Hello all!
This week’s Sydney Friday seminar is from Geoff Williams, 4pm Sydney time
Friday 10th September.
With lockdown happening at the moment in Sydney, we’ll be online, but hopefully
toward the end of semester we will be able to come together face to face again.
The link is: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/84093744071
All welcome. Below is the abstract and the schedule for the semester.
Yaegan
Semantic variation theory as appliable linguistics: Exploring contexts for
melanoma treatment
Geoff Williams
Semantic variation (SV) research by Hasan and her students focussed on early
childhood contexts, with a particular interest in the ontogenesis of
intracultural ways of saying and meaning (e.g. Hasan, 2009; Cloran, 1994;
Williams, 1995). A significant question raised by the results of these
studies, however, is whether the theoretical concepts and research methods
could be used practicably in other institutional contexts, and perhaps
contribute to SFL’s objectives to be an appliable linguistics and to engage in
praxis.
The paper reports on a study of semantic variation in clinical
consultations about the treatment of melanoma, in this instance focussing on
consultations in medical oncology. (Consultations in surgery are being studied
separately, for reasons to be discussed in the paper.) I will report on some
of the research outcomes so far, new theoretical and methodological issues
encountered, and practical constraints on doing SV research in this type of
institutional context.
References:
Cloran, Carmel. 1994. Rhetorical units and decontextualisation: An enquiry into
some relations of context, meaning and grammar. Monographs in Systemic
Linguistics. 6. Department of English Studies, University of Nottingham.
Hasan, Ruqaiya. 2009. Semantic variation: Meaning in society and in
sociolinguistics. Ed. Jonathan J.Webster. London: Equinox.
Williams, Geoff. 1995. Joint book-reading and literacy pedagogy: A
socio-semantic examination. Phd dissertation. Macquarie University, Australia.
Williams, Geoff, Frances Boyle, Iris Bartula and Jake Thompson. 2021. Effects
of Melanoma Patient SES on Communication during Initial Consultations and
Clinical Trial Recruitment. Paper presented to the Melanoma Institute Australia
Research Retreat. Sydney. 20 August 2021.
Date
Presenter
Topic
13th August
Jim Martin
Construing entities: types of structure
20th August
Ed McDonald
Back to the future: Descriptive adequacy in Halliday’s The Language of the
Chinese "Secret History of the Mongols"
27th August
Dragana Stosic
An axial perspective on Serbian nominal groups
3rd September
Yaegan Doran
Factoring out structure: Nuclearity, linearity and iteration
10th September
Geoff Williams
Semantic variation theory as appliable linguistics: Exploring contexts for
melanoma treatment.
17th September
Helen Caple & Ping Tian
Analysing the representation of diversity in early childhood picture books:
Challenges for multimodal discourse analysis
24th September
Mary Macken-Horarik
Building a knowledge structure in school English: Troubles and (potential)
triumphs
Mid-semester break
(ASFLA)
8th October
Sally Humphrey & Dragana Stosic
Towards a social semiotic perspective on Health Literacy
15th October
Xiaoqin Wu
Articulating social discourse and enacting spatial pedagogy: A multifaceted
understanding of rhythm and space
22nd October
Anna Crane
Interpersonal meaning in Gija: contributing understandings to revitalisation
programs
29th October
Bev Derewianka
Recontextualising a pedagogical grammar from theory to classroom practice
5th November
Alison Moore
#Recover South Coast: social media in bushfire recovery
12th November
Thu Ngo
Functions of film sounds from the systemic functional semiotics perspective
Y. J. DORAN
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
