Introduction to Functional Grammar - The Video

So many people attempt to study Halliday (and Matthiessen's) Introduction to Functional Grammar - or IFG. There are at least 3 great books that guide people on how to study IFG (introductions to the Introduction): Thompson, Bloor & Bloor and Martin et al. But these are all books. That's like giving someone a map to find a map. So, here's a new way of doing it - the video. Anabelle Lukin has used the SFL Video group in Vimeo to post videos of her lectures on introducing IFG. This one, for example, introduces the concept of the functional grammar:

An Introduction to Functional Grammar from Annabelle Lukin on Vimeo.

Here we have another example, this time introducing and explaining how the clause exchanges meanings between persons, enacting interpersonal meanings:

Clause as exchange part 1 from Annabelle Lukin on Vimeo.

Here is a full list of the Vimeo videos in this series:

Chapters 1&2
An introduction to An Introduction to Functional Grammar

A map of language: basic concepts for the study of language

Five principles of constituency

Understanding the clause

Chapter 3
Clause as message PART 1

Clause as message PART 2

Chapters 4 & 10
Clause as exchange PART 1

Clause as exchange PART 2

Chapter 5
Clause as representation PART 1

Clause as representation PART 2

Chapter 6
Below the clause: groups and phrases

Chapter 7
Above the clause PART 1/2

Above the clause PART 2/2

By the way,don't forget to order your copy of the new version of IFG - Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar (HIFG??) - by Halliday & Matthiessen, now in its 4th edition.

And, finally, just for a laugh, here is one more video to help you learn Systemic Functional Grammar - the SFG Rap!! Take it away...

Teaching, Learning and Researching Reading in EFL

I am very pleased to announce that TESOL Arabia has agreed to myself and Helen Emery editing a collection of papers on reading in EFL. (Helen is moving from Essex to Oman just after I move from UAE to Sheffield.) We both know a few people who can help us out, and we hope we can produce a very high standard collection of papers when the book is launched in March 2014 at TACON 20. I hope that together we can match the high standard achieved by Helen and Fiodhna for their young learners book.

Here is the CFP (and it is currently on the News page of the TESOL Arabia website):

If you or anyone you know can contribute, drop us a line.

I knew it!! The Technoskeptic Strikes Back

We all know that a lot of money from big business is going into making teachers believe they are inadequate in some way if they are not using communications & information technologies whenever possible during all forms of pedagogic interaction. A recent suggestion by many is to "leverage" student time on social networking sites to the benefit of learning. Sounds like a good idea? The thinking is, and I've heard it put this way, "Well, as they spend so much time on Facebook, we should get them to use it to keep studying." Perhaps we should spend a little time, and comparatively little  money, on finding out exactly what benefits Facebook and other social networking sites have for education, before insisting that teachers spend time interacting with computers instead of students.

So far, as usual, there is little or no empirical support for the use of social networks for education. I have also heard it suggested that online learning benefits the few students who are likely to be shy in class, and they can then contribute more in online contexts because they feel less threatened. I am glad to say that I have found some empirical evidence for quite the opposite. In Tracii Ryan & Sophia Xenos. 2011. Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissism, loneliness, and Facebook usage. (Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 5, September 2011, Pages 1658–1664, see this DOI), it is clear that Facebook appeals to a particular demographic:
The results showed that Facebook users tend to be more extraverted and narcissistic, but less conscientious and socially lonely, than nonusers. Furthermore, frequency of Facebook use and preferences for specific features were also shown to vary as a result of certain characteristics, such as neuroticism, loneliness, shyness and narcissism.

Similarly, and more importantly for education, in Khe Foon Hew. 2011. Students’ and teachers’ use of Facebook. (Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 2, March 2011, Pages 662–676, see this DOI), we find a pretty damning indictment of the promotion of social media for education:
The conclusions overall suggest that Facebook thus far has very little educational use, that students use Facebook mainly to keep in touch with known individuals, and that students tend to disclose more personal information about themselves on Facebook; hence attracting potential privacy risks upon themselves.

Acknowledgment: 9gag.com y u no visit 9gag?

A Man A Plan

Palindromes - say them backward the same way you would say them forward. So, I've always thought "A Man A Plan A Canal Panama" was a pretty cool palindrome, until I came across this, "Dammit I'm Mad" by Demetri Martin. Mad, brilliant and strangely poetic. (Says a lot about the kind of poetry I read!!).

