Re: more on genres (CHAT and SFL)

vera p john-steiner (vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu)
Wed, 14 Aug 1996 14:26:48 -0600 (MDT)

Jim,
My approach to the multiplicity of semiotic systems is what I call
cognitive pluralism, (see MCA vol.2, number 1). I would be greatly
interested in your response to some of the ideas in that piece.
The earlier version was an essay in Joshua Fishman's honor with a
stronger discussion of Whorf.
Vera

On Wed, 14 Aug 1996, James Robert Martin wrote:

> 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
>
>

---------------------------------
Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at triton.unm.edu
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