Date: 03-Jul-2009
From: Alexandra Bagasheva <abagashevagmail.com>
Subject: Questioning Linguistics
E-mail this message to a friend
Discuss this message
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/19/19-3337.html
EDITORS: Mahboob, Ahmar; Knight, NaomiTITLE: Questioning LinguisticsPUBLISHER: Cambridge Scholars PublishingYEAR: 2008
Alexandra B. Bagasheva, Department of British and American Studies, SofiaUniversity ''St. Kliment Ohridski'', Bulgaria
INTRODUCTIONQuestioning Linguistics is a collection of ''high quality papers'' which representthe essence of a conference as yet of a unique nature – the first conference on''Free Linguistics'', held on October 6-7, 2007 at the University of Sydney. Thebook contains 12 papers which have been chosen after a rigorous review process.The book is organized in two parts with a Preface and an Introductory chapter inwhich the editors describe the underlying principles of organizing the chaptersinto two distinct sections and identify the contents of each with an emphasis onthe issues that the authors problematize. The unifying motif in all papers isthe breaking down of inter- and cross-disciplinary borders and the underminingor at least probelmatizing of accepted assumptions and (mis)conceptions of whatlanguage(s) is/are and how linguistic issues may and should be approached.
SUMMARYThe Preface tunes in the reader's expectations for papers which ''questionlanguage and linguistics in unique ways'' and focus on the notion of freedom fromall linguistic subfields and promise to reveal ''an important viewpoint towardslinguistics seen from outside its borders'' (p. 2).
In Chapter One, it becomes clear that Free Linguistics is an initiative of thestaff and students in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydneywhose aim is to ''create a space where linguists of all traditions and views ...can share their descriptions of the _language-elephant_'' (p. 2) thus questioninglinguistics and language and their role in a globalized world. The 'humanlanguage as elephant' metaphor is used to emphasize the observed tendencies forfragmentary and unsatisfactory probing into the nature of language which ischaracteristic of much of contemporary linguistic research. Breaking down allkinds of borders, including our assumed understanding of what language is, canbring freedom and open up broader horizons. Leaving out all prejudice andpreference, in this chapter, which successfully performs the function of acomprehensive introduction, the editors succinctly and with in-depthunderstanding summarize the major issues and the suggested interpretations ofeach of the included papers. They outline the basic areas of research on whichthe separate chapters focus and critically assess the alternativeinterpretations provided by the authors of the respective chapters.
Chapters 2 to 8 are grouped into Part I: Issues and Directions. As the editorsinform us in Chapter One, the common undercurrent which unifies the eight papersis the fact that all of them shed light on ''areas that have been taken forgranted, relatively ignored, or perceived unidimensionally'' (p. 2).
Chapter Two, entitled ''Language-free Linguistics and Linguistics-freeLanguages'', written by Alastair Pennycook, questions the foundations of languageand linguistics. The author invites people interested in ''making meanings intheir everyday lives'' to engage in reflections on communicative practiceswithout relying on pre-conceived misconceptions of what languages are and whatlinguistics is. The researcher insists that language should be conceived of in awide socio-cultural framework with the focus on ''local language understandings''so that the imposed definitions and artificial divisions of languages, whichhave been introduced in the interest of dominant ideologies, can not only beproblematized but successfully overcome. A first step of counteracting these''regimes of language'' is the adoption of adequate terminology consistent withpeople's perceptions of themselves and their languages and appropriate fordisengaging our linguistic discourses from individuating ''essentializedlanguage-objects ... founded on notions of territorialization'' (20).''Transidiomatic practices'' should substitute concepts of bilingualism or evenmultilingualism, which, being essentialist in nature, remain fully bound tosegregational linguistics based on an underlying ideology of singularity andcountability. According to the author, there is significant discrepancy betweenthe number of languages linguists recognize and the number of languages peoplebelieve they are speaking.
The whole paper is cast in the general ambience of integrationalist linguisticsand is aimed at problematizing the still powerful discourses of colonization.Harris' and Toolan's insistence on eradicating notions of systematicity andrule-boundedness of language and adopting a more natural, everyday understandingof language resound through the suggestions and arguments presented byPennycook. The message to the readers is that language is enacted in multiplelayers of contextualization – speakers, histories, cultures, ideologies, etc. –and its study should be likewise multilayered and diverse. This can only beachieved in the author's view if we draw on ''whatever sheds light on language''(p. 28). The essential argument is that the study of language should not be leftin the hands of linguists; everybody can have a say in interacting with languageas everyone has a stake in it. Transforming the vertical discourse of linguisticanalysis into a horizontal discourse might actually reveal unsuspectedintricacies of language's being in the mind. Unfortunately, only time can showwhether such a development will have beneficial or detrimental effects.