“Dammit I’m mad.
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I’m in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level “Mad Dog”.
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
 In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I’m a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash.
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I’m it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I’d assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
“Sir, I deliver. I’m a dog”
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I’m mad.

Alternatives in Assessment

Just a quick one! This prezi was prepared for the Khalifa University faculty day which focused on "Alternative Assessment." For me, a test is one alternative in assessment that must be justified just as any other format, and so other assessments should not be considered alternative to tests; hence the title "Alternatives in Assessment."

Alternatives in Assessment on Prezi

I have to work on a way to add a voice-over. I know it can be done.

Meanwhile in Bologna - ESFLCW 23

A fantastic array of papers were lined up for the "limited-places only" 23rd European Systemic Functional Conference and Workshop in the beautiful setting of the University Residential Center of Bertinoro, hosted by the Center for Linguistic-Cultural Studies (CeSLiC), University of Bologna from 9th - 11th July.. I only wish I could have been there but you cannot be too greedy! 

I sincerely hope that there is a publication in the near future around the theme of "Permeable contexts and hybrid discourses". In the meantime we have videos of the three plenary speakers: Srikant Sarangi on Hybridity-types, role-sets and professional practice, Caroline Coffin on Re-orienting semantic dispositions: the role of hybrid discourses and Geoff Thompson on Hybridisation: how language users graft new discourses on old root stock.

ISFC 39 - Boldly Going

I was fortunate enough to attend ISFC 39, hosted by UTS. The 39th International Systemic Functional Congress was held at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), 16-20 July, 2012. The plenary talks were bold, innovative and inspiring, and none were presented by the SFL 'old guard;' the organisers were brave enough to give the opportunity to 'The Next Generation' of SFL researchers. The event was also attended by the 'legends' of the discipline: Halliday, Hasan and Martin amongst others. I met lots of very nice people that had previously been just names in books, such as David Rose, Mary Macken-Horarik, Terry Royce, Geoff Williams and Alison Moore (no relation!). I was introduced, formally, to Legitimation Code Theory, an update of Bernstein's code theory, by Karl Maton, dazzled, furiously, by Chris Cleirigh's rough ride over semiotics, biology and evolution, and inspired, sublimely, by Shooshi Dreyfus' linguistic analysis of her severely disabled son's communication patterns. The programme was packed with interesting talks full of insight. I learned about the grammaticalisation of movement, the pedagogic cycle that inspires the reading-to-learn programme and its application in new second language contexts, and the importance of the concept of recontextualisation, to name just a few. Finally, there were so many new publications by authors present at the conference that an extra date had to be added to launch all of the books (thanks to Pauline Jones' great organisational skills).


I was also lucky enough to attend two very different pre-congress institutes (courses related to SFL matters). The first was a 'traditional' tutorial-style hands-on attempt by Jim Martin to help the rest of us construct our own system networks. He advocates a 'gently does it' approach, limiting grammatical features and only bringing in new ones when you can account for all of the others. The second was a much freer discussion-based course on the concept and use of Register in SFL, led by Annabelle Lukin (yes, she of the Vimeo SFL group fame - the same). She kindly shared all that she could on a dedicated website and made it clear that we were there together not to find answers but to start asking the right questions. Thanks to Annabelle and ISFC39 I have a much better understanding of David Butt and the work that he and his colleagues have achieved.

Please download the ISFC39 Proceedings, carefully edited by John Knox. (My paper is also available on the academia.edu site.) It is packed full of fascinating insights on a range of SFL topics covering a variety of modalities and languages. As soon as there are any videos of the plenary talks made available I will add a new post.

What is Genre?

Every so often it happens that various people working independently converge on a single idea. This happened about 20 years ago when 'Genre' became a key term in applied linguistics. To celebrate this event,  Carleton University in Canada organised Genre 2012: Rethinking Genre 20 Years Later to "continue the tradition and scholarly conversation that originated with the first international colloquium on Genre Studies, “Rethinking Genre,” held at Carleton University in 1992." The programme shows a wide range of high quality papers from across the globe, and an edited collection is anticipated. Thankfully the organisers had the foresight to video the plenary speakers, including Jim Martin (evidently a regular visitor to Carleton). What becomes apparent quite quickly while watching these videos is that everyone has very diverse views on what genre means in applied linguistics. To Swales, Hyland and Bhatia it is an approach to English for Specific Purposes, for Martin it is an abstraction of text structure, while for Bazerman it is a new way to present rhetoric in writing courses. While the first two may share some common theoretical background, the third approach is very distinct, rooted as it is not in linguistics but language studies.

