model degrees of indeterminacy between the two options.

[4] To be clear, Martin has presented two models of a 'cline of individuation': one derived from the work of Bernstein and the other from the work of his PhD student, Knight. The Bernstein-derived model is a cline from 'reservoir' to 'repertoire', where 'reservoir' refers to the potential of the community and 'repertoire' refers to the potential of the individual. Bernstein (2000: 157):

I shall use the term repertoire to refer to the set of strategies and their analogic potential possessed by any one individual and the term reservoir to refer to the total of sets and its potential of the community as a whole.

Applied to language, this is a model of the meaning potential of meaners (language users). The organising principle of the cline is elaboration and ascription (intensive attribution), since 'repertoire' is both a subtype of 'reservoir' (elaboration), and a member of the class 'reservoir' (ascription); cf. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 145).

However, it is the Knight-derived model that is relevant to a discussion of 'bonds' and 'bondicons'. Martin et al (2013):

A second, complementary perspective on individuation looks at how personæ mobilise social semiotic resources to affiliate with one another — how users attitude and ideation couplings, in Knight's (2010) terms, to form bonds, and how these bonds then cluster as belongings of different orders (including relatively "local" familial, collegial, professional, and leisure/recreational affiliations and more "general" fellowships reflecting "master identities" including social class, gender, generation, ethnicity, and dis/ability).

Like the Bernstein-derived model, the organising principle is again elaborating ascription, since each point on the cline is a subtype and member of the points above as types, but unlike the Bernstein-derived model, the individuation here is not of the meaning potential of meaners but of the meaners themselves. This inconsistency leads to a more serious inconsistency: the conflation of two different types of hierarchy.

Affiliation differs from individuation in that its organising principle is extension, not elaboration, since it is concerned with composition and association (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 146). That is, where individuation is a hyponymic taxonomy (an elaboration of types), affiliation is a meronymic taxonomy (a composition of parts).

Because of this difference, affiliation can not be mapped onto the cline of individuation. For example, the bonding of meaners through shared evaluations does not affiliate them as a master identity such as gender or ethnicity. Gender and ethnicity are not created by people making the same interpersonal assessments, and the meaners (personæ) of the same gender or ethnicity can differ markedly in their interpersonal assessments.

[5] To be clear, Martin's concern here is to consolidate Appraisal as his discourse semantic system within SFL Theory. To the same end, he has previously claimed that Appraisal is not a theory, on the grounds that SFL is the theory, and here he echoes this claim by identifying Appraisal with description, rather than theory. However, a part of a theory is also a theory (e.g. transitivity theory), and in SFL Theory, every system network constitutes a theory. Moreover, in SFL, at least, the term 'description' refers to the application of the theory to individual languages (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: xxiii, 55). That is, Appraisal Theory can be used to provide descriptions of appraisal in English, Chinese, etc.

But, in any case, Appraisal Theory can be used by linguists who are not acquainted with SFL Theory, as has been proved many times over. 

[6] To be clear, this is the challenge of dealing with applications and critiques of Appraisal Theory by those who do not acknowledge it as one of Jim Martin's discourse semantic systems in SFL. The intellectual way of dealing with this is to critically examine the work by reasoning on the basis of evidence, but this is also the way of dealing with applications and critiques of Appraisal Theory who do acknowledge it as one of Jim Martin's discourse semantic systems in SFL. In other words, whether or not Appraisal Theory is acknowledged as one of Jim Martin's discourse semantic systems in SFL is irrelevant to sound academic practice. Consequently, here Martin is merely concerned with maintaining the public perception that Appraisal Theory is one of his discourse semantic systems in SFL.

The Institutionalisation Of Affect As Judgement

Evoked Attitude

When Is Emotion Not Affect?

When it is not used to enact the self or intersubjective relations through an interpersonal assessment. For example, the clause

She was surprised that the answer was thirteen

construes a process of emotion, but on its own, does not enact an appraisal, since nothing is assessed positively or negatively.