In Chapter three, ''Innocence: Realisation, Instantiation and Individuation in aBotswanan Town'', J. Martin contributes an analysis of four stories fromAlexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Actually, itis the same story told by four different characters in the series. The paper andthe Appendices provide a panoramic view of the stories, with their full versionsprovided (Appendix A), accompanied by a modality analysis of the stories(Appendix B), an analysis of the experiencing and acquisition of knowledge andthe linguistic strategies for its strategic projections by one of the centralcharacters (Appendix C) and a contrast between observable experience andknowledge constructs and construals of this by different characters (AppendixD). The analysis is an illustration of a further development of the intricatemutual dependencies between the two complementary hierarchies - instantiationand individuation - as they are developed within the framework of SystemicFunctional Linguistics (SFL). The focus of the analysis is on individuation asthe ''relationship between the reservoir of meanings in a culture and therepertoire a given individual can mobilize'' (p. 35). After a detailed and highlyinformative presentation of the major points of SFL and Bernstein's centralideas of the sociology of knowledge in relation to horizontal discourses, Martinturns to textual analysis in order to substantiate his claim that theunderestimated and understudied complementary relation between individuation andrealization as the core of the discourse structuring of social solidarity shouldbe revisited. Martin studies how the different ''forms of consciousness'' of theseparate characters are manifested textually. The basic variables shaping thesediscourse-grounded ''forms of consciousness'' are identified as ethnicity andgeneration. These in their turn are realized in genre specifics of the storytelling of the different characters and their different utilization of appraisalresources. In order to trace the complementary construction of identitiesthrough the interplay of individuation and realization, the author studies ingreat detail the network of discourse semantic engagement systems, which fromthe point of view of lexicogrammar, include modality and projection, concessionand negation and comment adjuncts. After a thorough and exhaustive analysis ofthe engagement systems, Martin concludes that an adequate understanding can onlybe achieved if we keep all three hierarchies (realization, instantiation andindividuation) simultaneously in mind. Appraisal systems and realizationresources, along with all other involvement systems recognized in the frameworkof SFL play a crucial role for identity construction, identity sharing andreaders' alignment. The paper is highly readable and informative. The authorillustrates and further develops his ideas, formulated in other publications, ofthe mapping of identity and culture in discourse through genre specifics, theintricate systems of appraisal and involvement and the interconnectedhierarchies of realization and individuation.
Chapter Four is devoted to the study of twoness of meaning created by theinterplay of meaning-generating modalities in a specific media genre 'imagenuclear news stories'. As Baldry (2000), Kress (2003) and Kress and van Leeuwen(2001) observe, the multimodal society has been here for some time now. It isonly natural, that in such a society meaning is generated through theco-deployment of varied semiotic resources. In her attempt to identify thespecific mechanisms of co-deployment in the specific media genre, Helen Caple,who has entitled her paper ''Reconciling the Co-articulation of Meaning betweenWords and Pictures: Exploring Instantiation and Commitment in Image Nuclear NewsStories'', has studied a corpus of 900 multimodal news story instances appearingin _The Sydney Morning Herald_. She focuses on the different ways in which theco-construal of complex meanings generated in the intricate interplay betweenimage and heading is manifested. The analysis makes fruitful use of the toolsoffered by the linguistic framework of SFL, more specifically the concepts ofmultistratal instantiation and commitment. Relying on the theoretical constructsof Martin and Rose (2003) and Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) and Matthiessen(2005), the author illustrates and analyzes how ''the ideational content of theheading is usually _reflected_ in the ideational content of the image'' (p. 83),which captured by Martin's (2000) ''coupling'' accounts for the complex meaningscreated by the playful relationship of the two instantiations from differentsemiotic modes. Caple identifies two principal ways for the manifestation ofcouplings: combining the image with recontextualized quotations from movies orproper names and titles removed from their original appellation context. So whenthe source is a movie or a famous speech, the intricate re-wording functions asa bondicon, a type of rallying resource through which strong interpersonalattitudes are associated with particular ideational meanings. The playfulrelationship is executed either through intertextual references based on thecultural knowledge we have been apprenticed into or by manipulating commonidiomatic expressions which need to be interpreted literally in the multimodalcoupling in image nuclear news stories. On the basis of convincing andinformative, though conformist, analysis of such news stories, the author makesfar-reaching conclusions concerning this genre's extreme efficacy in ''theattention economy'' and its suitability as a bonding means which invites aspecified reading audience of people able to engage with the play between thetwo modalities. So the coupling in the instantiation means results in couplingsbetween readers and a broadsheet with well-defined cultural and ideological values.
