Judy
At 08:53 AM 7/25/96 -0700, you wrote:
>Judy, just a few comments. I will be signing off in a day for the rest
>of the summer, so I don't want to open up too many cans of worms.
>
> Of course we frequently recognize genres in their most
>sedimented, institutionalized forms, sometimes even supported and defined
>by regulations. Such genres are highly salient social facts. And of
>course in introducing students to the concept of genre, highly salient
>cases are very useful both conceptually and for laying out the general
>shape of the contemp[orary discursive terrain. So yes, I use texts, and
>highly typified texts. I also point to regulation, institutional
>contexts, traditions, stabilized activity systems and the like which
>identify the meaning and forces that explain what the genre is doing and
>why it takes the shape it does.
> However in looking at more examples, complications soon enter
>in. And then in helping students writing effectively within familiar
>and recognizable and even enforced genres a more complex and flexible
>view is important to be able to move beyond coercion by convention to the
>communicative motive, sensitivity to local conditions, and individual
>commuiinicative desires which are part of having something meaningful to
>say within the genre and the circumstances. And all sorts of local
>interpretive issues enter in, and multiplicity in imp[ulse and situation,
>and changing conditions, and so on, which suggest the need for generic
>innovation with awareness of the limits of audience recognizability and
>institutional consequences.
> I am here just presenting a few possible sides and scenarios, and
>not being careful enough to be comprehensive. I just want to give a
>sense of how levels of perception make the notion of genre and
>typifications even more protean. In the second chapter of CONSTRUCTING
>EXPERIENCE I write about some of these issues by considering writing from
>four different levels of analysis--1) a phenomenology (how it appears
>from the point of view of the writer) 2) a social psychology (the view
>from outside the writer but in fairly intimate observational proximity,
>looking at writing behavior and the interaction with specific readers)
>3)a sociology (looking at the production and circulation of texts within
>a group) and 4) a sociocultural history (the really big view concerning
>the unfolding of literate practices in the last 5000 years and the
>residue of texts that comprise a literate heritage).
> Concerning Hallidayan SFL, I am to some extent familiar with and
>interested in SFL. I find a number of its particular formulations quite
>useful, including the work surrounding alternative realization of
>functions, projection, lexical strings, nominalization, and several
>others. I have also seen a number of illuminating specific studies come
>from the SFL perspective. In short, I find SFL provides many strong
>tools. However, I also have some differences, which are where the cans
>of worms are, which should be kept in the can, at least until after labor
>day.
>
>
>
>On Wed, 24 Jul 1996, Judy Diamondstone wrote:
>
>> 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?
>
>
>
....................
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