Description
ABSTRACT Reading the potato: a study of decontextualization and literacy Studies of research articles from the life sciences have suggested a correlation of decontextualized communicative events and literacy in the broadest sense of the word. This may be illustrated through the example of laboratory work done by scientists and reproduced in the methods section of the scientific paper as a static piece of writing devoid of problems, agents or reasoning. Laboratory activities are thus removed from their original context, and through a process of re-semiotization (Iedema 2000: 47) find a new simplified and static form. (Knorr-Cetina 1981; Latour and Woolgar 1986). In the process, human activities observable in the laboratory are omitted or reduced to traces in a typified part-genre which in Knorr-Cetina’s (1981: 118) words ‘hinders the outsider from perceiving and analysing the constructive operations of the laboratory, but also makes it more difficult for other scientists to evaluate the work.’ In other words, insiders as well as outsiders are reduced to a state of illiteracy. On the basis of SFL-analyses of resemiotized communicative events originating in an Aalborg-based potato research group and its American counterpart, this paper discusses literacy constraints that may prevent specialists from accessing information in spite of their possession of genre knowledge. References Iedema, R. (2000): Bureaucratic planning and resemiotization. In Ventola, E. (ed.) Discourse and Community. Doing Functional Linguistics. Tübingen. Gunter Narr Verlag, pp 47-69. Knorr-Cetina, K. (1981): The Manufacture of Knowledge. An essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Philadelphia. Pergamon Press. Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve (1986): Laboratory Life. The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.| Period | 30 Jun 2004 |
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| Event title | Euro-International Systemic Workshop |
| Event type | Conference |
| Organiser | Systemisk Funktionel Lingvistik (arrangørgruppe) |
| Location | Miraflores, SpainShow on map |