Re: more on genres (CHAT and SFL)

James Robert Martin (jmartin who-is-at extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU)
Wed, 14 Aug 1996 09:38:23 +1000 (EST)

David

Thanks for your feedback. Sorry for my common sense reading of activity -
unfortunately, what I know about activity theory is gleaned from this
list, and coloured my many misreadings.

"can't be read from text alone" - you comment. The problematic I was
trying to query into has to do with the limits of semiosis... we have a
number of semiotics systems around, all instantiating in what we can call
texts (or text/process if we want something more dynamic). Texts
instantiating language, instantiating image systems, instantiating music
systems, instantiating dance systems, etc. Recently I have been heartened
by the success of say Kress, van Leeuven and O'Toole in using systemic
theory to describe images, or by van Leeuven, Steiner, and less recently
Winograd, in using systemic theory for music. So as far as semiosis is
concerned it seems we can look forward to good account of texts deriving
from things we can construe as semiotic systems. What about the
non-discursive - the material activity in which language plays a greater
(this message) or lesser (during tennis) role? Or physical and biological
systems with which semiosis engages?

So what I was trying to ask was whether we need another kind of theory for
material activity, that maybe you guys have been working on, or whether
common sense language is already the best account of this activity we can
come up with, so we don't need a whole other theory. I didn't realise in
asking that what you mean by activity includes language.

So I guess I'm wondering, if for you, activity subsumes language, to what
extent, for me, can linguistics, or better semiotics, subsume activity?

Jim Martin