This stimulating volume provides fresh perspectives on choice, a key notion in systemic functional linguistics. Bringing together a global team of well-established and up-and-coming systemic ...functional linguists, it shows how the different senses of choice as process and as product are interdependent, and how they operate at all levels of language. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it covers a range of linguistic viewpoints, informed by evolutionary theory, psychology, sociology and neuroscience, to produce a complex but unifying account of the issues. This book offers a critical examination of choice and is ideal for students and researchers working in all areas of functional linguistics as well as cognitive linguistics, second-language acquisition, neurolinguistics and sociolinguistics.
•Presents a materialist account of linguistic and cultural evolution.•Brings together systemic functional theory, complex systems theory and biolinguistics.•Combines social and individual theories of ...linguistic response.
In this paper I consider the concept of linguistic dynamism from a materialist and evolutionary perspective. The paper begins with a description of the evolved human traits that account for the variability of response within specific contexts and the degree to which such variability is effective in safeguarding the integrity of the system while allowing for emergence and uptake of adaptive behaviour. From here, the paper draws on the architecture of Systemic Functional Linguistics and the recursive mechanisms of redundancy and articulation to outline how this evolved variability of response can account for the emergence of: (i) higher orders of extension and abstraction in the language system; and (ii) an increase in the meaning potential of the system at each level of abstraction. These two processes are seen as naturally occurring and mutually reinforcing and hence as the beginnings of a materialist account of creativity in language.
This paper opens with a problematisation of the notion of
in discourse analysis – dissected, as it is, as if time unfolded in a linear and regular procession at the speed of speech. To illustrate ...this point, the author combines Hasan’s concept of “relevant context” with Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope to provide an analysis of Sorley MacLean’s poem
, with its deep-rootedness in space and its dissolution of time. The remainder of the paper is dedicated to following the poem’s metamorphoses and trajectory as it intertwines with Bartlett’s own life and family history, creating a layered simultaneity of meanings orienting to multiple semio-historic centres. In this way the author (
) “sets out to illustrate in theory, text analysis and (self-)history the trajectories taken by texts as they cross through time and space; their interconnectedness with social systems at different scales; and the manner in which they are revoiced in order to enhance their legitimacy before the diverse audiences they encounter on their migratory paths.” In this process, Bartlett relates his own story to the socioeconomic concerns of the Hebridean island where his father was raised, and to dialogues between local communities and national and external policy-makers – so echoing Denzin’s call (2014.
. Los Angeles: Sage: vii) to “develop a methodology that allows us examine how the private troubles of individuals are connected to public issues and to public responses to these troubles”. Bartlett presents his data through a range of legitimation strategies and voicing techniques, creating transgressive texts that question received notions of identity, authorship, legitimacy and authenticity in academia, the portals of power, and the routines of daily life. The current is one such example. As with the author’s closing caveat on the potential dangers of self-revelation, offered, no doubt, as a flimsy justification for the extensive focus in the paper on his own life as a chronotope, I leave it for the individual reader to decide if Bartlett’s approach is ultimately ludic or simply ludicrous.
The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of deontic modality as a strategic means of mitigating evaluative meanings within and across texts. Evaluative meanings concern the function of ...language as used to express the speaker’s or writer’s subjective opinions, and such meanings have been extensively analysed through Appraisal framework. The framework has been used to account for evaluative/attitudinal meanings in texts, as well as dealing with the interaction of voices as one way through which speakers and writers can attribute evaluations to third parties in order to downplay or distance themselves from the evaluations that are expressed. Within the literature on Appraisal, however, the potential for deontic modality to mitigate subjective evaluation in texts has largely been overlooked and, thus, under-analysed. In this paper therefore, we develop a systems network for analysing the role of deontic modality and its interaction with other features as a tool for text analysis. We illustrate the distinctions in the network with examples of contrasting values from hard news stories that covered the 2011 public sector workers’ strike in Botswana and finish up with a short textual analysis to demonstrate how the consideration of deontic modality as a strategy of mitigation can not only enhance our understanding of how evaluative meanings are downplayed or overridden in texts, but also of how the distinctions between text types themselves can be blurred.
