Halliday's Texture in Language (Week 2)

• As Halliday says, language is a "system of meanings" with forms for expressing these meanings.
• To understand a list of words, consider them as a series of choices e.g. 'milk' instead of 'juice'.
• The context of choices and the relationships between them form the basis of "texture".
• Texture is what makes a set of sentences a text rather than a random collection.
• Halliday says a language speaker's ability to distinguish strings of sentences "is due to the inherent texture in the language and to his awareness of it”.
• Texture, in language, relies on the relationship among words and sentences.
• Grammatical rules help understand relationships in a text.
• The appearance of items in a list provides a base connection.
• Another textual connection is similarity i.e. belonging to the same semantic field.
• Connections between words become more clear when words appear in conversation e.g the use of 'and', 'we', and 'need'.
• According to Halliday, understanding language conventions and communication is inside the mind of the reader.
• Language conventions help form a framework for understanding the text.
• Common knowledge helps understand what people do with texts such as shopping lists.
• Texts are related to other texts, and reference to outside texts may be needed to understand them.
• Relationships/connections are what make a text with cohesion, coherence and intertextuality.
• Cohesion is the relationship between words, sentences, and elements inside the text.
• Coherence is the relationship between the text and the reader, relying on background knowledge and social conventions.
• Intertextuality is the relationship between one text and other texts.

Texts and Social function

• Structures and expectations in texts contribute to their social function and define social activities and groups.
• Studying the social functions of texts is called genre analysis.
• Genres and expectations offer ideas about stories and characters.
• Films may mix genres, subvert expectations, and not fit neatly into genres.
• Discourse analysis asks what the structures of texts tell us about the people who use them and what they use them to do.
• Bhatia defines genre as a communicative event characterized by communicative purposes understood by the community.
• Genres have constraints on contributions and allow the expertise of members.
• Bhatia's definition has 3 parts: genres are communicative events; events have constraints; expert users exploit constraints.

Genres as communicative events

• Genres are communicative events, rather than just objects.
• Texts are instances of people doing things to other people e.g informing or instructing.
• Martin points out that, genres are how things get done using language.
• Texts have multiple purposes and complex communicative purposes.
• The purposes of different users of the text may differ.

Conventions and Constraints

• Genres are structured by what people want to do with them.

• Genres have constraints to fulfill communicative purpose.

• These constraints govern not just what can be included but how it should be included e.g. an application letter.

• The move structure (order) of a genre determines success.

• Conventions and constraints facilitate communication and show that the text producer knows how to do things.

• Successfully producing a type of genre indicates that the writer is a 'certain kind of person' who communicates like us.

• Employers find good qualifications using effective job application letters.

Creativity

• Successful texts defy conventions and push boundaries by mixing different kinds of text together and altering moves.
• Genre alteration is limited by the communicative purpose.
• Creativity relies on an understanding of expectations.
• Creativity relates to the context of the genre.
• Successfully defying conventions requires expertise.

Discourse communities

• The concept of genre involves belonging: using genres shows membership of groups.
• Genres relate to common goals, and common means of achieving these goals.
• Swales calls these groups "discourse communities".
• Discourse communities are expert members socializing new members.
• Members communicate regularly, provide feedback, and share a vocabulary.
• Common goals and genres reinforce each other.
• Using a genre moves the group closer to goals, validates the goals, and validates the member doing the action.
• Genres regulate what people can do and who they can be.
• Built-in goals make questioning hard and membership requires "buying into" the community.
• Fixed texts fix relationships.
• Genres are tools to define, organize, and structure social life, not just text types.

Discourse and Ideology

• A discourse is how texts are structured and the social functions they fulfill.
• Focus on: author versions of reality; author-reader relationships; representing other people's words; and larger concepts.
• Words are not neutral: they represent the world and create relationships.
• Ideologies are beliefs about what is good/bad, right/wrong, normal/abnormal.
• Ideologies define the world and limit how we look at it.

Cultural Models

• Cultural models make texts and actions understandable.
• Cultural models reflect beliefs of a particular place and time.
• Cultural models reinforce expectations and beliefs.