On the other hand, the clause

She was pleasantly surprised that the answer was thirteen

both

1. construes a process of emotion (was surprised), and 
2. enacts a positive appraisal of that emotion by reference to a Quality of emotion (pleasantly), and so constitutes an instance of affect.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7):

The ideational metafunction is concerned with construing experience — it is language as a theory of reality, as a resource for reflecting on the world. The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with enacting interpersonal relations through language, with the adoption and assignment of speech roles, with the negotiation of attitudes, and so on — it is language in the praxis of intersubjectivity, as a resource for interacting with others.

An Analysis Of Jim Martin's Argument That Appraisal Theory Is Not A Theory

Martin (2017: 22):

In late 2012 I was approached by a very concerned research student who reported that some people were saying ‘Appraisal Theory’ wasn’t a theory at all, but just a description. To which I replied: “Yes, of course. That’s right. Systemic Functional Linguistics (hereafter SFL) is the theory. APPRAISAL is a description of resources for evaluation in English”.

[Martin (2017) The Discourse Semantics of Attitudinal Relations: Continuing the Study of Lexis, Russian Journal of Linguistics, vol. 21, No 1, 22-47]

Blogger Comments:

A. Martin's argument can be broken down to two exchanges:

An anonymous student's report of anonymous others: 'Appraisal Theory' isn't a theory…
Martin: Systemic Functional Linguistics is the theory. 

An anonymous student's report of anonymous others: 'Appraisal Theory' isn't a theory…
Martin: APPRAISAL is a description of resources for evaluation in English..

Notice firstly that 'cause: reason' is entirely absent, both explicitly and implicitly, from both exchanges.  That is, neither exchange constitutes a reasoned argument.

Notice secondly that there are no explicit logico-semantic relations between Martin's replies and the anonymous claim.  That is, the reader is left to supply the implicit logico-semantic relation in both exchanges.

Notice thirdly that the implicit logico-semantic relation, in both cases, is 'extension: variation: replacive' (not X but Y).  That is, in both exchanges, Martin merely replaces one assertion with another.

In short, Martin has merely pontificated an opinion, unsupported by reasoning, and has disguised the lack of reasoning by leaving the logico-semantic relations implicit.

B. More shortcomings become evident, if it is assumed, for the sake of argument, that the implicit logico-semantic relation in both cases is one of 'cause: reason'.  This can be demonstrated by making the causal relation both explicit and structural:

1. 'Appraisal Theory' isn't a theory [because] Systemic Functional Linguistics is the theory.
2. 'Appraisal Theory' isn't a theory [because] APPRAISAL is a description of resources for evaluation in English.

The two reasons attributed to Martin for the exclusion of 'Appraisal Theory' from the set of theories can be considered in turn.

The argument in (1) is that because Systemic Functional Linguistics is the theory, 'Appraisal Theory' is not a theory.  It can be seen that the one does not logically entail the other since, even if Systemic Functional Linguistics is the theory, it does not logically exclude the possibility that 'Appraisal Theory' is a theory.  Such matters depend on how 'theory' is defined, and Martin provides no definition of the term, thereby providing no opportunity for its negotiation.

Incidentally, the strategic use of the here also plays a rôle, given its function; Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 367):

The word the is a specific, determinative Deictic of a peculiar kind: it means ‘the subset in question is identifiable; but this will not tell you how to identify it – the information is somewhere around, where you can recover it’. … Hence the is usually accompanied by some other element that supplies the information required … . If there is no such information supplied, the subset in question will either be obvious from the situation, or else will have been referred to already in the discourse …

The argument in (2) is that because APPRAISAL is a description of resources for evaluation in English, 'Appraisal Theory' is not a theory.  Again, it can be seen that the one does not logically entail the other, since even if APPRAISAL is a description of resources for evaluation in English, it does not logically exclude the possibility that 'Appraisal Theory' is also a theory.  Again, such matters depend on how 'theory' is defined, and Martin provides no definition of the term, thereby providing no opportunity for its negotiation.

Two questions that might occur to any discourse analyst capable of critical thinking are:

1. What is at stake for Martin?
2. Why would he want his readers to believe that Appraisal Theory is not a theory?

"What are the most frequent emotions encoded by interjections?"

