Michael O'Donnell wrote to ChRIS on Sysfling on 18 Feb 2025, at 22:36:
1. And you may be right about 2020 and what happened there. David mentioned 2012, so I responded to that. Around 2020, a different fight about your toxicity, and I don't want to go into that again.
ChRIS responds:To be clear, what O'Donnell wrote about 2012 and 2020 is misleading, as previously demonstrated at Michael O'Donnell [3].
2. You claim you are the defender of the list, and only attack the toxic.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading because it is not true. I do not claim either. I simply posted ChatGPT analyses of the rhetorical strategies used by bullies on Sysfling.
3. You tried that on your list Sysfan,
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading because it is not true. Mick may be referring to the time I satirised someone who was preaching racial hatred, for which I was accused of racism. See Yaegan Doran Falsely Accusing The Sys-Func Moderator Of Racism.
4. but Asflanet was set up, and many abandoned your list for the more moderated list.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading on several fronts. Asflanet was not set up because of any lack of moderation (i.e. free speech) on sys-func (which is only 'mine' in the sense that I have managed it for 25 years). Asflanet was set up by Martin's former students who were trying to expand the dominion of ASFLA by equating it with the SFL community. This involved several underhand activities. Many were told that sys-func was finished and that everything was moving to Asflanet. Then sys-func mysteriously disappeared, which means someone, with institutional authority, had contacted the host, UTS, and told them sys-func was no longer needed. When I re-established sys-func with a different host and posted instructions on how to subscribe to the new sys-func on the ASFLA website, the instructions were immediately removed. And from its inception, Asflanet has described itself as the list of the Australian Systemic community.
5. You then moved into Asflanet, and "defending" from that list from toxicity earnt you multiple warnings to desist or be banned.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading, because it is untrue. There were no multiple warnings and no mentions of banning. I had posted two posts to Asflanet: the first expressed admiration for an insightful post that everyone else was ignoring, and the second provided assistance to the list members by quoting Halliday on the adverbial group. Dreyfus then misrepresented these as "public chastising"; see Shooshi Dreyfus Falsely Accusing ChRIS CLÉiRIGh Of Impropriety. Doran then repeated the false accusation in a private email, offlist; see Yaegan Doran Falsely Accusing ChRIS CLÉiRIGh Of Impropriety.
6. So, it seems you moved your attention to Sysfling, as your new home for "anti-toxicity". And you say myself, John Bateman and David Rose are the toxic voices on the list.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. I used ChatGPT to analyse the rhetorical strategies used by bullies in the Sysfling thread. The people demonstrated to be using these strategies were O'Donnell, Bateman and Rose.
7. To this, we could add those for whom you have built hate pages on your blogsite,
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading because it is untrue. There are no "hate pages" on my "blogsite". My blogs teach SFL Theory by identifying theoretical misunderstandings in publications and email discussions, and provide evidence as to why they are misunderstandings. Their pageviews number in the tens of thousands, so they are clearly proving useful (given only 810 subscribers to Sysfling).
8. and who no longer post because of you, Jim Martin and Lise Fontaine, Carlos Gouveia, Ellissa Asp, Robin Fawcett
ChRIS responds:
This is a bare assertion unsupported by evidence, and falsified by the postings of Fontaine, Gouveia and Fawcett (Poremskyi) in this very thread and by all the posts of Martin archived here. Asp has rarely posted to any list in the 30 years of their existence. Since I rarely post to Sysfling, a more plausible reason for any reluctance to post might be the behaviour of Rose, as documented here.
9. and others who are named in your Mistakes blogs.
ChRIS responds:
To be clear, my "Mistakes blogs" are those that teach SFL Theory by identifying theoretical misunderstandings in publications and email discussions, and provide evidence as to why they are misunderstandings.
10. It must be difficult for you to need to defend SFL from all these "toxic" people, many of them major voices in SFL. But my main concern is for all those who are not yet on your "toxic" list.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. It is not a matter of defending SFL from toxic people but of identifying toxic behaviour in the SFL community in the hope of improving the culture of the SFL community and limiting the damage it causes. See The Detrimental Effects Of The Culture Of The SFL Community.
