RSSEverything Old Is New Again
Mar 24
general observations, language and brain, language and culture, materiality, mode and modalities No Comments
The Human Individual: Organism, Person, Meaner
Mar 22
general observations, suitable quotations 1 Comment
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 610):
The human individual is at once a biological “individual”, a social “individual”, and a socio–semiotic “individual”:
as a biological “individual”, s/he is an organism, born into a biological population as a member of the human species.
as a social “individual”, s/he is a person, born into a social group as a member of society. “Person” is a complex construct; it can be characterised as a constellation of social rôles or personæ entering into social networks …
as a socio–semiotic “individual”, s/he is a meaner, born into a meaning group as a member of a speech community. Meaner is also a complex construct. …
These different levels of individuality map onto one other: a meaner is a person, and a person is a biological organism. But the mappings are complex; and at each level an individual lives in different environments — in different networks of relations.
Academic Persona Types?
Mar 13
education and academia, general observations, suitable quotations 1 Comment
Throughout this long deveopment, from 600 BC to the present day, philosophers have been divided into those who wished to tighten social bonds and those who wished to relax them. With this difference, others have been associated.The disciplinarians have advocated some system of dogma, either old or new, and have therefore been compelled to be, in greater or lesser degree, hostile to science, since their dogmas could not be proved empirically. They have almost invariably taught that happiness is not the good, but that ‘nobility’ or ‘heroism’ is to be preferred. They have had a sympathy with irrational parts of human nature, since they have felt reason to be inimical to social cohesion.The libertarians, on the other hand, with the exception of the extreme anarchists, have tended to be scientific, utilitarian, rationalistic, hostile to violent passion, and enemies of all the more profound forms of religion.This conflict existed in Greece before the rise of we recognise as philosophy, and is already quite explicit in the earliest Greek thought. In changing forms, it has persisted down to the present day, and no doubt will persist for many ages to come.
— Bertrand Russell ‘The History Of Western Philosophy’ (pp21-2)
What Do Social Semiotics And Pantheism Have In Common?
Jan 27
general observations, language and culture, mode and modalities No Comments
SFL enables us to see a parallelism between pantheism and social semiotics.
By pantheism, I mean the practice of regarding natural phenomena as if persons: ie as if gods, spirits etc; by social semiotics, I mean the practice of regarding material phenomena, especially human artefacts, as if signs: ie as if metaphenomena.
In pantheism, natural material phenomena are treated as symbol sources. In personifying such phenomena, the type of symbol source is Senser: ie a conscious participant capable of projecting the content of consciousness.
In social semiotics, artefactual material phenomena are also treated as symbol sources. Here, though, the type of symbol source is Sayer: ie a participant, not necessarily conscious, capable of projecting the content of consciousness (the sign says x).
I return to Sydney and notice stylistic affectations
Dec 10
announcements, context, general observations, instantiation categories, description, street, style 1 Comment
Having just returned from a longish sojourn in what is fondly called round here ‘the outback’ on a small research foray paid for by an institution which shall remain nameless lest I besmirch their up-till-now fairly fine reputation, I began to remark to myself that the environs in which I now languish on a short sabbatical courtesy of my old friend eldon – to wit, the villages of Enmore, Newtown, and Erskineville – far from being inhabited by outlandish independently-minded personae as I had been warned (or perhaps ‘regaled’ might be the better term), were actually populated by an array of varieties of human tribes of different age brackets, who identify their allegiances by being attired in a number of easily identifiable uniforms.
Of course, I admit at the outset that my use of the term ‘uniform’ speaks not of exact uniformity, certainly not of the ilk enforced at the hands of the teachers at the schools of my youth, places where rulers were applied to the knee to ascertain the exact distance of hem from that knee whilst kneeling on the floor, and at which troupes of girls about to leave on excursions out of school grounds were lined up for an inspection by headmistress and denied the small pleasure of group travel should their livery be in any way different from that laid down by the official documents she held dear. No, my use of the term uniform here speaks more to the loose requirements of latter-day secondary colleges who demand that their inmates pay homage at least to the school colours and officially-sanctioned items of vestment, but who are free to mix and match along fundamental lines which allow members of the student body to be recognised as affiliated with their specific secondary communities only by virtue of a compositional coherence with respect to a certain arrangement of garments, which in turn provides an associative value – an index if you will – pointing to the school with which these colours and arrangements can be traced.
