Ceremonial Redress: How Conferencing in Fact Achieves Its Goals

This chapter suggests that conference theorists and advocates have been looking in the wrong place when trying to find a way of explaining the transformation that occurs in a conference. Instead of a theory based on personal internal emotional states, the chapter argues for a social semiotic perspective that accounts for the interactive power of the macro-genre—an approach that deals with the way conferences draw on shared cultural resources to realign the YP with the positive values of particular communities. Anthropological work on ceremony and Systemic Functional Linguistic work on iconization are brought together in an interpretation of conferencing as a powerful form of ceremonial redress.