[Xmca-l] Re: Ruqaiya Hasan

[Dr. Paul C. Mocombe]

"The Obama problem," is emblematic of the strife between cornel west and Michael Eric dyson.  You have black folks who love him simply because  he is so-called black, which makes him beyond reproach, and the one brother (west) who treats him no differently from any other puppet of the American oligarchy. 

Because I am haitian, I do not see Obama as a black man.  For me he is white (in haiti the one drop rule is reversed), which is why I can not for anything understand the postmodern/post structural emphasis on the politic of the body found among critical race theorists.  Blacks in america are a by-product of racial - class structural differentiation, and this maudlin reinterpretation  of the black church by West, dyson, and the media as the source for black liberation and struggle is laughable and historically inaccurate. The church in slavery, as now, was an ideological apparatus used to oppress blacks, justify slavery, and mentally enslave the african.  Go into any small black church in america, they know more about white jesus than they do about homer plessy, nat turner, dessalines, boukman dutty, etc. (By the way, my father-in-law is the deacon of his so-called black church, when I met my wife, he invited me to church.  I said no...the church is a form of white supremacy---I do not care how cone wants to rationalize it--- he told me that jesus saved him from being an african, and he loves the lord for that).  I find it absurd when so-called black public intellectuals overlook historical facts for rhetoric while staring at blonde-haired and blue-eyed jesus from the pulpit.... REALLY?

The absurdity impacts every aspect of so-called black life... dividing black folks into good blacks who are educated, speak standard english, eat soul food (but do not want whites to know that they eat soul food or associate it with their so-called black culture) and attend the black church v. Those who are uneducated, speak AAEV, eat soul food, and do not attend the black church as often as the former.  The latter somehow represents authentic blackness and the former "black Anglo-Saxons" (Nathan Hare's term).  Both are black anglo-saxons differentiated, interpellated, and embourgeoised by different ideological apparatuses of the American social structure... 

let me not get started on the absurdity of afrocentrism!

Obama ' s eulogy just went over my head.  I do not understand this talk of grace, turn the other check, love your enemies, etc.  The blood of dessalines flows through my body and the divinity that assisted my ancestors in overthrowing slavery deems it inhumane to turn the other cheek in the midst of oppression, exploitation, and cruelty!  In america the black man has been castrated and the black woman has become the freedom fighters, unlike my father-in-law, my mother-in-law will drop the jesus rhetoric in a heartbeat when she deems that it is not working!



Sent on a Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note® II

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> </div><div>Date:06/30/2015  2:25 AM  (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> </div><div>Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Ruqaiya Hasan </div><div>
</div>Ouch! Paul blew my cover. And President Obama’s as well. Apparently, he’s not the code shifter I thought he was and my ear is just not good enough to hear it. Maybe I didn’t want to hear. I have been so disappointed with what is happening with our political “leadership” in this country, I didn’t want to believe the president’s eulogy was one more charade. Maybe the amazing Supreme Court decisions last week put me in a state of euphoria and I just didn’t want to come down. But, is there no middle ground where Obama is at least seen to be trying, in good faith, to connect with those who ARE adequate representatives of African American English Vernacular? One might say that Obama learned AAEV as a second dialect and will always have a “foreign accent” in it. I am wondering how the audience in that AME church in Charleston, especially those who have truly lived the “black prophetic tradition", felt about Obama’s attempts at code shifting. 

I hope this post is seen more as an attempt to move the discussion of issues dear to Ruqaiya, especially code, than as a political red herring. 

With respect,
Henry
   
> On Jun 29, 2015, at 6:31 PM, Dr. Paul C. Mocombe <pmocombe@mocombeian.com> wrote:
> 
> Obama ' s eulogy is tantamount to bill clinton playing the sax in front of a black audience.  This is a young man raised in a white middle class community, who came across, "the black prophetic tradition" at reverend wright's church much, much later in life.  His attempt to speak to his audience is not an adequate representation of the phonetic, semantic, etc. differences between AAEV and standard american English highlighted by molefi Asante and others....
