HSNMDNS ONISATVNG 5 > Q 9 3 5 Q 9 4 m x 4 er Um ACM acim ig JNA GLOBAL aedllarel a Del ee ar re coAnalysing English ina Global Context A Reader Edited by Anne Burns and Caroline Coffin TheOpen University London and New York in association with Macquarie University and The Open UniversityFirst publishes 2001 by Routlesge Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously publishes in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10026 Reprinted 2003, 2005, Routledge isan imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Grou (© 2001 compilation, original and editorial material, Macquarie Univesity and The Open University: ndvgua artiles © their authors “Typeset in Perpetua and Gell Gothic by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton Printed ard bound in Great Briain by TS Tternatinal Ls, Padstow, Corral All eights reserved. Na part ofthis bok may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in ary orm or by any electron, mechanical or other nears, ‘ow known or hereafter vente, inlosing petocopying and recording, (rn any information storage or etrieval system, without person ihwriing fom the poblsners. British Library Catafoguing in Publication Data ‘catalogue rear for ths book is avalale frm the British Library Library of Congres Cataloging in Publication Data Anaiying Enaish na lal coment: a reader feted by Anne Burs and Caroline Coin pm =(Teaching Eras language worlwide) Ivcludes itagrapicl reference and index 1" Enaihfanguage Stay ond tating Foreign speakers. 2 Ealish larguone- Force cota, Enlsngage~Vorato,3: Common, 1945" I Coffin, Carlin, 19580 Ti Senes, am Coma. I: Bars Ae, PE1128.A2 A834 2000 42e'0r1—acr1 0.059193, 19H 0-415-24125-4 (nok) ISBN 0-415-24116-2 (poh) Contents List oF itustrations List of acknowledgements Anne Burns and Caroline Coffin IwrRopucrion PART ONE. English In the world: change and variety Braj B. Kachru and Cecil L. Nelson David Graddo! Denise E. Murray 3 NEW TECHNOLOGY: NEW LANGUAGE AT WORK? PART TWO The globalisation of English: opportunities and constraints David Crystal Vijay K. Bhatia 5 THE POWER ANO POLITICS OF GENRE Alastair Pennycook 6 ENGLISH IN THE WORLO/THE WORLO IM ENGLISH 2% 38 53 65 8148 ANNE BURNS Riggenbach, H. (1990) Discourse analysis and spoken language instruction, donua Review: of Applied Lingus, 1: 152.63 Roberts, C,Jupps Fan Davies, E(1992) Language and Disriminaion Seals of Communication fn Mahe Horta. Ln: Longman, Sacks, HL, Schegloll,F and Jellerson, G. 1974) 4 simplest stem for the organatan of tara taking lor conversation, Language, 50: 696-735 Schilein, D. (1990) Conversation amass. tnnaal Ree of Apel Linguists, Vhs 3-16, Schifrin, D. 1994) pprchesto Drsour. Oxford Backel Scale, |, (1969) Speech er kn Est inthe Philoophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambrige University Pres Searle, | (1976) A clawscation of locutionary ats, Language im Soe 5: 1-23 Sinclay J. MeHL and and Coulthard, RM (1975) Towands on Anal of Dasoune, Ovfon (Oxford University Pres Skule, D. (1997) Stores and gonsip in English: the miaosstructure of anual tlk, Prospect We, 71 Sperber, D. and Wilbon, (1986) Reliance, Cambridge, MA: Haevaed University Press Stret, B. (ee) (1995) Lacy n Crosland Penge. Cambie: Cambriige University Prose Talbot, MM. (1998) Languige and Gender: ntadaton, Lamon; Pity Press Thompson, J (1883) Cross-cultural peagmaticlallue.tppie Lingus, $2) 92-112 Walle, C. (1992) Critical literary awareness in the EFL Clssroom, fa Fairclough ted.) Censcal Language estos, Lond: Longman, Willing, K. (1992) Talking 1 Through Clorfcatan and Polo Sleng tn Proevsnal ipl, Seeley: NCELTR Winds, R-(1996) Dror of Dicoune. London: Longman, Chapter 9 J.R. Martin LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE Without thinking VERYBODY DOES THINGS WITHOUT THINKING, People learn to tlk and walk, drive cars, seve and volley, play instruments, and s0 on, And the point comes where what as once aslo andl painful often error-prone pracess hecomies auto ‘mated. fis thon simply taken for gr ted we forget about it, Atleast until someth goes wrong If we all o stutter, have an accident, double fault or play out of tune, we may ‘top for moment and think about what we were doing, But forthe most part we carey on, functioning as members af our culture, doing what other people accept Towards the end of the nineteenth century, three mous scholars became very incerested in the unconscious forces that shape our lives. These men, Saussure, Durkheim and Ereud, were the founder of whats now known as socal scence, Saussure is the father ‘of linguistics, Durkheim sociology, and Freud psychiatry. All were conceraed with what ‘vs that makes people tick, without their knossing that it does so. They were interested, in cther words, not ip physical, material things, asim anatomy or astronoms but in human Jbchaviour in soval fats. Taken together, these social acts constitute a system, These systems are set up to explain shy people do what they do without really thinking about what they are doing, Far example, 1am writing this paper in English, in English of particular kind in [am not using slang: Lam not using double negatives (I don't write, though many speakers ‘of English might say 1 don' wee no double nagaiee), andl Tam not iting in French oF Tagalog Why am I doing this? Tam not doing t hecause vou cannot write about language, register and genre in French or Tagalog. [am doing t because want to interact with vou the reader Hhnos tha you eapeetme tose Lnglh thatthe language we share So, by Comenton, Lise Englah, Onto take nother example, the wg fam eaing trousers om dogs because am a mae, working ntl, ain winter this hat Ausralan mals wear Iam not necessary wearing rouses becuse othe ol. number {i temas pos by my now ro tw time, and many of them are not swearing trousers ut skirts or dese. ike them, am dressing the way Ido by convention. Less, without thinking about it, as people expect. I might a times in my life think about it, and to someone in Tagalog or put on adress, But i Ido, my behaviour wil e take a6 3 joke, oF considered asocal, perhaps even outrageous. If break the rules, people will start thinking. Otherwise life simply goes on. eset eee eee eee eee eeeeeeeeeeeeeestetee eee eeeeeeeeeesseeeeseet eet eee eeeeeeseet eet eeeereeeeeeeeees tees ee eeeeeeeeereeeeeseeeeese eee eeeeereeeeereeeees eet eee150 4.8 MARTIN Now, the point of these remarks about the unconscious nature of language and culture isto try and give you an idea of what bi the unconscious rules which govern our behasiour and to make them explicit ~ to make the invisible visible in other words It order to do this they develop: models for organising these sovial facts and theories about the best ay to build these models (Culler 1976, Saussure 1915/1966), Let me try and illustrate with regard to a small example the kind of description of ists and saciolaghts do, Their jos to discover human behaviour linguists an sociologists interested in social fcts come up with, Imagine that you are an alien, that yout hase js landed on earth, and are standing at a pedestrian ‘crossing You notice that there isa set of lights, with greon and red pictaros of what appear torbe men. The lights change in a certain sequence, frst a green man, then a flashing red rman, a then a red man hich cloes not Hash. This gocs on repeatedls You aso notice that there are real people crossing the stevet and that their mosements soem tobe conditioned by the lights. When the light green they walk, when the light is ashing red they walk Taster or run, and when the light is re they stop and sit for cars to go by. Novy f you were an alien semiotiian (2 semiotcian someane who is interested