[Xmca-l] Re: Don't do it

[David Kellogg]

Larry:

I think it's not hard for people to hear how intonation (i.e. pitch rises
and falls) and articulation (i.e. vowels and consonants) are both distinct
and linked.  When people want to be sarcastic or ironic or just mildly
humorous, they do it by having the intonation (which is chiefly
interpersonal in meaning) say one thing and the articulation (which is
chiefly ideational in meaning) say another. That shows they are
distinguishable: that is, potentially distinct. But we more typically use
intonation to mark certainty ("Don't do it!") and uncertainty ("Is it
necessary?") and this is often linked to the articulation ("Don't..." and
"Necessary..."), so much so that we have invented a special kind of
articulation, called punctuation, to render it in writing.  When you sing,
you sing with intonation, but what you sing is the vowels (and, but to a
much lesser degree, the consonants); every burst of song shows us how, in
the human voice, intonation and articulation form what Vygotsky called a
"complex whole": that is, they are both linked and distinct.

I also think it's not hard for people to see how imperatives and
interrogatives (grammatical mood, which is mostly interpersonal) are both
linked to and distinct from nouns, adjectives and verbs (transitivity,
which is mostly ideational). There are differences between the differences:
the difference between "!" and "?" is one difference, and the difference
between "Don't...(!)" and "Necessary...(?)" is another, but you can see
that once again they can be seen as part of a complex whole ("Don't do it,
because it's not necessary"). That is just how Ulvi was seeing it, because
in order to disarticulate an argument into a negative proposal and a
negative proposition on the one hand, and into a doing verb and a happening
noun on the other, you first have to see them as a complex whole.

Here's the hard part (for me, anyway). The "perezhivanie" of the infant is
whole, but it's not particularly complex: it's pretty hard to take apart
the feeling of the infant drinking milk and the infant's pleasure, and if
you try to do it, you may find that the one disappears just as soon as the
other does. Some "perezhivanie" are definitely like that: when a car jumps
the curb and threatens to run me over, I find it very hard to distinguish
between the self that perceives, the self who fears and the self who runs
away (though I will admit I do not spend a lot of time trying to do this).
On one level, the living of life is like that: I cannot take apart "living"
and "life" no matter how hard I try. But there are also all these
activities, like trying to make sense of what has happened, where I must.
It is interesting (to me) that these other activities all seem to involve
language.

Yet language too is part of the living of life. So it seems to me that we
need a unit of semantics that is a complex whole at one end (at the end of
context) and a whole complex at the other (at the end of grammar). Sort of
like the way that the perezhivanie of the infant is whole and only
prospectivelly differentiable but that of the adolescent is complex and
only retrospectively whole. But allatthesametime.