> 
> 
> Sent on a Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note® II
> 
> <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> </div><div>Date:06/29/2015  6:57 PM  (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> </div><div>Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Ruqaiya Hasan </div><div>
> </div>One way to comment on Obama in the church is to think of language, in part, as a way of construing things/events in the world. Obama was construing the murders from the perspective of the speech community of the church goers there, Black and deeply Christlan. He, like Martin Luther King Jr, was a master of code shifting, so his he can construe he same event very differently in a press conference (where he talks to “the American people”, all of them. But the event (the murders) is the same. What’s different is not only construal, but context of Obama’s speaking. Variations in construal (of the same event) and context (when and where Obama speaks) makes for huge differences in meaning, semantics. I think this is a perfect example of how meaning and the structuring of meaning for linguistic purposes (semantics) is NOT universal, even within what is considered the same language (English, a many splendored thing). The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (LRE) of Whorf and Sapir from many decades back comes in here. But originally  it was focused entirely on lexicon. And it made the bold, but unsupportable claim, that language users are absolutely constrained in their thinking by their birth language. If so, language wouldn’t change nor would second language learning be possible. More tenable is a “weak” version of the LRE, which allows us to understand Obama’s code and construal shifting. When I say “we” I mean those of us who have lived with this code and construal shifting for a long time. I think that Vygotky’s conjecture that a person that doesn’t  know his first language until he learns a second makes sense if one includes learning a second dialect, or even plays with “coding orientation”, or any other device we use as speakers to make meaning, in context and about the world. And I agree with David that semantic structure of any language variety can not be reduced to lexicon. It is part of the lexico-grammatical continuum (see Halliday) from morphology (word formation processes), to syntax (word order), to discourse (the manipulation of language units  larger than the clause) and includes prosody (intonation), gesture. Moreover, meaning can be abstracted from context (something linguists do all the time) but meaning then is lost. And the devil is in the details.   
> 
> I am very happy that I am getting a chance to talk about all of this, and I do hope that I am staying relevant to the thread: Ruquaiya. And for me, if I understand David rightly, grammar IS relevant. It is about meaning. It is part, I think, of Vygotsky’s life’s work as a social semiotician. 
> 
> I wish I was as good as David with the punny humor: “Smart” indeed. LOL. The substance of the pun, the serious part, that Bernstein was misunderstood by your proverbial provincial American audience, is credible and probably emipirically confirmable. But we’ve come a long way, baby. We elected Obama!
> 
> Henry
> 
> P.S. Dam MIT! Martin and David have moved on, so my posting isn’t as SMART as I wanted it to be. However, Martin’s quote from Labov is the way middle-class American used to be in 1972, right? 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 29, 2015, at 3:51 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> First of all, Nancy's 100% right: it's all about social class. Ruqaiya was
>> 100% Marxist: she knew that if language could vary with the USE (that is,
>> registerial variation, the sort of thing you see on an airplane when you
>> compare the language used by the air craft controller giving imperatives,
>> the pilot in the cockpit using declaratives and the stewardess using polar
>> questions about coffe and tea, chicken and beef) then it could also vary
>> with the USER (that is, dialectal variation, the sort of thing you hear
>> when you move from the north of England to the south, or from America to
>> Australia, or from a black working class neighborhood to a white one). But
>> Ruqaiya and her student Clare Cloran were the ones who really provided
>> empirical evidence that class dialects were not simply matters of phonology
>> and phonetics. There were differences in lexical choice, and difference in
>> grammatical patterns as well. So class "dialects" were not simply dialects.
>> In fact, they were NOT dialects at all. This is pretty easy to see today,
>> when even the BBC allows Scottish, Welsh and other dialects, and you can
>> use an Australian dialect to fly a plane just as easily as you can to offer
>> the passengers chicken or beef. But perhaps it was much more difficult to
>> see in America, where the difference between white English and black
>> English sounded so much like a dialect rather than a register.
