Let me chime in here in this useful discussion of the potential relation
between activity theory (AT) (a la Leont'ev, Ilyenkov, Engestrom, etc.) and
genre theory (in both the tradition US tradition inspired by Carolyn Miller
and the Hallidayan tradition of systemic functional linguistics [SFL]).
Judy wrote in response to Paul.
>I agree that words on the page don't tell us about the
>voices, meanings, and values that were at stake in the making of the text.
>That's what makes analysis by way of texts so dependent on other texts -
>on building up a sociohistorical context. It probably isn't enough to
>pick up a full-enough record of the everyday, but it is probably all
>we have available in most cases. Would you agree with that (i.e., that
>it is possible to do responsible analysis on texts given adequate
>intertexts)?
In building up a history of the interactions ("sociohistorical context")
for analysis, one must go beyond the words-on-the-page (text in one sense)
and consider all sorts of other material tools-in-use. Verbalizations
(words-in-the-air inscribed on tape or written notes) but also a whole host
of other mediational means, such as architecture, music, movement with
apparatus (as in studying science lab classrooms). If we privilidege
"language" we miss all the other mediational means, the rest of the
semiosis (tools-in-use).
Of course we must choose what we look at, find the most salient aspects for
our purposes as analysts or reformers. But this should go on, in my view,
with an awareness that what we call "language" is only part of what
constitutes/constructs activity. [For a good discussion of the limitations
of the concept of Bakhtinian voices in terms of AT (as used by Wertch) see
Ritva Engestrom's article MCA last year.]
>I am struggling with Halliday, but the intro to the second edition
>of _An Introduction to Functional Grammar_ is addressed to
>strugglers like me. Halliday's lexicogrammar assumes that the
>lexicogrammatical system evolved in the course of situated
>language use, and it attempts to account as fully as possible
>for the regularities/meaning potential of a system that is obviously
>inexhaustible. It seems to me to be a theory of language USE that
>is definitely compatible with activity theory. The meanings are
>in our situated doings.
The Hallidayan historical account (as opposed to the Chomskian biological
account) of grammar is indeed compatible with activity theory and
tremendously useful in describing tools-in-use. This is also true, I
think, of the Hallidayan-inspired visual "grammar" that Gunther Kress is
developing, and true also of other systems for describing traditions of
tool use in various fields beyond linguistics and rhetoric (music theory,
art criticism, architectural criticism, kinesis, etc.), where the idea is
to describe the evolving (though perhaps temporarily stabilized) uses of
tools (e.g., s for plurals in English, or nominalization, or headings for
texts sections, or gothic arches).
I think the differences between AT and SFL have to do more with their
respective theories of society ("context") than with theories and systems
of grammar. What is con (with) text? That's the part I'm wrestling with.
Paul and Judy dialoged:
>>One thing I like about Bakhtin's comments on genre was his repeated emphasis
>>that genres are highly plastic, complex, and numerous, that we can only
>>speak in situated utterances though those utterances are cast in generic
>>forms.
>
>I completely agree with what you like about B. But what do you make
>of those generic forms - do you agree that they are relatively
>suitable to the purposes & interests of different groups?
>
>As for the tension, the trick about genres is that they account
>for texts that are the same and different. That's the whole trick,
>isn't it?
That instability is one of the things that I think AT, at least in the
versions I mentioned above, can theorize well through the concept of
dialectic. Genres, as routines of tool-use through which people carry out
their actions, are either suitable (appropriate[d]) or they are perceived
to be "inappropriate," they may change (people appropriate new ones).
Though this often happens with a great deal of tension, contradiction,
renegotiation, multi-voicedness and, unfortunately sometimes, downright
physical force (through the use of those tools we call weapons). Indeed,
it's possible to destry an entire genre, even an entire language, to
eradicate a whole "way of life" if enough force is applied. But more often
what happens in response to contradictions is that some new genre(s), some
new way of life is forged, synthesized, and then routinized, stabilized (as
indeed new languages, new cultures, are born of such struggles).
David R. Russell
English Department
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
USA (515) 294-4724,fax 294-6814
drrussel who-is-at iastate.edu