David Kellogg
Macquarie University

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017 at 12:31 AM, <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> David,
>
> My echoing what you say is in appreciation for your opening a space to
> explore :
>
> *some larger whole from which both the interpersonal and ideational
> metafunctions emerge
>
> * looking at the Pepperian idea of contextualism/dispersive and
> organicism/integrative – together
>
> *this togetherness in actual speech being – textualism (devices for
> integrating service
>
> *giving service  (and) getting service
>
>
>
> These focal points for analysis (exploring what has already occurred in
> development).
>
> I hope my echo is faithful? To your intent
>
> Opening a door
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>
>
>
> *From: *David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> *Sent: *March 13, 2017 12:39 AM
> *To: *eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> *Subject: *[Xmca-l] Re: Don't do it
>
>
>
> In my own (unpublished) study, it was the interpersonal metafunction which
>
> emerged first, not the ideational one. That is, children grasped the idea
>
> of giving and getting goods and services before they had the idea that
>
> experience could be encoded in language and shared with somebody who didn't
>
> actually have it. (This study just confirmed work by Clare Painter, Jane
>
> Torr, and Halliday himself.)
>
>
>
> However, I think that Rein is right in one sense: there is some larger
>
> whole from which BOTH the interpersonal and the ideational must be
>
> co-differentiated. I don't think this differentiation is what happens in
>
> development, though: it's an artefact of analysis. I don't think that this
>
> larger whole exists in infants, or even in early childhood; to use the
>
> Pepperian idea in Karimi-Aghdam article, it's a kind of artefact that
>
> arises post hoc, from looking at contextualism (which is dispersive) and
>
> organicism (which is integrative) together. By looking at an integrated
>
> whole and by thinking about it as development-in-context, we infer it, but
>
> to assume that it actually happens, that all word meanings are "given" to
>
> children, is to commit the Augustinian fallacy (that Wittgenstein
>
> criticizes at the beginning of Philosophical Investigations)
>
>
>
> Halliday's got a name for this larger whole, at least once it arises in
>
> actual speech. It's the TEXTUAL metafunction, that is, the textual devices
>
> that we use to integrate interpersonal functions and ideational ones into a
>
> single clause. To return to the example I gave earlier:
>
>
>
> a) Don't do it. (interpersonal proposal, ideational material process, "you"
>
> and "it" are Actor and Goal, textually unmarked)
>
> b) It's not necessary (interpersonal proposition, ideational relational
>
> process "it" and "necessary" are Carrier and Attribute, textually unmarked)
>
> c) Don't do it, because it's not necessary. ("because" is a conjunctive
>
> adjunct which integrates the two propositions--it has neither interpersonal
>
> nor ideational function, but is a purely textual element).
>
>
>
> (I've got a study on how this metafunction arises in Korean kids--it seems
>
> to me that it's not explicit until quite late, in sixth grade, in my data.
>
> This one will actually be PUBLISHED...in Language and Education! (DOI:
>
> 10.1080/09500782.2017.1306074)
>
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Macquarie University
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 7:51 AM, Rein Raud <rein.raud@tlu.ee> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Yes, this I can agree with - especially as this is fairly close to my own
>
> > theory of meaning ("Meaning in Action", Polity 2016, ch.2), except that
> in
>
> > my opinion the ideational is already given to us interpersonally (as when
>
> > someone explains to us what a word means), while there is also an
>
> > "experiential" meaning with which this ideational claims identity. But
> what
>
> > you say makes sense. Best, Rein
>
> >
>
> > On Mar 11, 2017, at 22:41 , Martin John Packer wrote:
>
> >
>
> > > Rein,
>
> > >
>
> > > David is building here on Halliday’s analysis of the two fundamental
>
> > ‘functions’ of language, the ideational and the interpersonal. It is when
>
> > the child becomes able to combine the two in the same utterance that
>
> > grammar emerges. (That was not David’s point; I just find it a very
>
> > interesting idea!)
>
> > >
>
> > > Martin
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > > On Mar 11, 2017, at 3:27 PM, Rein Raud <rein.raud@tlu.ee<mailto:rein.
>
> > raud@tlu.ee>> wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > David, I was only reacting to what you wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > I shall call this form of meaning--for meaning it is--"interpersonal"
>
> > > meaning, in order to distinguish it from "ideational" meaning. I think
>
> > that
>
> > > interpersonal meaning is meaning, but it is meaning which is directed
