[Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Mon May 1 18:18:31 PDT 2017
I will have to slip in a line about the cultural as well as
historical variation in the concept of "chair", David. Thank
you for that. :)
And yes, everything that is discussed in the paper about
"useful objects", i.e., artefacts, applies exactly to words
(which as Mike pointed out are artefacts). The great thing
about making the point in connection with plain ordinary
useful objects like spoons, chairs and tables is that it is
all quite transparent and no special knowledge or facility
in linguistics is required to follow the idea - anyone can
grasp the point viscerally. I hope that I have given Heikki
sufficient credit for this move while blasting him for his
interpretation of the Philosophy of Right.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
On 2/05/2017 7:53 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> A magnificent paper, Andy--I particularly like the
> distinction between project and practice. We tend to think
> of (pedagogical) practices as repetitive,
> self-reinforcing, and reactionary; this is a distinction
> that makes a difference.
>
> Koreans aren't really into chairs. We know about them, of
> course; just as we know about office cubicles, neckties,
> and French wines. But chairs are really for work; when
> you get home, you sit on the floor. If guests come, they
> sit on the sofa. And if they are really good friends,
> they sit in a row on the floor with their backs against
> the sofa, and you sit opposite them covering the TV set
> with your back, with a small floor-table (i.e. a table
> that is about ankle high) bearing cut persimmons with
> toothpicks in them between you, looking deep into their
> eyes. I don't think any of this is encoded in the
> structure of chairs, sofas, or TV sets. It's part of the
> way in which they have all been ripped from one cultural
> history and imposed on a very different one. I think you
> have to say the same thing about the stuff of words as well.
>
> As Vygotsky pointed out, every lexicogrammar is a rich
> emulsion, with islands of foreign wordings. On the one
> hand, the original significations of the words are often
> accessible to us through etymological analysis, so long as
> the language is familiar to us (e.g. so long as an English
> child knows enough French to know that a "clairvoyant" was
> originally someone who sees clearly). On the other, these
> original meanings are often a distraction from the sense
> that the words now have today (e.g. the English child must
> know that a "clairvoyant" sees darkly and mistily, as if
> through a veil of black gauze).
>
> Word stuff in English tends to go "DA-da" if it hangs
> around along enough. So for example, the name "An-DRE"
> becomes "AN-drew" within a few centuries of the Norman
> Conquest, and the diminutive "Andy", which is child-like
> in its refusal to end in a consonant sound like a proper
> man's name (compare: "Andrew") or to end in a vowel sound
> like a proper woman's name ("Andrea") is in some ways an
> exaggeration of its Englishness. This process of
> Anglicization makes it very hard to recover the original
> sounding. And of course meaning and sounding is
> solidary, in words if not in tables and chairs.
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 5:44 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> David, in this paper
> https://www.academia.edu/30657582/
> <https://www.academia.edu/30657582/>
>
> if you do a search for "chair" you will see an
> extended quote from a Hegelian called Heikki who is
> using production of chairs rather than tables as an
> example for concepts, after which you will see my
> critique (with which I am sure you will agree) and
> then if you flip to the mention of "chair" at the
> bottom of page 7 you see a surprising thing about the
> production of chairs which illustrates Mike's point
> about how pencils are carriers of historical practices.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
> On 1/05/2017 4:58 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>
> And tables carry with them the practice of eating
> "at table" and meeting a the board room table
> etc., it not that the table carries the idea of
> table but is the bearer of practices, which have
> refined the size and shape of tables for eating,
> talking, etc. LIkewise pencils are for cursive
> writing on paper. not scratching hieroglyphics
> into clay.
>
> Great quote from Mike! There is a LOT of
> resistance to this idea ... everywhere. It smells
> of Marxism.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
> On 1/05/2017 4:43 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
> Gordon Wells quotes this from an article Mike
> wrote in a Festschrift for
> George Miller. Mike is talking about artefacts:
>
> "They are ideal in that they contain in coded
> form the interactions of
> which they
> were previously a part and which they mediate
> in the present (e.g., the
> structure of
> a pencil carries within it the history of
> certain forms of writing). They
> are material
> in that they are embodied in material
> artifacts. This principle applies
> with equal
> force whether one is considering
> language/speech or the more usually noted
> forms
> of artifacts such as tables and knives which
> constitute material culture.
> What
> differentiates a word, such as “language”
> from, say, a table. is the
> relative prominence
> of their material and ideal aspects. No word
> exists apart from its material
> instantiation (as a configuration of sound
> waves, or hand movements, or as
> writing,
> or as neuronal activity), whereas every table
> embodies an order imposed by
> thinking
> human beings."
>
> This is the kind of thing that regularly gets
> me thrown out of journals by
> the ear. Mike says that the difference between
> a word and a table is the
> relative salience of the ideal and the
> material. Sure--words are full of
> the ideal, and tables are full of material. Right?
>
> Nope. Mike says it's the other way around.
> Why? Well, because a word
> without some word-stuff (sound or graphite)
> just isn't a word. In a
> word, meaning is solidary with material
> sounding: change one, and you
> change the other. But with a table, what you
> start with is the idea of the
> table; as soon as you've got that idea, you've
> got a table. You could
> change the material to anything and you'd
> still have a table.
>
> Wells doesn't throw Mike out by the ear. But
> he does ignore the delightful
> perversity in what Mike is saying, and what he
> gets out of the quote is
> just that words are really just like tools.
> When in fact Mike is saying
> just the opposite.
>
> (The part I don't get is Mike's notion that
> the structure of a pencil
> carries within it the history of certain forms
> of writing. Does he mean
> that the length of the pencil reflects how
> often it's been used? Or is he
> making a more archaeological point about
> graphite, wood, rubber and their
> relationship to a certain point in the history
> of writing and erasing?
> Actually, pencils are more like tables than
> like words--the idea has to
> come first.)
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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