language and context of situation

Feb 26

eldoncontext, instantiation, language and culture, suitable quotations 2 Comments

Ruqaiya Hasan 1999: TEXT AND CONTEXT IN FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS
Edited by MOHSEN GHADESSY

From the point of view of instantiation, situation is to culture as text is to language; the first term of each proportion instantiates the second:

situation: culture :: text: language

From the point of view of realisation, language is to situation; the first term of each proportion realises the second:

language: culture :: text: situation

Current SFL models possess no satisfactory means of contextual and/ or registral changes which do not disturb the unity of the text, nor can they specify where i.e., in what kind(s) of social situation, such changes are most at risk.

p.225

2 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. eldon
    Feb 26, 2011 @ 19:46:30

    pp.239-240:

    whether in its completed form or in its on-going state, it is the text’s language that summons up that part of a speaker’s experience which has bearing on the reading of that text. If this view is accepted, it provides a principle for resolving, the problem of the “content” of context raised earlier (see Section 2.1). From this perspective the concept of context must include all those features of the interactants’ material and social conditions of existence which are necessary and sufficient for the explication of what is said, whether directly or by implication.

    …. The analyst’s aim is to go beyond these so as to describe elements of the habitus of some section of the community in question.

  2. ThE CLOwN
    Feb 27, 2011 @ 13:28:51

    I think the first quote should read:

    “From the point of view of realisation, language is culture as text is to situation”

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