Network & the ASFLA newsletter

2.1 ISFLA

No report

2.2 ASFLA

President: Kristina Love, University of Melbourne

This is my first report as the newly elected ASFLA president, a role I initially accepted with some trepidation, given its relocation from the Sydney epicentre of SFL to the satellite of Melbourne. I thank Geoff Williams, Annabelle Lukin, Maria Couchman and Frances Christie for their patience and generosity in assisting with this relocation. Through electronic communication, I hope to be able to carry out the role as efficiently as Geoff Williams did in his admirable five years in office and I thank the members of the executive for being prepared to work with me largely in distance mode.

As I come to terms with the business and history of the ASFLA, I am constantly struck by the generosity, vitality and philanthropy which have characterised the organization as it has grown. Numerous Australian SFL scholars have contributed their time (and often money) to the development of SFL in countries such as Pakistan, India and South Africa. We have, after the considerable efforts of Annabelle Lukin and support from the membership, managed to bring Ernest Akerejola from Nigeria to take up a scholarship at Macquarie University, thereby enhancing the study of SFL in both countries. The organization hosted one of the most intellectually exciting conferences I have had the great fortune to attend, the `Language, Brain, Culture Conference' held at Sydney University in December 2001. This conference signalled for many attendees the ASFLA's capacity to engage substantially with disciplinary fields beyond, but related to linguistics, fields such as archaeology, psychiatry, psychology, speech pathology and primatology. Having opened up the trans-disciplinary dialogue, the ASFLA has ensured that the channels of communication will remain open by organising for a continuing conversation on language, brain, culture on a day prior to the `Exploring Semantics' conference to be held at Macquarie University on 5-7 July, 2002. Even for those who were not able to attend the Language, Brain, Culture conference last year, I would strongly encourage you to try to attend the session run by Professor Michael Arbib on 4 July prior to the Macquarie conference.

The intellectual vigour underpinning the association's conferences is also evident in the extensive local work on SFL that takes place every week in states and systems across Australia. I would like to take this opportunity to remind members that the association may be able to fund some of these local initiatives. Following are the names and emails of state members working on the ASFL executive who could be approached in the first instance for advice regarding such support.

Western Australia -- a.thwaite@cowan.edu.au,

New South Wales -- c.Painter@unsw.edu.au,

Queensland -- lenore.ferguson@qed.qld.gov.au,

Victoria -- k.love@edfac.unimelb.edu.au,

South Australia -- Brian.Dare@ceo.adl.catholic.edu.au,

ACT -- mmacken@comedu.canberra.edu.au,

NT -- peter.wignell@ntu.edu.au

We invite members to contact us if they have any suggestions about how the association can further serve its local membership. Much local SFL work is made possible largely through the unpaid efforts of committed individuals and, only to a limited extent, through members' fees. The association's budget is in a fairly healthy state, though income through membership is declining. We need to encourage more of those friends and colleagues interested in SFL to subscribe to the association in order to maintain its vitality and financial viability. State representatives on the executive are conducting membership drives, and we encourage all members to spread the word about the intellectual and professional benefits of joining the association. Membership is $30 for the full-time employed or $20 for students and part-time employed (particularly good value when membership entitles you to a $20 discount on all ASFLA conferences). Please give out the association's membership fax details (02) 9484 0085 and encourage potential members to visit the ASFLA web site (http://homepage.mac.com/asfla) to see the range of benefits of membership. We now also offer Life membership for $250, which can be paid in instalments if needed.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank John Polias and Carl Nilsson-Polias for their continuing volunteer roles as Web masters for the Association's web site. While John and Carl maintain the site, and John trawls through Sysfunc and Sysfling for items of relevance, the site belongs to the members. I encourage you all to provide content and instructions to John that will ensure the vitality of the web site as a means of communication between its members.

I hope to see you all at the July conference at Macquarie University.

Kristina Love

2.3 The Japanese Association of Systemic Functional Linguistics (JASFL)

Website:

http://www.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp/~makoto/jasfl.html

2.4 Newly formed North American Systemic Functional Linguistics Association (NASFLA)

2.5 Report from the Systemic Functional Linguistics Association of Nigeria (SYSFLAN)

The email contact for SYSFLAN is Sysflan@abu.edu.ng

For upcoming workshop, see Section 4.7.

2.6 Newly formed French SFL Association (A.F.L.S.F.)

Association Française de La Linguistique Systémique Fonctionnelle

President: David Banks

3.1 Austria

Cassily Charles writes: We've started an Austrian SFL discussion group which meets about every month or so, alternately Salzburg & Vienna. Next one's on Saturday to coincide with Theo van Leeuwen's visit to Vienna. Contact person & main mover: Peter Muntigl at the University of Vienna (peter.muntigl@univie.ac.at)

3.2 Australia

3.3 Australia: David Butt --Centre for Language in Social Life (CLSL)

The Centre for Language in Social Life (Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney) Research Report.

From Dr David Butt, Director

The Centre for Language in Social Life (CLSL) encompasses many of the strands of research in systemic functional linguistics, and, therefore, a wide range of cognate research in the various strands of the Linguistics Department. The aim of the Centre is to combine the modelling of discourse with the application of models to specific issues in medicine, law, education, translation, stylistics, and cognitive science. The emphasis has been on the cartography of systems at the levels of context, semantics and lexicogrammar - in particular, how such mapping can establishe the structure of meaning for a register.

3.4 Singapore

Many thanks to Kay O'Halloran for the following information.

4.1 ISFC 29: Systemic Linguistics and the Corpus

Dates: 15th - 19th July 2002 in Liverpool.

The plenary speakers will be:

Suzanne Eggins (University of New South Wales)

Michael Hoey (University of Liverpool)

Susan Hunston (University of Birmingham)

Christian Matthiessen (Macquarie University)

Mike Stubbs (University of Trier)

Gordon Tucker (University of Cardiff)

For further information, please go to:

http://www.liv.ac.uk/english/confer/confer/ISFC_2002.html

4.2 14th Euro-International Systemic Functional Linguistics Workshop - 14ª Workshop Euro-Internacional de Linguística Sistémico-funcional

Issues in Language Description: Rethinking Systemic Functional Theory?

Aspectos da Descrição das Línguas: Repensar a Teoria Sistémico-funcional?

