A systemic functional analysis of multisemiotic biology texts 4

CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS OF LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS 4.1 The Institutional Context for the Language of Tertiary Biology If text and context in general are intricately interdependent, in a relation of realization, language of school science and its context are no exception. Certain lexicogrammatical patterns are the realization of certain contextual variables, both of the context of situation and of the context of culture (see Section 2.3 above; cf. Section 3.2.1 above). It is therefore crucial to understand what the institutional context of school science is if we want to understand better the language features. As Veel (1997: 162; original emphasis) points out, An account of the language of school science must therefore more than document genres and their grammatical features. Many institutional factors affect the types of meanings that can be made and the value accorded to these meanings … To make sense of the way particular texts and particular grammatical patterns occur in school science, and why they occur in a particular order, it is essential to consider what is distinctive about texts within their particular institutional context. 4.1.1 The Context of Situation of the Biology Texts In describing the contextual configurations, we need to exercise discretion as to the delicacy level needed. That is, a particular category can be described along a scale of delicacy, from least delicate to most delicate (indicated in Section 2.1 above). In the 86 following descriptions, the ellipsis “…” is used to indicate that the category can be further moved down the delicacy scale. Field of discourse. Text 1: biology: cell biology: molecular cell biology: cell cycle: cell division: M phase: Mitosis:…; major reading material to be used in conjunction with attending lectures, doing experiments and taking part in other activities: …. Text 2: biology: biochemistry: macromolecules: carbohydrates: …; major reading material to be used in conjunction with attending lectures and tutorials: …. Text 3: biology: cell biology: cell cycle: cell division…; major reading material to be used in conjunction with attending lectures, doing experiments and taking part in other activities:…. Tenor of discourse. Expert to novices, i.e. first- or second-year university undergraduates (Text 1), freshman (Text 2), or pre-university students (Text 3), with some though not much background knowledge in biology: …; social distance: near maximum, with experts dominating and students subordinate, the latter under pressure to pass exams at the end of the semester:… Mode of discourse. Language role: constitutive and ancillary (with a lot of non-linguistic graphic elements)…; channel: graphic (marks on paper)…; medium: written…. Though not represented by the above description, lecturers play an important role in the selection and use of the biology texts. First, the students not select and buy textbooks by themselves, nor the textbook authors normally have any personal contact with the students and influence their choice. It is the lecturers under whom the 87 students study that recommend the purchase of a particular textbook. In the case of the biology texts to be analysed here, the lecturers strongly encourage the students to buy their own copies. Second, the lecturer, rather than anyone else, guides the students through the textbook in class. The lecturer emphasizes and de-emphasizes relevant parts of the textbook, in a sense transforming it, the process of which is impossible if the student works with the text on his or her own. Third, the lecturer sets standards of pass or fail. Through the examination system, the lecturer’s authority as the expert or the representative of the expert, or at least as the primary knower, is fully displayed and maintained (cf. Luke, de Castell and Luke 1989: 251-252; 257-258). 4.1.2 The Context of Culture of the Biology Texts The context of culture of a textbook is the whole of a school as an institution that gives meaning to the individual activity that takes place (See Section 2.3.2 above). What follows is concerned with the curriculum design for biology students selecting Text as their textbook1, in particular, with the development of scientific method in the students. The time allocation of a course specifies how a teacher / student spends the course time and gives us a brief indication of what it is that the student is expected to and achieve from the course. It is also an indication of the institutional context for the language of school science in that it provides information about what the student does in addition to what he or she reads. It also shows what it means to be trained as a scientist or what a science person should be able to do. A summary of the time allocation of all the Level 1000 (first-year) and Level 2000 (second-year) biology 88 courses offered in the Department of Biological Sciences at NUS is presented in Table 4.1: Review Total hours Tutorial hours C.A. Project work (total &%) Practical hours (total &%) (total & %) (total & %) (total & (total & %) %) 11, Level 1000 285 (54.2%) 142 (27.0%) 71 (13.5%) (1%) 22 (4.2%) (0.5%) (100%) 20, Level 2000 484 (50.3%) 380 (39.5%) 84 (8.7%) (0.2%) 13 (1.3%) 963 Component Lecture hours Total courses 526 (100%) Key: C.A. = Continuous Assessment. Table 4.1 A summary of the time allocation in Level 1000 and 2000 courses2 As we can see from the Table, practical classes account for 27.0% and 39.5% of the total contact hours of a Level 1000 / Level 2000 student’s learning life, respectively. This suggests strongly that a biologist in training should develop handson skills as well as acquire a body of knowledge. Some portion of what he or she reads or hears in lecture hours has to, at some point, be related to what he or she reads or hears and manipulates in the laboratory, and vice versa. In the words of a biology instructor, “biology is an experimental science” (interview with BL 2262 instructor). If we look at the historical development of biology over the past centuries, we can immediately see the critical role equipment and experiments played in the knowledge the scientific community has accumulated. As noted in Alberts et al (1994: 139), 89 “[w]hat we can learn about cells depends on the tools at our disposal, and major advances in cell biology have frequently sprung from the introduction of new techniques”. Therefore in training a biologist, a balance between theory and practice should be struck. The philosophy behind the incorporation of lectures and practical classes into the biology curriculum is that the student needs to understand and observe the scientific method as well as acquire a body of factual information accumulated in previous investigations. The scientific method may include: observation (made either directly by the senses or indirectly with the help of “instruments, such as light or radio telescopes, light or electron microscope and cathode ray oscilloscopes, which act as extensions of our senses” (Taylor et al 1997: 951), hypothesis, experiments, results and interpretation, and finally, theory and laws. The cultivation of the scientific method explains much of what a student does and reads. In another sense, the issue of the scientific method extends beyond the mastery of a method; it is also the cultivation of scientific behaviour. The student is expected to think and behave scientifically. An analysis of laboratory instruction will enable us to appreciate that the student is expected to be no more than a physiological organism that performs certain tasks. It matters not who the student is; what matters is what type of behaviour is accepted and acceptable in the laboratory. You have to be a scientific man / woman. Here is one paragraph from BL 1102 laboratory instruction3. During the Laboratory Period 1. Exercise caution at all times – for the protection of yourself and the equipment. Careful laboratory habits are the best prevention against personal injury, breakage, and damage to valuable equipment. DO NOT HURRY! 2. Report to the teaching assistant any personal injury or damage to the equipment. 90 3. Maintain order and decorum in the laboratory at all times. 4. Do not hesitate to consult with your teaching assistant when in need of help. 5. Chemicals or procedures that are potentially dangerous will be noted in the exercise description. Consult the teaching assistant if you have any questions about the proper handling of chemicals or safe use of equipment. Textually, the Themes of the clauses in the paragraph mostly fall on the verbs, “Exercise”, “DO NOT HURRY!”, “Report” and so on. This means that the text is mainly concerned with what the student needs to do. Interpersonally, most of the clauses are in the imperative MOOD. The author of the instruction is instructing the student as to the appropriate behaviour. He or she is entitled to the right and the power to so and, accordingly, the student is in a subordinate position, under an obligation to follow what the teacher demands. As well, clauses that are in the declarative MOOD are not modalized. For example, the clause “Careful laboratory habits are the best prevention…” simply presents a proven fact, absolute truth. We could go on describing the meanings in the paragraph in greater detail, but even such a cursory analysis reveals the author’s major concern, that is, the development in the student of the scientific method and behaviour. And reading such clauses, the student assimilates all strands of meaning and undergoes character transformation; he or she is expected to form the right habits, the right behaviour, and the right way of thinking and doing. Seen from a critical perspective, however, what is at play here is clearly the