the sestoms ‘of meaning or socal systems which regulate human behasiour you would ot down in sour journal a brie! description ofthe system you have been observing The system would have ‘three terms oF options: ‘walk’, "hurry up" and'stop’. Each of these choices has a meaning when people choose walk" they start to move aris the steets they choose hurry up {hey start to un oF walk more quickly across the treet; and if hey choose"stop they walt ‘on the corner le addition, cach of these options has an expression — way of Commun ‘ating its meaning: ‘walks expressed by (linguists would sy "is realise by") the green rman, hurry up" bythe Hashing roe man, an'stop” the rd man, Te notes you have made ae ie act a description ofthe semiotic stem of pedestrian lights. The description has three parts: (1) a statement of the meanings, in this case the socially signiieant human behaviour the ststom regulates moving across the street moving quickly across the stro and not moving; (2) the choices themselves “walk ‘hurry up” and ‘stop’; and (3) the realisation af the choices in this eae the lights red, Hashing red and green. An outline of this litle semiotic system is presented in Figure 9,1, 1 would be movlelled in spstomi Functional linguists, ic functional linguistics Syste Systemic functional linguistics sone ofthe main Functional theories of language which has heen developed in the tsenteth centars: Ite major architect fs M.A.K, Halliday, formerly ECP ee Pee eee eee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee Pee eee LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE 151 Professor of Linguistics atthe Unisersit of Seley (Halliday 1978, 199); one of bis rnin influences was JR. Hirth, the est Professor af Linguistics in Great Britsin, ho held the chr atthe University of London (Firth 1957a,b), In origin then, the thoory is a British fone, sith much stronger tiesto European linguists than to American approaches. The influcnee of Saussure ho taught in Geneva), Hjelmsles (tho worked in Copenhagen), Malinowski (an anthropologist based in London), linguists of the Prague School and another of Halliday's teachers, the Chinese linguist Wang Li, combine to give the school its tlstinctiveHasour Helmsley 1961; Malinossski 1923, 195; Mathesius 1968). How do systemic functional linguists difer Irom linguists of other school? Fist of all, they place considerable emphasis o the idea of choice, They sew language asa large ‘network of interrelated options, Irom which speakers unconsciously select when speaking In more technical terms, thei focus is on paradigmatic relations on what sou say in relation to what you coulel have said, Other linguists hav much stronger ssntagmatic perspective on what you sayin relation to what you sal before and what you ae going to sae next, Statemiciss formalise these choices hy means of systems (thus the name ofthe theory): for example, singular versus plural, active versus passive, declarative versus interrogative and sion. The way in which these systems bundle together in thee grammars gives sptemicit an insight intothow language is elated to the contexts in which it is used this takes us tothe second distinctive feature of sestemie linguistics, ‘Second, then, systems, like Firthians bufare them, have taken 4 great interest in the lation between language and contest. They have altats argued, following Mabinowski (1923, 1935), that sou cannot understand the meaning of what somone sats or writes unless you know something about the context in which iti embedded, Or, laoking at this the other cay round, if sou understand what somone sis oF writes (a text in technical terms), sou can ako figure outa great deal about the context in sshich that text occurred (Ure and Ellis 1977), This lea abwut the relationship between language and context was taken over from Malinosssk int linguistics by Firth (19373, Malinowski was an anthropologist sho worked largely in Melanesia, studing the culture of people living on islands to the south al east of Papua New Guinea, Malinowski ‘sas shat people commonly think of when they hear the word linuit: nat someone whe Alesribes languages, but somone who knows a lot of languages and learns them easily Malinowski believed that learning the language of the people you were stdying was essential lor an anthropologist, and he collected a number of fests, taken from many Ailerent aspects ofthe life of the Melanesians he sas sting (noe that anthropologists like Malinowski are social scientists too, sor closely related to sociologists im what they dda though tending to work on more exotic and less fami cultures), When he was trans lating these texts into English, for the benefit of his English readers, Malinowski noticed that the translations he was producing di not really make much sense, This was partly because Malinowski was not a linguist in the grammar-describing sense ofthe term, and tends to give word-for-word translations shich exaggerated the differences between Melanesian languages anal English. But more importants, and this as Malinowski point, ‘po matter how good translation be made, it still turned out that if you didn't know shat the people involved inthe text were doing, and didn’t understand the culture, then you couldn't make sense of their text. In order to deal with this problem Malinowski introduced the tems ‘context of situation” andl context of culture ‘Let me try and give an example of what Malinowsski was an about. Suppose you are sitting in 2 room, and hear someone yell: "John, don’t do it there mate!” (if you know152 4.R, MARTIN rage), Nom, however age, it wil stil be the case that ‘unless you know what John was doing, sou don’t really know what the person talking to him mcant You don’t koow ashat Jab seas ding, sthat he wa da ‘to, and whore he it IP hossever yaw had 2 translation of thi sentence, and a description of the contest situation nhc eas attri Jo dpi fake ad rks nce and of the Cspin the meaning a sentence you need bth deep of that ‘context in which it was wed But Malineseski believe tht exe this would not he enough. Alongside a description ‘tthe context of situation, sow also noed 3 description of de culture in which thew fs used, Suppose, for example, you are wander g dlesen a corridor at Sediney University and ear someone say “Okay, now athat we have here isa mental pracess rank shifted into the Carrier of a relational clause’. (Try translating that inte another language if you know fone!) Suppose as well that sou happen to glance through an open door and sea lecture talking 1 group of students and pointing to the anlerlined cansitvent ima clause sich the following written on the blackbuard: what thy want sc unusable Yow have ne heard the sentence if you look clencly sou ean soe which part of the clause the Carriers ad you can sce what the keturor is doing and sho he is talking to, Hut i you are not studying Tinguistics you wil il heat 3 lms as to what exactly i going on, This is hecause sou have rot been sialsed into the world where such a sentence makes sense. You are not 3 member of the subculture which goes around talking about fangage i his a This s Malinowski’s point about needing 2 description of the language, the cantext of situation al the contest of culture in ashich a sentence is wed. I you ate not a member a the culture, sou cannot understand! what meant Malinowski’ ideas about language in relation to context wf situation and context of ‘culture sere taken over by Firth and inconporatd int linguistic theory. bn sharp contrast tw the goals of many of his American contemporaries, Firth helived that the purpose of linguistics was to explain meaning (American linguists sich ae Bloomeld elt that