list of plenary speakers | plenary abstracts | plenary workshop abstracts | plenary program
Ghassan Hage University of Sydney
Chris Jordens University of Sydney
Mary Macken-Horarik University of Canberra
J R Martin University of Sydney
Christian Matthiessen Macquarie University
Clare Painter University of New South Wales
John Swales University of Michigan
Theo van Leeuwen University of Technology, Sydney
Geoffrey Williams University of Sydney
list of plenary speakers | plenary abstracts | plenary workshop abstracts | plenary program
Plenary Speaker Abstracts
Ghassan Hage, Anthropology, University of Sydney
Hope and Hoping in Warring Societies
Since the 'War on Terror' has been declared, we are increasingly living in warring societies. Such societies are not necessarily 'at war' in the classical sense, but what defines them as warring societies is that they are increasingly structured as geared towards war. How does such a warring state affect the mechanisms of production and distribution of social hope that are at the core of such societies? Answering such a question gives us important insights into what constitutes social hope, the relationship between the various forms of social hoping and modes of social belonging, and most importantly, in the way social and political conditions affects the way we formulate our hopes and go about attaining them.
Christopher Jordens, Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, University of Sydney
Narrative schmarrative! Generating a discourse of cancer survivorship
Whilst survival is one of the goals of medical treatment for cancer, it is a mixed blessing for some people. The experience has its own peculiar burdens which sit uncomfortably alongside the cultural metanarrative of survivor-as-hero. Is one of the goals of language-based research in cancer medicine therefore to generate an alternative discourse of survival--one which augments the range of possibilities when it comes to speaking to and from the position of survivor? I will review a program of research that has undertaken to do precisely this. What are the elements of an alternative discourse of cancer survival? What is the role of discourse analysis in such an undertaking? And what does this tell us more broadly about the place of language-based social research in medicine, and the uses of Systemic Functional Linguistics within that endeavour? Finally, what does the Survivor Research Project have to say about the value of hope in the context of cancer illness? And given that, what of the prospects of peace, reconciliation and change?
Mary Macken-Horarik, University of Canberra
Towards a semiotics of hope: new kinds of complementarity and new kinds of genesis in refugee discourses
Multimodality is vital to the production of either humanising or de-humanising discourses about the subjects of news (newsmakers). Just as a photograph can represent asylum seekers as distant, de-powered and generic, so it can also represent them as symbolically close, empowered and individuated. Some forms of complementarity between image and verbiage can relay prejudice into a 'hard-news' story through a telling headline (Sink or Swim over a blurred image of people in the water), or a misleading caption (e.g. that accompanying satellite images of weapons munitions factories in Colin Powell's address to the United Nations). Other forms serve to re-contextualize (even challenge) controversial political claims (such as the publication of new photographs of children overboard which included a sinking boat in the background of their rescue and a headline about Labor's attack on the Liberal's claims). Some forms of semiotic history attenuate empirical accounts of events (e.g. depersonalising, then removing, voices which get 'in the way' of a preferred version of events); other forms restore agency to those affected by newsworthy events (e.g. giving voice to accounts by newsmakers themselves).
That multimodality can be deployed differently is evident when we consider the ways in which Australian newsmakers such as Cornelia Rau or Shapelle Corby are currently represented in media discourse. In 'their stories', we are invited to 'tut tut' over the inhumane conditions of their detention, to 'feel with' and judge sympathetically 'our Cornelia' and 'our Shapelle'. For those who care to attend, we have access to every word Shapelle uttered to the Indonesian judges in her address, we see every tear she sheds and many of us talk endlessly on talk-back radio about the insignificance of her crime compared to the enormity of the possible sentence (at the time of writing, her sentence has yet to be handed down). To appropriate Shapelle's words, we hold "her life not in our hands but in our hearts". The point here is not to deny the pain that these Australians have undergone during their detention but to show that semiotic resources (news and otherwise) can be deployed to produce humanization, intersubjectivity and a fair hearing for newsmakers. And they can be deployed otherwise.
The first part of my paper will analyze some realizations of both hopelessness and hope in relation to public discourses about refugees. It draws on data collected since 2001 from newspapers, television news, books about the 'refugee problem' and, more recently, books and plays produced by or with refugees themselves. Four key semiotic strategies are analyzed:
(i) self-determination versus other-determination,
(ii) intersubjectivity versus distantiation,
(iii) justice (a fair hearing) versus injustice (indifference to marginalized voices),
(iv) strategies of humanization versus de-humanization.