>> 
>> If you listen to Obama's eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, you will see that
>> the difference between white and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE,
>> in Labov's terminology) really isn't reducible to dialect. Obama doesn't
>> just use the beautiful meters and cadences of the black church: he also
>> uses sloppy, imprecise, and at one point completely
>> outrageous reasoning ("Oh, but God works in strange ways!"). At one
>> point, he tells us that grace is something "we didn't ask for, but God
>> gives it to us anyway", and at the end of the talk he makes it clear that
>> Clementa Pinckney and the eight other black people murderously gunned down
>> because they opened their church to a stranger of another race and tried to
>> convert him had actually "found grace". This is truly grace unasked for but
>> given anyway! I think that if Obama were addressing any other audience, the
>> irony would be palpable. But in this register, there is no trace of irony
>> anywhere in the part of the speech concerning God (although there is some
>> in the parts of the speech concerning social justice, demonstrating that
>> the patterns of meaning are to do with the use and not the user). This lack
>> of irony, at least when it comes to the unlooked for gift of "grace", has
>> nothing to do with dialect and everything to do with what Ruqaiya would
>> call coding orientation.
>> 
>> Ruqaiya knew that this mattered. The same thing that allows us to see irony
>> and double meanings is what allows us to have figurative language, and to
>> see grammatical metaphors (i.e. that something like "to develop" which is
>> normally encoded as a process can be recoded as a noun--"development"--so
>> that it can be measured, given agency, classified, and developed in other
>> ways. This is, according to Ruqaiya, the child's next "big break" into
>> language--it's just as important as the development of the mother tongue
>> out of "child language" (what Vygotsky called "autonomous speech") and the
>> development of school subjects out of everyday language. In fact, it's an
>> inseparable part of the latter, and if children cannot learn to talk about
>> the unseen in science as well as in religion, to use gramamtical metaphors,
>> they will not be able to develop the coding orientations that are required
>> in a class society for jobs that come with goodies (i.e. middle class jobs).
>> 
>> So, Greg's 100% right too. Like many debates in academia, the argument
>> between Bernstein and Labov very quickly became ill-tempered and even
>> demagogic. The very fact that people were reducing "coding orientation" to
>> "dialect" (and I even reduced it--almost--to "class dialect" in my original
>> post) shows how essentializing the debate became. Bernstein NEVER would
>> have used the American notion of "smartness". But he was smart enough to
>> know that if you live in a class society, it's going to have a big effect
>> on your language, and that language is going to be an important part of
>> reproducing the next generation of class distinctions. For this he was
>> pilloried. But mostly he was pilloried by Americans who believed that
>> language is the land of opportunity (and who believed, as Chomsky was
>> teaching, that semantics is something quite separate from and not at all
>> linked to grammar).
>> 
>> And so Martin puts his finger on the real irony. It was BERNSTEIN who
>> argued a non-essentialist, relativist position--it was BERNSTEIN who argued
>> that coding orientations were not universal essences but were related to
>> what you were trying to do with language and with whom (which
>> was--inevitably in a class society--linked although not fully determined by
>> your class). Labov's position was that all language had a common underlying
>> semantics--that there were no differences in coding orientations, only
>> differences in dialects. And THAT is essentialism.
>> 
>> Of course, Bernstein was an Englishman: if he ever had said that some
>> people were smarter than others, all he would have meant was that some were
>> better dressed.
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 2:59 AM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co
>>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi David,
>>> 
>>> I'm confused; wasn't Labov's book 'Language in the Inner City: Studies in
>>> the Black English Vernacular' a study of codes, and of code-switching? And
>>> weren't his studies of what we denote with a word such as 'cup' directed
>>> against an essentialist (Aristotelian) model of semantics?
>>> 
>>> Expecting to be corrected... :)
>>> 
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> On Jun 29, 2015, at 3:41 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Ruqaiya also had an important contribution to make concerning another
>>>> problem that has surfaced on this list many times, a problem which is
>>> ever
>>>> present in the work of Cole and Scribner, and also in Paula Towsey's and
>>>> Mike Cole's contributions to the Symposium on Vygotsky's Concepts:
>>>> 
>>>> https://vimeo.com/13550409
>>>> 
>>>> Mike's contribution is entitled "Do College Professors Think Like
>>> Children,
>>>> Primitives, or Adolescents?" and it's essentially concerned with what
>>>> Ruqaiya called "semantic variation" in general and "code orientation" in
>>>> particular. Ruqaiya, as will be evident to anyone who reads her
>>> "exotropic
>>>> theories"paper, was an ardent champion of Bernstein's work (in which she
>>>> played a considerable role). This brought her into conflict with Labov,
>>> who
>>>> was the major American socioliinguist of the time. For Labov, there was
>>>> simply no such thing as semantic variation: the semantic categories were
>>>> more or less universal, and if you believed that they were somehow shaped
>>>> by code orientation, as Bernstein did, then you were saying that some
>>>> people were somehow less intelligent than others.