this 35 hopelessly complicated goal. Firth fof culture, but he dil take steps ta outline those aspects of the context of situation which wore relevant 10 linguistic description. This work was carrie on hy Firth's students, sho Tite to Hesh out Malinowski’ concept of context adopted the torm register for the stud of the relation hetweet Language ard context of Firth’ students were for time rolerred to as neo-Firthians (mans, fllssing Halliday, would go on to develop ststemic linguistics; Havel al, 1966), They develepedt a more ~ophisicatel framework than Firth lor describing register, making use of three main cate gories: fel, mode and tenor (at est they used the term “styl for "enor", but the following Gregory, agroed to reserve that term for the study of literary texts Halliday 1978; Halliday and Hasan 1985). Definitions of these threw categories varied slightly ener the sears (Gregory in fact suggested splitting tenor into personal tenor and Functional tend in 1967 - this will be further discussed below; see Gregory and Careoll 1978); but ‘in general the terme ean be understand a alls Fick refers to what is going on, whe « what is going on is interpreted institutionally, in terms of some culturally recognised atisity (what people are doing with their Hes, 36 bul ing consteuetion, larming, politirs, education and so on, When people ask you what you do ft wore), Examples of fields are activities such as tennis, opera, linguists, cookin LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE 153 ashen first getting to knw’ yu, you tena to answer in term fil (e.g Me ma nga 1 play tens tered in as 3d 50 on Tenor roles to the way you relate to other people when doing shat vou do, One aspect of this isstatus, Our society, ike all other human societies we know of isstructured lisuch a a that poople have power oser onc another This passer is of ariows kinds mature people tend to dominate younger anes, co nanding their respect; bosses dom: fate emploces teachers dominate stunents and so on, There is no escaping this, however rice we try ta be ahaut it, When sou think people age hoses o “abowe themecle it ‘nally because they ane asserting an inordinate amount of power over sou, When sou think someone i quiet erase an ooking insecure, it sien because they are being vers deferential to yo, And o urse you can resist, 38 when feminists strugee to remote the poser relations between swomen and men, Renovation is hard work av we all kno and however democeatie our ideals, there alway scems to be some residue of poster, and mashe more, rou Meade rotors to the channel you select te communicate the choice presented is between spevch andl writing Hut modern society makes use of many adi ‘ional channels: e-mail, tslephone, ratio, television, widen, film and s0 on, each a distinct rmoxle im its ow right. It should perhaps be stews here that writing is 3 relatively late development in human culture, both in terms of the history of our race and inthe lie of child, Writing as we know i 3s invented just three times in human history once in ‘the Middle East (and once in Central Amerie, although this tation has China, one rot survived). ln European apd Asign contexts writing is only a few thousand sears ol many languages still da not use a writing system in day-to-day fife, and across cultures chillren hase learned to spcak much of their language before they put pen te. paper. Interestingly enough, the emergence of writing ystems has had a considerable elfect on hand writing differ a they do, anel sehy learning to write involves far more than using squiggles to make the structure of languages which se them, This related te shy spe caning iat of souls, The choices your make fram sour grammar ate themselves very uitcrent in speeeh and weting (see Halliday, Chapter 17. this volume. [eis or this reason that lesening to write ellectisly takes so eng. Formal ing the relationship of language and culture Inthe late 1960s, ater working for some yeats on formalising the choices relevant to ash, Halliday male asigniicant breakthrough as fr as work on the relationship between language and content fs concerned (Halliday 1973). He noted that slause structure in E the register categories of ie, monle and! tenor that he and his clleagues had developed carlcr in the decade hal striking parallels in the structure of language itself. What had happencel was that a6 work on formalising clause spsteme progressed, st hecarme cleae that those stems were tering to luster inte three main groups, One bundle of choices was referred to in hs early work by Halliday as anti this bundle of choices was concern with the structure of causes terms the way they map reahty- the diference betstoen setbs of doing and happening, reacting, thinking aed perceiving, saying, and deseeing and identilsing, slong with the soie (active/passive) potential associated with cach, Another bundle he refered to as mod, and was concerned with dl ‘inguishing statements Fram questions from commands from exclamations as well as expressing the possibilty,154 Je. maRTIN probability oF eo of some meaning: The third bund, called heme, has todo with the ‘ay in which speakers order constituents in a claus, putting frst a theme which connects swith the overall development of a paragraph oF text, and last something that contains Information which is new to the listener, Eater, Halliday as to use more semantically ‘oriented terms to generalise these three broad areas of meaning potential: ieational for neaning about the world, “interpersonal” for intersubjective meaning between speakers, and ‘textual’ for meanings relating pieces of text to cach other and to their context (aliday 1978, 1954, ‘Looked! at inthis way, in terms of the kines of meaning involved, the theee main ovis in the following was Field obviously correlated with ideational meaning. There was a connection between the Institutional actsities in which people engage and what they were talking about, Move was bundles of systems were een to match up ith register ca ‘most clearly related to textual meanings The channel sow choose has a ig effect on the relationship berween language and its context, and tenor was closely related to inter personal meaning, Power andl solidarity are hath implicated in whether you are giving for demanding goo and sersices oF information and how sure you are about what you are Hloing, This correlation betsscon gister categories and fenctional components in the arrammar is very important, I€ is this that enables sestemicists to predict om the basis of Context not just what choices a speaker i likely to make, but which areas ofthe grammar are at stake, Consersely it alloss us to look at particular grammatical choices and 6 Understand the contribution they are making tothe contextual meaning ofa sentence, This ‘makes it posible for systomic linguists to argue on the basis of grammatical evidence about the nature of field, more and tenor atthe same tine ast gives them a way of explaining ‘shy language has the shape it dacs in terms of the say in which people use it to live Systemic grammar is offen relerred to ay systemic functional grammar for this reason (Eggins 1998; Fries ancl Gregory 1995), This particular approach to language and context of situation did not have much influence within linguisties pmpee when it first appeared in the earls 1960s. In general, ‘shen linguists looked at context at that time they were concerned with phonological and low-level morphological sariation, and wore stung the difference betiscen the dialects Df English spoken by speakers coming from dierent social hackgrounds(socilinguiss ingpireel by William Labor were the main researchers in this area}. But