hegemony of science discourse in the student’s life and in the lives of ordinary citizens at large, supported by “the ever-growing control it [science discourse] affords over the material environment (over physical and biological resources) – through technology” (Martin 1998: 11). Text, material world, science and 91 technology, educational institutions and teachers thus conspire to position the student as a subordinate, or repress him or her. 4.2 Ideational Meaning: Technicality in Biology This section falls into three sub-sections. In Section 4.2.1, I present the experiential meaning selections made in the biology texts, those for PROCESS TYPES and those for CIRCUMSTANCES. In Section 4.2.2, I discuss the logical meaning and Section 4.2.3 is concerned with some thematic patterns (Lemke 1990) that occur in Text 1. 4.2.1 Experiential Meaning 4.2.1.1 Process Types The frequencies of process types in the biological texts are presented in Table 4.2. Examples of the process types follow. All examples are from Text unless otherwise noted4. Material process: Cl. 71 It starts to assemble toward the end of mitosis, Relational: intensive: attributive: Cl. The duration of the cell cycle varies greatly from one cell type to another. Relational: intensive: identifying: Cl. 46 Chromosome condensation marks the end of G2 phase. Relational: circumstantial: attributive: Cl. 13 In a typical mammalian cell the whole of M phase takes about an hour. 92 Text Text Text Process type Number % Number % Number % Material 240 61.1 270 32.1 478 39.8 Intensive: attributive 19 4.8 135 16.0 102 8.5 Intensive: identifying 22 5.6 112 13.3 182 15.2 Circum.: attributive 17 4.3 16 1.9 26 2.2 Circum.: identifying 24 6.1 42 5.0 82 6.8 Possessive: attributive 21 5.3 29 3.4 38 3.2 Possessive: identifying 2.3 71 8.4 75 6.2 Verbal 20 5.1 79 9.4 105 8.7 Mental: cognition 33 3.9 42 3.5 Mental: affection 0.4 0.2 Mental: perception 1.0 11 0.9 Existential 1.5 31 3.7 37 3.1 Behavioural 11 2.8 21 2.5 20 1.7 Total 393 100 842 100 1201 100 Key: Circum. = Circumstantial Table 4.2 Frequencies of process types 93 Relational: circumstantial: identifying: Cl. 185 Kinetochore assembly depends entirely on the presence of the centromere DNA sequence: Relational: possessive: attributive: Cl. 34 the cell would not have time to double its mass. Relational: possessive: identifying: Cl. 162 The next stage in mitosis involves the positioning of the replicated chromosomes…. Verbal process: Cl. 27 As we discuss in Chapter 18, Mental: cognition process: Cl. 134 you should assume // that…( Text 2) Mental: affection process: Cl. 796 The greater sweetness of artificial sweeteners surprises many people; (Text 2) Mental: perception process: Cl. 384 although they cannot be seen. Existential process: Cl. 287 In most cells there is one gap phase (G1) between M phase and S phase Behavioural process: Cl. 338 (see Figure 16-10) As we can see in Table 4.2, the three texts differ in their selections of process types. While in Text material processes account for 61.1% of all the instances of processes, clearly standing out as the most frequent process type, in Texts and relational processes, which account for 48.0% and 42.1% respectively of all the instances of processes, outnumber the material process (and any other process type). This difference in the frequencies of process types redounds with the difference in the field of discourse discussed above. For instance, Text introduces the topic of cell division, what happens when the cell divides into two, hence the higher frequency of material process clauses, whereas Text is concerned with biochemical molecules, carbohydrates in particular, the structure, function and reactions of carbohydrates, hence the higher frequency of relational processes. All three texts, however, have one 94 feature in common: material and relational process clauses combined make up more than 80% of all the instances of processes in each text, while the other process clauses such as mental process clauses are much more infrequent in all three texts. This indicates that the texts are mainly concerned with actions and happenings and establishing relations of attribution and identification between participating entities. In the remainder of this sub-section I discuss each of the major process types: material, relational, mental, existential, verbal and behavioural processes. Material Processes Halliday (1994: 110) notes that a material process clause can be considered from the perspective of doing and that of happening. In “the lion caught the tourist”, “the lion” is the entity that does something. As for the “tourist”, something happened to him or her. In the analysis of material processes in the texts I draw a distinction between doing and happening from the standpoint of the biologists or biological students. That is, biologists are charged with “doing” whereas what is observed under the microscope or elsewhere is termed “happening”, the criterion being what type of Actor the entity belongs to, a scientist or a biological entity such as a cell. Within the happening I further classify simple and metaphorical happening. A simple happening is construed minimally by an unconscious biological entity (what Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 182) call a simple thing) and a process, and a metaphorical happening by a nominalized process (what Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 60) term as a macroparticipant) and a verbal group. A summary overview of the types of material process and their distribution in the texts is presented in Table 4.3. 