>>>> 
>>>> Mike's version of Labov's position is not that semantic categories are
>>>> universal, but rather that the acquisition of "true concepts" cannot be
>>>> dependent on formal schooling. Of course, on one level, that has to be
>>>> true, since true concepts are initially developed in laboratories and
>>>> libraries rather than schools. But for Ruqaiya, class societies produce
>>>> class dialects, and class dialects vary not only according to their
>>>> functional registers but also according to their "code orientations".
>>> Some
>>>> of these code orientations are towards concepts, and some are not.
>>>> 
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> 
>>>> On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 2:39 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Good on Carol’s challenge and David’s response. But I would I take the
>>>>> term “conventional” to mean “cultural” and much preferable to
>>> “arbitrary”
>>>>> when describing the pairing of phonemes and morphemes. I think this is
>>> an
>>>>> important issue, if we are to take Port Royal Grammar and Saussure to
>>> be a
>>>>> useful point of departure for a theory of grammar for the CHAT.
>>>>> Henry
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Jun 26, 2015, at 3:55 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Yes, the Port Royal Grammar was extremely important in a number of
>>> ways.
>>>>>> Politically, it was an attempt to reestablish the rationalist,
>>>>>> Protestant-leaning current of thinking about language and society that
>>>>> had
>>>>>> been almost crushed by the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre and was
>>>>>> eventually totally crushed when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes
>>> (I
>>>>>> tried to find the site of the Port-Royal monastery a few months ago
>>> when
>>>>> I
>>>>>> was in Paris and there isn't even rubble.) And linguistically, the
>>>>>> contribution of the Port-Royal Grammarians can be seen as an extension
>>> of
>>>>>> that universalist rationalist spirit:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> a) The underlying semantic distinctions of all languages (e.g.
>>> concepts,
>>>>>> spatiotemporal categories) are essentially the same.
>>>>>> b) The basic syntactic distinctions of all languages (e.g. nouns/verbs,
>>>>>> subjects/predicates) are essentially the same.
>>>>>> c) Although all of these distinctions do exist, there isn't any
>>>>> principled
>>>>>> distinction between vocabulary and grammar, because what some languages
>>>>>> express in a single word can be expressed in another language by a
>>> whole
>>>>>> wording.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Ergo: the "words 'n rules" model of language, which is the basic model
>>> we
>>>>>> use in all pedagogical grammars today, has no scientific or even
>>> logical
>>>>>> foundation. There is a distinction, of course, but it's much more like
>>>>>> Vygotsky's distinction between learning and development. That is, words
>>>>> are
>>>>>> learned; grammar develops.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Halliday explains why this should be. What we call vocabulary is
>>>>>> essentially a "word's eye view" of the units of the clause, relating
>>> them
>>>>>> to open-class words, to local areas of meaning, and to non-proportional
>>>>>> relations (that is, contextually variable "car-horns" rather than
>>>>> universal
>>>>>> "traffic lights". That is why a word like "love" means something
>>>>> different
>>>>>> in different lexical environments, while a morpheme like plural "s"
>>>>> always
>>>>>> means pretty much the same thing. What we call grammar is essentially a
>>>>>> "wording's eye view" of the units of the clause, relating them to
>>>>>> closed-class words, to system-wide areas of meaning, and to
