[Xmca-l] Re: Saussure vs Peirce

[Martin Packer]

Hi David,

You write: "the fact that an utterance seems to end in the middle of a turn is embarrassing.”

But (for CA) it’s not that an utterance can end in the middle of a turn. It’s that a turn can end in the middle of an utterance. That’s to say, an utterance can include more than one turn. Consider:

T: Who can tell me the capital of South Korea?
S: Is it Chiang Mai?
T: No, it is not! Who knows the capital of Thailand?

Last utterance by T is composed of two turns. And while there are plenty of games - chess, tennis - where players must alternate turns, taking only one turn at a time, there are plenty of other games where a player can take one turn and then take another.

I think you would agree with me that it is not the lack of “theoretical preconceptions” that prevents a dog with headphones from recognizing the units of speech. CA treats as unproblematic (or relatively so) the understanding and transcribing of the sounds and words of a language. It assumes that the researcher has a speaker’s competence in these matters: no one expects someone who speaks only Spanish to conduct CA on English speech. On the other hand, to a native speaker of English the sounds and words are (relatively) “real, actual, and factual.” 

The (relative) absence of ‘theoretical preconceptions’ in CA refers to a preference to look for, to try to identify, the methods that participants are actually using to carry out their conversation. Based on concrete empirical evidence. Rather than assuming from the outset a theory about how speech is generated and how conversations are structured.

So, returning to the larger issue (what the heck is language and how can we study it?), CA approaches language as a concrete practical accomplishment, achieved collaboratively by people whose acquired competence as language speakers amounts to a set of practical skills or methods. That approach will not be to everyone’s taste, but in my view it has plenty to recommend it. 

Martin


> On Mar 20, 2019, at 10:27 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Martin:
> 
> From the CA point of view, there isn't anything wrong with it. Like many branches of linguistics (and mathematics), CA has its ducks in a row, and its system is well designed to prevent internal contradictions. For example, CA insists that no theoretical "preconceptions" be brought to the data, and in that sense it is "radically empiricist".
> 
> I think the problem arises when you try to incorporate concepts from abroad, including Bakhtin. If we say that turns are "real, actual, factual" units ("in the air", as J.J. Gibson used to say--quite incorrectly, as it turns out--of the phoneme), then the fact that an utterance seems to end in the middle of a turn is embarrassing. It undoes the attempt by CA to do an end run around Saussure's notion that the object of study in linguistics is created only by our attitude towards it (that is, we have to understand that something is language before we can study it as language and not simply noise). 
> 
> From a Vygotskyan point of view, this radical empiricism will not do: a dog with headphones could easily segment the "real, actual, factual" turns in data, but not the utterances if we define them by potential turn transition points (or TRPs, or whatever). But it's precisely units that would escape a dog in headphones that make the sound signal into human language, into a meaningful sign, and not simply a signal.  
> 
> 
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
> 
> New Article;
> 
>  David Kellogg (2019) THE STORYTELLER’S TALE: VYGOTSKY’S ‘VRASHCHIVANIYA’, THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT AND ‘INGROWING’ IN THE WEEKEND STORIES OF KOREAN CHILDREN, British Journal of Educational Studies,                                                                         DOI: 10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200>                                
> 
> Some e-prints available at:
> 
> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GSS2cTAVAz2jaRdPIkvj/full?target=10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200 <https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GSS2cTAVAz2jaRdPIkvj/full?target=10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 11:32 PM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
> 
>> On Mar 17, 2019, at 11:06 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>  As soon as you do this, though, you have to admit (and real, actual, practical data will support this) that there are two such transition points--not just one--WITHIN your utterance (in addition to the real, actual, practical turn transition point. .
> 
> Right: CA refers to this as speaker self-selection. At a TRP (transition relevant place) the person who has been speaking continues to speak.
> 
> So what’s the problem with that?
> 
> Martin
> 
> 
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20190414/dd85de3c/attachment.html