Department of English Studies, University of Lisbon, Portugal

July 24-27 2002

Departamento de Estudos Anglísticos, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal

24-27 de Julho de 2002

Invited Speakers / Oradores Convidados

Ruqaiya Hasan (Macquarie University)

Christian Matthiessen (Macquarie University)

Susanna Shore (University of Helsinki)

Anne McCabe (Saint Louis University, Madrid)

4.3 Conversations on Language, Brain, Culture

Date: July 4th, 2002

Venue: Macquarie University

Speakers include:

• Professor Michael Arbib, Director of the Brain Project, University of Southern California, and lively, engaging presenter from last years widely acclaimed Language, Brain, Culture conference
• Dr. David Butt, Director, Centre for Language in Social Life, Dept of Linguistics, Macquarie University
• Dr Geoffrey Williams, Department of English, University of Sydney
• Dr Clare Painter, Department of English, University of NSW

See http://homepage.mac.com/asfla/asfla02/ for details

4.4 ASFLA 2002: Perspectives on Semantics from SFL

Date: July 5th-7th, 2002

Venue: Macquarie University

Plenary speakers:

• Dr. David Butt, Director, Centre for Language in Social Life, Dept of Linguistics, Macquarie University
• Dr Alice Caffarel, Dept of French Studies, University of Sydney
• Professor Jim Martin, Dept of Linguistics, University of Sydney
• Karl Maton, University of Cambridge

Workshop presenters include:

• Dr Geoff Williams, English Department, University of Sydney
• Dr Carmel Cloran, University of Wollongong
• Dr Peter White, University of Birmingham

Conference convenor: Annabelle Lukin, Centre for Language in Social Life, Macquarie University, alukin@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au

General enquires: becksyb@hotmail.com

Within SFL, a variety of models for the description of the semantic stratum have been proposed. These include Hasan's Message Semantics, Cloran's Rhetorical Units', Martin's work on Discourse Semantics in English Text and the more recent Appraisal Systems, Butt's Semantic Cycles, Matthiessen's RST, and Halliday and Matthiessen's work on Element-Figure-Sequence. Work on phonology in relation to semantics has also been important within SF linguistics. There is widespread agreement that work in this area lags behind our descriptions of grammatical systems, although the semantic orientation of these systems -- e.g. the systems of THEME, MOOD and TRANSITIVITY -- will enable us to take the description of semantics much further than it has traditionally been taken.

The 2002 ASFLA conference will be one of a number of opportunities being planned for discussions and debates on modelling semantics. There will be plenary talks, parallel papers and workshop presentations on different aspects of semantics. As well, we would anticipate having papers on the usual diverse range of topics which reflect the great variety of questions and problems to which SF theory has been applied.

Immediately following this conference, there will be two weeks of linguistics workshops, under the umbrella of the Australian Linguistics Institute (ALI), also at Macquarie University. For more information, see the webpage of the Macquarie Dept of Linguistics, www.ling.mq.edu.au

While you're there, don't miss the chance to read the Department's newsletter, called LingLine. Under the editorship of Tessa Green, LingLine provides a very comprehensive source of news about matters linguistic.

See http://homepage.mac.com/asfla/asfla02/ for details - abstract will shortly be posted to that site.

4.5 Norman Fairclough Master Classes in CDA at the University of Queensland,

Phil Graham, University of Queensland

There has been ample cross-pollenation between SFG and CDA perspectives over the last decade or more, a fact reflected in the organising theme of last year's ISFC meeting in Ottawa. This July, Professor Norman Fairclough of Lancaster University, a key figure in the development of CDA, and of links between CDA and SFG, is giving two master classes for postgraduate researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ).

The classes are jointly sponsored by UQ's School of Education, Business Economics and Law Faculty, and the Centre for Social Research in Communication. So far the courses have attracted researchers from throughout Australian universities, the UK, US, and New Zealand. The emphasis of the classes will be upon helping researchers and research students develop their work in CDA. Professor Fairclough will also give an overview of his current and recent work.

The classes are running 11-13 July and 18-20 July. Unfortunately, the 18-20 class, which was originally to be the only class, filled up before the event was formally announced. Professor Fairclough kindly agreed to give another class between 11-13 July, and there are a few places left at the time of writing.

Participants will receive a a reading pack of as yet unpublished work by Professor Fairclough, and a certificate of attendance from the UQ School of Education upon completing the classes.

For further information or bookings, contact Phil Graham (phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au), or visit the master class website at http://www.uq.edu.au/gsm/NFindex.html .

Other links: Language in New Capitalism (LNC) group http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/lnc

4.6 Appraisal Workshop

Dear colleagues

We are pleased to announce that Peter White, Birmingham University, UK, teaches a workshop on Appraisal (how opinion gets expressed in text) at Aalborg University on 26-28 August 2002 (mornings from 9-13). The workshop will take place right after the Symposium 'Constructing Image and Ideology in Mass Media Discourse'.

For further information on the workshop and the symposium, see relevant link at: www.sprog.auc.dk/image2002

It is still possible to register for the symposium (without paper). Final deadlines for registration:

Symposium: 15 July 2002

Workshop: 15 July 2002

Further inquiries to the organizing committee: email: image@sprog.auc.dk

Best wishes

Jeanne Strunck, Bente Vestergaard and Inger Lassen (organizers)

4.7 SYSFLAN Workshop, 24-26 July 2002

The Systemic Functional Linguistic Association of Nigeria (SYSFLAN) has scheduled a Workshop for July this year.

Date: 24 -- 26 July 2002

Venue: Faculty of Arts, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria Nigeria.

The following scholars have accepted to present Lead Papers at the Workshop:

1. Professor Funsho Akere, Head, English Department, University of Lagos (Unilag).

2. Dr. Adeyemi Daramola (Unilag): Ph.D Macquarie University.

3. Professor Kevin N. Nwogu of Federal University of Technology, Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria

4. Dr. A Rasheed, Bayero University, Kano; former student of Margaret Berry's.

The Themes to be explored are:

a. Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Analysis of Discourse

b. Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Learning/Teaching of Language

c. Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Analysis of Text (Literary and non-Literary)

Participants are expected from all parts of Nigeria, especially the North.

Ernest Akerejola

SYSFLAN'S Immediate Past President

4.8 Towards Humane Technologies: Biotechnology, new media, and citizenship

The ASFLA/Network newsletter might seem a strange place to extend an invitation to a conference focused on biotechnology. It shouldn't be.

The social changes being wrought which involve new technologies are extensive and massive. New contexts, new meanings, new understandings of what it means to be human - all of these are contingent to some degree upon new understandings of what it means to be human in a globalised, increasingly technologised world. Nothing highlights this as much as new biotechnologies. Nothing should be more relevant to sociolinguistics.

These phenomena are of much concern to linguists as they are to farmers and the "disabled". In fact the conference has attracted such an interdisciplinary array of scholars, legislators, community members, and practitioners that the conference itself presents an opportunity for research as a problematic sociolinguistic phenomenon.

Why "biotechnology, new media, and citizenship"?

In the widespread debates about the future of biotechnology, many people feel that institutional and expert voices often overpower those of people who are personally and immediately affected by current technological developments, or the lack thereof. Such people include, for example, people with disabilities; people conceived through reproductive technologies; people who use reproductive technologies to conceive; farmers and graziers; scientists at the coal-face; government project and policy officers who promote and regulate the bioindustries; and community members who feel they have much to contribute to the debate yet feel they have no way to influence our technological direction.