The second part of the paper identifies some of the conditions that underpin development of a semiotics of hope. These include (i) access to and control of the means of representation itself (what I call 'first order discourse'), (ii) opportunities for dialogue between refugees and longer-term Australians, (iii) legal and administrative systems that are just and decent and (iv) social-semiotic practices that work actively towards humanization and hope.
J R Martin, University of Sydney
Vernacular deconstruction: undermining spin
One significant task for positive discourse analysis (PDA) is that of identifying sites outside of academe where meanings are deployed to challenge hegemonic discourses, bringing closer to public consciousness the semiotic spin that naturalises power. In this paper I'll consider 3 texts from popular culture which have been designed to undermine populist nationalist sentiment and to address readers untouched by critical discourse analysis (CDA) and unlikely to be moved by scholarly deconstruction should they encounter it. The texts feature interacting modalities of communication and satire, and thus present some interesting theoretical and descriptive challenges for systemic functional semiotics as it emerges out of SFL.
Christian M.I.M Matthiessen, Centre for Language in Social Life, Centre for Translation and Interpreting Research, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University
Multilingual humanity, multilingual studies: hope or despair?
There are a number of activities in and around linguistics that highlight the diversity of the languages around the world -- including language teaching-&-learning, translator-&-interpreter training, language planning and policy, cross-cultural pragmatics, (human and machine) translation studies, contrastive analysis, comparison and typology. These activities can be interpreted as falling within an intellectual space we might call multilingual studies . However, they have often been pursued in relative isolation from one another, with relatively little cross-fertilization. This is grounds for despair if one is convinced, as I am, that these activities would benefit greatly from more collaboration and sharing of findings and insights.
There are no doubt many reasons for this fragmentation of knowledge, including the structuring of "knowledge" into disciplinary domains that we have inherited as part of the organization of institutions of learning; but there are two key reasons having to do with the domain of activity itself. (1) One has to do with the phenomenal realm of languages in context: the different activities tend to be kept separate because they are focussed on different regions of the cline of instantiation -- some (like typology) on the system pole (the overall meaning potential), others (like translation studies) on the instance pole (acts of meaning in unfolding text). (2) The other has to do with the nature of the activity -- whether it is primarily one of reflecting on languages as system-&-text (e.g. description of individual languages, or of typological generalizations, or analysis of parallel texts -- original and translation) or one of acting on communities (as in language planning and policy) or individual persons (meaners, as in language teaching and the training of translators and interpreters). There are, of course, links between reflection and action, as when studies of language contact situations and multilingualism lead to well-informed and effective language policy and planning. And if it is possible to locate all these different activities relative to one another in a space of multilingual studies, as suggested above and shown diagrammatically in Figure 1 , this is grounds for hope : we can see how the activities can be mutually supportive. For example, typology is relevant to translation studies (as has already become clear in work on machine translation), and translation studies can provide typology with text-based comparison that sheds light on typological variation in linguistic systems. Since systemic functional linguistics is such a richly dimensionalized resource for reflection and action, it can make a fundamental contribution towards multilingual studies. There is certainly reason for hope as far as systemic functional linguistics is concerned: in the last decade and a half, there has been a considerable expansion in the development of description of particular languages (including the studies in Caffarel, Martin & Matthiessen, 2004), in the work on systemic typology and comparison (see Teruya et al, in press; Matthiessen, 2004b), in systemic functional translation studies (see e.g. Steiner & Yallop, 2001; Teich, 2003; Steiner, in press), and in the engagement with second and foreign language teaching (as in various contributions to the 2005 Georgetown University Roundtable, "Educating for Advanced Foreign Language Capacities").