95 Cl. 89 How # then are these various membrane-bounded organelles segregated…? (Text 1) Cl. 385 Is the glycosidic linkage # an α or β linkage? (Text 2) Occasionally, however, the finite operator serves to indicate inversion; for example, (Cl. 900 Dietary fiber can be insoluble,) Cl. 901 as is the cellulose present in vegetable stalks …# (Text 2) The interpersonal Theme can also be metaphorical in that it is realized by a clause rather than an element of the clause. For example, Cl. 612 It is essential that different kinds of cells # recognize … (Text 2) Textual Theme. According to Halliday (1994: 53-54) there are three types of textual Themes: the continuative, the structural Theme (including conjunctions and WH-relative) and the conjunctive Theme. A WH-relative Theme is distinctive in that it is simultaneously a topical Theme. The frequencies of each type of textual Themes are set out in Table 4.15. Examples of each type follow. All the examples are taken from Text 1. Structural: conjunctions: Cl. 61 and # is carried out by the mitotic spindle, Structural: WH-relative: Cl. 249 which # polymerize at their plus (free) ends. Conjunctive: Cl. 86 Likewise, cells # cannot make a new endoplasmic reticulum… 174 Text Type of textual Theme Text Text Number % Number % Number % Continuative Structural: conjunction 104 74.3 204 76.4 310 81.6 Structural: WH- relative 29 20.7 39 14.6 47 12.4 Conjunctive 5.0 24 9.0 23 6.1 140 100 267 100 380 100 Total Table 4.15 Types of textual Themes As is clear from the Table, in all three texts analyzed, structural: conjunctions are the most common Theme type, followed by the structural: WH-relative type, whereas conjunctives are very rare and the continuative does not occur at all. 4.4.2 Experiential Content of Topical Themes Halliday (1994: Chapter 5) offers a categorization of transitivity functions recognized in the English language. An initial grouping is to recognize the process itself, participants in the process and circumstances associated with the process (1994: 107). Each of the three broad categories has various subcategories and each, in principle, can be selected as Theme of the clause. Table 4.16 presents the frequencies of each type of 175 topical Themes in the texts. Examples of some common types follow. All examples are taken from Text unless otherwise noted. Text Transitivity roles Text Text Number % Number % Number % Actor 125 37.3 107 13.9 247 22.1 Goal 33 9.9 88 11.4 104 9.3 Recipient Behaver 0.6 Initiator 0.6 0.4 Range 0.6 0.1 0.3 Carrier 44 13.1 167 21.7 148 13.3 Attribute 0.1 Identified 46 13.7 196 25.5 300 26.9 Identifier 0.3 0.4 Assigner 0.3 0.2 Attributor 0.3 Inducer 0.1 0.4 Existent 0.9 20 2.6 21 1.9 Phenomenon-Range 0.6 1.2 31 2.8 Phenomenon-Agent 0.3 Sayer 1.5 22 2.9 29 2.6 Senser 12 1.6 0.6 176 Verbiage 2.7 26 3.4 60 5.4 Verbal process 13 1.7 0.2 Material process 19 2.5 31 2.8 Mental process 12 1.6 0.7 Behavioural process 10 3.0 11 1.4 0.7 Causative process Extent Location: place 11 3.3 14 1.8 24 2.2 Location: time 35 10.4 1.2 35 3.1 Manner: means 0.6 0.5 0.4 Manner: quality Manner: comp. 0.4 0.4 Cause: reason 0.3 0.4 0.6 Cause: purpose 0.3 Cause: behalf 0.3 Contgy: condition 0.3 0.3 0.4 Contgy: concession 177 Contgy: default 0.3 0.1 Accompaniment 0.3 0.1 Role 0.1 Angle 0.1 Matter 0.4 “there” 0.3 1.0 12 1.1 335 100 770 100 1116 100 Total Table 4.16 The experiential content of topical Themes Key: comp.: comparison; Contgy: Contingency. Actor: Cl. 111 and the mitotic spindle # begins to assemble outside the nucleus; Goal: Cl. 56 Both structures # are rapidly disassembled Carrier: Cl. The duration of the cell cycle # varies greatly from one cell type from another. Identified: Cl. 11 These two processes # constitute the M phase of the cell cycle Existent: Cl. 129 The D-sugars # predominate in nature. (Text 2) Phenomenon-Range: Cl. 384 although they # cannot be seen. Sayer: Cl. 77 We # discuss later Verbiage: Cl. 133 (The general mechanism …# is discussed in Chapter 16.) Process: Cl. 137 (see # Panel 17-1) 178 Location: time: Cl. 29 During all of interphase, # a cell continues to transcribe genes, Location: place: Cl. 337 In animal cells # a pair of centrioles is located at the center … As found in the Table, the experiential meanings