Yet in today's mass mediated arena we all have almost daily experiences of the widespread excitement and concern about new technologies and media forms, especially biotechnologies. It seems that the potentials for our new technologies are boundless, regardless of whichever attitude one takes towards them. Often they appear as inevitable, ubiquitous, agent-like--almost human. Too often, though, the human-ness of our new technologies gets ignored as we stand in thrall of their potentials, and their actualities.

New media are always dependent on older media. Biotechnology is dependent on any number of media for its public propagation, acceptance, or rejection. These include, but are not limited to, ICT, mass media, and institutional media (the institutions of law, policy, and various other organs of public opinion). A "new media" perspective on biotechnology provides a new way to understand the current issues surrounding the emergence of biotechnology and its attendant possibilities.

In effect, a new media perspective allows us to map out and comprehend the extent to which developments in a field such as biotechnology can and do affect our lives, the lives of other species, and the world we live in. Citizenship is the process of engagement in such issues which is fundamental to healthy liberal democracies. It is in the spirit of citizenship that we take a new media perspective on biotechnological advances.

Media in all forms are the means by which we move meanings and ideas from one context to another, across time and space. As such, an emergence of new media forms is always historically significant. Such emergences create possibilities for new forms of human relatedness; new ways of understanding what it means to be human; access to new meaning systems, new cultures, new beliefs, and new knowledges. So at least in a limited sense, we can also see biotechnologies and their associated practices as mediating practices--as biomedia. Biomedia provide new perspectives on what it means to be human, to be healthy, or even to be living; they move fundamental aspects of life from hitherto "secret" places into the realm of public space and commercial manipulation; they open possibilities for new knowledge about life; and they present new challenges to human understanding about what it means to be human and humane.

Towards humane technologies is a forum for creating new understandings about these directions in our society. We want to ask important questions about what kinds of meanings are made and moved because of biotechnologies; about who gets to make the meanings that count; and about creating a forum for making meaningful contributions to the direction of our technological processes. That is something that cannot be done in isolation or ignorance. We invite you to join us in approaching biotechnology research and commercialisation as a challenge of citizenship.

The organisers welcome SFL practitioners who are interested in these issues to participate.The event is sponsored by Biotech Australia, UQ Business Economics and Law Faculty, the UQ Community Service and Research Centre, and the QUT program in Applied Ethics.

Speakers include:

Norman Fairclough

Peter Isaacs

Joseph Vogel

(http://www.thebiodiversitycartel.com/cartel/paginas/framecartel.asp?idsec=4&idioma=2 )

David Seedhouse

http://www.aut.ac.nz/research_showcase/research_activity_areas/davsee.shtml

"And many many more", as they say in showbiz.

For further information see http://www.uq.edu.au/gsm/biomediaindex.html

Or contact the organisers - Naomi <n.sunderland@qut.edu.au>, Phil <phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au> Peter <p.isaacs@qut.edu.au >

4.9 The Developing Discourses of Identity and Immigration in Europe

A workshop to be held in Aberystwyth, Wales, 22-27 July, 2002, is titled "The Developing Discourses of Identity and Immigration in Europe" (Workshop 510). It is to be held at The Eighth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas -- European Culture in a Changing World: Between Nationalism and Globalism. The URL of the conference is <www.aber.ac.uk/tfts/issei2002> and the workshop chair is Robert Gould, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada, <rgould@ccs.carleton.ca> (613) 520-2600, ext. 2123.

4.10 Ruqaiya Hasan's visit to South Africa, July 2002

Following John Polias and Geoff Thompson,s visit last year, we are privileged to have another member of the systemics community visit South Africa. We have received generous funding from the SA National Research Foundation for Professor Ruqaiya Hasan to visit Pietermaritzburg, Grahamstown and Cape Town to present papers and seminars. Her focus will be primarily educational, in response to the feedback we had from people on what they would most like her to talk about.

The following is her itinerary:

4-6 July, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg -- Seminar on 'Understanding Language in Relation to Teaching and Learning'

8-10 July, SA Applied Linguistics Association (SAALA) and Linguistics Association of SA (LSSA) combined annual Conference, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg Keynote address on 'Globalization, Literacy and Ideology'

11-13 July, Rhodes University, Grahamstown -repeat of Pietermaritzburg seminar

17-19 July, University of Cape Town -The Second International Basil Bernstein Symposium paper on 'Semiotic Mediation and Bernstein's Code Theory: On the Conditions of Knowledge in a Pluralistic Society'

4.11 The Transcultured Self: Experiencing Languages and Intercultural Communication

6-8 December, 2002 - Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

http://www.cf.ac.uk/encap/langcom/ialic/conference/index.html

4.12 Conferences in China

China's next systemic functional conference is to be held in Qinhuangdao in July (or Aug) 2003, hosted by Yanshan Univ. Qinghuangdao is a beautiful coastal tourist city. International scholars are welcome to come.

Huang Guowen of Zhongshan University in Guangzhou will host a conference discussing the application using SFL and other linguistics theories in translation.

4.13 European Symposia on Multi-modal Discourse

We are grateful to Cassily Charles for the following information about plans to follow up the Symposium Multi-modal Discourse in Salzburg in January 2002.

Following enthusiastic feedback on the Salzburg Symposium on Multi-modal Discourse earlier this year (University of Salzburg, Austria, 25th & 26th January 2002), a regular series of European multimodality symposia has been proposed, with the next to take place in Norway in 2004.

Eija Ventola's initial plan in 2001 was to invite to Salzburg 'the Italian contingent' (i.e. Christopher Taylor, Anthony Baldry & Paul Thibault), for a seminar on their recent multimodality work. This eventually evolved into a very densely-packed two-day symposium, with plenary speakers including Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, and participants from Australia, Singapore, Japan and all over Europe.

The symposium was small and intense but quite inclusive. There were about 60 participants in total, about half of whom presented papers. Speakers ranged from the leading scholars to beginning postgraduates, and drew on a range of frameworks. A few papers discussed on-going issues of building and adapting theoretical tools for inter-semiotic discourse - e.g. Gunther Kress on genre. Others - John Bateman, Christopher Taylor and Anthony Baldry - demonstrated software for the management & analysis of multimodal texts & corpora. The majority of papers focussed on specific modes, media or codes (e.g. typography, hypertext, product samples, gesture), texts (e.g. museum displays, interactive CD-ROMs, popular films) or applications (e.g. translation, expert knowledge representation, the design of teaching materials).

