There are lots of ways of talking about talk & text that are
not horribly technical - mid-level theories, I suppose, but ones
that are recognized as useful for most people's purposes. Why
get more technical? Especially in classroom instruction. I can
appreciate the analytical advantage of SFL for the kinds of text
analyses I do, but what's the advantage to students who are not
committed to climbing the ladder. I actually believe that insofar
as there is any critical advantage to using SFL, it's worth the
struggle, for me, for my students, for their students, which is
why I'm still at it. But it requires a leap of faith.
I just read an article by Geoff Wms. on the work he's doing in
England that provides the only empirical evidence I know of that
the SFL meta language has practical value, even at the
elementary level. More of that is obviously needed.
In one of Jay's papers he refers to "the abstract taxonomic
relations of items as lexical items" as maybe invariant across
texts, in contrast to thematic meanings. That helps me to see
the difficulty of making common sense of the elements of a
semiotic system - but I'm suspicious of taxonomies.
Might there not be other ways of laying out the goods?
I have to know that taxonomy x is relevant to my work &
to my development as language user.
- Judy
At 10:52 AM 8/21/96 +1000, you wrote:
>Judy
>
>What would an 'unhorribly technical' language for talking about language
>look like?
>
>What kind of tool would it be??
>
>Jim Martin
>
>
>
....................
Judy Diamondstone diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Graduate School of Education Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place New Brunswick, NJ 08903
Eternity is in love with the productions of time. - W. Blake