Figure 1 : Multilingual studies as description and action in relation to the cline of instantiation
If nurtured properly, multilingual studies could thus be concerned with different inter-connected facets of the diversity of the languages around the world -- of multilingual humanity. As far as this diversity is concerned, there would seem to be grounds for despair -- on the one hand, because differences get mapped onto dimensions of power and come to be linked to access to resources; on the other hand, because the diversity is decreasing. It seems likely that "semiotically modern languages" have been evolving for something on the order of 150 K to 200 K years, having emerged together with "anatomically modern humans" out of what I believe must have been a long transitional period from an earlier protolinguistic phase (see Matthiessen, 2004a). Semiotically modern languages probably reached the highest degree of diversity somewhere around 10 K years ago in a rich, wide range of non-settlement societies. This diversity has been decreasing ever since -- first because of the conditions brought about by settlement and agriculture around 10 K years ago, then by the further changes brought about by city-based civilizations starting around 5 K years ago and then by the development of modern nation states, including ones with imperial power around 0.5 K years ago.
The decrease in diversity is accelerating; many of today's around 6,700 languages (according to the Ethnologue) are spoken in communities under threat (see e.g. Nettle, 1999; Nettle & Romaine, 2000; Maurais & Morris, 2003). Nettle & Romaine (2000: 8) note that the 100 most used languages account for about 90% of the world's population and that there are "at least 6,000 languages spoken by about 10 per cent of the people on earth", concluding that there may be only about 600 languages with a "secure future". From the point of view of members of communities under threat, there is clearly every reason for despair: they are being pushed to the edge of existence, or transformed into something very different, both materially and semiotically. From the point of view of the rest of us, there is also reason for despair -- at least as long as we realize that we are one humanity sharing the resources of one planet, and that it is not only the material resources that are part of our collective "inheritance" but also the semiotic ones (cf. Rose, 2005).
Here there may be reasons for hope . While scientists and activists still face an uphill battle, there is a growing awareness of the material realm -- of the value of biodiversity, of forests as our planet's "lungs", of the significance of traditional medicinal plants, and of the need to intervene to constrain the seemingly unstoppable processes of exploitation and to restore and nurture. In "eco-linguistics", there are findings showing links between biodiversity and linguistic diversity, both tending to be the highest around the equator with certain exceptions (e.g. Nettle, 1999; Nettle & Romaine, 2000). We are also beginning to understand the links between modes of subsistence and modes of meaning (as in Halliday's, 1992). And there are now projects for documenting resources of languages on a large scale; and there are linguistic institutes like the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore, India, dedicated both to research and to the development of materials for communities. One challenge is to relate the perspectives of academics to the perspectives of communities of meaners under threat, ensuring that the former serve the latter. A related challenge is to ensure that there is an ongoing exchange between reflection and action in multilingual studies.
In the context of ISFC 2005, we can ask ourselves how we can enrich multilingual studies informed by systemic functional linguistics, and we can come to understand and nurture our collective semiotic inheritance in a way that is designed to benefit all inheritors, not just those who are already privileged. Can we extend systemic functional work to include not only "safe" languages at the "centre" but also "endangered" ones at the "peripheries" (as in Rose, 2001)? Can we change perspective, valuing peripheries as centres? Can we develop descriptions of languages that not only document them for academics and government agencies but also serve as resources for communities? Can we enable children growing up in privileged countries with privileged languages to understand how to mean in very different languages?
References
Caffarel, Alice , James R. Martin & Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen (eds.). 2004. Language typology: a functional perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1992. "New ways of meaning: a challenge to applied linguistics." Greek Applied Linguistics Association, Journal of Applied Linguistics 6.
Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. 2004a. "The evolution of language: a systemic functional exploration of phylogenetic phases" In Geoff Williams & Annabelle Lukin (eds.), Language development: functional perspectives on evolution and ontogenesis . London: Continuum. 45-90.
Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. 2004b. "Descriptive motifs and generalizations." In Alice Caffarel, J.R. Martin & Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen (eds.). Language typology: a functional perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 537-673.
Maurais, Jacques & Michael A. Morris. 2003. Languages in a globalising world . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nettle, Daniel. 1999. Linguistic diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nettle, Daniel & Suzanne Romaine. 2000. Vanishing voices: the extinction of the world's languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rose, David. 2001. The Western Desert Code: an Australian cryptogrammar. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Rose, David. 2005. "Narrative and the origins of discourse: construing experience in stories around the world." Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 19: 151-173.
Steiner, Erich. in press. "Halliday and translation theory -- enhancing the options, broadening the range, and keeping the ground."
