Disciplinarity and the case of
school subject English
Frances Christie and Mary
Macken-Horarik
Subject English
 Unique in the curriculum
 Series of models
 Review (i) developmental growth in language
& (ii) history of subject
 Propose a renewed model of English using
SFL theory to give coherence and direction
across the years of schooling
Developmental growth in
control of language
 Textually: emergent control of theme and
reference
 Ideationally: emergent control of nominal
group structure, verbal group structure,
prepositional phrase, adverbial group;
enhanced range of conjunctive relations and
clause types
 Interpersonally: emergent control of modality
and attitudinal lexis
 And of course grammatical metaphor.
Some Broad Developments in Schooling
Late 19th century – early 21st century
Mid to
late 19th
century
Late 19th
to
20th
century
Basic
Skills
Cultural
Heritage
Periods
Models
1960s
to
1980s
Personal Functional
Growth Language
Studies
Late 20th
to
early 21st
century
Cultural New Literacy
Analysis
Studies
&
Multiliteracies
Mid to late 19th century to end of
WW1
• elementary schooling mainly for the poor;
secondary education for the privileged few
• Basic Skills
– Object of Study: Language as spelling, phonics,
sentence grammar.
– Subject Position: Apprentice to expert
– Semiotic practices: Mastery of discrete language
skills
Late 19th to 20th century
• elementary schooling made compulsory. After WW II
some expansion of types of secondary education at
least to the junior secondary level
• Cultural Heritage
– Object of Study: Language as Art & as civilising
cultural artefact.
– Subject Position: Novice to mentor
– Semiotic practices: Language of artistic and
symbolic control
1960s- 1980s
2nd half of 20th century
• secondary education for all expanded. After the 1950s
emergence of comprehensive secondary education, involving
notion of common education for all students
• Functional Language
Studies
– Object of Study: Language
• Personal Growth
as instrument of ‘self
expression
– Subject Position: Personal
responder to trusted adult
– Semiotic practices:
Language as personal self
expression
– Object of Study: Language
as system and as text.
(Phase i: register & dialect;
Phase ii: register & genre)
– Subject Position: Linguistically
informed user of language to
expert
– Semiotic practices: Language
to engage with texts in contexts
Latter years of 20th century into
21st century
• comprehensive secondary education maintained but often under
challenge, causing emergence of selective (academic) secondary
schools and/or specialist secondary schools e.g. arts, technology.
A splintering of different types of schools
• Cultural Analysis/
Multiliteracies
• New Literacy Studies
– Object of Study: Language
as infinite number of texts
– Subject Position: Analyst to
critical friend
– Semiotic practices:
Language for critique and
subversion
– Object of Study: Language as
‘situated’ in diverse literacy
events
– Subject Position: Investigator
of literacy events to mentor
– Semiotic practices: Language
for localized social events
A distinctive disciplinary
structure?
1. Some kinds of knowledge (or KoKs) are
preserved in all models of English - to do with
mastery of literate textuality. This means that
verticality is generated through textuality.
2. Two questions:
(i)What purview of literate textuality is offered
in each model (from point of view of semiosis
each makes possible)?
(iii) Can the gazes made available in each
model be made pedagogic?
Multiliteracies & the semiotic economy
of contemporary English
• A diverse range of multimodal texts to interpret
- a centrifugal expansion in curriculum
possibilities;
• Increasing stratification of teacher-examiner
readings of students’ response texts
- the centripetal pull of assessment regimes
• Hierarchies in diversities
(all models are equal but ……...)
Multimodal offer, literate response
• In answering Q 50, students must identify and explain
the contrast between two frames. The literate response
is what is evaluated, not the multimodal reading.
A visual text, an open question & the gap
• What kind of
journey is
represented
and how?
A visual metaphor & open questions
What impressions are
we given by the
drawing on the
opposite page?
And what is suggested
by the drawing?
(from trial Australian
Scaling Test, ACT, 2007)
The potential of each model for
enhancing ‘verticality’?
