Misunderstanding Field As A Semantic Sequence That Realises It

Doran, Martin & Herrington (2024: 185-6):

A complementary perspective on field is a dynamic perspective that construes phenomena as a set of activities. For example, in our classroom the teacher explains mitosis as an activity where a single cell divides into two daughter cells (underlined). 

This example presents mitosis as a single activity – what we can call an unmomented activity. Alternatively, activities can be divided into a series of moments. When Mukherjee (2022: 99) visualises mitosis, he presents a caption that explains it in terms of its moments – what we call a momented activity. After describing that the chromosomes are initially present in loose threadlike forms in the nucleus, he explains:

Then the threads tighten into dense bundles. The nuclear membrane dissolves, and the chromosomes separate into two sides of the cell, as if drawn by some forces. When they’ve fully separated […] the cell splits, generating two new cells. (Mukherjee 2022: 99)

The activities that Mukherjee (2022) describes are as follows (where ^ indicates a sequence):

The threads tighten into dense bundles

^

The nuclear membrane dissolves

^

The chromosomes separate into two sides of the cell, as if drawn by some forces

^

They (the chromosomes) fully separate

^

The cell splits

^

Two new cells are generated

(Mukherjee 2022: 99)

This presents a complementary view to the static one focused on items – it outlines a dynamic unfolding of events. These activities are interconnected with the items and taxonomies that are involved in them. In this instance, the cell splits due to activities associated with two of its parts: the nuclear membrane dissolving and the chromosomes separating.

Reviewer Comments:

To be clear, the field of this text, 'what is happening' in cultural terms, is a classroom lesson in cell biology. The sequence of figures is the language that realises the (second-order) field in this instance.

In English Text (Martin 1992), such activity sequences are similarly misunderstood as field, but in Working With Discourse (Martin & Rose 2007), they became misinterpreted as experiential, not logical, discourse semantics.