Orientation Of Text Towards Both Field And Tenor: 'Enabling' Situations

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 42):

The goals of ‘enabling’ situations can also be said to relate to both field and tenor, but in a different way. They concern the addressee’s activities in some field, but tenor comes into the picture as well because these activities are ‘modulated’: the addressee is either capacitated to undertake them (instruction) or required to do so (regulation). In terms of their organisation, instructional texts tend to be more field-like, being organised as the sequence of steps that make up a procedure. In contrast, regulatory texts have a less clearly field-based organisation; and like ‘promoting’ texts, they may include motivations – although typically threats of forms of punishment rather than the irresistible features of a product or service!