The previous series proposed a relational reconstruction of speech function.
Questions, statements, offers, and commands were reconsidered not as mechanisms for exchanging meanings, but as ways of structuring enactment space. Questions organised answerability. Statements organised commitment and responsibility. Offers organised relational possibility. Commands organised responsiveness under conditions of asymmetry.
The aim was not to reject Halliday's account of the interpersonal metafunction, but to reconsider one of its central metaphors. Exchange was replaced by enactment, yielding a model in which interpersonal meaning was understood as the structuring of relational possibilities rather than the transfer of semantic commodities.
Yet speech function has never exhausted the interpersonal metafunction.
Halliday's account has always included a broader range of interpersonal resources. Alongside speech function sit systems such as modality, polarity, comment, intensity, and temporality. These systems have traditionally been discussed under the heading of modal assessment and have long occupied an important place within systemic functional descriptions of interpersonal meaning.
The question, therefore, is what becomes of modal assessment once speech function has been reconstructed in terms of enactment space.
This is not merely a matter of theoretical housekeeping.
The reconstruction of speech function generated a new conceptual landscape. Questions, statements, offers, and commands came to be understood as organising distinct regions of interpersonal possibility. Accountability, commitment, responsiveness, and availability emerged as structured dimensions of enacted social relations.
Once this step has been taken, however, a new problem immediately appears.
Consider the following statements:
It is raining.
It is probably raining.
It is certainly raining.
Frankly, it is raining.
From the perspective of speech function, all are statements. Responsibility space is structured in each case. A commitment is enacted and made available for uptake.
Yet they are clearly not interpersonally identical.
Or consider:
I'll help.
I'll gladly help.
I might be able to help.
Again, the speech function remains constant. Possibility space is established in each instance. Yet the interpersonal positioning differs significantly.
The same observation can be made of questions and commands. Speech function remains stable while something else varies.
The existence of modal assessment has always recognised this fact.
What remains unclear is how these systems relate to the enacted structures identified in the previous series.
A clue may lie in Halliday's broader characterisation of the interpersonal metafunction.
The interpersonal metafunction is not only concerned with the enactment of social relations. It is also concerned with the enactment of the self in those relations.
This formulation deserves careful attention.
The previous series focused primarily on the enactment of social relations. Speech functions were shown to organise interpersonal configurations within which participants become accountable, committed, responsive, or available in particular ways.
But once such configurations have been established, another question arises.
How are participants positioned within them?
This question does not assume that modal assessment is simply a matter of expressing attitudes, opinions, or inner states. Nor does it assume that the self exists prior to discourse and is subsequently projected into it.
On the contrary, a relational perspective suggests that participant positions are themselves enacted.
The issue is therefore not expression but positioning.
Speech function structures interpersonal relations.
Modal assessment appears to have something to do with how participants occupy those relations.
Whether this intuition proves correct remains to be seen.
For the moment, it is enough to observe that the reconstruction of speech function leaves an important question unanswered.
If speech function structures enactment space, what interpersonal work is performed by modal assessment?
The purpose of this series is to investigate that question.
In doing so, we will revisit the systems of polarity, modality, comment, intensity, and temporality, asking whether they can be understood as resources for positioning participants within the relational possibilities established through speech function.
The answer, if there is one, lies ahead.
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