the approach tid hase obsiows implications for appl linguistics and began to be used in work on the teaching of English bothasa mother tongue the Nullicld Foundation project (Pearce ul. 1989}, and as a second oF foreign language English for special purposes and Functionalinotional sllabus research), language development (Halliday 1975; Painter 1984, 1991, 1999), schizophrenic spovch (Rochester and Martin 1979), stlistice (Hasan 1985; Birch and O"Toole 1988), ideology {Kress and Hodge 1979) andl coding orientation (Berastein 1973; Hasan 1990, 1996), It as mainly in these applied contents that register theory continued to evolve (Ghadesy 1988, 1993; Leckie-Tarry 1995; Matthiessen 1993), Register The particular mode of language and register to be presented here was developed inthe applied context of studying the development of children's writing abilities in infants, LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE 155 primary and secondary schon! (Rothery 1996), One important aspect ofthe mal s the ‘phasis it places on treating register as a semiotic system, Samiti, as 1 have already totes, ica term referring to matems that make meanings, Reger, however, i semiotic sstemn which diffs fram semiotic systems such ay nnguage, music, dance, image and sa fn, This s because it isa kind of parasite I has no phonology of is xen, The only way can make mcaning is hy using the words and structures of the semiotic we call language The great Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev (1961) referred to semiotics like register as ‘connate semiotic, i order to dstingish them from semiotics hike language which ean make their own meanings an are not dependent on the resources of another meaning system to express themselves What does this mean? For one thing if register isa semiotic, then it shouldbe possible to work out the choices open to speakers as fara fick, made and tenor are concerned. What esactly is the set of institutions in which we participate! What i the range of roles swe can aelopt with respect to other speakers? What isthe nature of the channcs we can se te convey our message? Another consequetee of interpreting register asa semiotic system is that sou hate to be able to say how the diferent relied What inher work ast mean afar a language comer the iscourse i inguisties instead of sociology tennis instead of cricket, a Another important aspect of the madl is its facus on genre. This infact goes back to Gregory's (1967) suggestion that tenor be split into personal tenor (concerned with satis snd! formality a Lunctional tenor chasing to do with purpose). The relation of purpose, for what a speaker is tring to accomplish, to register has long been an uneasy one. Over the years Halliday has tended to subsume purpose through isdetinitions of held, tenor and specially made (e.g, 1978), We encountered to main problems with this conlation, ist ‘ofall, it makes the earrlation betwcon register categories and functional components of ‘the grammar les clear. Predictions about sich and sch 3 register choice being realised in such and such 9 part af the grammar are weakened], Secon it als to give a satisfactory account of the goal-oriented beginning.-midle-cnd structure of most texts (or example, the Orientation Complication Lsalustion Resolution Coda structure for narrative sug gested by Lahos and Waletzky (1967), In our work on childeen's writing we felt hat a Clearer Feation between register choices and metalunctional components would help us clarity the linguistic rllection of the stages a child goes through in learning to write in diferent registers, We ake felt a need to gise some more explicit acount ofthe distinctive Deginning-middlo-end (or schematic) stuctutes which characterise children’s writing in diferent genres, So we took the step of recognising a third somioticsystom, which we called genre, underlsing hoth register al language. Like register it isa parasite without register and language it would not survive Ina sense this takes us back to Malinowski, who argued that contexts hoth of situation an culture sere important if 66 are to fully interpret the meaning ofa text, Our level of _gente cortesponuls roughly to context of culture in is sense, our register pethaps t0 is ‘tof situation, This means we ate using the term genre in a far wir sense than that in sich it is used i literary sti where it roters to hteray text types such as port, lable, short story oe nore. For us, gente isa staged, goal-oriented, purpose activity in ‘which speakers engage as members of our culture. Examples of gonres are stage activities such as making a dental appointment, busing vegetables, ling 3 sory, writing an ess, applying fora job, writing letter to the editor, iaiting someone for dine, and so on. Virtually ecerything you do involves your participating in one or another genre. Culture156 4.8 MARTIN language gue 82 Lang ee scen in these term can be defined as ast of generically interpretable activities The mall ‘of language and its conpotative semiotics presented here fs utined in using co-tangentil circles in Figure 9.2, where language functions as the phonology of register, an! both register and language function as the phonology of genre (Christi and Mattin 1997; guns ane! Martin 1997; Martin 1985, 1992; Martin and Veel 1998) ‘So much for the superstructure. Now lets come back to tcl, mode and tenor and see what thes look lke in more detail, given a framework such 3° this, First of all remember tha fel mse and tenor make ery general Kinds of caning, Even within Language its, prammatial meanings are more general than lea ones fhe tons sree Agent Process Gosl, whith we might gloss aX docs something to Ys makes 2 more {Rural meaning than the worsings which might ols yg or amply, And vogser meaning ar more ener sill teresting enough, once We Ieave language, an increas nthe generality of te meanings iced des ot sem to ge ar oe wih inti ruc we cannot see them, Bat speakers are generally Toe conscious ft meaning aso with oie an genre, one ou part em ut hn the ar of romain ming Field This is probably the most daunting of the register variables we have to describe, simply because there are so anany things peopl do, We will probably get a workable description ‘of tenor and mod in our culture long belore we produce an enesclopedia of lds Nevertheless it is possible to sketch out here something of what we are on about, at least by way of an example. For purposes of illustration, lets considr the set of fils hing to sla with people in relation to animals. There ae reall wo things to worey about here: hrs, what do people do with animals activity focus)? and second, shat animals ae invalved in those activities (object focus)? Fick ae about people interacting with their world, so they tend to be characterisable along these two dimensions: shat people are doing and what they are doing it to. As a fest approximation we might say that there are thece main ways in which people are involved with animals: keeping them, using them and obscrving them By “keeping animals’ I mean keoping them 3s pets. The main function of animals in this ‘context is that of companionship. Some people are deeply involved in this Fick, breeding animale and taking them to shows, By “using animals’ [refer to two main arca: animal husbandry and sport. The mair opposition here is between using animals for food and clothing and using them for recreation, hunting and racing being the principal leisure activities in which animals are involved. By "studsing animals’ I refer to an interest people LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE 157 take in animals lor their own sake, This interest may be focused in different