The Sociolinguistics of Writing

217 Pages·2013·2.546 MB·English

by  Theresa Lillis

Edinburgh Sociolinguistics T
Series Editors: Joan Swann and Paul Kerswill h The Sociolinguistics
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Designed for newcomers to the field as well as postgraduates and academics with an S of Writing
interest in socially oriented approaches to language, this series covers the core topics o
in sociolinguistics. Volumes are discursive, accessibly written and offer both a critical c
overview and insights derived from the authors’ own research. As a whole, the series io Theresa Lillis
provides a comprehensive introduction to sociolinguistics. l
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The Sociolinguistics of Writing
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Theresa Lillis W
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‘With clear vision and a broad reach this book provides a powerful contribution in
to understanding the nature of writing. Equally important is its contribution to g
sociolinguistics, showing how the study of written language belongs at the centre of
contemporary sociolinguistics.’
David Barton, Lancaster University
This book puts writing at the centre of sociolinguistic inquiry drawing on a range of
academic fields including New Literacy Studies, semiotics, genre studies, stylistics and
new rhetoric. The key question the book explores is – what do we mean by ‘writing’ in
the twenty-first century?
Using examples – such as blogs, academic writing, fanfiction, poems, texting, newspaper
articles, souvenir labels, advertisements, wikis, political banners, letters, Youtube
comments, asylum applications - the book argues that writing, involving both old and new
technologies, is a pervasive and complex communicative feaature of contemporary life.
The book is organised around the following areas:
• The multimodal nature of writing
• The verbal dimension to writing
• Writing as everyday practice
• Writing as a differentiated semiotic and social resource
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• Writing as the inscription of identity
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A range of analytic tools for analysing writing as text and practice are illustrated including r
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genre, register, discourse and metaphor, as well as notions which emphasise the mobile
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potential of writing such as genre chains, networks, literacy brokers and text trajectories. a
This book seeks to redress the neglect of writing in the field of sociolinguistics by
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introducing readers to the nature and consequences of what it means to do writing in a i
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globalised world li
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Theresa Lillis is Professor in English Language and Applied Linguistics at the Open
University, UK.
ISBN 978-0-7486-3750-8
Cover design: riverdesign.co.uk
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www.euppublishing.com h
Edinburgh Sociolinguistics
The Sociolinguistics of Writing
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Edinburgh Sociolinguistics
Series Editors:
Paul Kerswill (Lancaster University)
Joan Swann (Open University)
Volumes available in the series:
Paul Baker, Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics
Scott F. Kiesling, Linguistic Variation and Change
Th eresa Lillis, Th e Sociolinguistics of Writing
Forthcoming titles include:
Kevin Watson, English Sociophonetics
Visit the Edinburgh Sociolinguistics website at www.euppublishing.com/series/
edss
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The Sociolinguistics of Writing
Theresa Lillis
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© Th eresa Lillis, 2013
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 10/12pt Adobe Garamond
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3748 5 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 3750 8 (paperback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 3749 2 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 7751 1 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7486 7750 4 (Amazon ebook)
Th e right of Th eresa Lillis
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Figures ix
Tables xii
Author’s acknowledgements xiii
Publisher’s acknowledgements xiv
1 Writing in sociolinguistics 1
Introduction 1
Spoken language as the object of the sociolinguistic gaze 2
Key principles in sociolinguistics 3
Th e importance of the social 3
Th e empirical study of naturally occurring language 5
Everyday language as worthy of study 5
Variety as a core dimension to language 6
Th e position(ing) of writing in sociolinguistics 7
Standardisation and codifi cation 7
Speech and writing in binary opposition 8
Th e acceptable site for ‘closet prescriptivism’? 10
Legitimising writing as an object of sociolinguistic inquiry 12
Th e ethnographic pull in sociolinguistics 13
Background and aims of this book 15
Overview of the book 17
Notes 19
