Re: Quack! on clines

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
Fri, 19 Apr 1996 09:06:02 -0400

Since reading some systemics functional stuff, I have been
struggling to visualize clines in operation (probably less
murky for anyone with a statistics background). I found Jim's
last message helpful. I know that semiosis presupposes
different "time depths" in Halliday's terms in the organization [?]
of meaning-making resources. If texts, registers, codes represent
one cline, how might we represent the climate/weather relations
between each shift along the continuum? Let's say, the shift in
perspective from "text" (an instance of discourse) to "register"
(a type of discourse). How might we represent specifically the
contextual constraining and enabling of changes in text-types
(registers) made possible by (contextually constrained & enabled)
textual events? I keep wanting a movie-image, a dynamic graphing,
of events at different time depths and the relations between them.

Judy

At 04:15 PM 4/19/96 +1000, you wrote:
>
>Perhaps the trick is to see weather and climate as a cline, so we can
>have 2 person cliamte, more person climate... etc. Or texts, registers,
>codes (in Bernstein's sense of coding orientation),
>languages if we put this into a linguistics kind of orientation to
>communities.
>It's the micro- vs macro- problem again... the bottom line for me is that
>we can't talk about power without relating weather to climate, and if we
>can't talk about power, it is very difficult to act politically on
>anything.
>
>On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, Robin Harwood wrote:
>
>> Jim--I love the climate/weather analogy. The "climate" perspective
>> seems to imply not only a longer period of time, but also seems to
>> look for meaningful patterns over a larger geographical region as
>> well. "Weather" occurs outside my front door, but "climate" is
>> something that can be said to characterize the entire state of
>> Connecticut; moreover, I can visit Virginia and "compare" the "climates"
>> (i.e., the larger weather patterns) of the two states.
>>
>> This is interesting to me, because I have heard some people argue
>> that it is meaningless to look for cultural patterns any larger
>> than two people interacting at a given point in time. The climate/
>> weather analogy, however, seems to suggest otherwise...
>>
>> Robin
>>
>>
>
>
>

Judy Diamondstone
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08903

diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
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