I acknowledge that I am primed to notice tribal affiliations, especially those manifested in the visual indicators of clothing and accessories, and have already spent quantities of focussed observatory time in Japan taking notes on the means by which the Japanese – many of whom strive to be recognised easily as belonging to a particular social grouping – indicate their affiliation with such groupings so that they may not create confusion in anyone’s mind, and may thus be conveniently addressed in an appropriate manner whilst going about their everyday duties. I refer, for example, to the well-documented tribe of ‘housewife’, a noble profession in Japan, whose domestic duties encompass a scope and quality handed down by generations of devoted employees of their husbands and their husbands’ mothers. These noble women can be seen going about their shopping day, on busses and on bicycles wearing the typical bibbed pinafore over their normal clothing, an item which denotes the housewifely calling. Normal clothing for the Japanese housewife is also fairly strictly demarcated, and consists of a pale-coloured shirt teamed with either a dowdy skirt or pair of loose trousers. That they do not remove their protective garment before leaving the house underlines their need for recognition as employed in this capacity, since both other housewives and shopkeepers alike must be alerted to their status as dutiful holders of the household reins, and keeper of the household purse.
During my recent stay up-country in outback Australia, in a town a little further from civilisation than I normally care to sojourn, I was accommodated in a local pub. I will not go into the reasons here regarding why I did not avail myself of the more salubrious offering at the motel on the outskirts of town, but I might mention both the distance factor and the pecuniary factor as primary decision-makers in the matter. My official research there did not entail the observation of the local white community, but this being my natural inclination anyway, after a while and upon attending one or two shopping days in the town as well as one race meeting, it became apparent that the graziers or ‘cow cockies’ thereabouts were also prone to identify themselves with an arrangement of particular clothing types and even brand-names – I hesitate to declare, as I am ignorant of the taxonomy of names of those fashion houses who supply the apparel for the man on the land. The primary items of this apparel were, as usual for males, a pair of trousers and a shirt. In my notes I observed that the shirt needed to have two breast pockets, or failing that, needed to be patterned in very small cross-hatching on the vertical and horizontal. The trousers were by preference moleskins, and of an off-white colour. The outfit needed to be teamed with, on the feet, riding boots, at the lower waist a plaited leather belt in brown, and on the head a flat-brimmed hat. There was also the variation of the tie, with the woven khaki variety finding popularity amongst the middle-aged set. Younger members of the group effected American style broad-brimmed hats, and occasionally higher heels on the boots, with the here-and-there affectation of the American-style shoe-lace affair threaded about the collar and fastened at the neck with a device in the shape of a stock animal, but generally the uniform was adhered to – not so much that that members might recognise each other more easily, but that the un-landed gentry might recognise their betters.
And so it is that I have come to observe the latest affiliatory signifiers of the people on the streets near to where I am presently taking my ease. I have been reliably informed that one style, or should I say constellation of artefacts worn at the same time that represent an overall style, can be labelled as ‘indie’. But there the tribal or associative relationships indexed by these sets of worn-artefacts ends for me – I am not apprised of what ‘indie’ (presumably shortened from the word ‘independent’ but I do not observe any shred of independence in the wearers of this style) signifies in terms of dress code or approach to ‘life’, and hence the identity to which indie-aficionados hope to aspire. The reader will have noted that I have up till now mentioned one or two very brief descriptions pertaining to arrangements of clothing forms – or items that constitute an affiliatory practice – which have been either related to institution, e.g. school, or profession e.g. grazier or housewife. However, the local practices I speak of in respect of younger people as well as older non-employed persons cannot be traced to their identification with a place or mode of employ.
So, for example, although we note on the streets of Enmore and Newtown a repeated pattern exemplified by the very fine pin stripe shirt, well-fitting trousers, teamed with low-profile tie and belt, as well as a trim haircut – which style indexes the real estate agent – we also note a variety of other styles which are not traceable to specific work practices. Thus, I am not talking here about those people who are obviously dressed for the job, in particular the manual labouring jobs which necessitate shorts and slightly dirty T-shirts or shirts actually emblazoned with the company insignia. I refer more specifically to those who have chosen to wear what they do as a index of their personal style, as if style itself were the identity of the persons so attired.
Hence my aim is to accumulate notes on the observed apparel on the streets and cafes of the locale, and to build up a sense of repeated patterns, of generalised shapes (or ‘lines’ as I believe they used to be called), fabric patterns, footwear, hairstyles (as they also signify in this area of description) and accessories – especially carry-bags, scarves and hats. This should provide a means of making generalisations which may lead at the same time to the ability of calculating – or at least throwing into high relief – boundary lines between styles and their offshoots, such that further enquiries could be more profitably made regarding the reasoning behind persons’ effecting of these styles through arrangement of clothing form.
