This chapter explores how speakers use MOOD^RESIDUE clause features and discourse–semantic resources to configure space-times homophobically, focusing on mass-media reported statements from Wyoming (USA) residents in response to the 2005 release of Brokeback Mountain. Using Systemic–Functional grammatical analysis, both interpersonal and representational lexicogrammatical features are examined, identifying: who is ‘in’ the lexicogrammatical/semantic space (speaker, addressee, non–interactants); speech function (proposition/proposal) and the interlocutors’ assigned roles (giving/receiving, offering/accepting, demanding/giving); clause participants’ location within free, bound, and embedded clauses; and clause participants– semantic content, querying the extent to which they index normative gender–sexuality or non-normative gender–sexuality. Mapping these features onto the MOOD^RESIDUE structure reveals how speakers seek to delimit the possibilities of negotiating or contesting their configurations of space and time by locating homophobic ideations within bound and embedded clauses, with an additional preference of placing such ideations with the Residue, thereby further curtailing negotiability.

This chapter focuses on the lexicogrammatical systems of IMPERATIVE MOOD and INDICATIVE MOOD in the Australian language, Pitjantjatjara, in relation to the discourse-semantic systems of NEGOTIATION, SPEECH FUNCTION, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION and the phonological system of TONE. It treats co-selections of features in MOOD and TONE as instantial couplings (Martin 2008) that realise variations in speech function. This discourse-semantic orientation departs from the treatment in Halliday (1967), Halliday & Greaves (2008) and Rose (2001, 2008) of tone/mood relations in terms of grammatical delicacy. Options in NEGOTIATION and SPEECH FUNCTION are illustrated with a series of exchanges that exemplify the coupling of MOOD and TONE selections. Imperative and indicative mood systems are then described in detail and exemplified with mood/tone couplings, including options for metaphors of mood. The chapter concludes by outlining grammatical and phonological realisations of ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION, including the lexicogrammatical system of MODAL ASSESSMENT.

In this chapter, we take paradigmatic reasoning as point of departure and describe axial relations for interpersonal clause systems in Brazilian Portuguese. We reason axially about MOOD types first in relation to discourse-semantic systems and then by agnating clause structures. Our description is text-based and privileges the view from above as it investigates how exchanges are enacted in language through the discourse-semantic systems of NEGOTIATION, SPEECH FUNCTION and ENGAGEMENT – which in turn are realised by MOOD and ASSESSMENT in the grammar. A corpus based on a range of text types forms the basis of the study. The core of interpersonal grammar comprises the functions of Predicator, Finite and Subject realising MOOD – responsible for dialogic interaction and negotiation. Positioner is the function realising ASSESSMENT – the grammatical system responsible for assessing the roles of speaker and listener, thus managing their voices in the negotiation of moves.

This chapter provides a description of the basic interpersonal clause system in Khorchin Mongolian – i.e., MOOD. The categories in the traditional description of Khorchin Mongolian clause grammar are mostly defined notionally and are not grammatically motivated. In contrast, the description in this chapter motivates the clause classes in the MOOD system in terms of their structural configurations based on unmonitored conversational data. The functions of Predicator, Positioner, Interrogator and Inquirer are used to distinguish the general types of [indicative] and [imperative] and the more delicate systems they make available. The MOOD systems are then characterised in relation to their functions in exchanges in terms of the structural configurations that realise options in NEGOTIATION in discourse semantics. The description in this chapter makes significant contributions to (i) the unified description of Khorchin Mongolian clause types and structures, and (ii) the characterisation of grammatical patterns in terms of discourse semantics.

This chapter develops a carefully reasoned analysis of Spanish resources enacting the negotiability of propositions and proposals. Following a review of the ways in which English and French structure the negotiability of moves in conversation, the chapter turns to Spanish – demonstrating that it is the Predicator function, realised by verbal group resources, that manages the negotiability of the clause (with respect to those resources ‘most at risk’ in the exchange). The chapter shows that functions such as Subject or Finite have no place in the interpersonal grammar of a Spanish clause and closes with an overview of basic negotiatory structures in Romance languages, from the perspective of functional language typology.

In this paper we extend work on the interpersonal grammar of Tagalog by focusing on ASSESSMENT resources realised through non-pronominal clitics. From a discourse semantic perspective (Martin & Rose, 2007; Martin & White, 2005), ASSESSMENT is centrally involved in the enactment of ENGAGEMENT, as interlocutors negotiate consensus around propositions and proposals, and the attitudes they inscribe or invoke. The meaning of each assessment clitic is characterised as the basis for the formalisation of this resource in system networks. In addition, the role of assessment clitics in discourse is illustrated through move-by-move analysis of two main texts. The paper concludes with some discussion of SFL’s hierarchy of realisation as far as the description of Tagalog ASSESSMENT resources are concerned.

This chapter is a text-based study of the enactment of interpersonal meaning in Mandarin, with particular focus on the MOOD system and structure, part of interpersonal grammar that is involved in the realisation of the discourse-semantic system of NEGOTIATION. The data considered is taken from the genres of criminal case courtroom discourse, realised interpersonally by a tenor of unequal social status and lack of reciprocity of linguistic choices among the speakers. The study adopts an axis-oriented trinocular perspective, foregrounding paradigmatic relations as the fundamental principle of linguistic organisation and reasoning about system-structure relations from above, round about and below. The analysis shows that MOOD in Mandarin is not only responsible for negotiating knowledge and action exchanges between moves in dialogue, but also closely interacts with MODALITY and POLARITY systems that are associated with the subsystem ENGAGEMENT of the discourse semantic system APPRAISAL. Therefore a complementary description of Mandarin MOOD is presented with a perspective oriented toward both NEGOTIATION and ENGAGEMENT.

In this chapter the editors introduce the theoretical and methodological orientation of the book. They begin with an overview of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), introducing its model of language and two descriptions of special relevance to this volume. The chapter then moves onto key theoretical dimensions – axis (system-and-structure relations), rank, metafunction and stratification. A particular concern of this book is the way in which interpersonal grammatical systems realise the discourse-semantic systems of NEGOTIATION and APPRAISAL. Accordingly, the authors present an outline of NEGOTIATION and APPRAISAL resources relevant to the interpretation of chapters in this volume. At the end of this section of the chapter, the editors introduce the understandings underpinning the model of context proposed by Martin (1992) for interpreting patterns of language use. Next, the chapter reviews the methodological implications of SFL’s theoretical dimensions with respect to text-based data compilation, approaching grammar from above, axial reasoning and functional language typology. The goal here is to establish the common ground on which functional descriptions informed by SFL can be constructed. Finally, each chapter is introduced, highlighting its distinctive contributions to our understanding of interpersonal grammar.