Negotiating Tenor: Rendering Meaning in Dialogue and Monologue
Negotiating Social Relations - Tenor Resources in English - Yaegan Doran
Yaegan Doran [+]
University of Sydney
J.R. Martin [+]
University of Sydney
Michele Zappavigna [+]
University of New South Wales
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Description
This chapter introduces the system of POSITIONING: how people put forward meanings (described in terms of ‘tendering’ meanings) and how they react to meanings (described as ‘rendering’ meanings). It shows that by making some basic distinctions in how we put forward and react to meanings, we can develop a model of conversation that can engage with ongoing dialogue in which what people say regularly works to both react to things previously said and put forward something else to react to. The chapter deals in particular with resources for rendering. It illustrates that in English there are a wide range of interpersonal resources for reacting to meanings, including the evaluative meanings of attitude, the heteroglossic meanings of engagement, the dialogic meanings of exchange and a range of lexicogrammatical resources within these. It also shows that these resources can be used in relatively similar ways across monologue and dialogue such that we can see parallels across modes as far as the the interpersonal metafunction is concerned – as we position ourselves in our communities in relation to one another.