Three Dimensions
CHAPTER 3
The socio-topical matrix
The intersection of the social and topical dimensions produces a set of boxes. For some situations, the boxes might be labeled as follows:
| Greetings,etc. | Street directions | Food | Work schedule | etc. | |
| Adult stranger | |||||
| Small Child | |||||
| Policeman | |||||
| Colleague | |||||
| Host etc. |
Note that not all the boxes will be equally plausible: one will not expect to praise the policeman's cooking or ask directions of a four-year-old child. This kind of matrix[1] is useful both for making an inventory of what is in an existing book, and also for plotting the needs of a particular group of students. with the addition of a linguistic dimension, as in Chapter 4, p. 142, such a matrix may
- ↑ A matrix with a social dimension was suggested to me by Dr. Albert R. Wight (private communication).
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