Steiner, Erich & Colin Yallop (eds.). 2001. Beyond content: exploring translation and multilingual text production. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter.
Teich, Elke. 2003. Cross-linguistic variation in system and text. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Teruya, Kazuhiro, Ernest Akerejola, Thomas H. Andersen, Alice Caffarel, Julia Lavid, Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, Uwe Helm Petersen, Flemming Smedegaard & Pattama Patpong. in press. "A systemic-functional approach to the typology of mood : system and process."
Clare Painter, University of New South Wales
Negotiating affect, alignments and personal experience: building narrative understandings in early childhood
Discourses of hope or reconciliation depend on fostering the ability to relate to the point of view of the other, one of the key tools for this being personal and fictional narrative texts. Moreover, as well as serving as a key instrument for ethical training, it is typically through stories that children in our culture are apprenticed into literacy. Thus, while the idea of narrative as a "primary act of mind" (Hardy 1977:12) may have had unfortunate consequences in literacy education (by distracting attention from the functionality of genres associated with uncommonsense knowledge) it may now be timely to reconsider the place of narrative in children's early learning, in particular its role in making sense of experience and aligning the child to the values of the meaning group. This paper will use reports of infancy research (Trevarthen 2001) and case study data of parent/child conversations (Painter 1986, 1999/2000) to trace aspects of the child's pre-school learning experience relevant to the child's appreciation of the cognitive and emotional perspectives of others and the ability to represent meaning in a narrative mode. It will be argued that this occurs in the dialogic exploration of 'factual' meaning and the narrative construal of personal life, in both of which the understanding, imagining and moral shaping of experience occurs. In demonstrating these developments, both the role of the adult in fostering the child's meanings and that of children's picture books in further shaping children's understandings of narrative will be considered.
References
Hardy, B. 1977 "Narrative as a primary act of mind." M. Meek (ed) The Cool Web: The Pattern of Children's Reading London, Bodley Head
Painter, C. 1986 Into the Mother Tongue London, Pinter
Painter, C. 1999/2000 Learning through Language in Early Childhood London, Cassell/Continuum
Trevarthen, C. 2001 "Intrinsic motives for companionship in understanding: their origin, development, and the significance for infant mental health" Infant mental Health Journal 22 (1-2): 95-131
John M. Swales, University of Michigan
The Flavor and Structure of Academic Speech
Deborah Tannen (e.g. 2002) has been arguing that academic speech tends to be contentious and disputacious, and her view certainly coincides with folkloristic beliefs about "the cut and thrust" of academic argument. However, empirical evidence from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) challenges such views and beliefs. This corpus consists of nearly 200 hours of transcribed speech from a wide range of speech events (lectures, office hours, meetings, dissertation defenses etc). Various kinds of investigations (lexico-grammatical, pragmatic, discoursal) into this register and into some of its constituent genres show, for example, that criticism tends to be muted and sparse, while praise is fulsome and widespread. Perhaps unexpectedly, the University of Michigan turns out to be a locus of Positive Discourse (Martin, 2004).
More theoretically, the MICASE corpus raises questions about whether a single lexico-grammar can encompass both academic writing and academic speech. Certainly, academic prose's successions of SVO declarative sentences do not easily transpose to the utterance fragments, the phraseological chunks and the various moods (such as exclamatives) of academic speech. So, in the second half of this talk, I argue, in contrast to the Longman Grammar (1999) and others, that there may be good reasons, both descriptive and pedagogical, for accounting for the structure of these two registers separately.
Theo van Leeuwen, University of Technology, Sydney
Discourses of choice
In every domain of public life, discourses of rules and fixed procedures are being replaced by discourses of choice, following a model pioneered in advertising, but also heralded, and often celebrated, in 20th century philosophy, sociology and cultural theory.
This paper presents a critical discourse analysis of discourses of choice in four areas: global lifestyle advertising, expert advice in global magazines, Tony Blair's speeches, and systemic-functional linguistic theory.
It concludes by addressing the theme of the conference, arguing for the positive contribution critical discourse analysis can make to debates that are crucial to the future of our increasingly global society.
Geoffrey Williams, Department Of English, University Of Sydney
Memory, literacy and the ontogenesis of vertical discourse
This paper reports on a continuing exploration of the ontogenesis of literacy in different social class locations. The project is designed to contribute to SFL research into semantic variation, as originally proposed by Hasan (e.g. 1989; 2004).
