ABSTRACT
In this chapter I want to build upon what we already know about genres and connected sets of genres, what we know about intertextuality and systems of intertextually-linked documents, what we know about speech acts and writing as forms of social action, and what we know about individual micro-acts and social macrostructure. I want to do this to present a vision of how people create individual instances of meaning and value within structured discursive fields and thereby act within highly articulated social systems. The action is accomplished through performance of genres that have highly specific, systematically contextual requirements and well-defined consequences for further generically-shaped social acts. That is, I wish to present a vision of systems of complex located literate activity constructed through typified actions-typified so that we are all to some extent aware of the form and force of these typified actions. As we become more informed and involved with these typified literate actions, we come to share a more precise set of functional meanings and consequential relations through the kinds of texts. By using these typified texts we are able to advance our own interests and shape our meanings in relation to complex social systems, and we are able to grant value and consequence to the statements of others.