ways: studying imal. as sittin, showing them ol at 7o0s, prescrsing them in museums or observing them inthe wild, Ths list of animal-rlated intitutions is certainly not exhaustive, but it tlocs serve te illstrate the actiitis which be bein what people mean when they say "Tn {naturalist or biologist (or 200-koepor/curator/punter hunter farmer /dog lover, et.) The other se of this picture of course, the animals themselves, We keep dogs, ca fish and birds as pets te farm cows, sheep, pigs and fowl; we hunt with dogs and hassks “ve study anything we can lay our hands on, twill not atempt 10 wwe ace horses and dy evel folk tasonomry of animals here, but ote tat its the nature oftheir involvement ‘with people that shapes a taxonomy of this kind. Ac noted ahove, register categories have no words and structures of their own 50 i toraer to get realise they have te harrow linguistic ones, They do this in two main ways. The rst is to make certain linguistic choices much more likely than ethers. The result of this is that as we listen to a text, cortain patterns of choice begin to stand out in a non, random was, These patterns representa particular register choice telling u it's there, The second way ts for roger categories ta take-over a small numberof linguistic choices as their aun, This type of realisation i indesica rather than probabilistic. The choice then functions a a trigger, giving away the register selection once we hear the word or phrase involved. Obviously ony 3 very small number of language choices can be taken ove in this vay otherwise Language would cease to exis, The Feationship between language a register fs much more symbiotic than this, As far as probabilistic realisation is concerned, field realised by making certain experiential choices far more likely than others (lexieal choices are more noticeable; {grammatical choices ate too general in meaning to transparently distinguish held). Thus i sou drop in om a consersation, it will tke you a moment helore you realise what people fre talking about, You have to walt until you have heard enough of dhe mutually expectant Tesical tems to give ava the fie, Depending on your familiarity with the tick it mas take you more oF les time to catch on. When, for example, do you recognise the ted of the Following string: oot, nu, algorithm, bit, ring capac param? “The more sou know about computers, the quicker you will eatch on realisations are aso found, As ar as eli concerned these are words, very technical ones, ndexical ‘which tend to be used almost exclusives ima given field. IFyou understand the word, it almost automatically implicates the fel. The word moxphephonemics, taken from the tek of linguistics, isone such indexcal Note that invdexical items and ‘of mutually expectant lexical items realise they mut not be equated with ick, Field ia register category, relerring to one or another institution, Lexical items are linguistic categories, through which il is realised. At the level of register we ate loving a ld in terms of what people are doing with their ives, At the level of language we are looking at Held in terms of how we know atkat people ate ‘doing The two perspectives are distinct, asociated with dillerent semiotic systems ~ the fone realising the other (Halliday sia Martin 1993; Martin andl Vee! 1998). Mode (On the surface choice of mode Fooks hike it could simply he specified in television, telephone, lm, leer, notice, e-mail and so on. But it iin fact necessary to go158 s.R. maRTIN somewhat deeper than this ithe effect which mode has on choices within language is to be Tully appreciated. The hest way to do ths to consider the etfect diferent channels have ‘on communication. One clear elect that they affect the relation between speaker and listener by placing harriers ber.cen them, When compared with face-to-face conversation in this light, lerent channels can be seen to allect oth aural and visual contact Tee phones remose the visual channel, while maintaining sural fedhack. Television permits ‘one-way visual contact, but removes aural fecdback. Radios take away the visual channel completely. Considered along these lines i is possible to set up a sale ean from face to-lice dalogue to tream.of consciousness writing or thinking aloud at the other. At one end, speaker and listener are a lowe to each other as possible; atthe other, the question of audience disappears completely: This sale is outlined in Figure 9-3 boo forssouiness Sut sua maton aback: a SNevat ess svete gure 9.3 Tf ire a The second thing that modes doi allot the relation between language anl what its talking about. This dimension opposes language in action to language a+ reflection, cr for example, a game of cricket. At one end ofthis scale we ave the language of the players and umpire duriag the game, Nest on the scale wovld he ball-hy-ball ‘commentary on the game. This willbe somewhat further removed from language inaction on rao than on television since on teksision the commentator and his atlience ean hath sce what is going on, but on radio ans the commentator ean, Ata further remove from the action would be an interview sith the pavers alter the gam game, followed by a report ofthe game in the paper the nest da. Ths i leading us towards the relletive end ofthe seal, where action s reconstructed, rather than commented on, Next we might place « hook about cricket in a given year then a book about cricket in abstract to eral. Finally can oven more one which constructs rather than reconstruct reality An example might he philosophically oriented treatise on sport, lar pla and ricket ax symbolising the English 183s of life (no underarm bowling allowed), What is happening along this sale is that language is hecoming further and further rene from what i is actually talking about, ‘ot simply in terms of temporal distance (distance tram the scene ofthe crime as it were), bout eventually in terms of abstraction aswell, Abstract siting snot reall about ansthing you ean touch, taste, hear, see or smell, though ofcourse, in the end any sense material it must connect with abservable action reflection scale outlined in Figure 9.4 Like fie, mode has both indexical and probabilistic realisations. Unlike field iti realised forthe most part through textual systems, One clear set of indexieal realisations ‘occurs in grevtng sequences atthe beginning of texts reciprocal Hi Hi signals face-to face dialogue; phone conversations begin with Hilo followed by Hi or some other greeting, an possibly some form of identification; newsreaders begin with a more formal greeting, to which there is of course no reply letters begin with Dear NY; hooks with a iFwhat we write isin ets of some kind or other. This, LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE 159 we ZA ZS gute 14. tama wae preface or acknowkgements, and so on, (Note that i snot the formality of the greeting "hich i important here, but rather the form of the greeting and its relation to a response if there is onc, The formality of greetings sa feature of tenor) Probabilistic realsations of trode Toc large on dens, where thsi interpreted boas to encorpar tent, Nmicaton and then. Clee of preset tense fa dg), Hist psa (ne), demon Straten pointing to the nomerbal context (hs here now) andthe selection of eto Stcand perso if me, jou) theme preues pattern fot language inaction dng mode: Language which eeonsructs events onthe ther hand prefers past tense Sa remote demonstrates here hn th). Ard eflecive language often select simple generic present tense (Broting distance varies with pee), generic reference to whole classes {thoes ae mana), and favours abstract lexical tems as theme There i a great deal more to be said