Pennycook: Critical Applied Linguistics - A Critical Introduction. A Critique

Alastair Pennycook takes us on a very personal voyage of where he thinks a Critical approach to applied linguistics should take us. Along the way he is quite critical (small c) of a large number of applied linguistics, including Critical (large C) Linguists.
Pennycook is less than sympathetic towards writers that would consider themselves Critical Discourse Analysts, such as Fairclough. He thinks that Fairclough just isn't Critical enough, but he saves most of his scorn for Widdowson. It seems as though Widdowson has just stumbled onto the topic of critical linguistics via Google, and believes his gravitas should be sufficient to allow him full vent of his opinions. Pennycook viciously deconstructs all of the false dichotomies that Widdowson applies to Critical linguistics, and reveals that Widdowson really does not understand what the real issues are. It seems that Fairclough was let off lightly!
However, Pennycook's view of Critical (i.e. Critical Theory, i.e. modern Marxism) is not really that clear, either. Perhaps the only person that is not saved from Pennycook's rejection of claims to Critical Applied Linguistics is Foucault, whose brand of critical theory is obviously admired by Pennycook. Finally, Pennycook suggests how a Critical approach to applied linguistics might change the language learning classroom.
In all of Pennycook's carefully constructed arguments, however, I found one important thing missing: Linguistics. Despite his disregard for Fairclough's linguistic analysis, Pennycook offers no new way to analyse how language may actually work in real texts to support the very detailed power structures described in his neo-Foucaultian framework. When I see such models I may be less critical of his view of Critical Applied Linguistics.

How did you know this is another cheap shot? Yes, it's a Goodreads review I'd almost forgotten, but as I'm going to UTS, (Pennycook's stomping ground), I thought I'd dust it off and give it an airing.

GoAnimate! Star Trek & Information Structure

I prepared this for IFSC39 as part of my presentation. Well, it's their fault. If you are going to give your conference the title of "To Boldly Go" you are asking for it.

TOS_Information by NickMoore on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.

I am expecting a few spare Aussie trekkies on the first day, at least!
And the presentation is here:

ISFC39: Going Beyond Speech To Seek Out New Information In Writing & Other Modalities on Prezi

Sounds - App by Macmillan

Sounds is a phonetic alphabet app by Macmillan publishers, available as an Apple or Android app or as a downloadable stand-alone app for your pc (click on the "Phonetic Chart - full screen version (exe)" link for a flash version).
You can watch a video about Sounds here:

As with the excellent website by Paul Meier (see earlier blog), the user just clicks on a phonetic symbol and the app makes the right sound.
The Macmillan Sounds app comes in two versions: the Free and the "Premium" (£3.99 / $5.99). The free download offers basic sounds for British & American English phonetic symbols, while the paid-for version adds wordlists which can be supplemented or replaced plus various activities and inter-activities.
This can be used by students working on their own to improve their pronunciation, or in class to demonstrate the sounds of English and how words can be pronounced.
Further information on this and similar products can be found at the Language Bits blog.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Saeed Al Mannai who brought this to my attention.

Pause and Effect

An exquisite volume of scholarship. The text combines a history of punctuation in the West, as a narrative based almost entirely on evidence from original manuscripts, with copious notes and samples of manuscripts that come complete with original text, translations into modern English and a commentary on the importance of the manuscript to the development of punctuation.

Parkes reveals the correlation of historical conditions leading to changing functions for written English with the changes in type and function of punctuation marks, identifying where and how historical changes produced the current merging of written-to-be-spoken and written-to-be-read-silently punctuation marks and practices.

Another goodreads.com review.