A volume of selected papers edited by the Salzburg organisers (Eija Ventola, Martin Kaltenbacher & Cassily Charles) is in the wings, and should be out late this year. The next multi-modality symposium will be in early May 2004, organised by Eva Maagero at Agder University College, Kristiansand, Norway (eva.maagero@hia.no)

5.1 Language, Brain, Culture Conference, December 2001

Language, Brain, Culture conference, University of Sydney, December, 2001

By Annabelle Lukin

Centre for Language in Social Life, Linguistics, Macquarie University

In December last year, the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association, in conjunction with the Centre for Language in Social Life, Macquarie University, hosted an ambitious, transdisciplinary conference with the theme `Language, Brain, Culture' (LBC). The conference was the brain-child of Dr. Geoff Williams, (University of Sydney English Department), who, over a coffee following the Bernstein Memorial in January 2001, proposed the conference title, and suggested that we begin by inviting Harvard neurobiologist Terrence Deacon, author of the well known The Symbolic Species: the coevolution of language and the brain. Colleagues Professor Bill Greaves and Dr Jim Benson (Glendon College, York University, Toronto) had already been in discussions with Professor Deacon. Thanks to their ground work, Deacon wrote back almost immediately to accept the invitation.

Terry Deacon was just one of many engaging and lively plenary presenters at the conference. His presentation, "Language as an emergent complex co-evolutionary phenomenon' provided a discussion of the language-brain relationship remarkably resonant with work in systemic functional theory. He argued against any kind of `unitary language facility', suggesting instead that language is at the convergence point between the biological, the social and the semiotic. He rejected computation or design metaphors in relation to the brain, arguing that the brain is organized from `the bottom up'. His research demonstrates a degree of plasticity in the brain which is incompatible with notions of language as `hard-wired' in the brain.

But neurobiology was just one of the disciplines represented at the conference. Archaeologist Professor Iain Davidson, of the University of New England (Armidale, NSW) reviewed archaeological evidence and arguments about language origins which have been debated over the last 15 years. Fuzzy engineer Professor Michio Sugeno, of the Riken Brain Sciences Institute in Tokyo presented a paper titled "Verbalization of computers toward brain-style computing architecture". Sugeno discussed his current research project, which aims to enable computers to compute meaning, and systemic functional theory is the linguistics of choice for his project. A number of researchers from Macquarie University's Centre for Language in Social Life are consultants to this project.

To the conference committee's delight, Professor Michael Arbib, Director of the University of Southern California Brain Project, submitted an abstract to the conference. Thanks to Geoff's timetable juggling, we were able to schedule Michael Arbib's paper as a `featured presentation'. Arbib demonstrated his capacity to ride a steep learning curve when he delivered a revised version of his original paper, "Extending the mirror system hypothesis", incorporating some ideas from systemic functional theory in his discussion. His paper generated a very exciting sense of the possibilities of transdisciplinary discussions. Michael Arbib accepted an invitation to return to Sydney for the 2002 ASFLA conference, and he is delivering a plenary paper there, as well as being a key presenter at the pre-conference seminar designed to build on the discussions initiated at the LBC conference.

It might seem, from the plethora of experts from this variety of disciplines, that little space would have been left over linguistic input. Yet the conference managed to feature plenaries from the following, in order of their presentation:

o Professor Christian Matthiessen, "Approaching `language, brain, culture' systemically: A journey of exploration"

o Emeritus Professor Ruqaiya Hasan, "On semantic variation: talk with consciousness in mind"

o Dr David Butt, "Significant behaviours: Art, language, culture and the growth of human potential to mean"

o Clinical Linguistics Research Group (Dr Beth Armstrong): "Language disorder: A window to language organization, the brain and learning how to mean

o Emeritus Professor Michael Halliday, "The architecture of language: How children build up the resource which enables them to mean"

The parallel papers were also successful in attracting a presenters from a range of disciplines, including linguistics, archaeology, psychiatry, education, sociology, and speech pathology. It is only through opportunities such as these, in which cross-disciplinary discussions are possible, that we can expect progress on the big questions about the language, brain, culture interactions.

The conference was opened by Robyn Williams, a science broadcaster of many many years experience. He hosts The Science Show and Ockham's Razor, two high rating programmes on ABC Radio National, which is Australia's public broadcaster. Robyn passed our programme onto Natasha Mitchell, who was then in preparation for a new programme now running called `All in the Mind'. Natasha attended a number of sessions at the conference, and arranged interviews with some of the presenters.

A really big thanks must go to Geoff Williams for conceptualising and organizing a conference which many are still raving about. As someone who participated on the conference committee with Geoff, I remain in awe of his enormous energy and capacity to get the job done with minimal fuss.

5.2 Past conferences in China

We are very grateful to Professor Fang Yan (Tsinghua University, Beijing) for providing us with information about some recent conferences in China.

The Eighth National DA conference held in Suzhou from May 18 - 20. To begin with, Suzhou has completely changed from the old poor city into a real modern city with the its facsinating classical southern features.About the conference, 83 acholars attended including your old friends Hu, Zhu Rongsheng, Zhang Delu, Yang Xinzhang, Ren Shaozeng, Huang Guowen and many new faces, mainly PhD and MA students. Among the keynote speakers addressed issues concerning the nature of context (Hu), a diachronic study of the path of DA (Zhu), a further study of cohesion (Zhang), Applying SFL theory to evaluate translation(Huang), elaboration on the Apraisal system and applications (Yang; Li Zhanzi), a diachronic study of genre (Fang), Language, Disourse and Power (Xinbin). In the afternoons, the participants had group discussion and more presentations.

Before this conference, a stylistic conference was held in Chongqing at which the application of SFL in stylistic analysis occupies a noticable place.

Then immediately after the DAC, Hu and some other scholars went to attend a confernce on Semiotics.

5.3 Harvard Evolution of Language Conference 2002

Jim Benson and Bill Greaves, York University, Toronto.

The Harvard Evolution of Language Conference 2002 was a remarkably informative and stimulating event. Owing to the inevitable parallel sessions, we were able to attend only a fraction of the proceedings, but a glance at the program (http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/evolang2002/) will make clear the diversity of fields of study that were represented. Of particular interest were the strands on animal communication, mirror neurons, and archaeology.

Our poster on 'The interface of neurobiological and linguistic development' was the result of collaboration between ourselves and Chris Cleirigh, and Jared Taglialatela of the Language Research Center in Atlanta. We relied heavily on visuals for this, and found that they were very effective in getting across basic systemic concepts such as stratal and metafunctional diversification. In fact, the thing that stands out most for us was the ease with which the Hallidayan perspective on language permitted cross-disciplinary conversations. For example, we had two lenghy extra-curricular sessions with Richard Lewontin. To take another example, we found a musicologist from Johns Hopkins, Elizabeth Tolbert, who says that Ed McDonald's systemic approach to music has a lot in common with her own, and she is excited at the prospect of meeting him at the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition at the Uni of NSW this July.