that are most often placed in thematic positions in the texts are Actor, Goal, Carrier, Identified, and Location (cf. Wittaker’s (1995: 115) findings about the most frequent ideational Themes in linguistics and economics academic articles). In each of the process types selected in the texts there are a number of participant, process and circumstantial roles available for thematic positions. Then why are these few participant and circumstantial roles selected for the topical Themes of most clauses? To answer this question it is necessary to examine the subject-specific nature of the most frequent topical Themes. The subject-specific nature of the major transitivity roles of Actor, Goal, Carrier, Identified and Location selected as Theme is summarized in Tables 4.17 (a) and (b). 179 Actor Number (% ) Goal Number (% ) Carrier Number (% ) Identified Number (% ) Nominalized biological process (5.6) (3.0 ) 19 (41.3) Biochemical substance /molecule (2.4) (6.1) (6.5) Forces (1.6) (3.0 ) (2.3) (6.5) Cell or its component 105 (84.0) 29 (87.9) 28 (63.6) (17.4) Phase of the cell cycle (5.6) 10 (22.7) (19.6) Time: duration (2.3) (2.2) Number (4.5) patient (0.8) Author, micrograph (4.5) sign, possibility, difference (6.5) 125 (100) 33 (100) 44 (100) 46 (100) Subjectspecific categories Categories that occur only once in the text Total Table 4.17 (a - text 1) Subject-specific nature of major participant-Themes 180 Location: time Number (% ) Location: place Number (%) 35 (100) (9.1) Textual space/object (18.2 ) Cell or its component (45.5) Categories that occur only once in the text Subject-specific categories Phase of the cell cycle Total 35 (100) organ, microscope, reality (27.3) 11 (100) Table 4.17 (b - text 1) Subject-specific nature of major circumstance-Themes 181 Subject-specific Actor Number (%) categories Goal Number (%) Carrier Number (%) Identified Number (%) molecules 50 (46.7) 67 (76.1) 125 (74.9) 122 (62.2) nominalized processes 14 (13.1) (1.1) 11 (6.6) 24 (12.2) cells and organisms 25 (23.4) (1.1) (3.0) (4.6) humans 14 (13.1) (2.4) (0.5) (1.9) (5.7) (1.8) (3.1) structure (4.5) (3.0) (2.0) effects (1.1) (1.0) property (3.4) (3.1) energy (2.3) fact (0.6) (3.1) disease (1.1) (1.2) nature terms state difference 0 0 0 0 (1.2) (1.2) (1.8) (1.8) (1.0) (1.5) 0 Instrument, value, method (3.4) (0.6) 88 (100) 167 (100) inscriptions problem example Categories that temperature, occur only once pressure (1.9) in the text Total 107 (100) (0.5) (2.6) Interest, discipline, place, reason, exception (2.6 ) 196 (100) Table 4.17 (a - text 2) Subject-specific nature of major participant-Themes 182 Location: time Number (%) Location: place Number (%) molecule 10 (71.4) organism (21.4) inscription (7.1 ) nominalized process (77.8) state (11.1) phase (11.1) Total (100 ) 14 (100 ) Subject-specific categories Table 4.17 (b - text 2) Subject-specific nature of major circumstance-Themes 183 Actor Number (%) Goal Number (%) Carrier Number (%) Identified Number (%) molecules 100 (40.5) 60 (57.7) 43 (29.1) 104 (34.7) nominalized processes 42 (17.0) (3.8) 12 (8.1) 73 (24.3) cells and organisms 84 (34.0) 27 (26.0) 50 (33.8) 36 (12.0) (2.8) (0.7) (0.3) inscriptions (1.0) (0.7) (1.0) structure (0.7) (1.0) technique / method (0.7) (0.7) property / feature (1.0) (1.0) (2.9) (0.3) fact (2.0) (3.4) 15 (5.0) code (2.0) (5.8) 20 (13.5) 23 (7.7) phase (0.4) (1.4) (1.3) evidence (0.4) (1.0) (1.7) idea (0.7) (1) mechanism (1.4) size and arrangement (1.4) strand (1.3) definition (1.4) Subject-specific categories humans instrument / instrumental material 184 advantage (0.7) (0.3) problem (0.7) example (1.3) principle (0.7) number (1.4) Categories that clue, occur only once something, (0.8 ) in the text Total 247 (100) time (1.0) 104 (100) difference, orientation (1.4) 148 (100) effects, term, significance, length, exception, relationship, link, text that follows, research area, reason, width 11 (3.7) 300 (100) Table 4.17 (a - text 3) Subject-specific nature of major participant-Themes 185 Location: time Number (%) Location: place Number (%) human (8.3) cell and organism 16 (66.7) inscription (4.2) nominalized process (4.2) experimental material (8.3) reality (4.2) example (4.2) Year /century /minutes 16 (45.7) phase 17 (48.6) (5.7) 35 (100) 24 (100) Subject-specific categories experiment Total Table 4.17 (b - text 3) Subject-specific nature of major circumstance-Themes The subject-specific categorization of the participant-Themes in Tables 5.17 (a) for Texts 1, 2, and is based on my analysis of all the major participant-Themes in the texts (cf. Fries’s (1995: 345) summary table on semantic properties of Themes in various texts involving narration). One thing that is very clear is that different texts select different subject-specific Themes. Text 1, for instance, predominantly has cell or cell components as its Actor / Themes, while in Text 2, 46.7% of the Actor / Themes are molecules. General patterns, however, emerge across the texts. 