An E845 exercise: Reading power dynamics linguistically (TENOR).
Thursday, 5 May 2016, 09:34
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Steve Bamlett, Friday, 6 May 2016, 15:00
Unable to meet the demands of H817, I've taken the curiosity elsewhere to E845.
Here is a reading of a passage where I am beginning to try and understand the dynamics of power relations in writing. Here is the passage:
1 All children watch TV but maybe it’s not such a good thing.
2 On one hand, television can teach you lots of things, like the alphabet and maths. Sesame Street is really popular and there are lots of other programmes which I think are good and you can learn things from them.
3 Nevertheless, children’s TV makes kids think it’s cool to swear and fight, which leads to accidents from them fighting.
4 Nonetheless, children become addicted to the television. They stay inside all day which is just lazy and unhealthy. This makes children overweight.
5 Watching too many cartoons can block children’s imagination and when writing stories children get ideas from programmes which also block imagination.
6 However, we might start watching adult TV if there was no more kids TV. This could show swearing and other things of that sort.
7 On the other hand, television is a great source of employment. It provides work for everyone. In addition children can improve acting skills and adults can work and have fun too.
8 However, television is also a social thing. People talk about programmes the next day with friends and I like seeing what my friends think about things. And having discussions improves skills in school.
9 In conclusion, many people will have their say as there are plenty of arguments on both sides.
Here is the response - an exercise on reading TENOR
Feature of tenor examined
Comment
Linguistic evidence
Social roles and social status
The social roles and relationships appear relatively fixed at first
glance. The writer has power of interrupted discourse but must also conform
to an agenda that regulates their speech made up of teaching and learning
conventions, precedent and ‘rules and rubrics’. That suggests the power to
change certain features of genre is limited and that the writer shows
invisible awareness of the gaze of an eye monitoring their performance
(embodied in the teacher momentarily).
The social role of the genre is said to be objective in that it
eschews an identifiable ‘subject position’ in favour of ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’.
Hence the essay starts by working with nominal groups considered as
independent of the writer: ‘All children’. Likewise ‘watching TV’ a process
is often nominalised as an agent (‘TV makes kids think it’s cool to swear’).
This is the first time children and kids are used as synonyms but the effect
is to disturb the surface of the generic register,
There are different relationships set up between the writer and ‘children’
on the one hand and ‘kids’ on the other. In (3) TV is an agent in a process
that is material – making but also mental (how should we discuss this?). In
(4) children are an affected participant by the mental process that has no specific
agent – ‘addicted to the television’ not made to do something by it. The
change in register is also there in the lexical shift between TV and ‘television’.
We have a very ‘hybrid’ discourse here.
Social distance
The writer is given power to assert meaning that they have apparently
made but only in relation to the limits of genre. However, the writer can
play with the social distance between themselves and the observing,
regulating and monitoring eye, not least in challenging the formal role and
relationships expected of them within the generic ‘prescription’.
The disturbance of the balance of ‘discussion genre’ in the unequal
distribution of ‘for’ v. ‘against’ arguments could, and probably will be seen
by the teaching establishment as a failure to meet the generic requirements
set. I’m marking TMAs at the moment and I’m feeling
identity – torn. On the other hand, we could see the conflict as
beginning to involve the writer on one side rather than the other. Is this
the resistance that ‘kids’ set up to ideological threshold learning like how
to be ‘objective’ and how to achieve ‘balance’? The distance between ‘I’ and
my friends(nominalised as ‘kids’) often relaxes. At this point guardians of the
genre (and much else besides implied by order, balance and control) will begin to protest. Hence, is this writing a
dynamic act of belated rebellion?
Speaker / writer persona
The persona is regulated in relation to:
(a)The
presumed authoritative reader who knows how this should be written;
(b)The
ideational content and the subject positions it represents.
In effect the writer writes for the teacher in order to meet
prescribed criteria for the ‘role’ of a writer in this genre (aiming for ‘objectivity’,
‘balance’ etc.).
They also write in relation to the possible identification they might
have with a subject position which can be described as a ‘child who watches
TV’.
These persona are sometimes confounded!
The clearest evidence here for ‘persona instability’ (if I might call
it that) is the slippage from passive to active tenses and the appearance and
disappearance of the writer’s self-representation as an agent in the material
process of watching TV.