• The open question requires recognition of
the contextual demands of the discipline.
Students’ responses are linguistic
manifestations (realizations) of their acts of
recognition.
• What do their responses to stimulus texts and
the grades these earn have to teach us about
the consequences of different models?
• Use SF grammatics to read KOKs embodied in
students’ texts - SFG as meta-model.
Dimensions of each model and
associated code
• Knowledge - different ways of
construing language in texts (object of
gaze);
• Knower - subject positions adopted in
relation to text (gaze);
• Semiotic practices - particular uses of
language that generate the gaze and its
object.
Text as springboard - Personal Growth
Knowledge code:
arbitrary
(speculating about what
the text could possibly
mean);
Logic of aggregation-a
series of things about text;
Knower code: voicing
student’s thoughts &
feelings;
Semiotic code: a local
orientation to task - a
scatter of impressions.
Example 1: Yr 10 School Certificate – What is
the story The Red-Back Spider really about?
The effective part of the story to me was at the beginning
When it explained what they were doing there in that point of
time. To me it had a few things the story was about. + How
the father is away from his wife and son + and telling us how
the wife is surviving with her son + and then it goes near the
end of the story + how Mrs Burnett reacted x when she saw
the horse in the pocket + and it sounded like she didn’t care if
they got hurt. She only cared about her work being done…..
+ But I think the story was not about the spider x because it
was killed straight away. The main thing that caught my
attention was when Mrs Burnett asked about the toy horse
and told him not to play with toys. That was the most
confusing part of the story X when it doesn’t say why she
acted like that. X So there must have been something with
those toys that he was playing with.
D range
Text as window - Basic Skills
Knowledge code: Mimetic looking through text to
experience and its significance;
Logic: Retelling story &
identifying characters’ reactions;
Knower code: voicing
characters’ thoughts/feelings
and identifying the message;
Semiotic code: global &
empirical orientation to task.
Example 3: The story is about a mother and a
young boy who migrated here. + They live in a
migrant hostel, + the mother works on a farm as a
domestic servant for Mrs Hunter who recommended
her to Mrs Burnett. + Mrs Burnett hired her to cut out
all the weeds around her house. + Mrs Burnett didn’t
seem like a very nice and trusting lady X because
she would always lock the door after her X when she
returned to go inside. + The mother would work for
Mrs Burnett on the days between she worked for Mrs
Hunter. + Her son would come along with her + and
play with his toys, X but one day he found a suitcase
with toys in it X so he decided to play with them, X
whilst doing so he heard a cry from his mother; she had
found red-back spider, she feared for her son’s safety
X so she burnt the spider along with its large nest of
eggs, X as she knew they were poisonous.
C range
Text as prism: Cultural Heritage
Knowledge code: symbolic interpreting meanings refracted
in text(s); analogic reasoning.
Logic: = semiotic reframing;
Knower code: voicing the text
and what it teaches;
Semiotic code: global and
abstract orientation to task.
Example 5: The story is made effective because
of the spider.= The spider is like a comparison of
the boy and his mother. = They are treated in
the way the spider is; = they are seen as if they
are poisonous. = They are kept outside + and the
boy is made to put the toy back, = like he is
poisoning it. The spider is like something foreign
and dangerous, = just as the migrants are seen as.
The description of the spider laying its eggs
hidden away is a comparison of how the migrants
must be. The woman’s son is seen as a hindrance,
= she has to protect him from those who look
down on him + and accuse him unfairly, =
like when she stands up for him when he is
found with the horse. = This is just like the
spider = who hides her eggs for protection. ….
A range
TEXT AS KALEIDOSCOPE - Cultural Analysis
Knowledge code: theoretical
– how particular readings
render meanings differently
Logic: (=, x) semiotic
explanation.
Knower code: voicing
different ways of reading
with and against text(s);
Semiotic code: Abstract and
reflexive orientation to task.