2 Th e question of mode 21
Introduction 21
What’s in a mode? 21
Writing as inscription 23
Writing as verbal 25
Writing as material 29
Writing as technologies 30
Writing as visual 32
Writing as spatial 37
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vi The Sociolinguistics of Writing
Writing and other modal dimensions 37
Modes in practice: an example from geosemiotics 38
Conclusion 40
Notes 41
3 Writing as verbal 42
Introduction 42
Approaches to text analysis: content, form, function 42
Content analysis 43
Form–functional analysis 47
Layering function onto form 47
Collapsing the form function dichotomy 52
Elevating form over function 54
Traditions of written text analysis 57
Critical discourse analysis 57
Rhetoric and new rhetoric 61
Stylistics 64
Contrastive rhetorics 67
Typifi cation and genre 68
Conclusion 71
Notes 72
4 Writing as everyday practice 74
Introduction 74
What counts as literacy? What counts as writing? 75
Writing as ordinary 76
A social practice perspective 78
Th eoretical and empirical tools for exploring writing as social practice 79
Who are writers? Th e current growth in writing activity 85
Using old and new writing technologies: an example of popular political
activity 89
Writing as diff erentially evaluated resource: the case of formal schooling 92
A note on the challenges of description 95
Th e question of literacy 95
Th e question of language 95
Conclusion 97
Notes 98
5 Resources, networks and trajectories 100
Introduction 100
Resources for writing: use and re-use 100
Communities, networks and the clustering of resources 105
Communities – speech, discourse and practice 105
Identifying clusters of resources 107
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Contents vii
Networks and brokers 111
Th e portability and mobility of writing 113
Centring institutions, text trajectories and the question of uptake 113
Seeking asylum (Blommaert 2005) 115
Writing for academic publication (Lillis and Curry 2010) 118
Medical certifi cation processes in nineteenth-century England
(Berkenkotter and Hanganu-Bresch 2011) 119
Conclusion 121
Notes 123
6 Identity, inscription and voice 124
Introduction 124
Why focus on identity? 124
Writing as identity work 127
Th e social structuring of opportunities for writing 127
Habitus and writing practices 129
Resources for writing inscribed with particular identities 131
An example of a centripetal resource: essayist literacy 134
Regulation and agency 136
Strongly regulated writing spaces 136
Weakly regulated writing spaces 139
Ownership and becoming: the material resources for identity work in
writing 146
Conclusion 147
Notes 148
7 Th eorising writing-reading-texts: domains and frames 150
Introduction 150
Conceptualising what writers do: diff erent approaches to writers-
readers-texts 150
Poetic-aesthetic 151
Transactional-rationalist 152
Process-expressionist 153
Socio-cognitive 154
Social semiotic 155
Socio-discursive 156
Social practice 158
Participatory culture 159
Recognition and evaluation of writing: domains and frames 161
Shifting the frame: the aesthetics of routine writing 165
Student writing 165
Workplace writing 166
Conclusion 169
Notes 171
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viii The Sociolinguistics of Writing
8 Conclusions 172
Introduction 172
A summary of key points in this book 173
Th e question of function 173
Th e question of value and evaluation 175
Th e question of boundaries 176
Future research 177
References 179
Index 196
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Figures
1.1 Th e binary framing of spoken language and writing 9
2.1 Personal letters (Besnier 1988: 728) 27
2.2 Pillow as site of graffi ti (Wilson 2003: 298) 30
2.3 Extracts from the status updates on a Facebook wall 31
2.4 Example of public sign using English with features of Celtic
typeface 34
2.5 Example of public sign using Irish with Celtic typeface 35
2.6 Shop sign using simplifi ed Chinese characters (Scollon and
Scollon 2003: 131–2) 39
2.6a Simplifi ed and traditional Chinese characters (Scollon and
Scollon 2003: 131–2) 39
3.1 Examples of a fi lter blog and a personal blog (Herring et al. 2004,
2005) 45
3.2 Move analysis (Swales 2004: 230) 49
3.3 Examples of cohesive ties (Halliday and Hasan 1976) 50
3.4 Exploring cohesion and coherence: data extract and analysis
(Hewings and North 2010: 43) 51
3.5 Parsing of sample sentences using SFL framework
(Moore 2010: 56) 53
3.6 A souvenir label (Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes 2011: 340) 54
3.7 Extracts from letter and analysis (Maybin 2011: 137) 55
3.8 Th e manipulation of form in text messaging (Tagg 2011: 229) 56
3.9 Extract from waste company brochure and analysis (Fairclough
2006: 127–8) 58
3.10 Th e Big Issue Christmas Appeal (in Chouliaraki and Fairclough
1999: 11) 60
3.11 Keywords indicative of moral panic regarding Islam in British and
American press reporting after 9/11 (Baker 2010: 136) 62
3.12 Food label and analysis (Cook 2010: 139) 64
3.13 Extract of poem and stylistic analysis (Short 1996: 62, 67) 65
3.14 Extract from Talkin Th at Talk (Smitherman 2000: 346) 68
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