[Xmca-l] Re: language and music

Thu Nov 29 14:23:56 PST 2018

Well, I am lost too, but I meant the possibility of reading the need for being "clear" as the need to address others and therefore as a social need, and the need to speak such as not to loose the trail of what you are saying as a constrain that has to do with how our organisms set boundaries to what is hearable and possibly held together within one's awareness during any given period of time. But of course, the two needs presuppose each other; to make yourself clear presupposes the "biological" constrain immediately. That is why I was thinking of gesture as an expression of this unity; which in expressing itself, changes the very relation.

The babbling is even worse now, at 23:23 (really it is 23:23 in my clock)

Alfredo

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
Sent: 29 November 2018 23:00
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: language and music

Alfredo,
Bingo! to gesture addressing that tension between the potentially competing charges of language, but you lost me at "social and biological conditions as a means to address gestures”. Hmmm…Proof of Slobin’s pudding? Clarity vs. temporal constraints. It may be clear to another member of the audience. Precisely Mike’s point in working with Martin. Bateson’s claim: It’s all in relation.
Henry

On Nov 29, 2018, at 2:22 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@ils.uio.no<mailto:a.j.gil@ils.uio.no>> wrote:

Interesting, Henry. Would it be correct to speak of the two "charges" that you mention in terms of (1) our social condition, and (2) our biological condition, respectively? And if so, would it be correct to consider gestures as culture, manifesting this duality, or rather, manifesting this unity of the social and the biological? That would sound like a very Vygotskian account to me. And then it would make just as much sense to speak of gestures "helping to address this tension" as it would make it to speak of our social and biological conditions as a means to address gestures.
Just babbling here, 22:22 on this side of the Atlantic.

Alfredo

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From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>>
Sent: 29 November 2018 19:55
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: language and music

James,
This conversation has been so satisfying I don’t want to let go of it, so I hope I am not tiring you or others with all the connections I find. But, in the spirit of Alfredo’s post, I’ll just keep on talking and remark on how the duck tail hair cut is a rich gesture, an important concept in this subject line. Gesture is an aspect of communication present in many species. Hence, the importance of gesture as a rudimentary form of language with evolutionary results in human language. Maybe this is a reach, but I see the business of quotes in the subject line now taking place (Anna Stetsenko and Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont, contributing right now) on the last chapter of Vygotsky’s Speech and Language as an issue of gesture. Language, written language in this case, is limited in its ability to provide nuance. Writing without quotes “gestured”, pointed to to author sources familar in the day that Vygotsky wrote, such that quotes were not necessary. Dan Slobin, psycholinguist at Univ of Calf, wrote that two charges of language where in “tension”: 1) make yourself clear and 2) get it said before losing the thread of thinking and talking. Gesture, I would like to argue, is an aspect of discourse that helps to address this tension. A turn (in discourse) is a gesture, with temporal constraints that belie the idea that a single turn can ever be totally clear in and of itself. Writing, as we are doing now, is always dialogic, even a whole book, is a turn in discourse. And we keep on posting our turns.
Henry

On Nov 29, 2018, at 8:56 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com<mailto:jamesma320@gmail.com>> wrote:

Henry, Elvis Presley is spot on for this subject line!

The ducktail hairstyle is fabulous. Funnily enough, it is what my brother would always like his 9-year-old son to have because he has much thicker hair than most boys. Unfortunately last year the boy had a one-day show off in the classroom and was ticked off by the school authority (in China). However, my brother has managed to restore the ducktail twice a year during the boy's long school holiday in winter and summer!

I suppose the outlines of conversation are predictable due to participants' intersubjective awareness of the subject. Yet, the nuances of conversation (just like each individual's ducktail unique to himself) are unpredictable because of the waywardness of our mind. What's more, such nuances create the fluidity of conversation which makes it difficult (or even unnecessary) to predict what comes next - this is perhaps the whole point that keeps us talking, as Alfredo pointed out earlier.

James

On Wed, 28 Nov 2018 at 22:19, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:
Back at you, James. The images of the mandarin drake reminded me of a hair style popularin the late 50s when I was in high school (grades 9-12): ducktail haircuts images<https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ducktail+haircuts+images&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8>. One of the photos in the link is of Elvis Presley, an alpha male high school boys sought to emulate. Note that some of the photos are of women, interesting in light of issues of gender fluidity these days. I don’t remember when women started taking on the hair style. Since I mentioned Elvis Presley, this post counts as relevant to the subject line! Ha!
Henry

On Nov 28, 2018, at 7:39 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com<mailto:jamesma320@gmail.com>> wrote:

Thank you Henry.
More on mandarin duck, just thought you might like to see:
https://www.livingwithbirds.com/tweetapedia/21-facts-on-mandarin-duck

HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> 于 2018年11月27日周二 19:30写道：
What a beautiful photo, James, and providing it is a move on this subject line that instantiates nicely Gee’s conception of discourse. Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful response.
Henry

On Nov 27, 2018, at 11:11 AM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com<mailto:jamesma320@gmail.com>> wrote:

Henry, thanks for the info on Derek Bickerton. One of the interesting things is his conception of displacement as the hallmark of language, whether iconic, indexical or symbolic. In the case of Chinese language, the sounds are decontextualised or sublimated over time to become something more integrated into the words themselves as ideographs. Some of Bickerton's ideas are suggestive of the study of protolanguage as an a priori process, involving scrupulous deduction. This reminds me of methods used in diachronic linguistics, which I felt are relevant to CHAT just as much as those used in synchronic linguistics.

Regarding "intermental" and "intramental", I can see your point. In fact I don't take Vygotsky's "interpsychological" and "intrapsychological" categories to be dichotomies or binary opposites. Whenever it comes to their relationship, I tend to have a post-structuralism imagery present in my mind, particularly related to a Derridean stance for the conception of ideas (i.e. any idea is not entirely distinct from other ideas in terms of the "thing itself"; rather, it entails a supplement of the other idea which is already embedded in the self). Vygotsky's two categories are relational (dialectical); they are somehow like a pair of mandarin ducks (see attached image). I also like to think that each of these categories is both "discourse-in-context" and "context-for-discourse" (here discourse is in tune with James Gee's conception of discourse as a patchwork of actions, interactions, thoughts, feelings etc). I recall Barbara Rogoff talking about there being no boundary between the external and the internal or the boundary being blurred (during her seminar in the Graduate School of Education at Bristol in 2001 while I was doing my PhD).

James

On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 at 23:14, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:
James,
I think it was Derek Bickerton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Bickerton) who argued that “formal syntax” developed from stringing together turns in verbal interaction. The wiki on Bickerton I have linked is short and raises issues discussed in this subject line and in the subject line on Corballis. Bickerton brings me back to the circularity of discourse and the development of discourse competence. Usage-based grammar. Bickerton’s idea that complex grammar developed out of the pidgins of our ancestors is interesting. Do I see a chicken/egg problem that for Vygotsky, “…the intramental forms of semiotic mediation is better understood by examining the types of intermental processes”? I don’t know. Could one say that inner speech is the vehicle for turning discourse into grammar? Bickerton claimed a strong biological component to human language, though I don’t remember if he was a Chomskian. I hope this is coherent thinking in the context of our conversation. All that jazz.
Henry

On Nov 21, 2018, at 3:22 PM, James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com<mailto:jamesma320@gmail.com>> wrote:

Alfredo, I'd agree with Greg - intersubjectivity is relevant and pertinent here.

As I see it, intersubjectivity transcends "outlines" or perhaps sublimates the "muddledness" and "unpredictability" of a conversation (as in Bateson's metalogue) into what Rommetveit termed the "draft of a contract". This is because shared understanding makes explicit and external what would otherwise remain implicit and internal. Rommetveit argues that private worlds can only be transcended up to a certain level and interlocutors need to agree upon the draft of a contract with which the communication can be initiated. In the spirit of Vygotsky, he uses a "pluralistic" and "social-cognitive" approach to human communication - and especially to the problem of linguistic mediation and regulation in interpsychological functioning, with reference to semantics, syntactics and pragmatics. For him, the intramental forms of semiotic mediation is better understood by examining the types of intermental processes.

I think these intermental processes (just like intramental ones) can be boiled down or distilled to signs and symbols with which interlocutors are in harmony during a conversation or any other joint activities.

James

________________________________________________
James Ma  Independent Scholar https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa

On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 at 08:09, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@ils.uio.no<mailto:a.j.gil@ils.uio.no>> wrote:
Henry's remarks about no directors and symphonic potential of conversation reminded me of G. Bateson's metalogue "why do things have outlines" (attached). Implicitly, it raises the question of units and elements, of how a song, a dance, a poem, a conversation, to make sense, they must have a recognizable outline, even in improvisation; they must be wholes, or suggest wholes. That makes them "predictable". And yet, when you are immersed in a conversation, the fact that you can never exactly predict what comes next is the whole point that keep us talking, dancing, drawing, etc!