186 Roughly speaking, simple things, be they cell or molecule, serve as participant-Themes around 50% of the time. This result agrees with Taylor’s (1983: 216) analysis of science textbooks used in secondary schools, where 46.6% of the topical Themes were observed to be what he calls “things”. In addition to simple things, it is also found that macro-things, i.e. nominalized processes, or events, are thematized. Things and events may be taken as a biologist’s view of the world: the structure, composition and function of things, and the processes that occur and the forces that make them occur. These constitute the major concern of the texts and points of departure of the clauses. An example of a thing serving as the Actor / Theme and an example of a nominalized process as Actor / Theme are given below: Cl. 116 and the spindle # draws them to opposite poles of the cell (Text 1) Cl. 390 (1) the elongation and sliding of the polar microtubules past one another # pushes the two poles apart, (Text 1) In Cl. 390, the Actor / Theme is “the elongation and …”. Here grammatical metaphor is deployed to turn two events into one macro-thing, which functions as the Theme of the clause. A more congruent version of the Theme might be a clause complex: “the polar microtubules become longer // and they slide past one another”. By nominalizing the clause complex and then thematizing it, the authors are able to proceed further than if the cell components alone functioned as Theme. As a result, not only cell components but also biological processes can become the point of departure of the clause. The subject-specific categorization of the circumstance-Themes in Tables 4.17 (b) (for Texts 1, 2, and 3) is based on the nature of the nominal groups within the prepositional phrase, what Halliday (1994:150) calls “indirect participant”. For 187 example, the Theme of Cl. 29 (Text 1) (“During all of interphase,”) is recorded in the Table as an instance of “phase of the cell cycle” as circumstance-Theme. By examining what subject-specific meaning is taken as the point of reference for the minor Process of preposition (1994: 213), we can expect to find what is taken as the point of departure of the clause having a circumstance-Theme. As is clear from Tables 4.17 (b), the prominent participant-Themes in the texts, in terms of their subject-specific nature, turn out to be also prominent in the circumstance-Themes. For example, in Text all of the Location: time-Themes (or rather, the indirect participants) are concerned with phases of the cell cycle and in Text 3, 66.7% of the Location: place-Themes have cell or organisms as indirect participants. From this it is evident that some subject-specific categories (e.g. cell components) are deemed important by themselves thus functioning as participant-Themes and that together with a preposition or minor Process they also function as circumstanceThemes. In summary, Theme selection in the texts is not random; it favours some grammatical categories over others and some experiential content over others. This in itself suggests that the textbook authors systematically allocate different types of meaning to different parts of the clause as a message structure, either in the Theme or in the Rheme. A knowledge of the Theme selection in science textbooks will be important for non-native students who approach science textbooks written in English for the first time, a matter which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6. This chapter has investigated the lexicogrammatical and semantic choices made in the texts, that is, the linguistic features of selected biology texts. On the other hand, biology texts in educational settings devote a significant proportion of their space to 188 semiotic resources other than language, for instance, schematic drawings, photographs and other visual images. Even the stratum of lexicogrammar in language depends on graphology for its realization in any textbook meaning making. Furthermore, graphology does not simply exist as a medium, a channel for the expression of the lexicogrammar, and has no meaning potential of its own. On the contrary, écriture, which is the language system “based on the cross-coupling of the conceptual and graphic-visual orders of difference” (Thibault n.d.), has a life of its own, and when it is deployed in social semiosis, it is to interact and integrate with, or multiply with other semiotic modes, through its impact upon the retina of the social viewer. For example, in ECB, the presence of headings / subheadings in boldface and larger font size and distinct colour (for example, headings in this textbook are signaled by larger font size, bright green and double spacing) tells the reader the intended way to assign different values to different clauses, thus contributing to the textual meaning of the text. The question of how graphology, lexicogrammar of language and visual displays are codeployed and co-contextualized (Thibault 2000: 312; 362) in the biology textbooks will be discussed in Chapter 5. 