An original copy of this book, published by Scolar Press, was kindly provided by KUSTAR as a British Library loan. It is also available online from Ashgate.com, who have reprinted and republished it. The new edition is a great improvement: the manuscripts and documents are so much clearer than in the previous edition. Here is what Ashgate have to say about the book:

From its publication in 1992 Pause and Effect has become a cornerstone of the study of punctuation across the world. Described as 'magisterial' by Lynne Truss in her best-selling Eats, Shoots and Leaves, this book has stimulated interest and scholarly debates among writers, literary critics, philosophers, linguists, rhetoricians, palaeographers and all those who study the use of language. To celebrate this extraordinary achievement, Pause and Effect has been republished in September 2008, coinciding with the publication of the author's new work, Their Hands Before Our Eyes.
The first part of Pause and Effect identifies the graphic symbols of punctuation and deals with their history. It covers the antecedents of the repertory of symbols, as well as the ways in which the repertory was refined and augmented with new symbols to meet changing requirements. The second part offers a short general account of the principal influences which have contributed to the ways in which the symbols have been applied in texts, focusing on the evidence of the practice itself rather than on theorists. The treatment enables the reader to compare usages in different periods, and to isolate the principles which underlie the use of punctuation in all periods.
The examples and plates which are at the core of the book provide the reader with an opportunity to test the author's observations. The examples are taken from a wide range of literary texts from different periods and languages. Latin texts are accompanied by English translation intended to illustrate the use of punctuation in the originals in so far as this is possible.

Release Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan

Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan is an Iranian applied linguist. I have read a number of his papers and have great respect for his work. I have been in contact with him on a number of occasions in relation to the International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS). He was very quick to offer me the opportunity to join the Editorial board in 2010, and has sent me a number of papers for review. However, it would appear that Mohammad has been re-arrested. His personal facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/nodushan) and the facebook page for IJLS (http://www.facebook.com/ijls.ed) have both been de-activated, even though the co-editor for IJLS attempted to re-activate it. Mohammed was released from Iranian jail a few months ago after facing the death penalty. The Iranian authorities accuse him of converting to Christianity which they consider is worthy of the death penalty. Although it is almost impossible to confirm this information, the following message was sent earlier this week:

Hi. 
I am contacting you on behalf of your friend. 
Please DO NOT reply to this mail. I will delete this address as soon as this email is sent. 
Your friend in C*U*S*T*O*D*Y again since 14:00 hours local time June 13, 2012. 
Charges: 
1.        Conversion 
2.        Persistence on New Faith 
3.        Propaganda against G*O*V*E*R*N*M*E*N*T by placing a footnote on page 1 of the article at: http://www.ijls.net/volumes/volume6issue1/montazeran1.pdf 
4.        Including some J*E*W*S and I*S*R*A*E*L*I*s on I*J*L*S editorial board (i.e., this has resulted in his being charged for E* S* P*I *O *N *A *G *E for that G*O*V*E*R*N*M*E*N*T) 
Items 1 to 4 all automatically entail a D*E*A*T*H sentence. 
Please make sure you go public with this info since our cyber activities are CTRLed here, so we cannot do anything. Things must be done outside of here.   
Please remember that my name must be kept S*E*C*R*E*T.  Please: 
1.        Contact S*A*R, U*N* Human R*I*G*H*T*S W*A*T*C*H, and other related organizations and N*G*Os. 
2.        Open a new P*E*T*I*T*I*O*N on G*O*P*E*T*I*T*I*O*N dot C*O*M 
3.        Go public with all the past info and documents on F*A*C*E*B*O*O*K and other M*E*D*I*A 
4.        Whatever else you think will help. 
Thank you very much. 


When Mohammad was arrested previously there was a campaign to raise his case in international media and with the concerned charities and NGOs, such as Scholars At Risk and Amnesty International. As you can see, there is a call to do the same this time in order to save the life of a fellow academic whose only crime is to profess to a belief that the governing political regime consider hostile. 

Please help in any way you can. There is an online petition that you can sign here:
Release Mohammad Ali Salmani Nodoushan Petition | GoPetition
If you know any other way, please share with the IJLS co-editor Professor Randall Gess.
(Another unusual post for this blog.)