Alfredo

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>>
Sent: 21 November 2018 06:22
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: language and music

I’d like to add to the call and response conversation that discourse, this conversation itself, is staged. There are performers and and an audience made up partly of performers themselves. How many are lurkers, as I am usually? This conversation has no director, but there are leaders. There is symphonic potential. And even gestural potential, making the chat a dance. All on line.:)
Henry

On Nov 20, 2018, at 9:05 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu<mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>> wrote:

For many years I used the work of Ellen Dissenyake to teach comm classes about language/music/development. She is quite unusual in ways that might find interest here.

https://ellendissanayake.com/

mike

On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 2:16 PM James Ma <jamesma320@gmail.com<mailto:jamesma320@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hello Simangele,

In semiotic terms, whatever each of the participants has constructed internally is the signified, i.e. his or her understanding and interpretation. When it is vocalised (spoken out), it becomes the signifier to the listener. What's more, when the participants work together to compose a story impromptu, each of their signifiers turns into a new signified – a shared, newly-established understanding, woven into the fabric of meaning making.

By the way, in Chinese language, words for singing and dancing have long been used inseparably. As I see it, they are semiotically indexed to, or adjusted to allow for, the feelings, emotions, actions and interactions of a consciousness who is experiencing the singing and dancing. Here are some idioms:

酣歌醉舞 - singing and dancing rapturously

村歌社舞 - dancing village and singing club

燕歌赵舞 - citizens of ancient Yan and Zhao good at singing and dancing, hence referring to wonderful songs and dances

舞榭歌楼 - a church or building set up for singing and dancing

James

________________________________________________
James Ma  Independent Scholar https://oxford.academia.edu/JamesMa

On Sat, 17 Nov 2018 at 19:08, Simangele Mayisela <simangele.mayisela@wits.ac.za<mailto:simangele.mayisela@wits.ac.za>> wrote:

Colleagues,

This conversation is getting even more interesting, not that I have an informed answer for you Rob, I can only think of the National Anthems where people stand still when singing, even then this is observed only in international events.

Other occasions when people are likely not to move when singing when there is death and the mood is sombre. Otherwise singing and rhythmic body movement, called dance are a norm.

This then makes me  wonder what this means in terms of cognitive functioning, in the light of Vygotsky’s developmental stages – of language and thought. Would the body movement constitute the externalisation of the thoughts contained in the music?

Helena – the video you are relating about reminds of the language teaching or group therapy technique- where a group of learners (or participants in OD settings) are instructed to tell a single coherent and logical story as a group. They all take turns to say a sentence, a sentence of not more than 6 words (depending on the instructor ), each time linking your sentence to the sentence of previous articulator, with the next person also doing the same, until the story sounds complete with conclusion. More important is that they compose this story impromptu, It with such stories that group dynamics are analysed, and in group therapy cases, collective experiences of trauma are shared.  I suppose this is an example of cooperative activity, although previously I would have thought of it as just an “activity”

Simangele

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>] On Behalf Of robsub@ariadne.org.uk<mailto:robsub@ariadne.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, 16 November 2018 21:01
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>; Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com<mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Michael C. Corballis

I remember being told once that many languages do not have separate words for singing and dancing, because if you sing you want to move - until western civilisation beats it out of you.

Does anybody know if this is actually true, or is it complete cod?

If it is true, does it have something to say about the relationship between the physical body and the development of speech?

Rob
On 16/11/2018 17:29, Helena Worthen wrote:
I am very interested in where this conversation is going. I remember being in a Theories of Literacy class in which Glynda Hull, the instructor, showed a video of a singing circle somewhere in the Amazon, where an incredibly complicated pattern of musical phrases wove in and out among the singers underlaid by drumming that included turn-taking, call and response, you name it. Maybe 20 people were involved, all pushing full steam ahead to create something together that they all seemed to know about but wouldn’t happen until they did it.

Certainly someone has studied the relationship of musical communication (improvised or otherwise), speech and gesture? I have asked musicians about this and get blank looks. Yet clearly you can tell when you listen to different kinds of music, not just Amazon drum and chant circles, that there is some kind of speech - like potential embedded there. The Sonata form is clearly involves exposition (they even use that word).

For example: the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo opens with a musical theme that says, as clearly as if we were reading aloud from some children’s book, “I am now going to tell you a very strange story that sounds impossible but I promise you every word of it is true…da-de-da-de-da.’ Only it doesn’t take that many words.

(18) Fargo (1996) - 'Fargo, North Dakota' (Opening) scene [1080] - YouTube

Helena Worthen
helenaworthen@gmail.com<mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>
Berkeley, CA 94707 510-828-2745
Blog US/ Viet Nam:
helenaworthen.wordpress.com<http://helenaworthen.wordpress.com/>
skype: helena.worthen1

On Nov 16, 2018, at 8:56 AM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:

Andy and Peter,
I like the turn taking principle a lot. It links language and music very nicely: call and response. By voice and ear. While gesture is linked to visual art. In face-to-face conversation there is this rhythmically entrained interaction. It’s not just cooperative, it’s verbal/gestural art. Any human work is potentially a work of art. Vera John-Steiner and Holbrook Mahn have talked about how conversation can be a co-construction “at the speed of thought”.  Heady stuff taking part, or just listening to, this call and response between smart people.  And disheartening and destructive when we give up on dialog.

