Course Details
Courses will be held at X5B136 and X5B136 (please see Campus Map)
Course A: SFL theory and practice
“Network Writing”
J. R. Martin
This course focuses on network writing - the formalisation of paradigmatic relations as interdependent systems. It will be run as a practical interactive workshop, beginning with very small data sets and gradually enlarging them in order to demonstrate the sense in which theoretical constructs such as metafunction, rank and strata are based on clusters of systemic options. Some typological considerations will be addressed, especially in relation to mood.
Because of its interactive nature the course will be restricted to approximately 25 participants. A basic familiarity with IFG style accounts of English grammar will be assumed. Selected papers of relevance to the course will be forwarded to participants upon payment of registration fees.
Course B: Discourse Analysis
“Discourse Analytics in the service of professions”
David G. Butt and Alison Moore
David G. Butt and Alison Moore (Centre for Language in Social Life, Macq.U) with project colleagues and input from: (including) Psychiatry at Westmead Hospital; the Australian School of Advanced Medicine and Nepean Hospital; the C.S.I.R.O.; the Simpson Centre at Liverpool Hospital; and New South Wales AMES.
The specialised analysis of meanings, which may be expressed both as wordings and other modes of sign, is no longer an unusual requirement of professional enquiry. While we may have been long familiar with this discourse analytic dimension in decisions made at law and in government, the crucial role of textual data - including the interpretation of the significance of such data - is now widely recognised in fields as different as engineering, aviation, financial management, health services and sciences, military strategy, and a variety of further applications which have arisen under the broad study of “complex systems” (here we can include the construction of “smart spaces” or automated, semiotic environments).
At the core of the raised profile of discourse analysis are a number of long traditional preoccupations of text linguistics, all of which have been re-visited in the new light of contemporary theory, work practices, and technology. Cultural and institutional complexities are now widely interpreted as functions of meaning (not just of materiality); work needs to be directed by evidence about outcomes; and technologies have empowered individuals dealing with extended texts and semantic variation (variation both in terms of use/register and user/language-dialect). Evidence from discourse analysis is in a new key. It has achieved a clearer ‘forensic’ status - that is, as a tool of persuasion before a ‘forum’ of peers.
Over our 4 sessions, this strand of the Institute will address a series of specialisations within discourse analysis, all linked however by the clarification of key concepts like “motivated selection”, “consistency of foregrounding”, semantic drift”, “textual and semantic weight”, “textural visibility (and covertness)”, and “registerial probabilities”. The emphasis will be on interpretive (semantic) arguments based on evidence from ‘above’, in the context, and from ‘below’, in the lexicogrammar, including cohesion analysis. In this way, our claims concerning the configurations of meaning should be anchored both in the working worlds of professionals and in the specialised perspective of professional linguists.
Session 1:
Problems of context and text: myriad forms of application; myriad forms of evidence?
[data from a spectrum of problems; and a focus on the difficulties of specific professional domains].
Session 2:
Operating in teams: what is ‘relevant’ in institutional environments?
[video data drawn mainly from projects in hospitals: eg. operating theatres; med. emergency teams et al.]
Session 3:
A “Conversational Model” of social apprenticeships: what needs to be learnt? and what needs to be taught?
[viz. schooling and language; pedagogy in surgery; and psychotherapeutic training].
Session 4:
The “existential fabric” of texts: a semiotic defence of “personality studies” and discursive indices of “self”?
[examples drawn from profiles in counselling; performance style; and the social agency of verbal art].
The context of sessions will be adjusted according to the interests of the participants. It is, therefore, helpful to communicate your motivation for undertaking the sessions on Discourse Analysis.
Course C: LOTE
“Advanced Foreign/ Second/ Heritage Language learners and SFL”
Cecilia Colombi
This workshop will look at the development of advanced literacy in foreign/ L2 or heritage speakers using SFL for:
* Curriculum Development - This workshop underscores the explicit instruction of genre/register theory as a way of promoting students’ awareness of discourse-semantics and lexicogrammatical features of academic language in courses for heritage or second/ foreign language learners. It focuses on the SFL construct of field, presents theme analysis of texts (thematic clusters) as a tool for organizing discourse, and highlights grammatical metaphor as one of the most prominent lexicogrammatical features for indexing academic language. Explicit examples from German as a foreign language and Spanish as a L2 and heritage language in the U.S. will be presented.
