DESIGN AND PRACTICE: ENACTING FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

Abstract

I have tried to practice linguistics as a form of social action, a practice which Halliday (e.g., 1985) has suggested cannot be other than ideologically committed. This practice dissolves the linguistics vs. applied linguistic opposition which has evolved in response to the hegemony of American formalism—whose idealizing reductivity comes nowhere near serving the needs of language users and their aids around the world. In its stead, linguistics as social action engages theory with practice in a dialectic whereby theory informs practice which, in turn, rebounds on theory, recursively, as more effective ways of intervening in various processes of semogenesis are designed (Martin 1997; 1998a). My own experience of this engagement has been mainly in the field of literacy, especially of writing development in primary and secondary school. Accordingly, I'll draw on this experience to address the sub-field ‘Writing and Literacy,’ writing as a linguist working across what is generally read and has been increasingly institutionalized as an applied vs. theoretical frontier.