In this respect, many conferees were ahead of the curve proposed by Ray Jackendoff in one of the plenaries, when he presented excerpts from his new book, Foundations of Language (OUP, 2002). It turns out that there are problems with UG from an evolutionary perspective. Since it is `treated as one decomposable unit', it is hard to see how it could have evolved incrementally. Jackendoff proposed to save the appearances for UG by `seeing language as composed of many semi-independent parts, with syntax not as the sole generative capacity, but as a mediator between phonology and semantics, which are independent coexisting combinatorial systems'. Sounds good to us.

The concluding panel discussion featured a phonologist, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, a primatologist, Marc Hauser, and the `father of modern linguistics', Noam Chomsky. This was a discussion that was hard to get off the ground, since one of the panellists maintained that about all you could do with the subject was to come up with competing fairy tales.

From our point of view, the new information was in the papers and in further discussions with the authors. For example, we discovered that monkey alarm calls are more rich and complex than standard accounts of vervets would suggest. Klaus Zuberbühler reported on two kinds of monkeys in the Tai forest that share the same habitat. The Campbell's monkeys have alarm calls for leopards and eagles, as do the neighboring Diana monkeys. The calls of both kinds of monkeys are acoustically very different, but each kind will perform the appropriate escape behaviour no matter which kind of monkey emits the call. Moreover, the female Campbell's monkey calls are radically different acoustically from those of the male Campbell's monkey. Interestingly, the calls seem to be addressed to the predators (a contribution to signalling theory made by Amotz Zahavi, in a plenary talk) rather than conspecifics; in addition, the calls are audible over long distances, the better to indicate the presence of a dominant male to any unaffiliated males in the vicinity. Incidentally, when these unaffiliated males emit an alarm call, it stirs up the females of the nuclear group. It seemed to us that there was much more interpretation going on in this environment than standard accounts suggest, and that `alarm' calls may be a misnomer.

Then there was the flutist who played a replica of a 53,000 year old Neanderthal flute. The original was made from the femur of juvenile cave bear, and the flutist made the replica from a similar bone almost as old. It looks like music has been around almost as long as language.

Fortunately, in the internet age, it isn't necessary to actually beanywhere to know about such things. Here is a website that features theflutist Jelle Atema, and it has audio clips as well:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/aaas-2000/0221_dispatch_flutes.html

In short, the conference provided many things to mull over, and presented many opportunities for further fruitful collaboration between systemicists and those who are not linguists but who are greatly interested in language.

6.1 Virginia Stuart-Smith, Ph.D. thesis

Virginia Stuart-Smith. 2002. Rhetorical Structure Theory as a Model of Semantics: a Corpus-Based Analysis from a Systemic-Functional Perspective. Macquarie University.

Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) is an approach to the study of text organisation which conceptualises a domain within the semantic stratum in relational terms. The present study aims to pursue the complementarity between RST and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SF). It investigates a corpus of six undergraduate Psychology essays that were analysed using RST. A database was designed to manipulate the corpus of essay texts and RST analyses to allow further categorisation and coding, as well as the extraction of particular parts of the corpus for analysis. The study has three components.

(1) The first component involves viewing part of the corpus from the perspective of a systemic analysis looking at the RST analysis. It deals with a whole essay in relation to the Method of Development and Main Point. Support for the view that the method of development is embodied in the rhetorical organisation of a text will be presented.

(2) The second component involves viewing selected parts of the corpus from the perspective of the RST analysis looking at the systemic analysis. It focuses on relations within clause complexes and specific relations in particular between-clause complex-contexts. Significant correspondence will be demonstrated between the analyses of rhetorical relations that occur within clause complexes and systemic clause complexing analyses. Also patterns in the movement of lexical chains through the relevant sections of text involved in Elaboration relations that occur between clause complexes will be described. Joints and Contrasts will also be investigated as part of the second component and evidence to support the conceptual separation of schemas and relations on the basis of the simultaneous systems of taxis and logico-semantic type will be presented.

(3) The third component involves a quantitative analysis of the whole corpus. Based on this analysis, a proposal will be put forward that offers a description of the hierarchical nature of text organisation. Text organisation will be presented as being distributed into five bands on the basis of clustering of text spans, initially on the basis of clause complex boundary and then on the basis of text span size.

6.2 Elizabeth Thomson, Ph.D. thesis

Elizabeth Thomson. Exploring the Textual Metafunction in Japanese: a case study of selected written texts. University of Wolloongong.

This study sets out to explore the relationship between the grammar of the textual metafunction within Systemic Functional Grammar and the organisation of a set of Japanese selected written texts into discrete text types or genres. The study is motivated by the need for grammatical descriptions of Japanese discourse for teaching Japanese as a Second/Foreign Language. Descriptions of how Japanese organises textually, as a coherent message, are limited, with most work centred on clause level descriptions. This study looks at the resources of textual organisation above the clause.

This study investigates the proposition that in Japanese, the clause is patterned in a motivated manner in its discourse environment and that this patterning correlates with the organisation of discourse. The theoretical resources of the Systemic Functional model of language are used to investigate these patterns above clause rank. In order to capture the organisational patterns above the clause, the study utilizes the T-unit or Theme-unit (Fries 1995c), the use of which can account for the operation of co-referential ellipsis and clause chaining in Japanese.

The corpus of this study consists of eight instances of five separate genres. The five genres are 1) the factual news commentary, 2) the hard news story, 3) the soft news story, 4) the nursery tale and 5) the narrative. Each instance is segmented into T-units. The order of the constituents within the T-units in each text is quantified. The quantitative results indicate that the choice of what is selected as first in the T-unit is significant and equates with Theme. The system of THEME as it appears in the corpus is thus described.

Following the description of the system of THEME, each text in the corpus is examined for patterns which demonstrate that the choice of Theme keys into the method of development of a text and that certain configurations of Theme serve to realise the function of each of the generic stages in each text.

The description of each text begins with an examination of the generic stages. This is followed by an examination of the selection of Themes within each stage and how these collectively work to produce a particular method of development. The generic stages are then described logically in relation to each other and consideration is given to the distribution of given and new information and how these configurations also key into the method of development. The picture of each text as an instance of a particular genre is built up.

6.3 Guowen Yang

Guowen Yang. The Description and Implementation of the Chinese Aspect System.