>>> proportional
>>>>>> relations (that is, the "traffic lights" instead of the car horns).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Now, from these three properties--open/closed class words,
>>> local/general
>>>>>> meanings, and proportional/non-proportional effects--we can guess that
>>>>>> vocabulary is learned incrementally and piece by piece, but grammar
>>>>>> develops in a non-linear, revolutionary fashion. That is, of course,
>>>>>> precisely what we see: you learn ten or fifteen words a day, but when
>>> you
>>>>>> acquire that plural 's', you have led a social revolution that will
>>>>>> transform every single (that is, every singular) noun that you have
>>>>> already
>>>>>> learnt and generalize to (and generalize!) every conceivable singular
>>>>> noun
>>>>>> you could ever learn in the future. Ditto articles, tenses, grammatical
>>>>>> metaphor, etc.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I think that's what Ruqaiya's "critique" of Vygotsky really means: it
>>>>> means
>>>>>> that we now have an extremely important and precise means for
>>>>>> distinguishing between learning in development in precisely the area
>>>>> which
>>>>>> Vygotsky was most interested in, except that it's not the development
>>> of
>>>>>> word meaning so much as the development in the meaning of wordings.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Of course, Vygotsky did have access to grammars. He knew personally
>>>>>> linguists like N.I. Marr (who took part in the seminars that he and
>>> Luria
>>>>>> organized with Eisenstein). He read Volosinov. His work is full of
>>>>>> references to Von Humboldt and Potebnia and even lesser known
>>>>>> lexicographers like Shakhmatov and Dal. It was from these grammars that
>>>>> the
>>>>>> Moscow linguistic circle led by Roman Jakobson took shape, and then it
>>>>> was
>>>>>> a short step (by Jakobson) from Moscow to Prague, where the Prague
>>>>>> linguistic circle laid the foundations for Halliday and Hasan.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> But when I said that Ruqaiya's eyes would smoulder, I was thinking of a
>>>>>> series of discussions  we had in Guangzhou about Saussure. She was an
>>>>>> ardent defender of Saussure, and I was an equally strident detractor.
>>> In
>>>>>> the course of the discussions, I came to see what she was getting at:
>>>>>> Saussure turned his back on history and created an almost purely
>>>>> structural
>>>>>> view of word meanings, and that was a terrible mistake. But Saussure
>>> was
>>>>>> carrying on the Port-Royal tradition of NOT erecting a rigid
>>> impermeable
>>>>>> barrier between vocabulary and grammar. And as for Saussure's notion of
>>>>>> "l'arbitraire", that is, the apparently random associations we find
>>>>> between
>>>>>> phonemes and morphemes, the Saussurean idea which most exercised me at
>>>>> the
>>>>>> time, Saussure simply meant "conventional"--that is, nothing more than
>>>>> the
>>>>>> kinds of relative differences that the Port-Royal grammarians were able
>>>>> to
>>>>>> describe precisely--precisely because they denied their absolute force.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Was Vygotsky an opponent of Saussure? In some places, he explicitly
>>>>>> endorses the Saussurean "phoneme" (e.g. Chapter One of Thinking and
>>>>>> Speech). But in other places, it's quite clear he's really talking
>>> about
>>>>>> morphemes (e.g. his discussion of Russian case endings in HDHMF). In
>>> some
>>>>>> places, he has a Sapirean idea of vocabulary (once again, Chapter One
>>> of
>>>>>> Thinking and Speech, although the passage on Sapir has been cut from
>>> the
>>>>>> English translation). In others, he seems to have a Saussurean one
>>> (e.g.
>>>>>> when he uses Piaget's test about calling a dog a "cow").