about the realisation of movle, based on Iknossledge about the grammar and discourse structure of English which cannot be assumes! here. What all the different realisations relleti the general concept of contextual slepenglencs. Are the meanings of the text largely implicit, inthe sense that unless we ean see wha the participants ar ding we cant rely understand what going on? Or the text expt, independent of contest, otha sips hy ang the text wean understand sth the txt eabout (asuming we know eugh aout the fi tht ecniait eot problem): The more speakers are doing thing together al engaging in dloge, the more thes ean take for granted Tanguage mines aay fom the eve sre, an he fa fechack removed morc snd mors of he meanings 3 ext mang mat how ell poss bh renlere explicit that text f the ae ta be rocoxerel bya rear, 90 ma informed (Biber 1988; Halliday 1983, Halliday ane! Matin 993), Tenor Tenor was disused abore with regard to status and formality; but it fs actually a more complex isue than that, Alongside status, our relations ith others are shaped by another factor: contact, This has to do with our feclngs towards others whether or not we ike them love them or hate them, These felings themselves are somewhat volatile depending “ from moment to moment, We all have a tendency to treat our in part on our emotions y losers as enemies ater banging our heads or watching them break a prized posession, Alongside these dispositions i the question of how offen we run into the people we are talking to. There are mans people we meet quite Frequently for example, aminstrators, colleagues, newsagents, sandwich counter attendants and sles clerk - without necesaril Feeling much of an emotional bond sith them, Se ee ee ee ee ee ee ee eee ee eee ee ee ee ee ee eee ee ee EE EE EE ES ES ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee eee160 J.R, WARTIN This gives demon to worry about when cnsering tenor status, which foci on poser rltions dominant or dferentia oes an ont whi ocases on cor alignment al fit with thers (lone an dian roles) Ite shuaye shea important to Snir tx fom tk ppt, sas pean sony shape sca Tenor is for the most part realived through interpersonal ystems, One of the clearest indexial realiations of tenor is found in the choice of vocatives or adlress terms Reciprocal ue of frst ames John/ Bll) signals solidarity, while non-reciproxal Yoho/ Pro ‘Brow is the sign of power Silas, my tle dling inlexes lane, and com faking Kas ih des ot ait, sve are many: praise etn of ten nd, Engh prubaiy at on extreme i thi ope Mans angogensructare ore Fly into their grammar ae! leis than English cows indexing status and th verb morphology (Japanese) or clioice of lexial items (in Javanese, for example, there are two or three words for exery common English word, and sou have ¢9 choose the appropriate one depending on tenor). English speakers express deference, for example, by favouring posility asa moaality (pos contact thr mgr, may might, being indirect in commands (oul sou mind opsning the door? instead af pen the dor cagrecing with thie superiors, letting thir superior initiate topes of conversation, avoiding alfet and soon. Again, a fall discussion ol this matter depen on a detail unverstanding of the lesie _grammatical resources of English uses in this area, The unifying theme ofthese resources ‘oval distance. They show how close sou feel tthe person sou are taki to ang the ‘ert axe of pcr wltos and the hort o ? horivena of communal gna Slade 1997; Poynton 1985), . X he instructive to stop and consider for a moment achat lle would be like i register did not exist es Impossible 10 find examples of recogntably human activity without register, although pple often fntasse about what x ‘ Shout eter nou be He, thinking in ere Sone kindof heaven, utopia nirvana. A worl without Fld woul be on to whch people cnt do amin with thir es Th simp wander around, eating grapes an Herts they rum across them, art af reer emg pin toute es st sitcnurse) Without tenon everyone would have tube equal su could mere be sare mb Goal wan tha wo pl evening, sou nol he on ae hs endl cre Tandy in tom tft no stanger Em), Without mee thre cl Bs ot wing iY al inp hat thet picking erry satng kaa wate whatever Remini o planing would jt rate posi Sa rings 8 question pera Whee the ce, human acne kw thom dt iyo oh ed The chines thy gt pha the ld mom ling otha enero ls do forgatonAeisep nb ger haat es hemor i he pa ar or the Tutu eld in ligt aesace Tans moments a the est a Inde eer pha; mua intra Ica,Meerphtr mace an Genre What about this other parasite, genre? Like register, genre has no phonology of iy own. It rakes meanings hy shaping register by cunsitioning the way in which fel, mode and LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE 161 tenor are recurrentls mapped! onte one another in a given culture. This mapping ten to tnd in pases and ger to the dni goa oem aging structure of gees Cider or coample, a sersice encounter in 4 wml bop. To begin yo exchange frecimg. with alespercon who wl ler tv serve you. You will hen wate your nce Fethas elping vourels or perting the akperson to sats your requirements, When fou get whit sea, ou ill tol how much cox Yo then pa sour ene tonne alkane, Thos stages can ho stot follows, Hasan 1977, 1984; Mitchel 1957, entla 1987), anng"* to nde sequen Greeting * Service Bid # Statement af Neel ® Need Compliance * Decision to Buy Payment * Leave-taking Some elements may be skippet some may recur; and they sho not aways occur in this ‘onder The important thing that you get what you were alter, using language to work your ‘vay through whatever stops are cesar: Note that these stages are culturally spect. In many cultures, for example, the price of goods isnot fixed and vou woul have to bargain tevestablish far price here deciding to bus ¢ Mitchell 1957). Thies something that man travellers tnd illic, because bargaining for emall goods isnot a ‘matter-of-fact’ part of the culture trom whieh they come: ‘Consiter now how the values oid, muck atl tenor change as you move through the phases outlined above, Suppose tht the Fld involves a small greengrocers shop. During the Service Bid and Payment the focus of the text will be on the actisity of using and selling But during the Statement of Need, Nev Compliance apd Decision to Buy the focus will shit to the proucts the shop is offering, And the Greeting and Leave-taking are nat thing at all. As far as move concerned, the text wll tend towards face really shout to-ace dialogue, language in action, Hut imagine that vou are dithering over the avocados ch, involving in the Decision to Buy stage. The greengrocer may sell unc into a ales 4 more abstract monologie moe sshich rellecis upon the merits of the avocados in {question, speculates about hows much you will enjoy eating them, makes suggestions For Preparation and enties sot with a special offer 4 sat i tenor might be imvobed in this {ake pitch as well, with the grocer caFrsing on as your trusted confidant. Ifyou do bus, you are likely to leave the shop sou entered as a customer feeling more like the grocers mate If you don’t, sou may leave feling a ttle les frictlly than when you came in ~ peehaps ister ales shift around as thes do in reaction to your soluctant to return Future. Ther gals This is what gente is set up to explain: how you accomplish things, om a day-to-day basis nx culturally speci way Like register, genre is realised both probabiitically and indevicalls. Let's take an ‘example of a genre ofa dierent kind to illustrate this a narrative (Labuov and Waletzky 1967; Martin and Plum 1997), Tivo of the best knovsn indxieal realisations of narrative are the opening Once upon vse and