* Explicit language focus in the classroom - This workshop will demonstrate ways of talking about “content” by engaging students in analysis of the texts they read and write. Using functional grammar to analyze what the text is about, the voice of the author, and the text organization, students can link the language choices of the author with the different kinds of meaning those choices construct. A productive focus on language as “a meaning making resource” can enable students to explore the content of the text at the same time that they can engage critically with what they read or write.
* SFL research tools for assessing language development - This workshop will elaborate on how the analytic approach of SFL can inform research on teaching and learning. It offers examples of classroom work informed by SFL approaches from several research studies done in the United States.
Course D: TESOL
Introduction to Functional Grammar and Genre
John Polias
This workshop is intended as an introduction to systemic functional grammar, especially suitable for those working in educational contexts, but also relevant to those working in areas such as translation or stylistics. We will focus on genre and grammar, identifying those aspects that have been found through long experience to be accessible to teachers and students beginning with the systemic functional model of language. Educational contexts will include both first and second language, and different levels of education from primary through to pre-tertiary. No prior knowledge is assumed. Those who wish to enrol in this course only may do so for $280. Otherwise it can be taken in conjunction with two other courses as per the normal registration.
Course E: Multimodality
“Basic techniques and problems in multimodal analysis”
John Bateman
(i) Introduction: how to do multimodal analyses linguistically
(ii) Static 2D multimodal artefacts (documents, webpages)
(iii) Dynamic 2D multimodal artefacts (film)
(iv) Bringing it all together and further moves
Course F: Interpersonal Semantics
“Applying Appraisal — analyzing attitude, alignment and authorial voice in student writing and mass communicative discourse”
Peter R.R. White
Audience
This course is intended both for those who are new to Appraisal and for those who are familiar with the framework but want to explore further its possible applications.
Overview
Appraisal theory provides a framework, from within Systemic Functional Linguistics, for the analysis of evaluative aspects of language, specifically the options available to writers/speakers by which they can advance positive and negative viewpoints, and negotiate these viewpoints with actual or potential respondents. It identifies three primary domains of evaluation: attitude (positive/negative assessment), graduation (the up-scaling/downscaling of evaluative positions) and engagement (dialogic positioning by the speaker/writer with respect to what has previously been said on the subject and with respect to what might be said). The appraisal framework extends the analytical possibilities for those interested in the interpersonal functionality of language, providing methodologies for investigating the different linguistic mechanisms by which point of view is conveyed and the different communicative effects associated with these mechanisms. It provides a resource for the investigation of how status and solidarity are enacted and negotiated in language, and of the linguistic choices which underlie the construction of different stances, authorial voices or textual personae. It makes possible systematic accounts of how texts project particular assumptions, values and beliefs onto those addressed and thereby construct for themselves “ideal” or “imagined” readerships/listenerships. It provides methodologies for exploring the evaluative arrangements conventionally associated with particular discourse domains, such as those of science, history, the mass media and public administration.
This course will both introduce participants to the appraisal framework and provide them with opportunities to explore its application to a range of text/discourse analysis issues. A substantial component of the course will be devoted to “hands-on” analysis activities. Some time will be devoted to exploring the role appraisal can play in the context of the teaching of student writing, and how it can assist teachers in better understanding what is involved interpersonally in the texts their students are required to produce. By way of a contrast, some time will also be devoted to methodologies for investigating the evaluative arrangements which operate in mass communicative texts such as those of the news media and politics.
Some references:
Martin, J.R. & P.R.R. White, 2005/2007, The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English, London & New York, Palgrave/Macmillan.
Introductory course in Appraisal (online): http://www.grammatics.com/appraisal/
Martin, J. R. 2000. ‘Beyond exchange: appraisal systems in English’. in Hunston & Thompson, (eds), Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 142-175.
White, P.R.R. 2006 ‘Evaluative Semantics and Ideological Positioning in Journalistic Discourse’, in Image and Ideology in the Mass Media, Lassen, I. (ed.), Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins: 45- 73 (available for download here)
Special guest lecture
“Language engineering: applying SFL to wide range of context”
Professor Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
Price Theatre (16:00-17:30, 16 July Wednesday)