My Year of the iPhone

Okay, I admit that this is not exactly a typical post for this blog, but with all the hype about how iPad and iPhone can revolutionise education I feel that I am justified (see a small sample of the hype here). I have just given away my iPhone 4. I am incredibly relieved that I will no longer have to put up with the stupid way it does everything.
Give a few examples you say? Okay, then. Let's start with iTunes. First of all, why do I have to use an iTunes account at all? I do, because without it Apple does not let me start the phone I just paid much too much money for.
Then why do I have to give Apple Inc. my credit card & billing details when I just want free stuff? Imagine that you went to a "regular store" (i.e. one without an i added to the beginning for no reason) & as soon as you step inside, they take your credit card from you. As you walk around the shop, you suddenly realise that the store has taken money from your credit card. When you query them, they kindly inform you that their very special products cannot remain in your shopping trolley for more than 5 minutes without you being charged. Would you go back there again? Ever? So why do we allow Apple Inc. to treat us this way?
Next, back to iTunes. It is rubbish. It is designed to make you use it exclusively. When I try to back up my terrible photos from my phone,  iTunes tries to copy all of my photos from the computer to the already full memory on the phone. The memory cannot be increased, and why would I want that anyway? Without asking me? With almost no control over where it places anything? Can't I have photos that exist independently of the rubbish images that iPhone produces? I have a VERY extensive music collection - far bigger than will fit on any Apple device and none of which I bought from iTunes. Most of the music is from my own collection of CDs. iTunes works on the principle that I have a music library that I must have bought from iTunes that 'synchs' with my phone, and so I can only have as much music as will fit on my iPhone, unless I want to copy everything that I want to transfer to the phone into a separate directory on my computer. Waste of space - waste of time.
Then there are all those pointless apps (e.g. Newsstand, Stocks, Weather, Gamecenter etc.) that I have no use for, but which take up the insufficient memory and cannot be removed. Ever. For no reason.
Then there's the micro SIM card. Because of this (exclusively) Apple innovation, it is next to impossible to transfer your contact information to and from your iPhone. I had to manually enter my contacts. Twice. The first time on buying the phone, and the second when the wonderful update lost half my contacts details despite supposedly backing up first.
I should stop. But I won't. Welcome back all those websites that still use the Flash animation format in preference to Quicktime. Wow, there's a lot of you out there!

Apple may have reinvented the mobile phone business with its AppStore, but it is no longer alone, no matter what it may wish for through absurd legal disputes. And in most cases Android apps are free - for life (although there are hints that Apple is teaching Google bad habits). There are almost no apps that are exclusive to Apple, so why would you pay up to three times as much for your device to be over-charged again?
Finally, back to that question of iPads and iPhones in education. While these devices may seduce you with their smooth, easy touch, it must be remembered that they are both primarily devices for electronic media consumption, not production (see here, here and here for more comments). You can watch, listen, view and surf with ease, but writing on one without cumbersome accessories quickly becomes tiresome - as does carrying around self-defeating cumbersome accessories. This makes them suitable only for passive inactivity. They are unlikely to engage thinking and so can have little effect on learning.
Wake up people. Apple are NOT the "good guys" of the software industry. Just because their advertising image is whiter than white, it does not mean the company is. Apple must be guilty of far more anti-competitive practices than any other software company (again, why do I have to go through the Apple AppStore or iTunes? Why can I not delete Apps? Why should websites be forced into using Quicktime instead of Flash?), so why aren't they in court already? If people did not like the way Bill Gates & Microsoft went about their business, through anti-competitive bundling of products and bullying acquisitions of competitors, how blind do you have to be to not see Apple Inc. doing just the same things? At least Bill Gates knows how to spend his money. Apple users stop making excuses for the company because they have made you think you have bought into a California-cool lifestyle. Wake up & smell the Jobbies, people!!

Cartoon: Another Book Just Died

Acknowledgement: 9gag.com

Cartoon: Reading vs. TV

Acknowledgement: 9gag.com

The Grammar Joke

Past, present and future met in a bar.

It was Tense!

Everett Update

Dan Everett's been busy of late. He has been involved in a documentary about his beloved Pirahã, and has a new book out. The documentary is called "The Grammar of Happiness" and the book is called "Language The Cultural Tool." Naturally, all this activity is firmly directed against the school of Chomsky and against Pinker's multi-million best-sellers. Everett appears intent intent on publicly discrediting the generativist/minimalist school. 

Trailer for "The Grammar of Happiness"

The debate rages on about whether the Pirahã language has recursion or not (and if it does not, does it really matter), but just to stoke the fires  higher, Everett has published a new book, called "Language The Cultural Tool." Yes, that's right. You would be hard pushed to pick a phrase that more succinctly says "No. Syntax is not autonomous." For years, generativists have been misrepresenting the ideas of Whorf and Sapir, not least in combining them into a mythical Whorf-Sapir hypothesis that simply does not exist. I hope that Everett is able to bring the debate back onto neutral ground and really tackle the question of how our language construes our perception of the world. For all his image as a 'radical' or 'the U.S. dissident', Chomsky's linguistics is deeply ideologically conservative (Chris Knight explains this very well in Weekly Worker 655, 656 and 657). Maintaining that you do not need to analyse language linguistically in order to identify its power structures, or that habitual language use does not blind one to the legitimacy of incumbent power structures, contributes to the obscuring of the ideological role of language.