>
> > > towards organizing an interaction as the giving or getting of
> information
>
> > > or goods and services. Ideational meaning is meaning too, but it is
>
> > > directed towards the representation (hence, "indication") of human
>
> > > experience and logic. They're equally meaningful, but they are filled
>
> > with
>
> > > different kinds of meanings.
>
> > >
>
> > > "Ideational" here seems to be what Austin calls "locutionary".
>
> > "Interpersonal", in turn, seems to be what Austin called "performative"
> (in
>
> > the illocutionary and perlocutionary varieties) and indeed you define it
>
> > as  "directed towards organizing an interaction". Thus I don't think your
>
> > counter-argument here is wholly legitimate, or perhaps I've missed the
>
> > point.
>
> > >
>
> > > Best,
>
> > >
>
> > > Rein
>
> > >
>
> > > On Mar 11, 2017, at 22:09 , David Kellogg wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > Here I'm talking about the difference between:
>
> > >
>
> > > a) Don't do it.
>
> > > b) You are doing it.
>
> > > c) Are you doing it?
>
> > >
>
> > > This is not a difference between locutionary, illocutionary, and
>
> > > perlocutionary force--Austin would say that all of these are
> locutionary
>
> > in
>
> > > their force, because the pragmatic purpose and the resulting event,
> which
>
> > > is the giving of linguistic examples and their reception, is the same.
>
> > And
>
> > > yet they are different. How so?
>
> > >
>
> > > They are different in the nature of the commodity which is put at risk.
>
> > In
>
> > > a) that commodity is goods and services, while in b) and c) that
>
> > commodity
>
> > > is information. This means that in a) language is ancillary--we can
> often
>
> > > perform the same "speech act" (to use the behavioristic terminology of
>
> > > Austin, Searle, and their disciples in pragmatics) using gesticulation,
>
> > > gesture, "eye language", or just intonation. But in b) and c) the use
> of
>
> > > lexicogrammar is central--we cannot successfully exchange propositions
>
> > > without encoding them lexicogrammatically.
>
> > >
>
> > > This is not the same difference that Austin is discussing. Austin is
> not
>
> > a
>
> > > linguist, so he wants to transfer meaning from language to context: to
>
> > > speech roles, to social recognition and to social outcomes. That's
> simply
>
> > > not possible in this situation: the meaning of b) and c) lies in the
>
> > > lexico-grammar and nowhere else. Speech act theory is to linguistics
> what
>
> > > behaviorism is to psychology.
>
> > >
>
> > > David Kellogg
>
> > > Macquarie University
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > > On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 6:33 AM, Rein Raud <rein.raud@tlu.ee<mailto:
>
> > rein.raud@tlu.ee>> wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > These differences have been discussed quite some time ago in
> J.L.Austin's
>
> > > "How to Do Things with Words" (1962), from which speech act theory
>
> > > originated. Austin distinguishes between locutionary (primary
> semantical)
>
> > > meaning, illocutionary meaning (what is being meant) and perlocutionary
>
> > > meaning (any event is being produced by the utterance). Thus when you
> say
>
> > > "Do you have some time?" you might mean "Can you spare some time for
> me?"
>
> > > and the perlocutionary result of this is that you will actually help me
>
> > > (because you are in a position where you cannot say "no" to me, f.ex.
>
> > > because I am your boss). A lot of speech act theory has evolved from
>
> > this,
>
> > > notably in the work of Searle. Best to all, Rein Raud
>
> > >
>
> > > On Mar 11, 2017, at 21:18 , David Kellogg wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > Ulvi, Mike...
>
> > >
>
> > > We started this thread with Ulvi's important remark that there is a
>
> > > difference between:
>
> > >
>
> > > "Don't do it."
>
> > >
>
> > > and
>
> > >
>
> > > "it is not necessary."
>
> > >
>
> > > Ulvi said that the difference does not lie in their polarity--they are
>
> > > both
>
> > > negative. Nor does it lie in their representational (referential, or
>
> > > "ideational" meaning). They both refer to "it" and to the advisability
> of
>
> > > "it".  Ulvi said that the first was imperative, and the second was not
>
> > > (the
>
> > > technical term for the non-imperative form of the second is
>
> > > "indicative-declarative", as opposed to "indicative-interrogative"
> which
>
> > > would be a question).
>
> > >
>
> > > I shall call this form of meaning--for meaning it is--"interpersonal"
>
> > > meaning, in order to distinguish it from "ideational" meaning. I think
>
> > > that
>
> > > interpersonal meaning is meaning, but it is meaning which is directed
>
> > > towards organizing an interaction as the giving or getting of
> information
>
> > > or goods and services. Ideational meaning is meaning too, but it is
>
> > > directed towards the representation (hence, "indication") of human
>