Chapter Five presents a three-pronged approach to the analysis of evaluation andemotion in American pop culture in a corpus of the TV series _Gilmore Girls_.The paper has two major merits: it offers a convenient way of combining threedifferent analytical procedures into a single approach and promotes as avaluable object of linguistic investigation an underrepresented genre, TVdialogue. In '''What the Hell is wrong with you?' A Corpus Perspective OnEvaluation And Emotion In Contemporary American Pop Culture'', Monika Bednarekoffers the combination of a large-scale quantitative corpus analysis, a smallscale corpus analysis and a qualitative discourse analysis (case study) of the''linguistics of emotion and evaluation'' (p. 105). The author provides solidargumentation for choosing a TV series as object of analysis in view of thewell-established ''parasocial interaction'' through which TV personae can becomepart of our everyday lives and of the subtle linguistic influence TV dialoguehas on our linguistic habits as one of the most common genres of pop culture.Emotional phrases like ''Oh my God' and ''What the hell'' are read as''conventionalized realizations of emotionality'' (p. 95) and analyzed as implicitcues to characterization in TV dialogue. After presenting a sample large scalecorpus analysis of a 1.5 million word corpus and justifying the non-inclusion inthe paper of the promised small scale corpus analysis, the author carries out acase study of one of the Appraisal systems as defined by Martin (1995) -Attitude. A detailed analysis is presented of the logogenesis and social contextof a dialogue between a mother and a daughter, which on the basis of modulation,irony and the whole hoard of lexicogrammatical means for realizing the membersof the Appraisal system, is classified as conflict talk.
The paper's most positive feature is the illustration of the inability of asingle theoretical framework or analytical procedure, irrespective of itsindividual flexibility and richness, to exhaust the wealth of interactionalmeaning generated in actual or simulated dialogue in any genre it iscontextualized. The paper questions the application of monomethodologies, but isitself an illustration of the successive application of such. The three (two)views into the corpus material undeniably present a panoramic, informative andexhaustive analysis of the linguistics of emotion and evaluation in the TVseries Gilmore Girls as a prototypical example of contemporary American popculture.
In Chapter Six Alan Reed Libert explores the degree of fixity of word order inartificial languages and discusses the sources of perceived fixity, attributingsome such impressions to inadequate descriptions of artificial languagedesigners. The paper entitled ''Free Word Order in Artificial Languages''introduces the reader to a number of artificial languages, both a posteriori anda priori ones, as well as mixed, and acquaints the audience with thedescriptions of word order patterns in the respective languages as providedeither by the designers themselves, or by analysts or by non-academic users ofthese languages. The author is convinced that artificial languages have much toreveal about the language faculty, as they function as an illustration of theconstraints this faculty imposes on the activity of language creation. Languagedesigners presumably have absolute freedom to give any form to the language oftheir own creation but detailed analysis might reveal that these languages stillconform to recognized language universals of which the designers are not aware,at least consciously. The properties of word order systems of artificiallanguages are contrasted with languages such as English, Hungarian and Dyirbal.The systems of word order include not only ordering of basic clausalconstituents but also the positioning of adpositions and modifying elements.Restrictions are reported at all levels. After discussing features of Guosa,Esperanto, Europal, Myrana, Sotos Ochando's language, Kosmos, Esperantido,Lingua Komun, Idiom Neutral, aUI, Interglossa and INTAL and how these have beenpresented by their designers or by analysts, Libert seeks the causes forapparent word order restrictions in artificial languages. The inheritancerelation between a natural source language and an artificial one based on it isdefined as one of the inevitable causes. As other prominent causes the authorproposes considerations of ease of learning and use, the designer's convictionin the cost effectiveness of having free or fixed word order, and the subtleinfluence of language universals. The author admits that careful analysis ofartificial languages is needed before we can draw shattering conclusions aboutthe language faculty as most descriptions of their features are inadequate forsome reason or another. Libret contends that most designers consider free wordorder a liability and this underlies the prevalence of intended fixed word orderin artificial languages.
