Page 106 - Literacy in the New Media Age

A SOCIAL THEORY OF TEXT 95

Overall there is a strong sense of uncertainty and insecurity about social
relations, indicated as much by a wavering between the aspiration to total
control through total knowledge – ‘no outside shoes will be worn when in the
pool area’ to the anxiously nervous ‘please … take particular care with untrained
children’ – as by the over-formal syntax. Much could be said about the social world
and its relations that has given rise to and is reflected in the generic form of this
text. It may be enough to say that it was produced by a group of young women,
mothers who knew each other socially, who were unpractised rule-makers. They
needed to produce rules that might guide the safe conduct of a new water babies
swimming club, and clearly felt uncomfortably lodged between the attempt to
impose authority and the reality of friendly social relations. My point is to show
just how precisely these social facts are reflected in the generic form of the text.
As I have indicated, in some approaches to genre, (temporal) sequence figures
significantly as one definitional criterion: ‘staged, goal-oriented social
processes’. In the approach that I take, sequence can have its role, in those genres
in which the unfolding of social action is significant. Certainly that is the case,
for instance, in a procedure, such as a recipe for instance. In other cases, the
rules here being one example, social relations are not expressed through the
sequenced ordering of action but through factors that focus on aspects of power.
Sequence forms no part of the definition of genre in this case. This matter will be
important to bear in mind when I come to discuss the question of genre in
spatially displayed representation.
My second example comes from a different place and a different time, not
from Norwich in the England of 1973, but from the far north coast of New South
Wales, in the Australia of circa 1988.

Beach house holiday units
This unit accommodates 5 persons only. Extra persons will be charged a
nightly rate. Unit to be vacated by 10 am. on the day of departure.
Only soft toilet paper to be used in septic toilet & please do not dispose
of sanitary pads in toilet.
Garbage bags to be placed out on concrete near barbecue each
MONDAY before 7 pm.
Barbecue is available for your use. Utensils in laundry.
No pets allowed.
No fish to be cleaned on premises.
For safety reasons please turn off heaters and fans when unit is
unoccupied.
Thank you
Brian and Norma Denny (Prop.)
PLEASE DO NOT PUT GARBAGE IN COUNCIL BINS
Holiday flat rules (Red Rock, Yamba, Australia, 1988)