You can find reviews of the new book from New York Times and The Guardian, among others.

On a separate but related note, I was on DubaiEye's 'Talking of Books' programme on June 9th, where I  championed Everett's earlier popular book "Don't Sleep there are Snakes" (reviewed in an earlier blog). You can hear most of that segment of the show on Grooveshark.

Bring Hope to the Bonobos - Again

The Great Ape Trust desperately needs your help to keep their research and the apes alive. Donate to bonobohope.org if you love language, animals or Des Moines, Iowa. Hey, Bill Bryson, I think that must mean you. Anybody have his number?? Join me, Bill Greaves and Peter Gabriel in trying to keep Sue Savage-Rumbaugh's great work going. We do not want another Nim!

More Video links: 

BBC: Super Smart Animals (Great Ape Trust segment starts at time 50:20) 
Oprah Show: Kanzi the talking Ape 
Anderson Cooper (CNN): Anderson as the Easter Bunny (with Kanzi) 
60 Minutes (in Australia): Talk to the Animals

And the latest appeal from Sue & The trust:

Update: I am very happy to report that this year's Target has been achieved. 

Michael Halliday @ Connecting Paths, Nov.2010

Thanks again to Annabelle Lukin for posting this video to the Vimeo SFL Linguists Group. In this talk, Michael Halliday draws various links from SFL to Sydney Lamb's linguistic theories, including stratificational linguistics, and points out that the differences between their approaches are mostly a result of their different  research areas rather than a difference in their views on language.

Other talks from the same Connecting Paths Symposium are also available from Annabelle's vimeo page, including the talks by Ruqaiya Hasan, Jim Martin and Sydney Lamb. Congratulations to City University of Hong Kong and to Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou for hosting such an interesting forum and for making it accessible to the rest of us.

Lessons Worth Sharing - TedEd

Those lovely people at TED have come up with a new idea they call TedEd. Just like the RSAnimate videos by CognitiveMedia (see the Ian McGilchrist post), they want to combine great talks with great pictures on a video, but they know they can't stop there. Each video is accompanied by quick quiz questions, open ended questions and resources.

Watch the Video - The folks at TEDEd explain it very clearly!

Again, though that is not enough. You can also "Flip" the video - which means you can customise the 'package' to suit your class. You can edit the title, the quiz and "think deeper" questions and the resources. And, but, that's not all. You can then "flip" any YouTube video and make it into a TedEd format video lesson.

So here's my flipping attempt - a short video from YouTube on the history of writing with some questions, some resources and a research project. Here's another flipping attempt. This one uses a video about Everett's claims about Pirahã.

Christian Matthiessen @ Register & Context 2012

In this talk from the Register and Context Symposium 2012, Christian Matthiessen offers, among other things, his 'wheel of register' which relates the field mode and tenor of different written and spoken genres. The link to the symposium also offers a wide range of resources and links to other videos.

Part 1 of the talk (Video 1 is an introduction by Annabelle)

Part 2 of the talk

Always a pleasure to hear you talk, Christian, and thanks so much to Annabelle Lukin for organising the symposium and for making the talks available at the time and through the SFL group on Vimeo. Also available from the Vimeo site are videos featuring Ruqaiya Hasan and there's more to come. If you are interested in these and similar videos, Annabelle requests that you  join the group so we can see how much interest there is.

Fry's Planet Word on DVD - A Brief Review

As with any 'popularisation' of a subject, academics can easily take a swipe at mass media explanations of their subject. In this review I will try to avoid taking cheap shots (unless the temptation is too great) and attempt to keep an open mind on how well Fry has done in representing the subject of linguistics to the general public as, I believe, this was his intention. I will review each episode and then finish with an overview.