Compare (5) & (6).
(a)In (5) nominalisation of the process ‘Watching
too many cartoons’ is linguistically represented as agent in relation to the
effected participant ‘children’. The source of the ‘knowledge’ here is
clearly external – from teaching content or reading perhaps.
(b)In (6) the actor /agent participant is ‘we’
which confounds the writer persona with the ideational subject position (‘children
watching TV’).
The change of subject position is registered in lexis too: from the
term ‘children’ to the closer warmer ‘kids’. I sense (rightly or wrongly) an
eruption of ironic speech practices in the nominalisation of adult licence: ‘swearing
and other things of that sort.’
This shift in persona occurs in (8) too where the theme ‘People talk
about’ …. Which expresses distance of the writer from ideational content
slips into ‘I like seeing what my friends think about things’.
The proximity of persona to content is a political and ideological as
well as a linguistic process. SFL helps you to see that.
Overall Evaluation
(formality / objectivity)
It depends on what criteria you judge. From the perspective of an
exercise meant to ‘teach you lots of things’, where the subject position
elides itself invisibly with the hierarchical teaching process, there is too
much formality here that breaks the structural back of the genre.
As an expression of the dynamics of learning and the resistance to
threshold concepts (Land) it is precisely challenging to the source of the
prescription for ‘formality’ and ‘objectivity’ in written text. An Ongian
protest from oral tradition.
My feeling is that what I miss above is an analysis of ‘you’. This
term has multiple potential meanings that are more clearly defined in other
languages with plural and singular forms and rules / conventions about the
formal roles and relationships that prescribe them. In modern English it also
takes the role of ‘one’ and we see it straining to that effect in (2, clause
1). When ‘you’ can become an agent rather than affected ‘object’ then things
can change: (6) ‘However, we might start watching adult TV if there was no more
kids TV.’ There is an ironic threat here as well as an attempt to ‘make a
point’: a battle in a larger strategy to challenge the consistency of what
the ‘adult world’ teaches.
Hence as an expression of ‘power dynamics’ it is excellent.
The lack of ‘control’ and ‘balance’ becomes precisely its theme. However,
since only the analyst (and not the writer) can ‘own’ such a reading, the
writer may be considered to be left and dry.
An E845 exercise: Reading power dynamics linguistically (TENOR).
Unable to meet the demands of H817, I've taken the curiosity elsewhere to E845.
Here is a reading of a passage where I am beginning to try and understand the dynamics of power relations in writing. Here is the passage:
1 All children watch TV but maybe it’s not such a good thing.
2 On one hand, television can teach you lots of things, like the alphabet and maths. Sesame Street is really popular and there are lots of other programmes which I think are good and you can learn things from them.
3 Nevertheless, children’s TV makes kids think it’s cool to swear and fight, which leads to accidents from them fighting.
4 Nonetheless, children become addicted to the television. They stay inside all day which is just lazy and unhealthy. This makes children overweight.
5 Watching too many cartoons can block children’s imagination and when writing stories children get ideas from programmes which also block imagination.
6 However, we might start watching adult TV if there was no more kids TV. This could show swearing and other things of that sort.
7 On the other hand, television is a great source of employment. It provides work for everyone. In addition children can improve acting skills and adults can work and have fun too.
8 However, television is also a social thing. People talk about programmes the next day with friends and I like seeing what my friends think about things. And having discussions improves skills in school.
9 In conclusion, many people will have their say as there are plenty of arguments on both sides.
Here is the response - an exercise on reading TENOR
Feature of tenor examined
Comment
Linguistic evidence
Social roles and social status
The social roles and relationships appear relatively fixed at first glance. The writer has power of interrupted discourse but must also conform to an agenda that regulates their speech made up of teaching and learning conventions, precedent and ‘rules and rubrics’. That suggests the power to change certain features of genre is limited and that the writer shows invisible awareness of the gaze of an eye monitoring their performance (embodied in the teacher momentarily).