the closing nd hey led happy ever offer. Once you bear these clic, vou knoe immediately what genre you are listening to (unless of course somone is playing a joke on you; the point i that you know its a joke precisely because {our expectancies are frustrated). Probabilistic relations of narrative are alo relevant The Orientation which introduces the characters and sets the story in time and place will ional clauses (e.g Once upon a time there wav a He/she was othe u The Complication will them tend tend to include re tage faced.) ith associated ctcumstantial elem to continue with aseries of temporally relate material processes (She did hicand then she did Geeceee gece gece eget eg eee gee gee gee ges eee ge geese eee ee eee eee pee eee eee eee eee eee eeeee ee eeeeC |1624.8. MARTIN this und chen she Jul...) leading up to something unexpected a crisis. At this point the temporal unfolding may be suspended for a moment wil the the thoughts and feelings of ro an perhaps another protagonist are explore He elt he though she sald ). Then the Resolution carries on, much like the Complication in its realisation until the problem setup inthe story is resolved, far beter or worse. Finally, the narrator may comment on the point af tlling the story ina Coda, often using a demonstrative that to refer tothe story itself along with some expression of attitude (e@ Thar wos a ell lore call), Note that since both genre al register are realise forthe most part probabilisically, they allow the individual considerable freedom in determining just how they ate to be realised. The patterns of selection by which we recognise 3 genre, or some field, mode oF tenor, ae distributed throughout a texts there are om afew local constants This does not mean honwever that register and genre can he ignored. They cannot You have to use enough signals of register and gone to ensure that sour listener can sce where you are coming from, Otherwise, you wll simply not be fully understood. But the notion of probabilistic realisation over whole texts docs mean that genre and register are not mechanical formulae, which stand inthe way ofan individual’ ercatvity oF sel expression. Iti peshaps a truism ta civ that your can't write if you don't fist keose language. But it is equally true to say that sou can't write you don't control the appropriate register and genres. Unartunatels, control ofthese systems is something that ccluators have too alee taken for granted. Like all semiotic systems, genre involves choc, and these choices bundle together into groups orient to relatable generic tasks, In our Culture, for example, there are many diferent kinds of area What they have in common is taking up a stance seth respect to a temporally related series ol events forming the backbone of the text, Perhaps the simplest form of narrative isthe recount In recounts, nothing really goes wrong, and this {s sshat istinguishes them from narratives. Narratives are focused around relatively problematic oF noteworthy events the narrator is making a point about. They may have a ‘more develaped heginning and end than recounts, witha more clborate Orientation and 4.Covla which makes the point of telling the story explicit This i because we usualy tell recounts to people with whom we share a great deal of experience, whereas narratives are mone public texts, needing to stand up in their own right, Labor and Waletzky (1967) suggest that one lilference between narratives of personal experience (stories about something that happened to you) and narratives of vicarious experience (stories that happened to someone else cr are n le up) is that narratives of personal experience have some kindof evaluation atthe criss point, daring which the listener is invited to identify ‘sith the narrator’ flings at this point inthe stors Speciic hinds of narrative makes spcetic kinds of point (Martin and Plum 1997)-The point of a fable is usually made explicit in a moral Patables make their point meta: Phoricall, though they may be embeded in religious discourse whose message they serve to exemplify: While sharing many aspects of structure, cach ofthese narrative {Spex llers somewhat inthe stages it goes though andthe precise nature ofthe stages them selves. This is because cach has a different, though relatable purpose in our culture Recounts review activities, narratives proper entertain, fables and parables instruct, and more literary narratives function as highly valued displays of verbal art In order to achieve these different goals, the structure f the texts themselses must difler As with register, research into genre from a linguistic point of view i sil developing (For recent developments see Christie and Martin 1997; Eggins ant Slade 1997; Ghatlessy LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE 163 1999; Martin and Vie! 1998, The important thing a lar as applied linguistics is concerned inguin te incerstd ng alto Begin will he to determine which genres consumers of bi ‘working on these In summary then, as Malinowski argued mote than fifty years ago, you cannot under stn ex ues sou Km somthing abet te content nhc occurs Beste we dre nc animale th coment ec one Ie inoles people doing things wih hit ives ttely erating with ther people enor) and Maing us of one or another “hanno communication av asa tn) ode Bey ht ae peop ageing n purporfalgalarinted aetiice (genre-Therehter categorie of el, snot temor cused ere present te attempt of one otf func ingucs ith hat Ninna Firth meat by content of ttn The prowetsa more recat tempt by tents ofthe Ings working to came ti discussion of genre in this school to explore what Malinoseski and Firth meant by context of culture. The strategy they are using sto interpret both register and genre as semiotic systems in their no phonology of thir on, ‘own right, but semiotics with the peculiar property of havi Boh depend cn language's words and structures to making meaning. Interpreted in this Fight, Hinguistie i the foundation not winks of the study of human commdnication, but of social science taken in avery broad sense. Th functional linguists adopting this extro- ‘verted stance are attempting to proside a perspective on learning which both challenges and complements that drawn from cognitive psychology in educational research, (For recent reviews of ther contributions we Christic 1992; Cope apd Kalantis 1993; Grabe an Kaplan 1996; Hasan sind Willams 1996; Martin 1993, 1997, 1939.) Note An catler vers of dis chapter ssa publish in F; Christe td.) 1984 ECT 419 Chien aenge4 Renker, Geelong, Vie: Deakin University Pros References Bal. JCC oon: Langan erste te 1973 Cl Ce and Cn 2: phd Soi: rd Sc of Lagu Tondo, Rourke and Kozan Pal rman ean, Language a sation Biber, 1988 faettion acros: Speech andilrting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thier 1995, Dmenaoms of Relation: 4 Crag Pree Cable Cambri Unieraty Pros Fier Dal E- Finegan (ih) 1998 Solingiic Rp on Frain, Ont Onfor M.A.K. Halliday ard R.A, Ruins (sh) 1966 J» Memory of Bie University Pres. Birch, D- and M, O'Fonke (ey) 1988 Function of Sle, London: Pinter Christie, F1992 Literacy in Australia, Annual Resi of ApliadLingusis 12: 142 (Christies rand J. Martin (eds) 197 Genes and Irtatiane Seal Pacem ehelRonkplace and Schoo. Lonel: Cavell Cope, Wo and M. Kalani es) 1993 The Poses of Laer Gente Approach ro Teaching Liters Lonlon: Falmer (Critical Perspectives on Literacy and Education) and Pitsburg ‘of Pts Press Pittsburg Series ia Composition Literacy, and Culture) Unive eee eee gee eee gee eee geese gece g gee epee epee eee Cee eee eee eee eee gece eee ge eee ecg eee eee164 1.8, MARTIN Cale, 19%6 Sas. Landon: Fontan Sakrn Master Se, Eggi S194 to nlcon