Episode 1 - Babel
...And he's off: in no time at all, we are sent from Stephen Fry's comfy documentary-world study to Kenya to meet the Turkana, back to the London suburbs to meet a typical toddler, Ruby, and off to Leipzig (twice). Before you can say hello in 25 languages, we are already pondering a wide range of linguistic dilemmas. We also catch glimpses of Nim Chimpsky and the famous chattering YouTube twins. To help us out, we visit a range of experts. If I could have anyone in the world to talk about state of the art theories of language development, I would have one person at the top of my wishlist: Michael Tomasello. He adds much-needed balance both to the academic study of language development and the programme itself. Then, very quickly we are back on the slippery search for the language gene, aka FOXP2, and only just understand that this really cannot be the whole answer.
While we do not learn very much about Stephen Fry's brain scans in an fMRI, we do learn that the people he chose from UCL have a very balanced, realistic view of what they are able to achieve with these tools. I suppose if you are going to prepare a documentary on language, you have to include Stephen Pinker, if only because more Joe Publics have read his books than any others on language. Thankfully, Pinker does not get it all his own way. At the end of the episode, we have been given a fairly good overall picture of language development and been introduced to  issues of language versus animal communication, language proliferation, decay and death, and the long, long way we still have to go to even start to understand language. All the time, no matter what you may think of the presenter, Fry clearly enjoys language and relishes the challenge of circumscribing the subject. As an introduction of language study to the completely uninitiated, this is a good start.


Episode 2 - Identity

This episode deals with the typically sociolinguistic topics of accent, language decay and identity.
We start with an investigation of the myriad accents of Yorkshire, guided by a poet from Barnsley, we give Fry a few moments to exhibit his control of accents on an 'accent forecast of the UK' made to resemble a BBC weather forecast, and then we land in Newcastle, where we hear 'chirpy' Geordie call centre operatives and their PR manager. Then we're whisked over to Connemara where we hear some Irish (or Irish Gaelic if you prefer) and find out how the young and older feel about their language which was brought back from the brink of extinction. At this point we do touch on the serious issue of language decay, identity and "linguicide", with a cheap swipe at L'Académie française for being so imperial for so long. We also look at the re-birth of Hebrew, where we at last meet a linguist (only the 2nd in this programme) whose thesis is that Hebrew still retains large parts of Yiddish. (I do not know if Fry is Jewish, but in this episode he goes out of his way to be nice to them in London, New York and Jerusalem.) Finally we compare how Irish, Breton, Basque, Hebrew, Oc and Turkana resist the threat of Globish (that's global English).

One other point of interest in the programme is the debate around how far your culture affects your language, and vice versa, with Stanford Russian linguist Lera Boroditsky discussing how masculine and feminine nouns in gendered languages affect the way that some speakers describe objects that carry different genders in different languages. Fry later admits to supporting the Chomskian line, that all languages are ultimately similar and so, after allowing such a poor misrepresentation, does a double disservice to the so-called Sapir-Whorif hypothesis.
After the Frying start of episode 1, episode 2 is very disappointing. I do not think that this is due to my personal lack of interest in the issue of Identity (which I think covers a multitude of academic sins), but because the head count of experts - famous or otherwise - is much lower in this episode, and Fry's inexhaustible enthusiasm is an insufficient replacement for real facts.


Episode 3 - Uses and Abuses

The primary aim of this episode appears to be to cram in as many words that are normally banned on the BBC as possible. It does quite a good job with copious fucks, plenty of bollocks and a smattering of cunts. In terms of academic head counts, this episode does a much better job than number 2, except Stephen Pinker crops up a number of times spouting off on subjects that he really has no expertise in - a role in which he has become quite an expert!
Although  Fry's approach could easily be dismissed by people working in the fields of sociolinguistics and humor studies (which he refers to as rather humorless), we must never forget that this is a television programme.
An experiment involving the actor Brian Blessed and a large tub of icy water is particularly unscientific, but it makes good television and is slightly related to more serious research. Admittedly this episode does descend into a promo-video for Fry's favourite issues (Judaism, homosexuality, racism etc.), but generally it also makes a point; although Fry & co. smatter their speech with expletives, none of them can bring themselves to say nigger in any form other than "the n-word." So, even for people who can cuss and swear willy-nilly, there are still some taboo words. Stephen K. Amos manages, just, but explains that it still retains an insulting meaning for him due to personal experiences. Hardly scientific. An improvement on episode 2, but still not as accurate or rigorous as episode 1.