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I think that, like Ruqaiya, Vygotsky accepted Saussure's basic model of
>>>>>> language, at least as a structure. What he rejected was the associative
>>>>>> psychology that lay directly behind it. And like Ruqaiya, he was
>>> working
>>>>> to
>>>>>> put something much better--much more historical, and at the same time
>>>>> much
>>>>>> more functional and thus rationalist--in its place. Port-Royal would
>>> have
>>>>>> approved.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> a)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 4:36 AM, Carol Macdonald <
>>> carolmacdon@gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Fellow XMCA-ers
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Now, I might have missed something here in the comments over the past
>>> 24
>>>>>>> hours, but there weren't very good grammars around a century ago, in
>>>>> fact
>>>>>>> there was only the Port Royal Grammar.  I long ago forgave Vygotsky
>>> for
>>>>>>> focussing on word meaning only, on these grounds. (I am a linguist,
>>> that
>>>>>>> why I was judgemental to start with.) He could not have had a theory
>>> to
>>>>>>> use.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Whether he would have developed one later we can never know - but
>>>>> knowing
>>>>>>> the the sort of man he was, he would definitely have gotten around to
>>>>> it,
>>>>>>> and it would have been good.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> So, perhaps it would be a good way to honour both  Ruqaiya and LSV to
>>>>>>> develop one.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Best
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Carol
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 26 June 2015 at 20:45, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I would be in over my head with verbal art, but I am sure you are
>>>>> right,
>>>>>>>> David, that the topic is very important to understanding Ruqaiya’s
>>>>>>>> contribution to understanding Vygotsky. On the other hand, Ruqaiya
>>>>> seems
>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>> be making the case that Vygotsky lacks something very important: a
>>>>> theory
>>>>>>>> of grammar. That is where her passion and brilliance especially seems
>>>>> to
>>>>>>>> come out. And I agree with her about the need! So maybe it’s not just
>>>>>>>> something you and I take a great interest in, but apparently a gap
>>> that
>>>>>>>> needs addressing. It wouldn’t be too far off the mark that this very
>>>>> gap
>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>> why I got into the CHAT. I have been interested in this since Vera
>>>>>>>> John-Steiner, another passionate and brilliant Vygotskian, took me
>>>>> under
>>>>>>>> her ample wings 30 years ago. At that time, I wondered if cognitive
>>>>>>> grammar
>>>>>>>> and Vygotsky were commensurable. Forgive my broken record on this,
>>> but
>>>>> I
>>>>>>>> think the potential is still there. I gather from what you have said
>>>>>>> about
>>>>>>>> Halliday that, from a Vygotskian perspective, there are problems with
>>>>>>>> cognitive grammar (e.g. Langacker). Andy (2011) has written about the
>>>>>>> lack
>>>>>>>> of a convincing notion of concept coming from cogntive psychology
>>> (e.g.
>>>>>>>> Rosch).
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> If I am wrong about cognitive grammar, a festschrift for Ruqaiya that
>>>>>>>> includes the “correction” of Vygotsky will help convince me. I don’t
>>>>> mean
>>>>>>>> that such a festschrift would include mention of cognitive grammar
>>> and
>>>>>>>> cognitive psychology. Just saying.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Henry
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> P.S. I love David’s description of Ruqaiya’s discourse “style”. It
>>>>> brings
>>>>>>>> her alive. Such descriptions will certainly be part of the
>>> festschrift,
>>>>>>>> whoever contributes.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> On Jun 26, 2015, at 1:08 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I don't think I'm qualified to edit a special issue for Ruqaiya,
>>>>> Henry.
>>>>>>>> I'm
>>>>>>>>> not sure who is qualified, but I think it should be somebody whose
>>>>> main
>>>>>>>>> relationship to the reviewers is not a collection of more than ten
>>>>>>>>> rejections going back over a decade, varying from the patronizing to
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> extremely vehement (in one case, my work was actually made the stuff
>>>>>>> of a
>>>>>>>>> graduate seminar by the reviewer, and dutifully reviled by all the
>>>>>>>>> participants!). I am sure there will be a Festschrift--but it will
>>> be
>>>>>>>>> probably be organized by her students and colleagues at Macquarie
>>>>> (e.g.
>>>>>>>>> Annabelle Lukin, who is in the lecture).
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Actually, I no longer have an academic position of any kind. So I
>>>>> think
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> only thing I can usefully do at this point is what I always do--just
>>>>>>>> start
>>>>>>>>> some kind of discussion and hope that somebody else who can command
>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> respect of reviewers and/or publishers will do something with it.
>>> You
>>>>>>>> did
>>>>>>>>> ask about Ruqaiya's critique of Vygotsky and that was why I posted
>>> the
>>>>>>>> link
>>>>>>>>> to her exotropic theories article; that is the obvious entry point
>>> for
>>>>>>>> most
>>>>>>>>> people interested in Ruqaiya's relationship to Vygotsky.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> But I think a good discussion, and also a good Festscrhift, should
>>> be
>>>>>>>>> inclusive. Many people on the list find grammar less interesting
>>> than
>>>>>>> you
>>>>>>>>> and I do. That's why I suggested her work on fairy tales. The work
>>> on
>>>>>>>> fairy
>>>>>>>>> tales, though, is not easy to understand; it's really just an
>>> instance
>>>>>>>> of a
>>>>>>>>> much wider theory of Generalized Text Structure that Ruqaiyah was
>>>>>>> working
>>>>>>>>> out in opposition to the Labov and Waletzky model of "OCER"
>>>>>>> (orientation,
>>>>>>>>> complication, evaluation, and resolution) which essentially reduces
>>>>> all
>>>>>>>>> narratives to four panel cartoons. That was why I suggested Dr.
