Textual trajectories: Theoretical roots and institutional consequences

Abstract

AbstractThis article maps out and reviews work on textual trajectories and related concepts from sociolinguistics, linguistic ethnography, discourse and literacy studies. The first part of the article argues that work on entextualization and recontextualization, and their incorporation in recent research on textual chains or trajectories, contributes to a new language of description which conceptualizes texts in dynamic terms while still maintaining a sense of their coherence and durability. The article traces how conceptions of dialogicality and recontextualization have been used to develop transcontextual approaches to analysis which have highlighted the ideological work of textual movement and resemiotization. It argues that envisaging linked series of entextualizations and recontextualizations as institutionally consequential trajectories not only illuminates micro-level practices, but also indicates their dynamic interconnection with macro-level institutional processes and ideologies. In this sense, the concept of textual trajectories contributes to meso-level theorizing of the interrelationship of language with social life. Examples of research from institutional contexts are reviewed to examine how textual trajectories are used to produce specialized knowledge, the instantiation of institutional procedures and the articulation of participant positionings and identities.