The social role of the genre is said to be objective in that it eschews an identifiable ‘subject position’ in favour of ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’. Hence the essay starts by working with nominal groups considered as independent of the writer: ‘All children’. Likewise ‘watching TV’ a process is often nominalised as an agent (‘TV makes kids think it’s cool to swear’). This is the first time children and kids are used as synonyms but the effect is to disturb the surface of the generic register,
There are different relationships set up between the writer and ‘children’ on the one hand and ‘kids’ on the other. In (3) TV is an agent in a process that is material – making but also mental (how should we discuss this?). In (4) children are an affected participant by the mental process that has no specific agent – ‘addicted to the television’ not made to do something by it. The change in register is also there in the lexical shift between TV and ‘television’. We have a very ‘hybrid’ discourse here.
Social distance
The writer is given power to assert meaning that they have apparently made but only in relation to the limits of genre. However, the writer can play with the social distance between themselves and the observing, regulating and monitoring eye, not least in challenging the formal role and relationships expected of them within the generic ‘prescription’.
The disturbance of the balance of ‘discussion genre’ in the unequal distribution of ‘for’ v. ‘against’ arguments could, and probably will be seen by the teaching establishment as a failure to meet the generic requirements set. I’m marking TMAs at the moment and I’m feeling identity – torn. On the other hand, we could see the conflict as beginning to involve the writer on one side rather than the other. Is this the resistance that ‘kids’ set up to ideological threshold learning like how to be ‘objective’ and how to achieve ‘balance’? The distance between ‘I’ and my friends(nominalised as ‘kids’) often relaxes. At this point guardians of the genre (and much else besides implied by order, balance and control) will begin to protest. Hence, is this writing a dynamic act of belated rebellion?
Speaker / writer persona
The persona is regulated in relation to:
(a) The presumed authoritative reader who knows how this should be written;
(b) The ideational content and the subject positions it represents.
In effect the writer writes for the teacher in order to meet prescribed criteria for the ‘role’ of a writer in this genre (aiming for ‘objectivity’, ‘balance’ etc.).
They also write in relation to the possible identification they might have with a subject position which can be described as a ‘child who watches TV’.
These persona are sometimes confounded!
The clearest evidence here for ‘persona instability’ (if I might call it that) is the slippage from passive to active tenses and the appearance and disappearance of the writer’s self-representation as an agent in the material process of watching TV.
Compare (5) & (6).
(a) In (5) nominalisation of the process ‘Watching too many cartoons’ is linguistically represented as agent in relation to the effected participant ‘children’. The source of the ‘knowledge’ here is clearly external – from teaching content or reading perhaps.
(b) In (6) the actor /agent participant is ‘we’ which confounds the writer persona with the ideational subject position (‘children watching TV’).
The change of subject position is registered in lexis too: from the term ‘children’ to the closer warmer ‘kids’. I sense (rightly or wrongly) an eruption of ironic speech practices in the nominalisation of adult licence: ‘swearing and other things of that sort.’
This shift in persona occurs in (8) too where the theme ‘People talk about’ …. Which expresses distance of the writer from ideational content slips into ‘I like seeing what my friends think about things’.
The proximity of persona to content is a political and ideological as well as a linguistic process. SFL helps you to see that.
Overall Evaluation
(formality / objectivity)
It depends on what criteria you judge. From the perspective of an exercise meant to ‘teach you lots of things’, where the subject position elides itself invisibly with the hierarchical teaching process, there is too much formality here that breaks the structural back of the genre.
As an expression of the dynamics of learning and the resistance to threshold concepts (Land) it is precisely challenging to the source of the prescription for ‘formality’ and ‘objectivity’ in written text. An Ongian protest from oral tradition.
My feeling is that what I miss above is an analysis of ‘you’. This term has multiple potential meanings that are more clearly defined in other languages with plural and singular forms and rules / conventions about the formal roles and relationships that prescribe them. In modern English it also takes the role of ‘one’ and we see it straining to that effect in (2, clause 1). When ‘you’ can become an agent rather than affected ‘object’ then things can change: (6) ‘However, we might start watching adult TV if there was no more kids TV.’ There is an ironic threat here as well as an attempt to ‘make a point’: a battle in a larger strategy to challenge the consistency of what the ‘adult world’ teaches.
Hence as an expression of ‘power dynamics’ it is excellent. The lack of ‘control’ and ‘balance’ becomes precisely its theme. However, since only the analyst (and not the writer) can ‘own’ such a reading, the writer may be considered to be left and dry.