Sem Fenn! Lingua, London: Pe Ein, Sand J. Maro 1997 Gann and eters cus cE san Die) nce a Sete nd Pees ann Sge Dievars Sai: Sl Ins lune 230 56 Eggi Sasa 1997 tng Cal Gama, Lon: Case Fath [R957 pn ngs 19341951 Lome: Ont ier) Pr Firth ]R1957H. ano of ngs tors, 1930-1955 Stee Lingo fn hp fe Pill Set) Lon: Backvel ppSt Reprin ER Palme ta) 1968 Sted Pope af Fh 1932 1930 Lon Logan, ets 35, Fries Band M. Graory cy 1995 Dace sn Sea: Stem Fann Repti Nonwon NfAescldanesin Disorse Pese Gn, 1995 Tango fe The Come Te Reto, Syl: Amen shasta Foes Chat, Me) 1988 Retr of Hinton Engl: Stain! ators and gi fas Ten: Prem ngs Gay Mt) 999 ar no Too od Pan. mn: Ptr Chae Me) 199 Come-To of Pace Amer Bein Grab, Wa R. Kaplan 1996 Thos on! Puce ing. Longman Ap Tings an Yanga Sea Gregory M1967 apt vartierentaton, ora angus 3177 98, Gregory M. and Carll 1978 Fang an Sane: Eager oa BS Coa Landon: Rote and Reg al ld 4.81971 pos mt oso ang: Ldn: Ea el Hats S.A.K 975 lrg boo a Epi nee Delp of Langage ond Favor Aro (aploronn tangnge ed) uli, MAK 197 fang So Smut The Sl Ie of Langage and ago orl Math, MUR T9S5 Qohen adltnce Language, Gevlng Vie: Deakin Uneray Pro Republi Ono era Pree 9 Hs, MAKI to Id to Fae omar (2 el London: aad ook Halla, M.A.K. and R Ha 1985 Zang. Cone ane: pe of Langu: nw Sc smote Arp Glog, i Deakin Unieran Press Repel by Oxtod ner rs 989 Hy, MLA.K- and J Marin 193 Haig Soe: ea al Darn Pr Loon Hal (rte Brees Ltrs al Elta, His, RIOT? Test te stomatal nt Dresser Ca Thin ings Berlin Wales te Grater pp 298 48 Haun, R. 1984 The nursery tale as genre. Noting Finguntic Csular 19 (Special sue om Systemic Linguists), pp. 71 102. Republished in Han 1996, pp. S172 Haan, R. 1985 Lingus, Langeage and tral te. Geelong, Vic. Deakin University Press Republished London: Oxford University Press 1989 Hasan, R. 1990 Semantic sariation and socalinguistics, fasraian Journal af Lingus: 92): 221-76, Hixan,R. 1996 Hg of Sung in of Meaning. edited by C. Cloran, D, Batt an G. Willams. TLondn: Cas Hasan, Rand J. Martin (eds) 1889 fonguayeDeseopment Learning Language Learning Culture, LANGUAGE, REGISTER AND GENRE 165 Norwornd, NJ: Ablox (dsances in Dicourse Processes 27 - Meaning and Choice in Language Stes For Michael Hall Hasan, Wane G. Wilms (ch 1996 Ler Sct. London: Longman (Applied Linguistics nd Language Std) Hjelmses, £1961 Prgomona to 2 Tog of Language, Madinon, Wh University of Wisconsin Pros Kress, G. and Hedge 1979 Language o deoigs London: Reatlsge and Kegan Pa Lahor, Wand J. Naletzhy 1967 Narrative anal n .Helen fd) Eason her andiual tes (Proneeings of the 1966 Spring Mecting of the American Ethnogical Soviet). Satie: University of Washington Press, 12-44, Reprint in urd of Nanas and ie Hagar TA 4). 338, Locke Torey H, 1995 Language and Canter Funcionl Fingurie Tory of Reger dtd David Bir, London: Pinter, Malinowski, B, 1923 The prablm of meaning i primitive languages. Supplement Ito C.K. ‘Ogden and 1. Richards The Moaning of soning, Now York: Harcourt Brace & World, pp. 296 436, Malinoski B. 1935 Co Gundons and thei Magic tf. 2. Lond: All and Unsin, Martin, JR, 1985 stalling. Enploring and hullnging Sxl Reals Geclong, Ves Deskin University Pros. Republished by Oxford University Press 1988, Martin, JR. 1992 Engl Te System and Seracture. Amster; Bemis, Martin, JR. 1993 Genre andl iteracy mosklling context in eshastionsl linguistics, taneal Reve of Applid Lingus 13: 141-72 Martin, JR. 1997 Linguistics and the consumer: theary in practice, Lingus and Ellin 913): 409.46, Martin, R. 1999 Mentoring semogenesis "genre has literacy pesagogs. I F Cristie te) Padoggs und che Shaping of Conciounen: Linguistic and Soil Poses. London: Cavell (Open Linguists Series), pp. 123-35 Martin, [Rand G. Plan 1997 Consteuing eaporence: same sory gente, forma af Naraise “and fife isons 721 4 Spoval Ione: OralNersons of Personal Experioce: thee decades ‘Enarrative analysis; Guest Ed, M, Bamberg: 299 308 in J. and Vel 1998 Roading Scene: Cc and Fansinsl Paps on Drsares of ‘iene London: Roath Mathesius,\. 1964 On the potentisity of the phenomena of language. In J. Nachck deh) 1 Prag Scol Reader Lingants. Bloomington Indians Univers Press, Motthiewen, C.MGEM. 1993 Register in the und: diversity in 4 uniied theory of register ‘analysis In Ghadsy 1993; 221 92 Mitchell, TF. 1959 The language of busing and selling fm Cyrensic: a situational statement pers 26: 81-71, Reprinted in TF, Mitehell 1975 Pringpls of Neo Frzban Lingus London: Longman, pp. 187 200, Painter, C. 1984 Io the Mother Tnguee4 Cae Stud of Eath Languoge Development. Londo: Pinter Painter, C1994 Learning the Mtb Tong (2a eda. Glog, Vie: Deakin University Press sinter C, 1999 Learning though Language n Earle Choad. London Case Pearce, J. G, Thornton and D. Mackiy 1989 The Programme in Linguistics and English Teaching, University College London, 1964. 1971. In Hasan and Marin 1989: 329-68. Panton, C1985 Fanguige and ander: Making the Difference. Geclong, Vi. Deakin Unisersity Press. Republi! London: Oxford University Press 1989, Rochester, Sa J.R. Martin 1979 Crus Tal Stud ofthe Dicsarse of Shivaphrni Soars New York: Plenum. ee eee eee eee ee eee eee eee eet eeal1660 4.8. MARTIN ‘Rothery, J. 1996 Making changes: developing an educational linguistic. In Hasan and Willams 1996 86-123 Saussure, F de 1915 Coure in Ganeral Lingus, edited by C. Bally and A. Sechehaye in collaboration with. Riclinger: New York: McGrail 1966, Use, J-and J: Ells 197 Register in scrips linguistics and linguistic socolog. fn O. Uribe Villas (ed. rae nSaclingnaies. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 197-285, emtola, E, 1987 The Strucune of Social Inaction: Sytem proach tothe Semin of Service Encouners, London Pinter Chapter 10 Clare Painter UNDERSTANDING GENRE AND REGISTER: IMPLICATIONS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING EARNING A NEW LANGUAGE ALWAYS insoles learning t leat something ‘of the was of operating in the society where that language is used. Most language tecachershave usually heen very conscious ofthe ned to take this fact into account in devs Ing Iruittl language-learsing methodologics. To assist sith this goal it s help to have ‘623s of thinking about language that focus oa its role in enabling the learner to participate inthe new culture. wo concepts which have proved very worthishile in this endeavour are ‘those of gene andl reir, which derive from ssstemic: functional linguists (SFL), What is genre? In the contest of language education the term genre comes from a perspective on language which sees it asa resource — resource that se call upon in order to achicve our social goals (sce Martin, Chapter 9), Any activity in the culture may ta a greater of loser extent involve langua ‘example, hooking stax, recounting an anecdote, holding a mecting, providing a record of 4 mcting in minutes, making a social security benchts claim and so on, Neither the Activities themselves nor the way they are carried out will nccessarily be uniform across cultures. In many culturcs, for example, any purchase of goods will require a stage of bargaining in the process and an outsler who does not appreciate this willbe unable 10 operate effective, however good their command of the grammatical patterns of the language ‘One way of siowing the culture forthe purposes of language teaching then, isi terms of the totality of is purposeful activities ofthe kind mentioned above, and ite thes culturally speci, purposeful activities which are referred to.as genre. Martin and Rothery (1980-81) define genre as "staged, goal-oriented! social process", emphasising therefore the falling thre points 1 Any genre pertains toa particular culture and its socal institutions ¢hence *Socal™ process).