In earlier work I argued that ontogeneses of literacy are highly sensitive to social class positioning because they are regulated by different code modalities, and that the different code modalities are themselves differentially related to pedagogic discourse in the first months of formal schooling (e.g. Williams 2000; 2001). Subsequently, Bernstein's proposal of a distinction between two very general forms of discourse, horizontal and vertical discourse (Bernstein, 1999), has enabled the research to address some new questions about children's modes of entry to, and exclusion from, vertical discourse through interaction in joint book-reading contexts. This paper reports on further analyses of episodes in which children and their caregivers jointly construct memories of events and entities related to represented events and entities in the narratives they read. It extends an initial report on the function of semantic prefacing (typically realized through projection) in the ontogenesis of vertical discourse, a report originally presented to the 'Reclaiming Knowledge' conference, December 2004. In that paper I suggested it might be productive to think about the function of one specific type of semantic prefacing in terms of 'proto-recontextualization' (Bernstein, 1990), following analogically Halliday's use of 'protolanguage' in modelling initial mother tongue development (Halliday, 2004; Painter, in press). In this paper I will discuss language features consistently present in these episodes that appear to be implicated in children's development of an orientation to recontextualized meaning-making.
References:
Bernstein, B. 1990. Class, codes and control Volume IV: The structuring of pedagogic discourse. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Bernstein, B. 1999. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. Revised edition. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Hasan, R. 1989. Semantic Variation and Sociolinguistics. Australian Journal of Linguistics. 9. p221-75.
Hasan, R. 2004. The World in Words: Semiotic Mediation, Tenor and Ideology. In The development of language: Functional perspectives on species and individuals. G.Williams and A.Lukin (eds.) London: Continuum.
Halliday M.A.K. 2004. The language of early childhood: Volume 4 in the Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. J. J. Webster (ed.). London: Continuum. Painter, C. in press. The concept of 'protolanguage' in language development. Linguistics and the Human Sciences. 2.
Williams, G. 2000. The pedagogic device and the production of pedagogic discourse: a case example in early literacy education. Pedagogy and the shaping of consciousness: linguistic and social processes. Ed. F.Christie : London: Cassell Academic.
Williams, G. 2001. Literacy pedagogy prior to schooling: Relations between social positioning and semantic variation. In Towards a sociology of pedagogy: The contribution of Basil Bernstein to research. eds. A. Morais, I.Neves, B.Davies and H.Baillie. New York and Oxford: Peter Lang.
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list of plenary speakers | plenary abstracts | plenary workshop abstracts | plenary program
Plenary Speaker Workshop Abstracts Friday 2:15-3:30pm
Ghassan Hage, University of Sydney
On 'going somewhere' in a place where there is 'something': Hope, mobility and potentiality.
In Lebanese, as in the English 'how are you going?' and in many other languages, the word used to denote 'functioning well' is the same used to mean 'moving well'. In colloquial Lebanese, to say 'I am well' you say 'mehche'l haal' which literally means 'the state of my being is walking'.
Needless to say, in the above, words such as 'walking' and 'going well' are not meant in the sense of physical movement. They denote a close association between the viability of life and a sense of symbolic mobility. Indeed, listening to people's own evaluation of what makes them migrate, one feels that there is an inverse relation between migration, this all-important physical mobility, and symbolic mobility. Migratory physical mobility is only contemplated when people experience a crisis in their sense of symbolic mobility. Or, to put it differently, it is when people feel that they are symbolically 'going too slowly' or 'going nowhere', i.e. that they are somehow 'stuck' on the 'highway of life', that they begin contemplating the necessity of physically 'going somewhere'.
Associated with this mobility is a very specific conception of reality. Migrants often say of the places they are leaving not only that they are 'going nowhere' within them but that 'there is nothing' there. What part of reality does one inhabit (and move within) that makes it appear as being 'something' or 'nothing'. In this paper, I will explore the relationship between symbolic movement and this peculiar ontology, emphasising the relationship between mobility and social hope: the potentiality of reality that this language aims to capture.