11. After my post the other day, 3 people emailed me offlist to say "thank you, I was afraid to say anything, for fear of drawing his wrath" (my paraphrase). Only 3, but I take these 3 to represent a larger silent majority, who are not posting to sysfling for fear of getting the kind of aggressive responses you have been sending to those who do have the courage to post.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. Firstly, 3 private messages cannot be interpreted as the silent majority view on a list of 820 subscribers, especially since offlist messages do not risk a public response. Secondly, the "aggressive responses" were AI analyses of the rhetorical strategies used by bullies in the discussion.
12. Or of becoming a target of your hate-blog.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading, because there is no "hate-blog". However, one blog records the attitudes of members of the SFL community to one another. See Respectful Solidarity In The Systemic Functional Linguistics Community.
13. On a different issue: "The "persecution" since 2020 has been a reasoned review of Lise's paper" - I saw your blog Chris. You mined her Facebook, found things she was telling her friends and relatives (a concern about putting on weight), and posted this on your blog, with a commentary about how silly she was. She sent you an email asking you to take this down, and you posted that email on your blog, again saying what a stupid woman she was. You are not the "reasoning" defender of SFLers here. You are the problem. Maybe this was before 2020, so your response as written may be true, but deceptive. You attacks since then have assumed a veneer of reason, but contain the same underlying sense of predator preying on the lamb.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading, because the review is just a review, and has never included any of the material O'Donnell falsely attributes to it. See Lexis As Most Local Context (Fontaine 2017).
14. But even assuming that your review is reasoned, I am more concerned with your motivation to write "reasoned" reviews of pèople's work, how are the people selected for review, and why is it only their faults are "discovered", not their strengths. You are selectively choosing particula people to target, and selectively choosing which aspects of their reality to place on the public web. You are choosing to negatively appraise certain people at length.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. The reviews use misunderstandings of theory to teach theory. The only "aspects of their reality" included s a publicly available photographic portrait.
15. Now, you are free to write as you like, but you should be aware that you are choosing to textually deface fellow member of your community. And that is the problem: instead of building on Halliday's heritage, you are shooting down those you don't like.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. The reviews use misunderstandings of theory to teach theory. They do not "textually deface" nor "shoot down" members of the SFL community.
16. Being publically-posted negative reviews, these "rational reviews" can cost people job or funding opportunities, so a real world effect of you actions. So you "defend" SFL by tearing it down.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. Job and funding opportunities are not decided on what is written on blogs, however valid. And the claim is falsified by the fact that Fontaine was promoted to the rank of professor after her paper was reviewed. See Christian Matthiessen Positively Appreciating Lise Fontaine's Promotion.
17. And there are a lot of people on your target list who do not deserve that. Carlos, who has spent his life supporting SFL in Portugal and beyond, earnt his attack on your bad side because your proposal was not accepted for a conference. You then examined the programme committee of that conference for possible culprits of the crime against you. And launched attacks on at least one of those.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. There are no posts about Gouveia or his programme committee on any of my linguistics blogs. The one post is a very hard-to-find meme on my recreational blog Thinking Outside The Agora in 2011.
18. This is not "rational" behaviour. Lise who re-united a fragmented SFL community in Europe, she does not deserve this. John Bateman, in my view a continual voice of reason on the list, does not deserve this.
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. To be clear, using misunderstandings of theory to teach theory is rational. On Fontaine and Bateman, see:
19. So, an appeal to you Chris, please continue to respond to any points made on this list, or open questions, as you do so well. but please, stop AI-bombing any response of those you don't like, and secondly, tone down the persecuting nature of your blogs.Mick
ChRIS responds:
This is misleading. On the one hand, the "AI-bombing" was using ChatGPT to analyse the the rhetorical strategies used by Rose, Bateman and O'Donnell in controlling the narrative of a Sysfling discussion. And, on the other hand, the blogs do not persecute, they educate.
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