I really enjoyed your brave summary of a general xmca position. At the
end you raise the question of powerful discourses and their virtuosity.
Perhaps it is possible to distill the essence of a powerful discourse, so
that it can be presented more efficiently... Halliday and Martin 1993
Writing Science (University of Pittsburg Press and Falmer-now Taylor &
Francis) is an attempt to do that for science discourse, including some
history. Taken alongside the work of Lemke, Bazerman and Myers, maybe we
are getting to an essence... the evolution of grammatical metaphor
(nominalisation etc.) to establish technical terms in their taxonomies of
uncommonsense and to organise the flow of information in argument in
comsumable ways. Perhaps grammatical metaphor and its deployment in
definition, classification and explanation can be taught more cheaply
than an entire science curriculum - but still comprise the powerful stuff
that might be revoiced from other than mainstream positions.
Jim Martin