>>>>> Lukin's
>>>>>>>>> lecture, which really does tell you something about how to read
>>>>>>> Ruqaiyah.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Ruqaiyah was a wonderful, combative, and at the same time very
>>>>> charming
>>>>>>>>> interlocutor; her eyes would light up like twin bonfires while you
>>>>> were
>>>>>>>>> speaking, and you knew that as soon as you paused for breath you
>>> were
>>>>>>>> going
>>>>>>>>> to get a blast that was going to open your eyes but maybe singe your
>>>>>>>>> eyebrows a little too. But Ruqaiyah was a somewhat awkward public
>>>>>>>> speaker:
>>>>>>>>> she interrupted herself a lot and like many people who do SFL she
>>> was
>>>>>>>>> always unsure where to start, where to stop, and how much of the
>>> whole
>>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>>>> necessary before the various parts she wanted to talk about would
>>> make
>>>>>>>>> sense. Dr. Lukin doesn't have that problem: she takes one of
>>>>> Ruqaiyah's
>>>>>>>>> best articles, starts at the start, goes on until she comes to the
>>>>> end,
>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>>> then...
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Well, that was the other thing about Ruqaiyah. She never really
>>>>>>> stopped;
>>>>>>>> I
>>>>>>>>> think she just didn't know how, or maybe just didn't bother to
>>>>>>> practice.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 1:59 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> David,
>>>>>>>>>> I want to make sure I understand. The first link is for an article
>>>>>>>>>> connecting Vygotsky, Halliday and Bernstein  that goes straight to
>>>>>>>>>> Ruqaiya’s “correction” of Vygotsky, right? The second link seems to
>>>>> be
>>>>>>>> an
>>>>>>>>>> abstract for the text of the third link article, right? I don’t see
>>>>>>> yet
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>>> connection between the article and the lecture, so I’m not sure I
>>> can
>>>>>>>> help
>>>>>>>>>> there. Let’s just say I tackle the article. Can you tell me how my
>>>>>>>> response
>>>>>>>>>> might help you and Phil get started on the commemorative
>>> festschrift?
>>>>>>>>>> Henry
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> On Jun 25, 2015, at 4:54 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> This is just to say that I am happy to participate in a
>>>>> commemorative
>>>>>>>>>>> Festschrift for Ruqaiya--or maybe a commemorative special issue,
>>>>>>> along
>>>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>>>> lines of what was done for Leigh Star--in any way I can.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> One way to start would be for Henry and for the list to read and
>>>>>>>>>>> discuss--and respond to--THIS:
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/JuneJuly05/HasanVygHallBernst.pdf
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> Something else to think about: Ruqaiya came to Vygotsky more or
>>> less
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>>>> same way Vygotsky did, through the medium of verbal art. So
>>> another
>>>>>>>> thing
>>>>>>>>>>> to consider is Ruqaiya's work on the structure of fairy tales; by
>>>>> far
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>>>> best thing done thereupon since Vygotsky's work on fables.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>> http://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/books/article/viewArticle/BOOK-29-752-1
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> If you can't afford or have trouble reading the original, there's
>>> a
>>>>>>>> good
>>>>>>>>>>> lecture by Annabelle Lukin on Ruqaiya's theory of generalized text
>>>>>>>>>>> structure:
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> https://vimeo.com/76491567
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 1:54 AM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> Hi Henry
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> The issue is -- who wishes to take responsibility for such a
>>>>>>>> production.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Phil and David have spoken up. Hard to say.
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> The thing about self organizing systems is that the self is not
>>>>>>>> located
>>>>>>>>>> in
>>>>>>>>>>>> one particular part
>>>>>>>>>>>> of them. THEY have to self organize.
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> You know the old saying, where there is a will there is a way.
>>> Very
>>>>>>>>>>>> optimistic in my view, but better than the total absence of will
>>> as
>>>>>>> a
>>>>>>>>>>>> starting point.
