Re: acronym enquiry (SFL)/ genres, values & tensions

Rolfe Windward (rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu)
Mon, 26 Aug 1996 17:41:43 -0700

My apologies for the appearance of technical authority -- I hoped my
protestations of ignorance would ameliorate the fault but, alas, writing has
always been difficult for me and it does tend to come out clunky and/or
prolix even when I'm not focusing on an argument. It's easier when I speak
and even better when I sketch but I can't do any of that here.

In any case, I neither accused nor even implied abuse on anyones' part --
only that there was the potential, in principle, for it and _if_ abuse
there were, it could strike very near the core of how meaning is made (not
at the center since I don't believe language is the only medium for meaning,
but close). My intent was not adversarial, just probing (rather clumsily no
doubt -- that's par) -- I knew it wasn't my turf but I was also genuinely
interested in the assumptions and logic underlying a technical
meta-language about language use but could not see what the tradeoffs were
(although I suspected there were some since there usually are).

Nuff said,

Rolfe Windward [UCLA GSE&IS: Curriculum & Teaching]
e-mail: rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu (Text/BinHex/MIME/Uuencode)
70014.0646 who-is-at compuserve.com (text/binary/GIF/JPG)