FB10, Sprach-und Literaturwissenschaften

Bremen University, 28334 Bremen, Germany

gwyang@uni-bremen-de

The research presented in this dissertation is composed of mainly three parts. The first part of the work is to give a full systemic description of the Chinese aspect system which is shown in a grammatical network with all relevant entry conditions and realization rules. The system not only contains simple aspect forms, but also all possible complex aspect forms on which little investigation has been done in previous research. The second part of the work is to carry out a semantic analysis of each aspect form in terms of temporal logic theories; this has also not been deeply explored before. In the research, much work is done on looking into the intrinsic temporal relations of both simple aspect forms and complex forms, especially on investigating, analyzing, and generalizing the semantic conditions for the combination of different aspect forms to explain the compatibility of particular aspect combinations. The third part of the work is to implement the system in the KPML multilingual generator to generate Chinese sentences. In the generation, the temporal relations of aspect forms are taken as semantic inputs. Under the guidance of entry conditions, the grammatical network is traversed, proper grammatical features are selected, and sentences in appropriate aspect forms are generated. In the dissertation, most existing achievements in the area are introduced, discussed, and considered for their relevance for the Chinese aspect problem. Comrie's theoretical framework of aspect and Vendler's claims concerning situation types are currently being used in analyzing the properties of each individual aspect form. The research is supervised by Professor John A. Bateman at the University of Bremen, Germany.

6.4 Theses from Deakin University

Two recently completed theses attached to the Deakin University Medical Interpreting project have addressed the issue of the interpersonal aspects of the physician's talk and the way it is interpreted by professional medical interpreters.

Di Hirsh's MA thesis followed Martin's work on the interpersonal metafunction in particular, adding gaze direction and aspects of the patient's lifeworld and to a lesser extent some features of White's appraisal analysis.

Cameron Willis' BA(Hons) thesis is an appraisal analysis of the physician's rapport and makes exclusive use of White's approach to this topic within the interpersonal metafunction. The quality of the rapport depends on the quality of the interpreting for the non-English speaking patient and the physician.

Both theses have delivered findings relevant to theoretical and practical material being developed for medical interpreters within the larger project. The outcomes will involve interpreters being much more attuned to interpreting not just the medical content of what the physician says but the way he or she expresses it.

Helen Tebble

Director Medical Interpreting Project

Deakin University

7.1 "On grammar"

By M.A.K Halliday. London & New York: Continuum.

The first volume of the 10 volume set of M.A.K. Halliday's collected works will be published in July and launched at the forthcoming conference in Liverpool.

7.2 "Relations and functions within and around language"

Peter H. Fries, Michael Cummings, David Lockwood & William Spruiell (eds.). Relations and functions within and around language. London & New York: Continuum.

7.3 "Towards a Relational-Perspective Approach to Syntactic Semantics"

Juan Qian. 2001. Toward a Relational-Perspective Approach to Syntactic Semantics. Beijing: Renmin Jiaoyu Chubanshe (People's Education Press).

Contents:

Preface by Hu Zhuanglin

Preface "Functional Syntax: an overview" by Susumo Kuno

Preface "Structural and Formal Linguistics in Prague" by Petr Sgall

1. Introduction

2. A survey of relevant studies

[Vilém Mathesius, Frantisek Danes, Charles Fillmore, Wallace Chafe, Michael Halliday]

3. A relational-perspective approach: relations

4. A relational-perspective approach: perspectives

5. Internal dative: a relational-perspective approach

6. Concluding remarks

7.4 "A systemic-functional approach to grammatical metaphor."

Wenfang Fan. 2001. A Systemic-functional Approach to Grammatical Metaphor. Foreign Language Teaching and Reserch Press.

Abstract

Ever since Aristotle people have been interested in and doing a lot of research on metaphor. But most of the studies of metaphor, have been mostly concerned with metaphor in its rhetorical sense of the term. Though some linguists have realized the metaphorical nature of grammar, research on grammatical metaphor (GM) is rare. The American functionalists did a lot of work on the relationship between form and content under the titles of iconicity and grammaticalization, but they failed to connect these phenomena to GM. It was with the systemic-functionalists that the conscious study of GM started. Following Halliday's initial treatment of GM in 1985, these systemic-functionalists began their reset in the field of GM. But these researchers differ in their views about GM, and even have not agreed on the concept of GM itself, each focusing only on a certain aspect. Compared with studies on metaphor in its rhetorical sense of the term and on other language phenomena, studies on GM are far from being enough. Therefore, I set out to make a systematic exploration of GM, hoping to bring together the scattered discussions on this topic under a systemic-functional approach and to help develop the theory of GM.

In the frontier of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is explained with more explanatory power. According to Lakoff, metaphor is a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system. This concept is accepted here in the explanation of GM. At the same time, Halliday's treatment of GM as transferred realizations in the lexicogrammar is also accepted. The combination of the Hallidayian and the cognitive linguistic approach to the problem led to the definition of GM. GM is taken to be a special type of the general phenomenon "metaphor". It is an incongruent realization of meanings involving transference of grammatical units from one grammatical domain to another.

Based on this definition, GM is studied systematically under the systemic-functional framework. Corresponding to the three metafunctions of language, GM is divided into three kinds: ideational GM (including experiential GM and logical GM), interpersonal GM (including speech function metaphor and metaphor of modality), and textual GM. The three kinds of GM are studied in turn. In this systematic way, the former partial and scattered studies done by Halliday and his followers are brought together. The study results in some modifications of the former studies and in the development of the theory of GM.

Under the systemic-functional framework, GM of each kind is classified a step further along the delicacy scale. For example, taking experiential GM as the transference from one kind of process to another, experiential GM is classified into four kinds: transference from process A to process B, from process Ai to process Aii, from overt process to covert process, and from zero process to overt process. The classification of GM along the delicacy scale makes the understanding of GM deeper and more concrete.

In the present systematic study of GM, some theories previously studied as separate phenomena, such as iconicity and grammaticalization, and the speech act theory, are treated only as diverse names of the same general linguistic phenomenon of metaphor under the systemic-functional framework.

The dissertation ends with a summary of the general characteristic of GM --recursion, and some conclusions of the whole dissertation.

7.5 "Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education"

Nat Bartels (Ed.) Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

This book is a collection of 20 commisioned studies examining what teachers learn (or don't) in different classes during language teacher education and and how this knowledge is used (or not) in their practice as teachers. Several of the chapters look at the learning of systemic-functional views language. The book also includes a chapter reviewing other research relevant to this area (i.e. knowledge transfer, expertise, teacher learning) and research methodology used to research such questions. It will likely be published sometime in 2003.

7.6 "Teaching Multiliteracies across the Curriculum: Changing Contexts of Text and Image in Classroom Practice"

Unsworth, Len. 2001. Teaching Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum: Changing contexts of text and image in classroom practice. Buckingham: Open University Press.

