Varietà della Lingua Inglese

VARIETÀ DELLA LINGUA INGLESE

↔ museum ↔ as texts.

Texts around → language as the foundation of one’s subject thought. Everything we

How we define language?

hear or sense is mediated by language.

Example: the way we dress is something related to language and communication. The way you

→

dress is something interpersonal / interactional you can send a message through what you are

wearing. Thanks to your clothes you constitute yourself in a group.

“The signifier represent a signify for other signifiers”.

Another example: name. Everyone is born in a signifier that had already been decided for him/her.

Your name becomes a different signifier for everyone who enters in contact with you.

Silence. We measure the meaning of what is said or not said by what we were expecting to receive.

Our language is based on differences and absences. →

Rauschenberg is an artist who creates a work of art by erasing a former piece of art. we can

express ourselves in absence and not just in presence.

How we define text? And reading?

A text is any signified unit that the viewer constitutes as an analyzing whole. A text can be formed

by other subtext.

Reading is interpreting. there’s the belief in western

Texts are never objectives. Objectivity in culture is free of bias but

culture that language can be objective. In reality, all communication involves interpretation and

selection. The way we describe an object is always a point on view of this object.

There are text that are neutral (reasonable, non-subjective) and others that are highly emotional

(subjective and less trusty).

My language has to capture anyone who is listening to me so I have to modify my language

according to who I am speaking with.

Ravelli, Museum texts: communication frameworks

Systemic functional linguistics (Halliday).

Halliday applies a sociological approach to language, useful because it dwells on the relationship

between text and context.

The origins of museums:

→ ethimology: mouseion (in Greece it represents the seat of Muses) / Museum (in Roman time, the

place of philosophical discussion)

→ early history: in the XV century it represents the collection of De Medici (without indicating a

building). In the XVII century it represents a collection of curiosities. The modern concept of

museum is born when for the first time a building was built up to house a collection.

It’s a recent idea that the museum has to be a place where you have to attract people; before, it only

a few and well-educated people went to visit museums. Today museums are considered institutions

for the preservation.

Reading spaces in the museum: Institution

Exhibitions

Exhibits

s

Relation text / context in SFL:

• –

Rule resource: model of language where language is seen as a source of meaning and not

as a system of rules.

• –

Sentence text: basic unit is the text because the meaning is negotiated in the text as a

→

whole functional grammar.

• –

Text context: focus on relationship between text and context (the social reality the text

represents and is inserted in) rather than on text decontextualized.

• –

Expressing constructing meaning

• –

Parsimony extravagance

Metafunctions:

Metafunctions

Ideational Field Representational

Interpersonal / interactional Tenor Interpersonal

Textual Mode Organizational

Overlapping of these metafunctions. It’s the basic framework of how Ravelli re-interprets

Halliday’s cathegories.

1. Organisational meaning:

We tent to privilege content more than form when we are asked to describe something.

Handout texts (1-2): the representational content is the same, what is different is the

→

organization

- text 1 highlights the typology of people who can go to the museum

- text 2 highlights the experiences in the museum.

There’s a change in the focus.

Explicit and implicit resources for the organizational meaning: the instructions (explicit) /

generic structure of the text and grammatical patterns (implicit).

Organizational devices to a textual level: →

- genres: text types (purpose and structure) if you understand the genre you will be able to

understand and predict the way language is used and the purpose of the text.

–

- theme / rheme (old / new given / new):

Example: The flow of information in handout 1. The first part of the sentence represents the

main issue, what we already know; the second part of the sentence represents the new

information. The flow of information is from what I know to what is new (theme to rheme). In

an exhibition you move from the paint (given) to the description (new). If the rheme is in the

first position there is a break in flow.

- accessibility:

Example: in classical museums under the object there is a scientific name and characteristics in

Latin. This is not accessible to everyone.

- accuracy (related to accessibility)

2. Interactional meaning:

A private museum is going to survive only if it’s attractive to people. There’s a change in the

in public museums it’s not important how many people visit it

relationship with the public:

because it survives thanks to governmental funds.

→3

Texts 1-2-3 handout 1 different types of text:

Specific attention is attracted by the use of proper terms. It’s a conventional and authoritarian

1-

kind of presenting knowledge. The explanation content may be of interest but the visitor is

passive since the description aims to pour knowledge into you.

It uses questions to involve visitors in a more active participation. It’s a more interactive

2-

form. It represents a dialogical position.