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> Time will tell.
>>>>>>>>>>>> betcha
>>>>>>>>>>>> mike
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 8:55 AM, HENRY SHONERD <
>>> hshonerd@gmail.com
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> I am saddened not only by Ruqaiya’s passing by also by how
>>> little
>>>>> I
>>>>>>>>>> knew
>>>>>>>>>>>>> about Ruqaiya’s work. I hope to correct that now by reading
>>> more.
>>>>>>> Not
>>>>>>>>>>>> least
>>>>>>>>>>>>> because of what David points out that she adds to Vygotsky:
>>>>>>> Grammar!
>>>>>>>>>>>> There
>>>>>>>>>>>>> may be a thousand things that Ruqaiya has contributed to
>>> systemic
>>>>>>>>>>>>> functional linguistics, but connecting it so explicitly to
>>>>>>> Vygotsky,
>>>>>>>>>>>> THAT I
>>>>>>>>>>>>> would like to read more and hear more about. If there is, as
>>> Mike
>>>>>>>>>>>> suggests,
>>>>>>>>>>>>> an MCA honoring of her work, I would very much like to see that
>>>>>>>>>>>> connection
>>>>>>>>>>>>> “foregrounded” (a term straight out of the Wikipedia article on
>>>>>>>>>> Ruqaiya).
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Henry
>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Jun 25, 2015, at 4:29 AM, David Kellogg <
>>> dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I think that Ruqaiya was the only person I ever met who set out
>>>>> to
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "correct" Vygotsky and actually succeeded: her insight was that
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Vygotsky's
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> theory, without a theory of grammar, was inevitably going to
>>>>> focus
>>>>>>>> too
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> narrowly on lexical meanings and their historical derivations.
>>> As
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Vygotsky
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> himself pointed out, it's very hard to tell when children's
>>> word
>>>>>>>>>>>> meanings
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> develop. But Ruqaiya pointed out that it's very easy to tell
>>> when
>>>>>>>>>> their
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> wordings do.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I was hoping to see her at the next ISFC in Germany next
>>>>>>> month--I'll
>>>>>>>>>>>> miss
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> her.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 4:56 PM, Phil Chappell <
>>>>>>>> philchappell@mac.com>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Many on this list will know of Ruqaiya Hasan's work and may
>>> even
>>>>>>>> have
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> joined in an XMCA seminar we had back in the mid noughties.
>>> She
>>>>>>>> was a
>>>>>>>>>>>>> great
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> advocate of intersections between Vygotsky, Halliday,
>>> Bernstein
>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Marx.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I'm sad to pass this message on.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Phil Chappell
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dear SFL Friends
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> With great sadness I have to tell you that Ruqaiya passed away
>>>>>>>>>>>> suddenly
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> yesterday afternoon.  She suffered heart failure, brought on
>>> by
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>>>>>> stress
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> of the cancer and the infection, which had so weakened her
>>> body.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Fortunately Michael was with her at that moment, and for some
>>>>>>> time
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> beforehand.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I have just spoken with Michael, and want to reassure you that
>>>>> he
>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>>>>>>> doing
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> well in these circumstances - as courageous and determined as
>>>>> you
>>>>>>>>>> know
>>>>>>>>>>>>> he
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> would be.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> There will be a small funeral service in Sydney next week.
>>> The
>>>>>>>> time
>>>>>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> date are still being arranged, and details will be posted when
>>>>>>> they
>>>>>>>>>>>> are
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> available.  There will also be a much larger scholarly event
>>> to
>>>>>>>>>>>>> celebrate
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Ruqaiya's life and work, and to keep it moving forward, later
>>> in
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>>>>>> year
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> at Macquarie University.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> A wonderful life, an immense scholarly contribution, an
>>>>>>>> extraordinary
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> friend to so many people around the world.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Geoff Williams
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which
>>> makes
>>>>>>>>>>>> you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see
>>>>> something
>>>>>>>>>>>> that isn't even visible. N. McLean, *A River Runs Through it*
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Carol A  Macdonald Ph D (Edin)
>>>>>>> Developmental psycholinguist
>>>>>>> Academic, Researcher,  and Editor
>>>>>>> Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa
>>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
> 
>