This book is grounded in systemic functional linguistics and its extrapolation to "a grammar of visual design" as described by Kress and vanLeeuwen(1996) More information at the Open University Press website: http://195.89.185.89/bd.cgi/openup/isb?0335206042 and for Australian readers the Allen and Unwin website: http://www.allenandunwin.com/shopping/product.asp ?ISBN=0335206042

CONTENTS:

1. Changing dimensions of school literacies 2. Learning about language as a resource for literacy development 3. Describing visual literacies 4. Distinguishing the literacies of school science and humanities 5. Exploring multimodal meaning-making in literature for children 6. Developing multiliteracies in the early school years 7. Developing multiliteracies in content area teaching 8. Teaching multiliteracies in the English classroom.

7.7 "Expository Discourse: A Genre-Based Approach to Social Science Research Texts"

Beverly A. Lewin, Jonathan Fine, and Lynne Young. 2001. Expository Discourse: A Genre-based Approach to Social Science Texts. London: Continuum. 2001. ISBN: 0826449131.

Lewin, Beverly (Tel Aviv University), Fine, Jonathan (Bar-Ilan University), Young, Lynne (Carleton University).

Hb: 0-8264-4913-1; x, 166pp; GB£45.00 /US$79.95.

This volume provides a detailed and explicit account of the genre of social science research articles. While previous literature has analyzed some aspects of the research genre separately, this book presents a comprehensive model which characterizes the generic, registerial and discoursal options as they interweave within a text. Another important contribution of the analysis is the formulation of explicit realisation statements that relate the abstract categories of move and act (as described by Swales and Bhatia) to the way these units actually are created by lexical grammatical choices. The realisation networks draw on the work of systemic functional linguistics, primarily Halliday, Hasan, Martin and Ventola. The added emphasis in this study is that research texts are ultimately persuasive texts and genre 'constraints' can be tightened or loosened in response to the rhetorical dimension. The description of the social science research genre is important both for those teaching English, for speakers and readers of other languages, and for researchers of discourse structure. For teachers, the detailed analysis of texts and the method for determining realization rules will help in guiding students who must understand and produce research articles. For researchers, the qualitative and quantitative analysis show how the different levels of abstraction, from the genre itself to its moves, acts and wordings, are related to each other. Lastly, this analysis can serve as a model for future descriptions of other academic and professional genres.

e-mail: rwilson@continuumbooks.com www.continuumbooks.com Rowan Wilson Marketing Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building 11 York Road London SE1 7NX Phone: 020 7922 0909 Fax: 020 7922 0881.

7.8 "The Language of Conferencing"

Eija Ventola, Celia Shalom, Susan Thompson (eds.). 2002. The Language of Conferencing. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Contents:

Part I

Eija Ventola: Why and what kind of focus on conference presentations?

Celia Shalom: The academic conference: A forum for enacting genre knowledge

Christine Räisänen:The conference forum: A system of interrelated genres and discursive practices

Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet: Science in the making: Scientific conference presentations and the construction of facts

Part II

Anni Heino, Eija Tervonen & Jorma Tommola: Metadiscourse in academic conference presentations

Susan Thompson: 'As the story unfolds': The uses of narrative in research presentations

Cassily Charles and Eija Ventola: A multi-semiotic genre: The conference slide show

Monique Frobert-Adamo: Humour in oral presentations: what's the joke?

Pauline Webber: The paper is now open for discussion

Part III

Irena Vassileva: Speaker-audience interaction: the case of Bulgarians

presenting in English

Tatyana Yakhontova: Titles of conference presentation abstracts: a cross-cultural

perspective

Viktor Slepovitch: English as a conference language for students of business in

Belarus: Problems, solutions and prospects

David Banks: The French scientist and English as a conference language

Eija Ventola: Should I speak English or German? -- Conferencing and

language code issues

7.9 Publications on literature

Huisman, Rosemary. 1998. The Written Poem, Semiotic Conventions from Old to Modern English. London & New York: Cassell. Repr.pb 1999, Continuum.

Huisman, Rosemary. 2001."Theme in Exodus: Grammatical Meaning and Spoken Syntax in Old English Poetry." Christian J. Kay & Louise M. Sylvester (ed.), Lexis and Texts in Early English, Studies presented to Jane Roberts. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 129-142.

7.10 JASFL Working papers, volume 2

Edited by Noboru Yamaguchi.

7.11 Other recent publications

Moore, A., Candlin, C.N., & Plum, G.A. 2001. "Making sense of HIV- related viral load: one expert or two?" Culture, Health & Sexuality, 3(4), 429-50.

This paper examines how patients with HIV and their doctors jointly interpret "viral load". We show tha the term `viral load' is multiply coded: it calls up the idea of a biographical property of the HIV positive body, but the term is also used as an indicator of drug treatment effectiveness, of patient compliance, and of overall wellness. Such multiple codings can be problematic because they index multiple and potentially conflicting discourses. Three distinct discourses which inform HIV medicine are identified: health measurement, health care, and health experience. These are described in terms of their semantic, lexicogrammatical and interactional patterns to illustrate how doctors an patients navigate their paths through them. In practice, what a viral load result is taken to mean depends on the alignment of patient and doctor in terms of their respective interdiscursive positions. The ability to recognize and flag discursive shifts should be considered a central component of doctors' professional expertise, particularly as a means of supporting patients in contributing their own expertise to clinical decision making.

Nanri, Keizo.2001. "Logical structures of Japanese texts." Text 21(3), 373-409.

7.12 Forthcoming publications

Caffarel, A. forthcoming. A systemic functional grammar of French. From Grammar to Discourse. Vol.1 and Vol.2. London: Continuum.

The first volume focuses on clause rank systems and the second volume on group rank systems. Both volumes aim at introducing French linguistics students and researchers to systemic functional grammar as a tool for text analysis and stylistics.

7.13 Software: Systemics 1.0 by K. O'Halloran & K. Judd

Systemics 1.0, software for coding SFL analysis developed by Kay O'Halloran and Kevin Judd through a Research Grant at the National University of Singapore, is now available from Singapore University Press. Please see below for an overview of the software, the cost and information about ordering the CDROM. Further information about Systemics 1.0 may be obtained from Kay O'Halloran (see contact details below)

8.1 Aviation English: An Invitation

Submissions are invited for Aviation English: Theory and Praxis, a volume of articles, essays, and research reports addressing the use of English for purposes related to airplanes and flight. Aviation English is both a specialized use of language and a lingua franca. The term refers to technical, administrative, commercial, and educational uses of the English language in application within the airline industry and private and commercial fields of aviation. Aviation English also refers to the use of English as the international language of the air, variously referred to as AIRSPEAK, air traffic control - pilot phraseology, and pilot - tower communications.

This collection of readings is intended for those who make indirect or direct use of Aviation English and for whom it is of importance. The contents would be of interest to anyone associated with the broad range of disciplines and activities connected with the airplane and flight: air transport administrators and business professionals, flight instructors, aviation historians, aeronautical science educators, aeronautical and aerospace engineers, government and airline association officials, airport managers and technicians, aircraft maintenance personnel, air traffic controllers and their trainers, journalists, language researchers, linguists, culture and communication specialists, instructors of Aviation English and English for specific purposes, and pilots - private and commercial.