Example 7: Transformations of Shakespeare’s
plays pop up a lot. Everyone seems to know how to
change the story to make it better. Some people try to
make it easier to understand, some try to modernise it
and some want to make it more accessible to a
particular audience. Romeo and Juliet has been
transformed many times, but this time, the
transformation is so massive that it’s ruined the
story. ……
That’s all well and good, but what Luhrmann has
created is not just a modern transformation of Romeo
and Juliet. He has created a foul film out of a
beautiful play. He’s changed the context of Romeo
and Juliet from 15 Century Italy to a mixture of
modern day Mexico City and California. This
disgusting mix changes the story to focus on guns,
brawls, drugs, and sex. Shakespeare would be
alarmed…...
What kind of textuality is valued?
According to the 2001 examiners, students in
the upper range of achievement produced:
• a synthesized response;
• a strong line of argument about the theme;
• demonstrated the ability to sustain a thesis
• with judicious reference to various texts;
• and an ability to integrate material,
• and write confidently on each text in turn.
[NSW Board of Studies, 2002: 8]
Verticality & its preferred KoK
• ‘Synthesis’ … symbolic abstraction
• ‘Strong line of argument’… rhetorical organization
• ‘A sustained thesis’ ………. coherence
• ‘Judicious reference to text’ .... meta-awareness
• ‘Integration’ ….. A global orientation to textuality
* So, what students generate through literate ‘know
how’ can become the basis of our ‘knowledge
about’ disciplinarity. We move from realization back
to recognition, construing the codes via analysis of
semiosis and its fate.
But here’s the dilemma …..
• “Just as language construes the social order without
referring to the system it is constructing, so likewise
language construes the natural order - through the
unconscious, cryptotypic patterns in the grammar,
which create their own order of reality independently
of whatever it is they may be being used to describe.
… The question is whether we can use it to think
with consciously. It may be impossible. I don’t mean
that it is impossible to understand the cryptogrammar
of a natural language, but that it’s reality-generating
power may be incompatible with explicit logical
reasoning.”
[Halliday, 1993: 113]
Thinking with grammatics: widening the
purview
• How to use the
grammatics to
widen students’
purview of literate
textuality?
• How to develop a
metalanguage
adequate to the
different KoKs
valued in the
discipline?
The deictic ‘I’, puzzling over text
I think/feel
The difficult text and its internal voices
he or she
thinks/feels
The symbolic construct and its significance
the text
reveals …
Readings and what they generate
Different
readings &
how they
generate
meanings
•Interpreting
theoretically
•Interpreting
symbolically
• looking through
• Explaining
• Reframing
• Voicing
readings
• Retelling
•Speculating
• Listing
Deictic centre
of semiosis
• Voicing text
• Voicing
character
• Voicing self
• Responding to
bits of text
• Responding
holistically but
empirically to text
• Responding
holistically but
abstractly to text
Responding
reflexively
Disciplinarity & development
• Gaze is a creation of a particular form of literate
textuality. Interpretation is a task that appears to
invite a range of readings (What kind of journey is
represented and how? What is the text really about?).
Here is the dilemma of the open question: Whose
social is speaking? (Bernstein, 1999). But the
grammatics can reveal something of the
supervenience hidden in each model. If we look
closely at the texts generated by students, cultural
analysis generates a form of literate textuality
supervenient on earlier forms. How to turn the
insights into pedagogy good enough for development
in a complex disciplinary structure?
• A quick look at one site - the romance unit taught by
Bill Simon at Wiley Park Girls.
Making it pedagogic - return with a difference
Enriching semiosis
Getting ‘meta’
Producing an essay about
‘dubious messages’ in film
Genre -how the
formula naturalizes
gender inscriptions
Discussing gender discourses in film
Mode shift applying formula
to film
Producing a romance narrative
My view of the film
Developing know-how
Field behavioural
processes
Genre - global
structure (formula)
Building knowledge
about semiosis