189 [...]... present, and (3) it does not project – for example, we can not say “He and his colleagues are investigating // that the accident happened at midnight” but we can say “He and his colleagues think // that the accident happened at midnight” (Halliday 19 94: 139; Halliday and Matthiessen 1999: 141 - 142 ; Martin et al 1997: 108-110) It is apparent that this professional behaviour of investigating or researching... and many instantial metaphors At the same time the logico-semantic relations between processes are sometimes verbalized, for example, from “because” to 107 “contribute to” This nominalization of processes and qualities and verbalization of logico-semantic relations are complex lexicogrammatical configurations and may cause difficulties for non-native speakers of English Mental Processes Following Halliday... Simple happening 201 83.8 147 54. 4 3 24 67.8 Metaphorical happening 27 11.3 49 18.1 55 11.5 Doing 12 5.0 74 27 .4 99 20.7 Total 240 100 270 100 47 8 100 Table 4. 3 Sub-types of material processes Examples of each type of material process follow They are taken from Text 1 unless otherwise noted Simple happening: Cl 20 During S phase5 (S = synthesis), the cell replicates its nuclear DNA Metaphorical happening:... processes are categorized into those dealing with composition, possession and association, out of which only the first and last sub-types figure in the texts [composition] This semantic category can be realized in a variety of lexicogrammatical patterns The verbal groups that realize composition include “contain”, “be composed of , “consist of , “be made up of “be divided into” and “be part of Again,... to the nominal group “variation” (grammatical metaphor type 2i) and concomitantly the addition of the verbal group “show” (similar 100 to grammatical metaphor type 12i, but with the additional meaning of ‘be seen’, mental: perception) In addition to the description of the attributes or class-membership of simple entities, intensive: attributive processes can also have as their Carrier nominalized processes... disassembly of the nuclear lamina (Text 1) Cl 643 Incompatible antigen-antibody combinations can result in death on transfusion.(Text 2) Cl 5 84 The α (1 → 4) - glycosidic linkages of amylase … prevent the formation of extended chain conformations (Text 2) Cl 910 … the principal reason for the reduction may be that diets high in fiber are generally low in meats and fats (Text 2) Cl 615 In many cases, these tasks... (1990) terms the transformation from the physical material to its semiotic trace as “inscription” and holds that such symbols for the material world are powerful means to convince Text 2 allocates quite some space explaining the conventions about how a diagram of a carbohydrate molecule is drawn and how it is interpreted ( 34 clauses) For example, Cl 111 Each figure starts with the triose at the top (Text... happening: Cl 277 and, as a consequence of decondensation, gene transcription is able to resume Doing: Cl 1 54 Later the root tips are removed, (Text 3) As is clear from Table 4. 3, simple happenings are the most frequent sub-type of material processes in all three texts and are felt to bear the bulk of the task of explaining to the students what happens in the phenomena in question For instance, in Text... There are two major types of things that biologists are engaged in, handling the biological materials (e.g specimens, instruments) and handling inscriptions (photographs, figures, diagrams) Verging on the mental process is another group of material process that describes the process of obtaining evidence for some ideas Biological material handling Text 3 includes an account of the procedure to carry... tasks are accomplished by a process called cell recognition, (Text 2) Cl 42 6 Removal of the polysaccharide capsule … had no effect on transformation, (Text 3) Cl 230 This explains how plants and fungi which lack centrioles also make spindles from microtubules (Text 3) In addition to [cause: reason], the texts also feature [location: time], [location: place], [definition] and so forth, which are illustrated . grammatical features. Many institutional factors affect the types of meanings that can be made and the value accorded to these meanings … To make sense of the way particular texts and particular. Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 182) call a simple thing) and a process, and a metaphorical happening by a nominalized process (what Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 60) term as a macro- participant). relation of realization, language of school science and its context are no exception. Certain lexicogrammatical patterns are the realization of certain contextual variables, both of the context of