First, do you object to anything in Halliday's text-level/
situation-level grammar? When you reject terms like
"realization" and "instantiation" are you rejecting
wholesale the notion of predetermined terms for participation?
As I understand it, Halliday's work on register seems consonant
with an activity-based natural history of genres. If you disagree,
can you say more about why?
Chuck Bazerman mentioned
>many social mechanisms to increase salience and alignment and stability of
kinds (such as simply circulating the name of a kind, perhaps with criteria,
perhaps without, perhaps with consequent discussion whether utterances are
instances of this or that kind), and salience and alignment are also
increased by other sharings of experiences and interests and structured or
bounded activity that increaase the amount of commonality people bring to a
situation
These seem a crucial focus for inquiry. But then, when you encourage
students to attend to genres, do you not focus on features of texts?
There's more to ask, but this is a good enough starting point.
Sorry about publicizing my first very clumsy wrestling with the
content of your messages. This notion of genre is still difficult
for me!
Judy
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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