The response to my question, so far, suggests that there is enough interest
that many of us should rather easily tolerate three screens or so.
Especially since it hasn't come up on xmca as far as I can recall. (The
tradition on xmca is to tolerate each others interests -- and use the
delete button freely when we don't have the time or interest). For myself,
at least, I would very much love to read your stab at the issue.
Carol, Judy --
Thanks for your summaries.
Judy, I was especially interested in two of your comments -- but I don't
mean to slight Carol's summary (as you will see later on):
>Ruqaiya H. rejects this version, as I understand it,
>because what is generic about report 1 and report 2
>is only trivially the same (if that!).
>to situational pressures. The distinction mapped
> onto that between context of culture and
>context of situation. Now, however, the
>distinction seems to oversimplify the notions of
>"strata" at which meanings are made (the boundary
>is not a fixed line but a dialectical tension:
>situations and culture are co-constitutive)
>& to overdetermine what "genres" can be.
Your first comment seems to suggest that the notion of a similarity between
two different instantiations of a genre type is illusory. The idea being
that one has to perform an act of abstractive self-delusion to see such
instances as examples of the "same" genre type? I wonder if this has
anything to do with (what looks to me like) the rather subjective process
of element labelling, as described in Eggins (1994, An introduction to
SFL), or as Ventola complained about some years back (1983, Contrasting
schematic structures in service encounters).
Your second comment sounds like a reference to Hasan's 1994 (?) article
"The conception of context in text", where I am (once again) slogging
through the argument of section 5.2 "Genre and register in a connotative
semiotic". I am also (once again) realizing that the outcome of this
latest trot through the swamp is likely to result only in the same muddy
view of the scenery I glimpsed the last time. Hasan's argument is
difficult to grasp for anyone without an intensive background in the
intricacies of SFL.
Judy, would it be useful to ask whether the argument about the legitimacy
of Martin's views of levels/planes/strata (which apparently underlies the
register vs. genre debate) have anything to do with the idea that,
ultimately, "genre" is (just?) another way of talking about textual
cohesion, similar to the same process that we can use if we are attempting
to do the kind of thematic analysis that Jay Lemke (1990, Talking Science)
uses to try to model student's views of scientific ideas? (Carol's comment
about "intertextuality or bi-directionality of the interaction" put me up
to this question. It's really all your fault, Carol :)
Sorry if my questions sound naive, but I am trying rather hard to make what
seems a very complex issue understandable enough that I know where to at
least make a start.
I suppose this is why I originally suggested back-channel notes (sigh!).
--glenn
Glenn D. Humphreys
P.O. Box 11
Echo Bay, Ontario
Canada, P0S 1C0
Telephone: (705) 248-1226
Internet: glenhump who-is-at soonet.ca
Fax (Phone/Email to arrange fax transmission): (705) 248-1226