Episode 4 - Spreading the Word
Episode 4 is all about writing, and is of a much higher standard than the previous 2 episodes. Although I would not agree with all that we see in this episode, I would say that Fry and his team have done a better job of researching the key issues in writing. We have a wide range of suitable experts from typesetters in Norwich to the inventor of Pinyin in Beijing.
When Fry wants to learn about the origins of writing he finds an expert in cuneiform in the British museum, who shows him how it is done, and even poses in front of THE Rosetta Stone (best not to ask why it's in the British Museum, though!!). He is back in Jerusalem to look at, be told off for touching, and witness digital imaging techniques for restoring the "Dead Sea Scrolls."
He also manages to trace the connection between printing, the Age of Reason and wikipedia - not bad for a TV show! He visits the Bodleian library at Oxford University to examine how they are keeping abreast of the digital age and in Harvard's library meets someone who points out that new media do not need to replace previous formats - that the iPad / Kindle etc. are not likely to replace the book, but both will develop alongside each other just as radio did not replace newspapers and was not replaced by TV.
As with other episodes Fry adds his own pet theories, likes and dislikes but he also places developments such as printing in a social context, providing a good balance of enthusiasm and restraint on a subject that easily leads to hyperbole. I also support his call to support the libraries of the U.K. and the world, no matter what formats are being preserved - buildings dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge through reading are the bedrock of civilizations!


Episode 5 - The Power and The Glory

So in the ultimate episode we learn that the ultimate purpose of language is...

literature. 

Fry explains why he loves a range of writers, from Joyce to Wodehouse to Orwell, heaping the greatest praise on Shakespeare - he even manages to find a French actor to admit that he would rather play Shakespeare than any of the lesser French playwrights. Fry just could not resist one last jab at the French before the series finishes. Some old friends are back, such as Brian Blessed and the Turkana villagers, as well as some new faces, including David Tenant giving us some of his take on Hamlet.

The episode is just as busy and full of locations, interviews and Fry's opinions as the others, but offers no new information on linguistics or even language studies. For this reason it is the most disappointing episode - at least episode 2 was related to aspects of sociolinguistics and the hot topic of identity. All of the science disappears and we left with the absolute relativism of everyone's opinion is just as good as each other, which is clearly not the case. Just ask a Cambridge Don!


Episodes 1-5 - Planet Word

All in all, Planet Word is very uneven. It manages to combine wit and fact, controversy and error. At times, it is highly perceptive and at others completely misleading. To be fair, this is TV. It is not intended to be lectures 1-5 in a course in linguistics. Evaluating the series from an academic perspective is completely unfair. Whatever Fry offers, it must work well on the screen - hence the frequent scene changes (often for no reason), cuts to the fake study for a talk-to-camera and a heavy dependence on interviews with experts (used in the loosest sense where Stephen Pinker is concerned).
What we need most from this series, perhaps, is for the general public to gain some understanding of language studies or even be inspired to look further into the subject, especially if they are young and are considering what to study at university. I believe Fry has succeeded to some extent in providing a TV series that engages with its audience, entertains and informs. A wide range of linguistic issues, perspectives and facts are offered with a minimum of effort on the part of the viewer - no mean feat. Only the last episode could be considered misleading. Certainly I do not agree with a lot of what he claims throughout the series, but this is his show not mine!

Find yourself a copy of the DVD, or even pick up the book, and see if you could find better ways to make linguistics appeal to more people who have never considered studying language before. It will not improve the programme but it may just help you, if you are a lover of language, to explain your interest to others. Spread the word - Planet Word.

Vygotskian Psychology - A Documentary

This is a link to a documentary about Vygotsky's psychological theories in the Soviet Union according to the people who were there at the time. A lot of the talk is about Vygotsky and Leontev as people and academics, but there is also a fair amount of discussion about their theory of psychology and its relation to Marxism. The film lasts 1 hour 45 minutes and was made by Mark Rozin in 1992.

This is a very rare film, and may lack any sign of pizzaz, but the people interviewed and the ideas discussed are worth the time and concentration.

Acknowledgement:  Thanks to Phil Chappell for posting the link to sys-func

New App - BOOK

In true over-the-top-hype, keep-it-clean, condescending Apple style, this short video introduces you to....

   

...the BOOK.

And this one re-imagines the IT helpdesk for the new invention of the book, when it was a new invention. Here we see the equivalent of "have you tried turning it on and off again?"

In both cases, we are shown up to be the IT-lap-it-up dogs that we have become. Just because Steve Jobs breathed on it at one time our awe is supposed to be inspired. Get a grip, peoples!!!