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Systemic semiotic development using SFX: prototyping genre-based representations of IS workpractices

Systemic semiotics, a combination of systemic functional linguistics and its elaboration into the general field of social semiotics, forms the basis for a new approach to the study of workpractices and information systems as patterns of human communication. Workpractices consist of one or more text-types referred to as genres, and zero or more actions-types. Action-types are purposeful, staged and goal-oriented sequences of social activity involving the movement of participants, goods, and/or texts, within/or between the organisation and its environment. Analysis of action-types generally involves direct observation, but may also be inferred from work documentation, reconstructed from software, or recovered from interviews. Genres integrate in predictable ways, purposeful, staged and goal-oriented social processes, with participant role structures and a symbolic organisation of written or spoken language. Through access to, and involvement with various institutions in society, members of communities become familiar with and utilise, commonly available genres called canonical genres. Genres in workplaces, while often based on canonical genres, have evolved to meet specific needs in organisational contexts. The paper provides an overview of the systemic functional systems (SFX) methodology. The case study used throughout this paper is of a small operational system (ALABS) used in the loan and return of items (software, hardware, and manuals) to students and staff at a tertiary educational computer centre.