Christopher Jordens, Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, University of Sydney
Working "above the text": genre as a recombinant resource
The linguistic concept of genre is a useful and widely applicable analytic tool. In SFL, it is a theory of cultural and situational context which interlocks with a theory of language. Genre theory is easily grasped by non-linguists, which makes it ideal for collaborative work across different disciplines, and it is perhaps the easiest way into SFL for novices. It is also very useful for analysing large texts and large data sets.
This workshop aims to explore some of the practical and theoretical problems that arise in genre analysis, with a view to sharing ideas and possible solutions. The workshop will focus on the distinction between genre and macro-genre as applied to spoken discourse. The rationale for this is that one of the main tools of qualitative, sociological inquiry—the in-depth interview—is usefully understood as a macro genre.
First I will briefly revise the notion of genre as it has been elaborated within SFL. I will then revise my own methods for mapping variation in spoken genres. Next, I will summarise some key findings from the analysis of a large data set (20 hours of spoken discourse) regarding variation in spoken genre within and between groups of lay and expert speakers. I will then turn to the task of interpreting variation in spoken genre. Given sufficient time and interest, I will also explore complementarities between genre analysis and appraisal analysis. This workshop should appeal to those who are interested in applying SFL in interdisciplinary research.
Keywords
Genre analysis; narrative analysis; in-depth interviewing; health and medical research.
Assumed knowledge
Eggins S. An introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics (London: Pinter; 1994) Chapter 2.
Background reading (available from presenter on request via email)
Jordens CFC, Little M, Paul K, Sayers E-J. Life disruption and generic complexity: a social linguistic analysis of narratives of cancer illness. Social Science & Medicine 2001; 53: 1227-1236.
Jordens CFC, Little M. “In this scenario, I do this, for these reasons”: narrative, genre and ethical reasoning in the clinic. Social Science & Medicine 2004; 58 (9): 1635-1645.
Mary Macken-Horarik
Genesis and complementarity in multimodal discourse: a focus on the generation of 'Australian-ness' through front-page news
This workshop will take up two of the issues explored in my plenary paper, particularly the analysis of genesis (intertextuality) and complementarity (intratextuality) in multimodal discourse. It will focus on newspaper accounts of Australian involvement in 'theatres of war' such as East Timor and Iraq over the last 5 or 6 years. Drawing on a series of front-page news texts, we will focus on the analysis of news texts about particular campaigns (intratexts) and of a narrative series of texts over the course of a campaign (intertexts). The workshop will explore the kinds of meanings generated at these different moments and their contribution to covert, nationalist and 'satisfying' accounts of Australian-ness.
J R Martin, University of Sydney
Positive discourse analysis: sites and tools
For this workshop I'd like to open up a discussion of the implications of positive discourse analysis (PDA) for the kinds of data we analyse, the tools we develop for analysis... and the way in which we design interventions based on this work. I'll begin with a brief introduction to the thinking behind PDA as I have tried to formulate it to myself, and then throw the workshop open to questions, suggestions and commentary by participants.
Christian M.I.M Matthiessen, Centre for Language in Social Life, Centre for Translation and Interpreting Research, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University
Vanishing voices or discourses of hope and wor(l)d peace?
In this workshop, we will "brain breeze" about ways in which systemic functional linguists and linguistics can engage with humanity's rich multingual inheritance and multicultural heritage. How can we increase awareness of the nature of this collective resource? Can it be introduced in schools; can students learn what it is like to live life in a very different kind of semiotic world; can they learn how to understand very different ways of meaning; can they learn to understand what is involved in translation? How can we help people see the value of multilingualism and multiculturalism; how can we conceive of the functional complementarity of languages in multilingual communities and in multilingual speakers; how can we facilitate second language learning in schools?
Since the gradual emergence of agriculture around ten thousand years ago, certain societies have become more and more hierarchical internally, and externally hierarchies among societies have emerged, first regionally with archaic states and then archaic empires, then more globally with far-flung empires. In the course of this evolution towards extended hierarchies, the socio-economic space in which languages are located has grown considerably: the distance between "rich" languages and "poor" languages has grown enormously. As traditional societies are being marginalized, their members die or are transformed; and their languages "shrink": the the range of contexts in which they are used is reduced, so registers disappear, and the languages are de-lexicalized -- their lexicogrammars contract. Eventually they disappear.