Send your 300 word abstract to Dr. Peter Ragan, Humanities Department, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, 600 South Clyde Morris Blvd., Daytona Beach, FL 32114, U.S.A. (e-mail: ragan@erau.edu).

9.1 Systemic web sites

9.2 SFL New Researchers' Network

We are grateful to Cassily Charles for providing us with the following information about an important new development in networked research.

An informal international network has newly been established for new researchers in Systemic-functional Linguistics. The idea was originally to facilitate peer-to-peer networking, resource-sharing & support for European post-graduate students working with SFL, who often face challenges of isolation, lack of conference travel funding, and/or barriers to consulting established scholars. However, it has quickly become clear that the need for informal networking is neither restricted to post-graduate students nor Europe. The network is still growing very quickly, but already has members from Japan, Canada, United Arab Emirates, U.S.A., Malaysia, Australia and South Africa, as well as Sweden, U.K., Denmark, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Greece and Ireland. Members range from Masters students and post-doctorate researchers to language professionals and established scholars in other fields who are new to SFL. As well as people seeking a friendly place to ask questions, more experienced SFL researchers have taken a much appreciated interest in sharing experience and mentoring.

So far, the network is supported by an e-mail discussion list, systudy, and a web page (see below). Proposals for future activities of the network include:

Reporting on local conferences & seminars for distant members

Virtual data-discussion sessions

On-line conferencing

The first face-to-face meeting of network members, and all interested others, will be during ISFC 2002 in Liverpool. We will be meeting for an informal lunch on the first day of the conference, 12:40pm on Monday the 15th July, in Carnatic Hall, where the conference meals are served. Everyone who would like to join us is most welcome! (N.B. The lunch must be booked beforehand with the ISFC organisers.) Please contact Cassily Charles (cassily.charles@sbg.ac.at) or simply look for us there.

The credit and our thanks for all the work of setting up and administering the e-mail list, creating the web page and generally making everything work go to Lise Fontaine at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest. The web-page for the SFL New Researchers' Network is at: http://www.univ-brest.fr/erla/systudy-sfl/index.html. To subscribe to systudy, e-mail Lise Fontaine: lfontaine@teaser.fr.

9.3 Macquarie Linguistics news letter

http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/newsletter/

9.4 Corpus resource

This is a general corpus resource, which can be of great value to systemic functional research. Thanks to John Knox, Linguistics, Macquarie University, for providing this information.

The English Language Institute at the University of Michigan is pleased to announce that phase one of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) is now complete, and the corpus is available for research, pedagogic applications, and general interest at

<http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/micase>.

MICASE consists of approximately 1.7 million words from 152 speech events recorded at the University of Michigan between 1997 and 2001, covering a wide range of university spoken activities.

The database is made freely available through the above-mentioned website, which has a custom-designed search engine allowing for a variety of searches that take advantage of the detailed speaker and speech event attributes encoded in the corpus. The ELI is deeply grateful to the Digital Library Production Services of the University Library for their generous support of this project.

Further information about MICASE is also available through the ELI website, <www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/micase.htm>, where we give background information, composition of the corpus in terms of percentages/words for major speaker and speech event categories, details about the transcription and markup scheme, and a list of MICASE-inspired presentations and publications.

Developments planned for the second phase of the project include tagging the corpus for part-of-speech, generating a word list of academic speech and related lexical statistics, posting selected soundfiles on the website, and the development of language teaching and testing materials, as well as continued research on grammatical, lexical, and discoursal features of academic speech.

The MICASE team currently includes Rita Simpson (project director), John M. Swales (faculty advisor), and Sarah Briggs (testing advisor). General inquiries about the project can be directed to Rita <ritacsim@umich.edu> or John <jmswales@umich.edu>.

10.1 John Bateman, The English Department at the University of Bremen: site and activities report

This is now my third year at Bremen, where my working group is slowly establishing itself and its identity. The group currently consists of Kerstin Fischer--conversational interaction and discourse connectives in spoken language, Guowen Yang--natural language generation of Chinese, and myself. Courses are offered within the English Deparment, but are also open to stadents from the Linguistics Department as well as, as appropriate, students from Computer Science and Media-Informatics. Many of the courses are directly built on systemic-functional linguistic approaches and basic knowledge such as transitivity, appraisal and textual organization (theme, cohesion, etc.) are regularlyl covered in the first 4 semesters. Every year there is one compulsory introduction to linguistics course for around 70 students, and this is also very strongly influenced by the systemic perspective.

The research profile of the working group is also progressing slowly but steadily. There are currently four PhD students working in systemic-related areas:

* Chrystalla Thoma: working on translation theory, applying notions of systemic analysis and register theory in the concrete case of the translation of folk tales from Cyprus into English.

* Brigitte Grote: working on a contrastive study of conjunctive relations and their relation to rhetorical organization and lexicogrammatical realization in German and English

* Guowen Yang: working on a systemic-functional grammar of Chinese, also implemented computationally, with particular attention to the treatment of aspect.

* Juan Rafael Zamarano: working on an extensive systemic-functional grammar of Spanish, implemented computationally, and investigated for its potential role in language teaching and providing reference grammars.

As 'services' relevant to the systemic community, we maintain the largest collection of computational systemic-functional grammars, containing grammars (of varying sizes) for, currently, English, German, Dutch, Czech, Russian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Spanish and French. These are accessible in the "Generation Bank" reachable from 'http://purl.org/net/kpml'. There is also a considerable amount bibliographical information relevant for systemicists maintained at 'http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/langpro/bibliographies/index.htm'.

The degree programme at Bremen is the traditional German one of a Magister divided into a two year foundation phase and a two year further phase for more advanced courses. Students study English with either a further main subject or two further minor subjects. Within English they must study Literature and Social History in addition to Linguistics, but can set their own focus within the last 2 years so that study typically concentrate on one area rather than all three. Since the most usual expectation is still that studying English is Literature based, there are still relatively few students who take up Linguistics within English as their main area. We are trying to counterbalance this tendency by further consolidation across the linguistics offering of the faculty--i.e., including both the Linguistics Department proper (which is currently typology based) andthe linguistics sections of the other modern language departments in a more cohesive structure. This will be facilitated by the gradual move away from the Magister type framework to a more modular organization reminiscent of programmes in Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere. There is also a parallel programme for training teachers of English, which follows the Magister structure with the addition of didactics and other practical components specifically for teacher training.

A number of larger research proposals are currently being prepared, in areas ranging from multimodal semiotics to human-robot interaction. Systemic, or systemically-inspired, approaches will play central roles in all of these.

John Bateman

http://www.uni-bremen.de/~bateman