Despite the purported or actual constraints on word order systems in artificiallanguages, they are worth studying as they reveal a lot about human cognitivecapacities and the intricate relations between creativity, the role languageplays in it and how these reflect on language creations. Unfortunately such aline of questioning linguistics has not been followed in the highly informativepaper.
Chapter Seven written by Hyeran Lee and entitled ''Syntactic encoding of Topicand Focus in Korean'' examines topicalization, focalization and scrambling inKorean with the aim to elucidate the articulated structure of the ComplementizerPhrase. Cast in formal syntactic terms, the detailed analysis, abundant inquotations and references to previous formal interpretations of these or similarphenomena, presents an exhaustive picture of three types of foci in Korean, aswell as the phenomena of topicalization and scrambling. After a highly technicaldiscussion, the author concludes that ''discourse information is encoded in thesyntactic positions at the left periphery in Korean'' (p. 160). In contrast toRizzi's claims (2004), Lee believes that multiple focus phrases are possible inKorean. The –nun marker is used to achieve both topic reading and contrastivefocus reading depending on its position in the Complementizer Phrase. The authordraws two further important conclusions relating to scrambling. In her view,long-distance preposing always brings some semantic effects – topicalization andfocalization – where scopal vacuity does not lead to semantic vacuity. However,clause internal preposing leads to ambiguous interpretations and PF scramblingdoes not have semantic import. The paper questions certain understandings of thesyntactic representation of discourse-information features in Korean in theterms of the generative grammar paradigm. Thus, although it raises importantquestions concerning the discourse-syntax interface, the paper remains firmlyembedded in one already traditional school of interpreting syntactic phenomena.
Chapter Eight, ''Syndromes of Meaning: Exploring Patterned Coupling in a NSWYouth Justice Conference'' by Michele Zappavigna, Paul Dwyer and J R Martin, isan application of one of the current approaches in the research agenda of SFL –modeling instantiation in larger textual patterns. The authors analyze thespecificity of the social context and the genre of the linguistic material – (atranscript of a) New South Wales Youth Justice Conference as broadcast on theABC Radio National. Three central ideas make the paper a coherent contributionto ongoing debates in SFL. First, the ideas of one of the authors (Martin) of''coupling'' as a grouping of related meanings in texts and ''syndromes'' as''patterns of coupling'' are expounded, then the idea ''that meanings coupled alongthe cline of instantiation may be involved in larger textual patterns isintroduced'' (p. 164) and finally a qualitative analysis is offered of thetranscript of a youth justice conference. The central focus of analysis is thetalk of the mothers of two offenders in which these ladies construct theirattitude, experience and responsibility in relation to the offences committed bytheir sons. On the basis of detailed analysis of the syndromes (''as recurrentco-instantiation of patterns of linguistic potential'' p. 175) of ambivalenceabout their responsibility for their sons' behavior, instantiated in variouscouplings: speculating about offender's thoughts and feelings, positiveevaluation of the son, negative effect, etc., the authors conclude that throughthe coupling of AFFECT and RELATIONAL PROCESS along the instantiation cline andthrough drawing from the legions of resources of the three evaluative systemsAttitude, Graduation and Engagement, the mothers construct a discourse in whicha balance is achieved between mothers' understanding their sons' deeds andambivalent sense of guilt for failing to act up to their responsibility. On alarger scale, the authors conclude that despite their analytical power systemnetworks are not sufficient for the analysis of the involved co-instantiationsof syndromes. There are patterned textual relations both between systems andwithin systems. Syndromes figure as a useful analytical tool for capturing theseclusters in large textual patterns. The analysis is consistent and logical, theconclusions highly relevant. The paper is a valuable contribution to SystemicFunctional research.