> > > experience and logic. They're equally meaningful, but they are filled
>
> > > with
>
> > > different kinds of meanings.
>
> > >
>
> > > The difference is qualitative, and that is another way of saying that
> it
>
> > > is
>
> > > "revolutionary" (because revolution originally meant turning around
> axis;
>
> > > the first political "revolution" was the rather pathetic "turning" of
>
> > > Latin-speaking civilization from a republican to an imperial form under
>
> > > Augustus). The difference is between making a proposal and offering a
>
> > > proposition--i.e. between realizing a potential state and simply
>
> > > discussing
>
> > > an actual one.
>
> > >
>
> > > One of the interesting aspects of Professor Jang's paper is that it is
>
> > > about adolescents who are in the process of forming concepts, but who
> are
>
> > > not there yet. And one way in which an adolescent forms a concept about
>
> > > the
>
> > > difficult concept of a social contract, of citizenship, of nationality
> is
>
> > > pseudoconceptual: it is based on discussing "actual" perceptual
>
> > > differences
>
> > > between races. This might seem irrelevant to current political
> discourse.
>
> > > Unfortunately, it isn't.
>
> > >
>
> > > What does a teacher say to kids who are thinking this way? Do we say
>
> > > "Don't
>
> > > do it"? Or is it better to show them that it is not necessary?
>
> > >
>
> > > David Kellogg
>
> > > Macquarie University
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > > On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 7:58 PM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com
> <mailto:
>
> > ulvi.icil@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > Mike, please corrct me if i wrongly take this meaning that revolutions
>
> > > causes big numbers of death, death in masses, so we would not prefer
>
> > > them.
>
> > >
>
> > > But, what if we sum up all the deaths because of occupatinal murders in
>
> > > workplaces, deaths from drugs, murders of women and early death because
>
> > > of
>
> > > lack of sufficient health care and all the deaths due to the bad
>
> > > orgsanisation of society under capitalism  and what is more turning of
>
> > > tens
>
> > > of millions of children into ignorant and fanatic human beings who are
>
> > > brought up able to kill anyone on the street etc
>
> > >
>
> > > Is it not more rational to put en end to this state of human society
>
> > > rather
>
> > > than to perpetruate it, allow it to exist.
>
> > >
>
> > > Unemployment itself 20 % in Turkey.
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > > 11 Mar 2017 03:14 tarihinde "mike cole" <mcole@ucsd.edu<mailto:mcole@
>
> > ucsd.edu>> yazdı:
>
> > >
>
> > > From my personal web page, Ulvi:
>
> > >
>
> > > *Apropos Thoughts on Revolutions and Their Causes*
>
> > >
>
> > > (From C. Dickens, *A Tale of Two Cities*, Ch 15)
>
> > >
>
> > > Along the Paris streets, the death carts rumble, hollow and harsh.
>
> > >
>
> > > Six tumbrels carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring
>
> > > and
>
> > > insatiate monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are
>
> > > fused in the one realization, Guillotine. And yet there is not in
>
> > > France,
>
> > > with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a
>
> > > sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more
>
> > > certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush human humanity
>
> > > out
>
> > > of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself
>
> > > into
>
> > > the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and
>
> > > oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit,
>
> > > according
>
> > > to its kind.
>
> > >
>
> > > It is the nature of the fruits sewn by the French Revolution that give
>
> > > pause for thought. And perhaps accounts for the lack of reply to your
>
> > > articulately formulated note.
>
> > >
>
> > > mike
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > > On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com<mailto:
> ul
>
> > vi.icil@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > If I say
>
> > >
>
> > > don't do it, it is imperative.
>
> > >
>
> > > But if I say,
>
> > >
>
> > > It is not realistic and you do not need it.
>
> > >
>
> > > It is affirmative and even  though negative, it is again affirmative,
>
> > > to
>
> > > demobilize you.
>
> > >
>
> > > What I mean is Revolution.
>
> > >
>
> > > Addressed to a married couple with two children.
>
> > >
>
> > > With 3 thousand Turkish liras in Istanbul in a  rented home of at
>
> > > least
>
> > > 1000 tl for rent.
>
> > >
>
> > > 1 usd = 4 Turkish liras
>
> > >
>
> > > Survival economics.
>
> > >
>
> > > Any prospect?
>
> > >
>
> > > No.
>
> > >
>
> > > That simple.
>
> > >
>
> > > What is socialist revolution?
>
> > >
>
> > > It is neither an intention nor a wish.
>
> > >
>
> > > It is simple necessity.
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> > >
>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
>
>