In this paper I explore the etic category of textuality and the emic category of Theme arguing that while Theme in English may simultaneously signal the point of departure of a clause with respect to ...the preceding text and also the ‘aboutness’ of the clause in relation to the method of development of a text, this is not necessarily the case with other languages. In particular I consider the rich textual resources of Scottish Gaelic, a verb-initial language with no morphological marking for Theme, to problematise standard treatments of thematicity in languages other than English. I elaborate on Cloran’s (2010) account of Rhetorical Units to present as a hypothesis for further exploration the idea that, while Gaelic and English ground clauses in both space and time, Gaelic is a process-centred language while English is a Subject-centred language and that these differences in the respective characterology of the two languages have repercussions on the process of textualisation and the method of development in each language.
Genre as Ideological Mediation Bartlett, Tom
Linguistics and the Human Sciences,
03/2008, Letnik:
2, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper draws on data from intercultural development discourse, ESL teaching and hate media in pre-genocide Rwanda to characterise genres as mediators of ideology, instantiating and interweaving ...culturally significant representations, authority systems and textual traditions through dispersed patterns of discourse as much as structural regularity. Applications of the approach for development and educational discourse are discussed in terms of the generic potential of discourse contexts and the registerial competence of participants, and the potential of the approach for propagating counter-discourses to hate media is considered in light of the data from Rwanda.
Abstract
This two-part article suggests ways in which elements of antagonistic discourses of the environment might be combined in a hybrid, innovative discourse that appeals to a broad section of the ...public while advocating for more environmentally sustainable practices in industry. It proposes an enhanced Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) that not only identifies points of fissure in the hegemonic discourse but also seeks points of convergence that can be articulated with in a hybrid, counter-hegemonic discourse that maximizes its potential for uptake while destabilizing the prevailing discourses at precisely the fissure points identified. Part I explores the theoretical grounding for an enhanced PDA, introduces the research method and then, based on
Stibbe (2016)
, makes an eco-discourse analysis of discourses by Shell Oil Company (SOC), with a focus on their discourse semantic patterns, showcasing how hegemonic groups employ discourse strategies to serve their interests and what ecological effects such discourses may produce. In Part II (
Chen et al. 2021
), a comparative analysis is conducted on the SOC discourses and the Greenpeace discourses. As well as highlighting the points of antagonism between the two discourses, it attempts to seek out points of convergence between progressive positions in the discourses. Part II also explores the potential fissures in the hegemonic order and discusses the
design
of alternative discourses thereupon. It is argued that an enhanced PDA which focuses on solutions rather than problems and collaboration rather than resistance forms a route for positive and interventionist orientations to discourse that promote social change.
•Takes logogenesis, ontogenesis and phylogenesis as genetic systems in language.•Proposes how the dynamics of those genetic systems can be accounted for.•Asks how to account for the expansion of the ...meaning potential of individual languages.•Questions the adequacy of categories of SFL to describe languages other than English.•Explains how the contributions in this Special Issue respond to these questions.
In the introduction to this special issue we consider the dynamics of language from three interrelated perspectives: ontogenesis, or the development of the language system in the individual; logogenesis, or the development of meanings across texts and discourses; and phylogenesis, or the changes to individual language systems over time. We discuss how these three methods of development are intrinsically connected, feeding into each other in such a way that they can be theorised as essentially different spatiotemporal perspectives on the same phenomenon. From there we pose three central questions for the modelling of change and contrast in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), summarised briefly as: How can the theoretical and descriptive architecture of SFL be developed to account for the dynamics between these three genetic systems? How can we account for the expansion of the meaning potential of individual languages as a result of these processes? And to what extent are the fundamental categories of SFL adequate to the description of languages other than English and, hence, to the comparison of different languages? We then provide an overview of how the different papers in this special issue respond to these three questions.
PDF