Chapters Nine to Thirteen are grouped into Part II: Applications and Variation
Chapter Nine is devoted to the demythologizing of Communicative LanguageTeaching. In her paper, entitled ''Demythologising CLT: Wanted – A ReorientationFor Teachers in the 21st Century'', Anne Burns critically addresses thewide-spread practice and uncritical adoption of Communicative Language Teaching,which in her view lacks detailed articulation of everyday practices and ischaracterized by vagueness and ineffective level of generality. Presentingresearch of the teaching practices in Australian adult English languageclassrooms as localized environments, the author concludes that despite beinggenerally associated with the language of learning, rather than the language ofeducation, Communicative language Teaching fails to provide clear classroompractice guidelines and needs immediate revision. In her view, the time is ripefor a general reorientation of the focus ''on to effective teaching that willserve language learners productively in localized contexts'' (p. 203). She sideswith Widdowson in his claims that despite invigorated communicative activities,learners are unable to readily read off the grammar they need as resource fromtheir engagement in communicative exchanges. Burns advocates the preservation ofa balanced authoritative teacher's role, accompanied with an understanding ofcommunicative activities not as a value themselves, but as sources of knowledgewhich has to be learned, not inferred.
Her voice is not an isolated one. Ana Maria Morais (2006) also appeals for theadoption of more balanced or mixed pedagogies, in which the potentialities of atotally invisible pedagogy characterized by weak classifications and framingsshould be slightly subdued, so that a balance can be achieved between discoverylearning and receptive learning. The balance in the views of both the author ofthe reviewed paper and Ana Morais has to be fixed after careful calculation ofthe cost effectiveness of progressive pedagogies in the conditions of localizedcontexts. Burns presents the findings of the study of Australian Englishlanguage classroom practices in terms of methodology, educational policy,curriculum design, negotiability of contents between educators and learners andeffective teaching practices as analyzed in terms of framing, individualenhancement, pedagogic devices and classification. The well researched paperopens up pertinent questions for classroom practices in English languageteaching which besides their localized focus in the paper have far-reachingconsequences.
Chapter Ten is focused on possible ways for providing authentic contexts forlearners of English to practice their fine-tuning abilities in discourse. In''Fine-tuning Discourse in Thai EFL Academic and Electronic Bulletin BoardWriting'', Montri Tangpijaikul discusses the misbalance between linguistic andpragmatic competences of Thai learners of English stemming from the lack ofadequate contexts for the development of fine-tuning pragmatic competence in theappropriate manipulation of interpersonal meanings in English. The authorstudies the use of modality in the writings of Thai learners of English in twodifferent genres. One of the genres is academic writing, characterized with apreference for more neutral presence of interpersonal meanings, and the other is''bulletin board writing'', defined as asynchronous free style writing whichprovides more space for students to practice their use of the system of modalityfor fine-tuning their attitudes in discourse. The paper reports the findings ofresearch of 39 second year undergraduate students majoring in English atKasetsart University in Bangkok. The students produced a piece of writing in theacademic writing genre, which was discussed by posting similar topics on thewebsite. By applying the Halliday and Matthiessen' framework of modality, theauthor analyzes ''three dimensions where modal and intensifying elements inEnglish can be viewed together in grammatical, functional and semanticcategories'' (p. 209). The dimensions are hedging, boosting, committal andinclination. After commenting on the findings of the study, which imply thatThai students of English lack sufficient pragmatic competence in usingfine-tuning devices in English due to the little opportunity they have tointeract in English in their daily lives, the author concludes that educatorsshould be searching for new contexts of interaction in which in authenticinteraction, without guidance, students will naturally resort to usingfine-tuning devices in their written interaction.
The paper is clearly written and well structured. It reveals yet another localcontext which imposes idiosyncrasies on teaching approaches and practices. Itproposes one alternative channel of interaction which is easy to implement andis obviously effective as a physical and discourse space provided for studentsto develop their competence in interpersonal (in the terms of SFL) interaction.
