working with discourse--meaning beyond the clause.doc

1. In a sense then this book is an invitation to grammarians to reconsider meaning in the clause from the perspective of meaning in texts; and it is also an invitation to social theorists to reconsider social activity as meaning we negotiate through texts. (P. 29)2. Grammarians are particularly interested in types of clauses and their elements. But texts are usually bigger than simple clauses, so a discourse analyst has more to worry about than a grammarian (expanded horizons). By the same token, cultures manifest themselves through a myriad of texts, and social theorists are more interested in how social contexts are related to one another than in how they are internally organized as texts (global horizons). Discourse analysis employs the tools of grammarians to identify the roles of wordings in passages of text, and employ the tools of social theorists to explain why they make the meanings they do. (p. 32)3. For us a genre is a staged, goal-oriented social process. Social because we participate in genres with other people; goal-oriented because we use genres to get things done; staged because it usually takes us a few steps to reach our goals. (p. 36)4. in our view ideology and power run through the whole ensemble of language and culture, positioning people within each social context as having more or less power, and opening or narrowing their access to resources for meaning. Of course, up to a point all speakers of a language share an equal range of meaning-making resources, but there are also certain varieties of meanings that are not equally distributed. These include resources for engaging in the written discourses of contemporary social institutions, such as sciences, government and education. One important strand of work in SFL has been to provide access to these discourses through literacy pedagogies grounded in discourse analysis. Another strand has been to investigate the principles by which access to meaning is unequally distributed, along the lines of generation, gender, class, incapacity and ethnicity. (p. 44)5. amplifying attitude involves a set of resources for adjusting how strongly we feel about people and things. Technically we refer to these resources as force. We use them to turn the volume up or down.Grading experiential boundaries involves resources that sharpen or blur apparently categorical distinctions. Technically these resources are referred to as focus. They make cut and dried distinctions negotiable. (p. 71)6. Summing up then, what we have are three main appraisal systems: attitude, amplification and source. Source covers resources that introduce additional voices into a discourse, via projection, modalization or concession; the key choice here is one voice (monogloss) or more than one voice (hetergloss). Technically, sourcing resources are referred to as engagement. (82)7. appraisal resources are used to establish the tone of mood of a passage of discourse, as choices resonate with one another from one moment to another as a text unfolds. The pattern of choices is thus “prosodic”.They form a prosody of attitude running through the text that swells and diminishes, in the manner of a musical prosody. The prosodic pattern of appraisal choices constructs the “stance” or “voice” of the appraiser, and this stance or voice defines the kind of community that is being set up around shared values. In everyday language, these stances are often discussed as ranging along a scale from more objective to more subjective. (83)8. how to analyze a text from the perspective of ideation: representing experience?Sequence of phases sequence of events within phases sequence of activities and descriptions within events elements (participants, process and circumstance) within activities realized as clauses (95-99)9. we have seen how a phase of discourse can develop, figure by figure, in two general ways, either by expanding as an activity sequence, or by expanding our picture of an entity. So texts or text phases can be either activity focused or entity focused: (110)10. in sum we have seen four ways of expanding the meaning of a person or thing (participants): qualities (that can be intensified) classes (categorical distinctions) qualifiers (that specify or elaborate an entity) parts (possessions, facets (location in place or time), measures (portions of the whole)11. the taxonomic relations between elements in a string are of two general kinds: class, and whole-part.Four types: class, and whole-part; Contrast (opposed in meaningantonyms (gradable and complementary antonyms) and converses (relational oppositeness), and series of differing meanings (scales and cycles); synonym; repetition (p. 129)12. in general the drift in meaning, by means of ideational metaphor, has been from reality as processes involving people and concrete things, to reality as relations between abstract things, as with the transference from marrying as process to marriage as thing. Part of the reason for this shift has to do with the greater potential for expanding the meaning of things: (132)13. There is a set of regular principles for creating ideational metaphors; for re-construing one kind of element as another, including:1 a process or quality can be re-construed as if it was a thing2 a process, or a quality of a process, can be re-construed as a quality of a thing.These are ideational metaphors of the experiential type, i.e. they are concerned with elements of figures. Ideational metaphors of the logical type are concerned with re-construing a conjunction between figures as if it were a process, quality, circumstance or thing. (132)14. ideational metaphor tends to re-construe our experience of reality as if it consisted of relations between institutional abstractions. These strategies have evolved to enable writers to generalize