Geoff Cooper (Universirty of Surrey, g.cooper@soc.surrey.ac.uk)

Question 1

We would agree with your question-response to Kress’ question. This is to go along with a Bernsteinean kind of approach (see Vertical/horizontal discourse, weak and strong grammars etc, cf. also Maton, 2000. The latter extends Bernstein’s analysis of the differing structuring of discourses and talks about different modes of legitimation).

Yet, Geoff remarks:

Is the dept of physics in tension with society in same way as dept of sociology? The objection seems reasonable …but some of my research suggests that the criteria of evaluation, forms of accountability, and imperative to collaborate with industry can certainly be felt as being in tension with a 'traditional' way of working by (eg) academics on one project in mechanical engineering. Indeed there was more tension about collaboration on one such project than there is (so far) on my present one on mobiles in which (so far) there is a significant overlap of commercial and sociological agendas. Admittedly, the re-articulation of 'academic' (from researchers within mechanical engineering and physics) might be read as accommodations: but they still point to a dynamic and relatively unstable state of affairs.

Furthermore, drawing on our contribution to this symposium, we would remark that the treatment of Kress’ question as suggested by your question/response somehow bypasses the issue of an essential instability in meaning, which is the condition for the multiple re-articulations of distinctions such as academic/ non-academic, and its consequences for research, research traditions, and research agendas.

Question 2

A cautionary note: the change of emphasis seems right, but are critique and design opposite and separate alternatives? traditional academic identity/ new academic identity (even when it is put in four boxes).

Again our contribution points to the need to deconstruct both poles of the dichotomy, in particular the image of the traditional academic researcher with eg an identifiable theoretical "position" (cf the notion of authorship). On the notion of construction, in particular (here and in Deleuze) 'Who, save God, has ever created, genuinely created, a concept?' Derrida (cited in G. Bennington, Interrupting Derrida, Routledge, 2000, p100).