I was concerned to see the Mass linguists' letter, but I can't say I was
surprised. Their group has done more than any other this century to
separate language from the social and cultural, and so make it almost
impossible for their model to be used by people who want to act on the
social and cultural. So when they try and act politically, not having a
model of language to reason with, they act out of ignorance and
arrogance... with utter contempt for what those more informed have tried
to do. A display of this kind puts the social value of their theory on
the table for all to peruse - not a pretty picture from my point of view.
Jim Martin
On Wed, 17 Apr 1996, KEN GOODMAN wrote:
> Jim.
> It may or may not surprise you that I agree with you on langue and parle.
> Do you or Halliday have a reaction to the letter being circulated by 40
> Mass linguists re reading and whole language?
> Have you seen it?
> Ken Goodman
>
>
> On Wed, 17 Apr 1996, James Robert Martin wrote:
>
> > Francoise,
> >
> > As an alternative to aligning language with the cognitive and parole with
> > the social, we could follow Hjelmslev or Halliday and treat parole as the
> > instantiation of langue - parole as the weather and langue as the
> > climate to use an analogy Halliday has suggested. Then langue, the
> > system, and parole, its instantiation in text (or process if we want a
> > dynamic view) can both be read as social (or social/psychological if you
> > will). I think this kind of re-reading of Saussure would interface
> > linguistics with activity theory much better than a cognitive vs social
> > split.
> >
> > Jim Martin
> >
> >
>
>