about social processes, and to describe, classify and evaluate them. One cost is that it may be hard to recover who is doing what to whom; another is that this type of discourse can be very hard to read and understand.Unpacking ideational metaphors can help to reveal how they construe reality and is one key strategy for teaching language learners how they work. (135)15. this distinction between concrete and abstract ways of meaning reflects a fundamental division in fields of activity in modern cultures between the everyday activities of family and community, and the “uncommon sense” fields of technical professions and social institutions such as law, medicine or education. Everyday fields are organized primarily by personal relations between interacting speakers, while uncommon sense fields are organized as much by written records. (p. 135)16. kinds of entities: concrete entities: everyday; specializedabstract entities: technical; institutional; semiotic; generic (terms for classes and parts)metaphoric entities: those derived from process; those derived from quality (135)17. (external) conjunctions (and continuatives) serve as logical connections between figures, adding them together (addition: additive and alternative), comparing them (comparison: similarity and contrast), sequencing them in time (time: successive (following and preceding) and simultaneous), or explaining their causes, purposes or conditions (consequence: cause, means, purpose, and condition (open and foreclose). These are all types of logical relations between figures.While ideation represents experience as figures and taxonomies of people, things, processes and qualities, conjunction links figures together into sequences. (139)18. internal conjunction: these items are not linking events (events, things, or qualities) in the world beyond the text; rather they are used to link logical steps that are internal to the text itself. (148) internal conjunction can be used to organize the stages of a text, such as the sequence of Arguments in an exposition, to link steps in an argument, give examples, and draw conclusions. Internal conjunctions fall into the same four general types that we saw for external conjunctions: (150)Addition: developing (addition and alternation), and staging (framing and sidetracking) (150)Comparison: similarity and difference (152)Time (ordering arguments): successive and simultaneous (153)Internal consequence: concluding and countering (154)19. instead of coming at the beginning of the clause, continuatives typically occur next to the finite verb within the clause 20. however, another perspective on continuatives is that they can be used to manage our expectations in discourse. On this criterion we can group together “already, finally, still, yet, only, just, even”, since they all signal that an activity is in some way unexpected. (156)pre-empting any objections and countering them. (158)21. there are certain conjunctions that specifically serve to signal counter expectancy. These include kinds of time, consequences and comparisons.Then: allowing for an unexpected turn of events.Suddenly: sooner than expected.Temporal continuatives: something happening sooner or later, or persisting longer than one might expect.Still: persisting longer than might be reasonable expected.Finally: taking longer than expected22. concessive consequence:concessive causes: even ifalthough, even though (because)but, however (so, therefore)“but” can realize concessive causes, and also contrast, which can be confusing. We can test whether the relation is concession by trying to substitute “but” with conjunctions that we know realize consequential meanings (“however, although”). (159)Concessive means: even by (by), but (thus)Concessive purpose: without (in order to)Concessive condition: even if (if), even then (then) (160)23. unexpected comparisons: in fact, instead of, rather, on the other hand, conversely, by contrastcomparative continuatives indicate that there is more or less to a situation than might be expected. (160)7. one of the reasons that writers use logical metaphors for conjunctions is that they can grade their evaluation of relations between events or arguments.Another reason: information flow (169)28. logical metaphor allows other meanings to be incorporated. Logical metaphor (construing conjunctions as things) enables logical things to be numbered, described, classified and qualified. on the other hand, re-construing conjunction as qualities means they can be used to modify things or processes. (171)29. we have shown two advantages of unpacking experiential and logical metaphors. One is that by paraphrasing highly metaphorical discourse in a more spoken form, we can show learners from more spoken to more written modes. Another is that we can recover participant roles and logical arguments that tend to be rendered implicit by ideational metaphor. This can be a powerful tool for critical discourse analysis, revealing implicit nuclear relations such as agency and effect, and implicit logical relations such as cause and effect. (172)30. (189)31. the use of pronouns to sustain reference within phases, nouns to frame phases in story telling.Another function of using full nominal groups to track participants is evaluation (192)32. the local tracking rulethis kind of tracking has evolved in order to avoid any ambiguities that might be exploited in a legal challenge. (198)33. identification systems: (199)34. tracking systems: (200)35.36. Halliday, Pike and others have used the metaphor of waves to describe this kind of information flow. Pike refers to meanings “flowing together like ripples on the tide, merging into one another in the form of hierarchy of little waves on still bigger waves” (Pike 1982: 12-13). Pikes notion of little waves on bigger ones is very important for understanding