Globalization is merely the most recent phase in this development, but it represents a greatly accelerated development and the potential impact on traditional communities around the world is enormous. How can we determine the impact it is having on our semiotic environment -- on our collective semiotic inheritance and heritage? How can systemic functional linguists and linguistics make a positive difference? How can communities be supported in retaining and developing their semiotic resources? How can we achieve semiotic sustainability? How can semiotic chasms be bridged; how can we achieve high-level translation that brings about mutual understanding? How can the new semiotic technologies associated with the "information age" tools for tending to our semiotic environment?
Claire Painter
Reading the visual in children's picture books
This workshop will draw on research in progress being conducted by Len Unsworth, Jim Martin and Clare Painter extending Kress and Van Leeuwen's work on Reading Images (Routledge 1996) to inter-visual sequences in narratives. A number of provisional (ideational and interpersonal) networks for analysing inter-visual relations in children's picture book narratives will be outlined, explained and opened up for discussion in the workshop. Exemplifications will be made from well-regarded picture book texts and input from participants working in educational contexts with children's literature will be particularly welcomed.
John M. Swales, University of Michigan
Revisiting Genre Analysis
This workshop is constructed around a series of tasks. These start with identifying examplars of a genre and close with a discussion of how analyses might be suitably reconfigured for teaching and learning purposes. Along the way, as it were, we will try to puzzle out the rationales for selected genres, analyse their structural propensities, and examine the way in which lexico-grammatical selections relate to structure and rationale. We will also consider issues pertaining to corpus linguistics and context.
Theo van Leeuwen, UTS
A functional semiotics of typography
The workshop presents the outline of a functional semiotics of typography and discusses some of the problems and issues that arise from researching this emerging field:
(1) Modelling
So far, it appears that the only typographic systems that can plausibly be modelled by means of system networks are systems that have long been established in typographic practice, and that are recognized by typographic practitioners, such as the system of serifs.
(2) The multimodality of typography
Contemporary typography works not only with letter forms, but also with colour, texture, and movement, and often re-introduces an element of iconicity. All of these could be regarded as 'semiotic modes' as they can realize all three metafunctions. But they differ from the 'semiotic modes' that draw upon them, such as dress, architecture, images, or typography. How can we theorize the difference between these two kinds of 'semiotic mode'?
(3) Theory and practice
Until recently discourses and practices of typography have focussed on legibility and aesthetics. Contemporary typographers claim that typography is a means of expression in its own right. What semiotic principles underlie their discourses and practices, and how can we draw on this in constructing a functional semiotics of typography?
Geoffrey Williams with Craig Ronalds and Geoff Williams, Naomi Carter, Annabelle Lukin and Kathryn Tuckwell, Dept of English, University of Sydney and Language in Social Life, Dept of Linguistics, Macquarie University
An Introductory Course in English Studies: Language and Image
This session will be based around a discussion of the materials developed for a first-year unit in language and image analysis that has been taught in the Department of English at Sydney University since 2002. The unit involves fairly intensive study, using analytic frameworks derived from SFL, of a single novel and film (currently Graham Greene's The Quiet American and Phillip Noyce's 2002 film of the novel). One of the main principles that underpins the unit is Hasan's (1985) notion of symbolic articulation: how the patterning of patterns of linguistic features (or features of a film's construction) construe and construct the second-order meanings (i.e. literary themes) in a work of verbal (or filmic) art. The unit content and materials, which are provided in a one-hour lecture and two-hour workshop each week as well as through a WebCT platform, are all oriented (as are the assessment tasks for the unit) towards helping students integrate detailed textual analysis with both theoretical concepts from SFL such as context and register and concepts that are common to other traditions of literature study, for example point of view, narrative time, and intertextuality. In the session we will present materials used in the unit and discuss the ideas that informed their design, as well as the ideas that informed the design of the overall unit and its pedagogy, which include Bernstein's (2000) theories about horizontal and vertical knowledge structures. We will also briefly present some of the students' achievements, and discuss student and staff responses to the unit.
References:
Bernstein, B. 2000. Vertical and horizontal discourse: An essay. In Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Rev. ed. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Hasan, R. 1985. Linguistics, Language and Verbal Art. Victoria: Deakin University Press.
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