Intertextuality

• Intertextuality are the connections between a text and other texts.
• Bakhtin says that every time we speak or write, we "borrow" words from others.
• Texts make reference to previous texts, contributing to a web of texts.
• This can be explicit using direct quotes.
• Reference can be oblique using paraphrasing and presuppositions.
• Presupposition links a text with shared knowledge making ideas harder to challenge.
• Fairclough calls borrowing of genres/styles interdiscursivity.
• Hashtags in digital genres link texts to larger webs.
• Different texts have different rules of intertextuality.
• Journalists usually "clean up" quotes whereas discourse analysts use "um" and "ah."
• Academics cite sources completely, while journalists hardly ever do this.

All the right moves

• Texts structured by genre have communicative purposes that is a key focus in analysis.

• The way certain genres are created depends on what people want to do using the genre.

• Communicative purpose is broken into steps/moves (like a recipe).

• The most important constraints are what steps must be in the genre, and the order they appear.

• Swales studied academic article introductions, asking "what do writers need to do to achieve their purpose?"

• The identified moves are: establishing a field; summarizing research; creating a research space; and introducing the study and accomplishment.

• Introductions may only contain some of these moves in some order or only contain different moves.

• Some genres are more conventional than others and exhibit more variety.

• Oral narratives are familiar, and easy to reproduce.

• Certain narratives are specialized, and demonstrate membership of a community.

• Since 2010, oral narratives circulate on YouTube in "It Gets Better" videos, where older LGBTQ people talk about experiences of bullying when younger.

• They talk about their lives to send a message that it gets better for "at risk" teens.

• Savage and White posted a video shock inspired by a news story of suicide bullied teens.

• When they posted, they set a template followed by others, and now has videos from celebreties.

• The stories told are stories, and this is where Labrov comes in, just as much as it is where actions that the narrators take in relation to their listeners.

• The stories, with each "move" as the narrator helps their listeners.

• In each video, a sequence can be found:

• Annoucning purpose of video

• Explaining problems of youth

• Explaining how problems were resolved

• Comparng my to their

• Offering encouagement and advice

• Reminding that it "gets better"

• The narrators offer their experiance and show themselves to mebers of the discourse community in the videos by the words they say.

• Genres are distinguished by moves, and particular words and phrases/ styles are used.

• Genres often have associations with different modes and media.

• Genres can serve many purposes for different authors and audiences.

• “It Gets Better” genre are designed for particular audiences to provide different perspectives.

• The main communicative purpose of "It’s Gettter”, is to inspire people and give voice to sufferings but the parents are included.

• Parents communicate, and try to offer care.

• Policy makers, are to alert a problem

• For the bullies, is to give shame for their actions

• Genre, consist of ordinary LGBTQ wish to the help or difficulty of the youths, or facing same thing.

• Posters, include singers, actors, politicians.

  • I do not know it like what it has to be in picked on because its what to grow what I have it do not belong/ Barack ebama.

• By making better for a video with better for a better videos also make a political statement is making a political state

• I’m gay/ Boris.

Comunicative purpose

• Comunicative purpose is not as seem, Since many genres do have many purposes.
• Rental Contract.
• The idea is to give hope as well as give voice to the indignities that they suffering.

Discourse coomunties

• Its is all about the genre belong to the members if LGBTQ members but it is still can’t get to transgender community.

• Generes serve in discourse, beyond members or community: help members accomplish the very concrete goals, that serves the encourage or harm from them selves. First, they promote what the members and all can use it. It is not itlicit, but it can be through social actions and the social relationships.

• genres can’t not serve to those the main functions, is social to do ways of of thinking.

• for sociallized genres, has portryal as competent membes and that shows that this can be hard to get throught.

• tradion, can follow the template how it by others make their to parctpe and their the project and also support the friend their

• So, the to best answer who make the videos better to support the community to come give a support one and all. This community sharess all what Swales

• Online community the expert members and there communiciate.

• The qualities are shrared, It is stop the bullied from other what the other are getting through in order to equal rights for LGBTQ People.

• the key is giving hope to the teens and all what need to find what is important for the support group. All the same all genres must show a dimsenion because their are functins, to create community to become

Constructing Reality

• What the text is what it tell, it will all do what you ever need and there. If they are being, I just got the to hear and know all there. So, is like no be to neutral with all kinds ways to what it means is the text of people like it can all not be

For your comfort and pease of mind a video and that is what the better I’am for the time

• it is a different partipatn in tv. I will do that and watch and tv what I was like. i had the