Chapter Eleven is devoted to a diachronic tracing of the semantics of graduationin the ideolects of 19 Japanese high school students. Caroline Lipovsky andAhmar Mahboob in their paper, ''The Semantics of Graduation; Examining ESLLearners' Use of Graduation over Time'', apply the framework of additionallanguage acquisition and the methodology of SFL for analyzing appraisal systemsto monitor how the ability of learners of English to use the Graduation systemevolves over time. After conducting a study of the expansion of the graduationresources exploited by 19 Japanese learners of English, the authors concludethat additional language acquisition can be fruitfully applied to examinelearners' ''ability to appropriate tools available in the cultural reservoir ofthe learned language potential'' and make ''it part of their linguisticrepertoire'' (p. 227). The design of the study is based on the study of adiagnostic piece of writing at the beginning of a year-long study abroad programin the USA and another composed at the end of the program on the same topic –comparing the abilities of native language teachers and non-native languageteachers. After analyzing the 19 learners' uses of force and focus, the twoauthors outline several hypotheses concerning the appropriation of the appraisalsystem in a longitudinal perspective. It is hypothesized that in acquiring theGraduation system beginning additional language learners favor syntacticallysimple system choices; they extend a choice in one system to other systems; showa preference for grammatical over lexical realizations; and tend to rely more onless figurative realizations. As the authors admit, these tentative hypothesesneed further support. Yet, the merit of the paper, in the authors' own view, isthat ''Given that no prior research is available in this area'', it develops ''aninitial understanding of learners' use of Graduation'' (p. 239). With its localfocus, the paper is yet another straightforward application of the SystemicFunctional Framework. It hardly questions linguistics, or linguists' practices,rather it invites linguists to apply a certain methodology to other local contexts.
In Chapter Twelve, ''Analysis of Japanese Spoken by Elderly Taiwanese: WordUsage, Particle Usage, and Predicate Forms'', Masumi Kai analyzes the deviationsin speaking Japanese on the part of elderly Taiwanese. Contextualizing the studyin a historical dimension, Kai reports that the basic types of deviations (inlexical borrowings, tense usage, particle usage, demonstratives, inflections onadjectives and verbs, predicate forms, etc.) make up a Taiwanese-Japanesevariant which is different from modern standard Japanese. This spoken variety isdefined as typical for elderly Taiwanese who received their education inJapanese. The unique feature of this variety is the predicate form which affectsthe cohesion of the conversation. The variable which determines the degree ofdeviation observed in the speech habits of the four subjects studied iseducational background. The author concludes that the findings of the surveyneeds further quantitative and qualitative substantiation – more subjects andsubjects who received their education in Japanese in other countries.
Even though the paper is informative and discusses significant local issues, ithardly raises any questions that can problematize fundamental linguisticassumptions or conceptions of language.
Chapter Thirteen raises an extremely painful question – the utility oflinguistics. In his paper, ''What's the Use of Linguistics?'', Michael Walsh drawsthe reader's attention to the pitiful state of aboriginal languages and the needfor the immediate implementation of a rehabilitation program for languagerevitalization. The author reviews all steps that have been taken for thedevelopment of the NSW Aboriginal Languages Policy and carefully explains thepainful necessity for aboriginal people to regain their languages as that willhelp them regain their identity and enhance community health – mental, physicaland social. Walsh promotes a plausible scenario for language revitalization byadopting the 9-step model of Hinton (2001). After discussing what linguists cando to save languages, the author comments on what the academy can do to helplinguists who help dying languages. Then Walsh addresses the issue of thedisadvantages to which aboriginal witnesses are put in courtrooms. Thedisadvantages are derived from the entirely ''different regime for the managementof knowledge'' (263) in aboriginal communities. Aboriginal communities maintainmultiple linguistic identities that can be baffling for non-initiated linguists.In relation to this, the author raises an intriguing question concerning thedistinction between language users and language owners. It is normal foraboriginal people to possess a language without speaking it. Language possessionis a life-long property of the person. In his argumentation for the usefulnessof linguistics for saving languages and identities, Walsh touches upon issues ofdual language and place naming and the training of court officials forappropriate transcribing of aboriginal testimonies in land claim proceedings.The chapter concludes with an appeal for all relevant areas of linguistics(phonetics and phonology, graphology, interactional sociolinguistics, lexicalsemantics, ethnography of speaking, dialectology, and social psychology oflanguage) to join forces to revitalize both moribund languages and the viabilityof linguistic analysis which he sees in the practicing of linguistics applied.The paper questions our understanding of the utility of linguistics and theperceived divisions of linguistics into theoretical and applied and theirreconciliation in linguistics applied which is extremely effective in settlinglife-saving issues of identity, land possession and language existence.