information flow since rhythm in discourse may have several layers. (203)37. the term “wave” is used to capture the sense in which moments of framing represent a peak of textual prominence, followed by a trough of lesser prominence. So discourse creates expectations by flagging forward and consolidates them by summarizing back. These expectations are presented as crests of information, and the meanings fulfilling these expectations can be seen as relative diminuendos, from the point of view of information flow. the term periodicity is used to capture the regularity of information flow: the tendency for crests to form a regular pattern, and for the hierarchy of waves to form a predictable rhythm. Discourse has a beat; and without this rhythm, it would be very hard to understand. (204)38. the peak of prominence at the beginning of the clause is referred as its Theme. (205)at the other end of the clause in writing we typically have what Halliday calls New. This is a different kind of textual prominence having to do with the information we are expanding upon as text unfolds. (207)they (choices for New) elaborate with human interest, whereas choices for unmarked Theme tend to fix our gaze. (207)39. for Halliday there are two overlapping waves involved: a thematic wave with a crest at the beginning of the clause, and a news wave with a crest at the end (where the main pitch movement would be if the clause were read aloud). (207)recurrent choices for Theme and related choices for New work together to package discourse as phases of information. (207)40. marked themes are often used to signal new phases in a discourse: a new setting in time, or a shift in major participants; that is, they function to scaffold discontinuity. (207)41. hyperTheme (topic sentence, predicting whats to come) body hyperNew (distilling/accumulating new information) (212)HyperThemes tell us where were going in a phase; hyperNews tell us where weve been. (210)42. Patterns of clause Themes have been described as constructing a texts “method of development”; patterns of News establish its “point” (Fries 1981) (212)43. layers of Theme construct the method of development of a text, and that this development is particularly sensitive to the staging of the genre in question. Layers of New on the other hand develop the point of a text, focusing in particular on expanding the ideational meanings around a texts field. (214)44. means to manage information flow, or resources for packaging/framing discourse:stage framing () larger waves;names of discourse or metadiscourse for framing stages: such as “letter, extract, story, lines, end” larger waves;hyperTheme and HyperNew;MacroTheme and MacroNew45. ways of constructing unfolding discourse: hierarchy of periodicity and serial expansion (214), and grammar (228)46. in most texts we find a mix of scaffolding through (hierarchy of) periodicity, and serial expansion that is not so clearly scaffolded, since these are simply two complementary strategies through which texts grow. (218)47. discourse gets packaged in various ways. Explicit scaffolding involves the erection of a hierarchy of periodicity beyond the clause, with layers of Theme and News telling us where were coming from and where were going to. With serial expansion theres a change of gears from one discourse phase to the next, without any explicit scaffolding of the change. In some kinds of discourse, such as legislation, explicitness is in a sense pushed to its limits by (i) grammaticalizing as much hierarchy as possible within very complex sentences and/or (ii) naming sections of the text numerically and/or alphabetically, and/or providing them with headings. Many texts involve some combination of all these resources for phasing information into digestible chunks. (229)48. the generic stages of an exemplum (orientation, incident, interpretation) are recurrent enough in the culture to be highly predictable. They are predicted by the genre itself. But phases within such generic stages are much variable. It is the co-patterning of discourse features (ideation, appraisal, identification, and information flow) that enables us to recognize a distinct phase. (233)49. (when making the decision of what texts to analyze), in theoretical terms both genre and ideology matter. The concept of genre gives us the kind of handle on discourse that the clause gives us for grammar; a genre is a recurrent configuration of meaning that matters in the culture, just as a clause is the recurrent configuration of meaning that matters for discourse. And from an ideological perspective theres no point in analyzing something that isnt compelling, because analysis takes a long time and it has to be worthwhile. (234)50.51. outside-in perspective in discourse analysis: formatting, genres and their staging, conjunction, text reference, and hierarchy of periodicity. (241)52. inside-out perspective in discourse analysis: foregrounding and co-articulation. (242)Foregrounding: the tendency for texts to make some meanings stand out against others. Sometimes we can observe this a text shifts gears from one phase to the next and certain options get taken up much more often than they were before.Perhaps the best advice we can offer here is to follow your hunches until you are more experienced with consciously drawing on the regularities English systems entail. If something seems unusual, go after it. (242)Co-articulation: Systems working together to produce a particular effect. (242)So basically the strategy we are suggesting here is to follow up on foregrounding by considering systems that work in tandem (co-articulation). These are systems, such as concession, negation and continuatives, that co-articulate the motifs of meaning that are critical to a texts function. Pursue the syndromes of choices, the fashions of meaning, until the design of the dis