Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 306):
[Verbiage] may be the name of the saying; for example a question in let me ask you a question, another word in now don’t you say another word! This type also occurs with very general verbs like give and make (as in ‘material’ clauses with Process + Scope), e.g. give the order, make a statement. The name of the saying includes speech functional categories such as question, statement, order, command – often with collocational constraints in relation to the lexical verb in the Process (ask + question, make + statement, give + order, issue + command, tell + lie) and generic categories such as story, fable, joke, report, summary. The name of a language can be construed as Verbiage, e.g. they were speaking Arabic; alternatively, this is construed circumstantially as Manner, e.g. they were speaking a few words in Arabic.