Hybridity in Systemic Functional Linguistics - Grammar, Text and Discursive Context - Donna R. Miller
13. Hybrid contexts and lexicogrammatical choices: Interpersonal uses of language in peer review reports in linguistics and mathematics
Hybridity in Systemic Functional Linguistics - Grammar, Text and Discursive Context - Donna R. Miller
Akila Sellami-Baklouti [+]
University of Sfax, Tunisia
Description
Akila Sellami Baklouti’s chapter addresses the functional significance of hybridity for text analysis, showing that text can be the product of hybrid discursive contexts: genre and discipline, which constitute two interacting cultures. Harnessing the ‘activation-construal dialectic’ (Hasan 2009b:170) between context, meaning and wording, Baklouti investigates semantic and lexicogrammatical choices realizing the interpersonal uses of language in a corpus of 30 Peer Review Reports relevant to two disciplines: Mathematics and Linguistics. A comparative approach shows that the two sub-corpora display some common lexicogrammatical choices, which are explained as being the traces left in the text by the Peer Review Report genre. In addition to these similarities, however, analysis also reveals some substantial differences, which are posited as being motivated by dissimilar disciplinary cultures (Mathematics vs. Linguistics), especially in terms of their research paradigms and community member relationships. Her findings support Baklouti’s hypothesis that each sub-corpus is to some degree a hybrid outcome of the interaction of different genres belonging to different cultures. Moreover, she is led to conclude that the dialectical relationship between text and context proves to be essential to showing this kind of hybridity at work.