[ANGER] damn! damnation! the devil! doggone! fuck! ha! hang it! hell! hunh! rats! shit! what! zounds!

[ANNOYANCE] bother ! damn! damnation! deuce! drat! drot! mercy! merde! oof! ouf(f)! ouch! rot! son of a bitch! spells! tut! tut-tut! zut!

[APPROVAL] hear! hear! hubba-hubba! hurrah! keno! olé! so!

[CONTEMPT] bah! boo! booh! faugh! hum! humph! hunh! paff! paf! pah! pfui! pho! phoh! phoo! phooey! pish! poof! pouf! pouff! pooh! prut! prute! pshaw! puff! poff! quotha! rot! sho! shoo! shuh! shah! soh! tcha! tchah! tchu! tchuh! tuh! tush! tusch! tusche! tuch! yech! zut!

[DELIGHT] ah! ach! coo! coo-er! goody! goody goody! whacko! wacko! whizzo! wizzo! yippee! yip-ee!

[DISGUST] aargh! bah! faugh! fuck! gad! humph! pah! phew! phooey! pish! pshaw! pugh! rot! shit! shoot! ugh! yech! yuck!

[ENTHUSIASM] hubba-hubba! wahoo! zowie!

[FEAR] eeeek! oh! oh, no!

[IMPATIENCE] chut! gah! pish! pooh! pshaw! psht! pshut! tcha! tchah! tchu! tchuh! tut! tut-tut! why! zut!

[INDIGNATION] here ! here! why!

[IRRITATION] cor! corks! doggone! hell! hoot! lord! lor'! lor! lors! lordy! lord me! merde! sapperment! shit! upon my word!

[JOY] heyday! hurrah! ole! whee! whoop! whoopee! yippee!

[PAIN] ah! oh! ouch! ow! wow! yipe! yow!

[PITY] alas! dear! dear me! ewhow! lackaday! lackadaisy! las! och! oche! wellaway! welladay! welliday!

[PLEASURE] aha! boy! crazy! doggone! good! heigh! ho! wow! yum! yumyum!

[RELIEF] whew! whoof!

[SORROW] alas! ay! eh! hech! heck! heh! lackaday! lackadaisy! las! mavrone! och! oche! wellaway! welladay! welliday! wirra!

[SURPRISE] ah! alack! blimey! boy! caramba! coo! cor! dear! dear me! deuce! the devil! doggone! gad! gee! gee-whiz! golly! good! goodness! gracious! gosh! ha! heck! heigh! heigh-ho! hey! heyday! ho! hollo! hoo-ha! huh! humph! indeed! jiminy! lord! man! mercy! my! nu! od! oh! oho! oh, no! phew! say! shit! so! son of a bitch! upon my soul! well! what! whoof! whoosh! why! upon my word! wow! yow! zounds!

[SYMPATHY] now! tsk!

[TRIUMPH] aha! ha! hurrah! ole! so!

[WONDER] blimey! crazy! gee! goodness! gosh! ha! heyday! oh! what! wow!

<source: Vladimir Ž. Jovanović: THE FORM, POSITION AND MEANING OF INTERJECTIONS IN ENGLISH (2004)>

Halliday On The Location Of Appraisal In The SFL Model

Halliday (2008: 49):

Some interpersonal meanings are highly generalised, like the enactment of dialogic rôles (speech function) … .  With options in the way something is evaluated (“I approve / I disapprove”), or contended (“I agree / I disagree”), the borderline between grammar and lexis is shaded over; systems of appraisal, as described by Martin & White (2005), represent more delicate (more highly differentiated) options within the general region of evaluation.

On the appraisal system of attitude, Halliday (2008: 179) writes:

This is a grammatical system that is realised by a selection of lexical items. Each such item is uniquely identified as a set of intersecting grammatical features; eg complicated is

appraisal: attitude: appreciation: composition: ( complexity : complex / polarity: negative …)

as well as other general grammatical features (e.g. as distinct from confusing, which is “effective”, as in it confuses me, complicated is “descriptive”).  Note that I am interpreting the feature "undesirable" (the "snarl" member of the "purr/snarl" opposition) as negative in the environment of the interpersonal.