Genre and Institutions : Social Processes in the Workplace and School

by Christie, Frances; Martin, J. R.

• ISBN13: 9780826447401
• ISBN10: 0826447406
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-03-01
• Publisher: Continuum Intl Pub Group

Summary

This book examines genres as instances of social processes, enacting a range of important institutional practices, hence also shaping people's subjectivities. Genres represent purposive and staged ways of building means in a culture. The book's particular claim to originality is that, using systemic functional grammar, it demonstrates how given genres build or enact social practice, how educational setting provide contexts in which some apprenticeship into such genres occurs, and how theorizing about such matters helps build a theory of social action, revealing how powerful is the systemic functional analysis in addressing questions concerning the social construction of reality.

Table of Contents

Contributors	vii
Introduction	1	(2)
Frances Christie
J. R. Martin
Analysing genre: functional parameters	3	(37)
J. R. Martin
Science, technology and technical literacies	40	(33)
David Rose
The language of administration: organizing human activity in formal institutions	73	(28)
Rick Iedema
Death, disruption and the moral order: the narrative impulse in mass-media `hard news' reporting	101	(33)
Peter White
Curriculum macrogenres as forms of initiation into a culture	134	(27)
Frances Christie
Learning how to mean - scientifically speaking: apprenticeship into scientific discourse in the secondary school	161	(35)
Robert Veel
Constructing and giving value to the past: an investigation into secondary school history	196	(35)
Caroline Coffin
Entertaining and instructing: exploring experience through story	231	(34)
Joan Rothery
Maree Stenglin
Index	265