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Critical Theory and Systemic Linguistics: Textualizing the Contact Zone.

1995; University of Pittsburgh Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

0731-6755

Frank Sullivan,

Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies

In the wake of postmodernism, composition studies' attempts to import various forms of critical theory for the analysis and transformation of discursive practices have been radically problematized. The postmodernist insistence on indeterminacy and de-centering?the play of difference?in the production of both meaning and subjectivity has cast doubt on the ability of projects such as that of the Frankfurt School or that of Foucault to address issues of agency and transformative discursive practice. Indeed, it can be argued that these critical projects have raised the very issues that have undermined them. Foucault's analysis of the role of power in the production of discursive formations renders study of, much less intervention into, those formations impossible. Since power is not centered but dispersed, there are too many, and yet no, points of entry. For Horkheimer and Adorno, the inexorable logic of domination leads to only one result: the servant remains enslaved in body and soul; the master regresses (35). Examination of inequities in social relations either valorizes victimhood or retreats into identity politics. The possibility of agency is rendered a moot point. This difficulty has especially problematized the place of linguistics, particularly the systemic variants of functional linguistics, within composi tion studies.1 Indeed, over the last five years, major scholars such as Crowley and Faigley have argued that the advent of postmodernism has eliminated any possible role within composition for linguistics. Given the fact that, since the work by Emig, Britton, and Gere in the early Seventies, composition studies has relied on the social constructionist perspective underlying func tional linguistics, the claims of Crowley and Faigley seem astonishing. It is not the case that linguistics in composition has died out. The last ten years have seen publication of articles and book-length collections on such topics as linguistic methods for studying written texts (Cooper and Greenbaum; Colomb and Williams; Witte); academic texts and discourse (Jolliffe; Nash; Swales; MacDonald; Halliday and Martin; Barton); writing in the workplace (Odell and Goswami; Couture; Spilka; Parker and Campbell); the develop ment of literacy in schools (Cope and Kalantzis); and the development of composition studies as a field (Nystrand, Greene, and Wiemelt). And one of