EVALUATIONSince this is a collection of papers, most of my remarks on individual papershave been included as part of the summary. Here I would like to evaluate thebook from the perspective of the entire collection of papers. The collection,although relatively short, is impressive with the linguistic sub-fields or areasit tries to straddle. The advantage of the collection is its diversity in termsof the disparate issues discussed and the interpretations considered, rangingfrom formal aspects of language (Focus in Korean) to Australian aboriginalethnolinguistic issues (Land and Language), as well as its pronouncedrecognition of linguistic data deserving attention which is traditionally if notentirely dismissed, at least grossly overlooked (TV series). The articles arewell-researched and provide rich information on valuable relevant sources. Thecollection does not offer a well defined ''bond'' with an easily specifiabletarget audience. Some of the papers require profound knowledge of SystemicFunctional Linguistics and appraisal theory, one requires acquaintance withMinimalist syntax, one with the court practices in which Australian aboriginesare put to a disadvantage on the grounds of linguistic and communicative habits,etc.
One particular feature of the collection is the arbitrary arrangement ofarticles. There seems to be no thematic justification underlying the ordering.The first part presupposes more theoretical discussions. Chapters Three, Four,Five and Eight go neatly together by consistently engaging in analysis ofappraisal instantiations in different sources – narratives, news stories,interviews, etc. Within this set of thematically coherent papers a minimalistaccount of information focus in Korean and an essayistic discussion of wordorder in artificial languages are inserted. Admittedly, the collection can beread as organized in a way intended to blur the cultural divide betweentheoretical linguistics (analytically oriented) and applied linguistics, withthe divide successfully bridged and deconstructed by linguistics applied. Afterall, the book is a collection of papers enhancing Free Linguistics principlesand absolute freedom includes internal organization.
For a collection which invites us to question rigid types of conformistanalytical approaches, however, some of the analyses seem disappointinglystraightforward, based on the application of well-established analyticalprocedures. In some of the papers there are more references in the body of thetext than the ones explicitly recorded in the References section.
On the whole, a large part of the language elephant has been carefully caressedand bits of the animal far removed from one another have been covered. The bookrequires the reader's expertise in multiple specializations of linguistics for afuller appreciation. So, despite of, or probably because of, its disparatecontents it makes a really stimulating read which might stir many linguists toquestion their own understanding and practice of linguistic work.
REFERENCES:Baldry, A. P. (2000) (ed.) _Multimodality and Multimediality in the DistanceLearning Age_.Campobasso, Italy: Palladino Editore.
Halliday, M. A. K. and Matthiessen C. M. I. M. (1999) _Constructing Experiencethrough Language: a language-based approach to cognition_. London: Cassell.
Kress, G. (2003) _Literacy in the New Media Age_. London: Routledge.
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001) _Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media ofContemporary Communication_. London: Arnold.
Martin, J. R. (1995) Reading positions/positioning readers: Judgement inEnglish. _Prospect: a Journal of Australian TESOL_ 10: 27-37.
Martin, J. (2000) Beyond Exchange: Appraisal Systems in English. In S. Hunstonand G. Thompson (Eds.), _Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and theConstruction of Discourse_ (142-175). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martin, J. and Rose, D. (2003) _Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond theclause_. New York: Continuum.
Matthiessen, Christian M.I.M. (2005) The ''architecture'' of language according tosystemic functional theory: developments since the 1970. In Ruqaiya Hasan,Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen & Jonathan Webster (Eds.), _Continuing discourse onlanguage. Volume 2_ (505-561). London: Equinox.
Morais, Ana M. (2006) Basil Bernstein: Sociology for Education. In C. A. Torres& A. Teodoro (Eds.), _Critique and Utopia; New Developments in the Sociology ofEducation_. Boulder, Rowman and Littlefield.
ABOUT THE REVIEWERAlexandra Bagasheva, teaches General Linguistics and English Syntax at theDepartment of British and American Studies at Sofia University, Bulgaria. She isholder of a Ph. D. from the Bulgarian Higher Attestation Commission inLinguistics and a DELTA diploma from UCLES. Her main interests broadly lie inthe areas of cognitive and functional linguistics, typology, linguisticanthropology, the semantics of compounds as the result of a complex doubleblending process, and the semantics-cognition-pragmatics interface. Her morenarrow interests are focused on the complexities of the correspondences andcognitive correlates between English syntax and compounding (exocentriccompounds). This coming academic year she will be launching two elective MAcourses: Language and Mind and Linguistic Anthropology which ultimately combineher research interests – the trinity of language, culture and cognition.
|