Work in the field has obviously already been done in the public arena and the private sphere, and here I am thinking of the published findings and recommendations made by two researchers known as Trinny and Susanah who have made available a very useful book (due to its many photographic illustrations) called “Who do you want to be today?” in which they imply the strong link between what is worn and one’s identity. Some of the identities they have provided are helpfully labelled in a type of intertextual shorthand, examples being the following: “rock chick”, “gamine”, “ice-queen”, “avant-garde eccentric”, and so on. In passing I note that there are confusions here of logical levels of analysis – since ‘gamine’ refers to appearance rather than persona, and the others in the cited list refer to persona and attitude – but I hope therefore to avoid such confusions in my own note-taking and analysis. In addition, while I find the use of such labels an act of efficiency by way of a convenient temporary box in which to group sets of phenomena, I am rarely tied to the labels I use for identification of related elements – rather, it is the grouping of elements together – against the differences, contrasts or boundary conditions between groups of elements – that are most important to these endeavours.
In this spirit, I first make observation of one personal identity type seen inhabiting the streets of Enmore and Newtown, which I am wont to call gothic-punk. It seems from many years of exposure to the punk orientation in its several guises and latter day interpretations, that the styles which adherents adopt in order to be identified as punk have now more than bifurcated, and have instead been adulterated by a number of other styles, so that there are cross-pollinations of style seen on the streets. One of the adulterations is the gothic orientation, and my reasoning for using the term ‘goth’ as a qualifier of the base term ‘punk’ is related to chronology in style appearance and the history of adoption and adaptation wherein ‘punk’ has a longer street history pertaining to clothing selections – not, I hasten to add, a longer history per se.
A description of the gothic-punk style necessitates in turn, a list of possible paradigmatic alternatives – that or else mere generalisations related to classification of the regularly donned items of apparel. I am thwarted in this endeavour by a learned ignorance on the names of the styles of shoes, types of clothing, and other accoutrements related to garments, so that description should not be tainted by what I think I ‘know’ about fashion or the clothing industry in general, but will remain a purer, more fundamental description losing out in specificity what it gains in authenticity. I am also keen to distinguish my first steps in description as a paltry endeavour in one sense, but also not a description of the language of fashion a la Roland Barthes. Instead, notes on clothing combinations of the day form an actual report on the observable patterns in appearance effected by the street-walking public – at least as I observe them in a small locale in Sydney, and occasioned in this instance by my sudden awareness upon returning to Sydney that the styles repeated as patterned social behaviour hereabouts constituted a set of patterns on their own – although of course, not isolated from the general melee of clothing trends that are the bread & butter of the world wide web these days. At the same time, the mix and obviousness of the styling in these parts prompting me to anthropological endeavours in the same vein as the previous local case studies I have been involved in over the years.
Thus, I adjure all who have bothered to read thus far to anticipate verbal descriptions starting from the head and working down of a number of locally apparent clothing combinations in future communications.
no grammar today
Jul 19
epistemology, general observations, language and brain, language and culture, lexico-grammar, mode and modalities, parody 1 Comment
having travelled across australia a third of the way and back just recently, i can confidently assert that there is no grammar today. there is a lot of weather about, and, in rural areas coffee is available but weak and not so milky or firm frothy for the cappuccino-afficionados out there. in addition, one has to invariably state that one would like one’s coffee to be served in a cup, not a mug.
as for grammar, we saw none on the way, and had to make do with random gurgles and unrelated-to-each-other signs or icons.
random quotation#1
Jul 04
general observations metaphor 6 Comments
“One always feels a bit sheepish, of course, about bringing the metaphor concept into the social sciences and perhaps that is because one always feels there is something soft and wooly about it.”
[your task, should you decide to accept it, is to attribute.]
[oh no, do not use google, that would be TOO easy.]
Validity
Jun 22
general observations 2 Comments
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 117):
Semantics has nothing to do with truth; it is concerned with consensus about validity, and consensus is negotiated in dialogue.
Affiliation And Individuation Characterised In Terms Of Expansion Types
Jun 17
general observations 1 Comment
Affiliation is based on extension (association).
Individuation is based on elaboration (and ascription).
SFL Architecture Classified By SFL Relations
Apr 30
general observations 2 Comments
A. system networks
i. delicacy: elaboration + attributive
ii. disjunction: extension: alternative
iii. conjunction: extension: addition
iv. entry condition: enhancement: condition
B. rank scale: extension: composition
C. realisation: elaboration + identifying
1. higher stratum realised by lower stratum [stratification]
2. system realised by structure [axis]
3. function realised by form; eg clause rank function structure realised by group rank syntagm
D. instantiation cline: elaboration + attributive
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