As I write this, I realize that the prosodic aspects of spoken language (intonation) are gestural as well. It’s simplistic to restrict gesture to visual signals. But I would say gesture is prototypically visual, an accompaniment to the voice. In surfing the web, one can find some interesting things on paralanguage which complicate the distinction between language and gesture. I think it speaks to the embodiment of language in the senses.

Henry

On Nov 16, 2018, at 7:00 AM, Peter Feigenbaum [Staff] <pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu<mailto:pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>> wrote:

Andy,

I couldn't agree more. And thanks for introducing me to the notion of delayed gratification as a precondition for sharing and turn-taking.
That's a feature I hadn't considered before in connection with speech communication. It makes sense that each participant would need
to exercise patience in order to wait out someone else's turn.

Much obliged.

Peter

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 8:50 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org<mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
Interesting, Peter.
Corballis, oddly in my view, places a lot of weight in so-called mirror neurons to explain perception of the intentionality of others. It seems blindingly obvious to me that cooperative activity, specifically participating in projects in which individuals share a common not-present object, is a form of behaviour which begets the necessary perceptive abilities. I have also long been of the view that delayed gratification, as a precondition for sharing and turn-taking, as a matter of fact, is an important aspect of sociality fostering the development of speech, and the upright gait which frees the hands for carrying food back to camp where it can be shared is important. None of which presupposes tools, only cooperation.
Andy
________________________________
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.ethicalpolitics.org_ablunden_index.htm&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=itd0qPWlE7uAuyEX0ii8ohEoZegfdMAOOLf-YoaEqqs&s=-uwTjZDhHtJM2EFdBS-rXLTptADQdSGAcibaav-mhJw&e=>
On 17/11/2018 12:36 am, Peter Feigenbaum [Staff] wrote:
If I might chime in to this discussion:

I submit that the key cooperative activity underlying speech communication is *turn-taking*. I don't know how that activity or rule came into being,
but once it did, the activity of *exchanging* utterances became possible. And with exchange came the complementarity of speaking and
listening roles, and the activity of alternating conversational roles and mental perspectives. Turn-taking is a key process in human development.

Peter

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 9:21 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org<mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
Oddly, Amazon delivered the book to me yesterday and I am currently on p.5. Fortunately, Corballis provides a synopsis of his book at the end, which I sneak-previewed last night.
The interesting thing to me is his claim, similar to that of Merlin Donald, which goes like this.
It would be absurd to suggest that proto-humans discovered that they had this unique and wonderful vocal apparatus and decided to use it for speech. Clearly there was rudimentary language before speech was humanly possible. In development, a behaviour is always present before the physiological adaptations which facilitate it come into being. I.e, proto-humans found themselves in circumstances where it made sense to develop interpersonal, voluntary communication, and to begin with they used what they had - the ability to mime and gesture, make facial expressions and vocalisations (all of which BTW can reference non-present entities and situations) This is an activity which further produces the conditions for its own development. Eventually, over millions of years, the vocal apparatus evolved under strong selection pressure due to the practice of non-speech communication as an integral part of their evolutionary niche. In other words, rudimentary wordless speech gradually became modern speech, along with all the accompanying facial expressions and hand movements.
It just seems to me that, as you suggest, collective activity must have been a part of those conditions fostering communication (something found in our nearest evolutionary cousins who also have the elements of rudimentary speech)  - as was increasing tool-using, tool-making, tool-giving and tool-instructing.
Andy
________________________________
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.ethicalpolitics.org_ablunden_index.htm&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=VlOXr8x02-mghKHGod2LwGx8_X-LHNRmDI_elI-7rKI&s=A3k5oeQ13zGCPUbWibdOb2KNZT4q__fLyCwugyULUDw&e=>
On 16/11/2018 12:58 pm, Arturo Escandon wrote:
Dear Andy,

Michael Tomasello has made similar claims, grounding the surge of articulated language on innate co-operativism and collective activity.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-handbook-of-child-language/90B84B8F3BB2D32E9FA9E2DFAF4D2BEB<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.cambridge.org_core_books_cambridge-2Dhandbook-2Dof-2Dchild-2Dlanguage_90B84B8F3BB2D32E9FA9E2DFAF4D2BEB&d=DwMFaQ&c=aqMfXOEvEJQh2iQMCb7Wy8l0sPnURkcqADc2guUW8IM&r=mXj3yhpYNklTxyN3KioIJ0ECmPHilpf4N2p9PBMATWs&m=VlOXr8x02-mghKHGod2LwGx8_X-LHNRmDI_elI-7rKI&s=vxJZooXRDYwTRrM4dzWBbLfUhF9HhmUvU3ouq6sbwPI&e=>

Best

Arturo

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