[Xmca-l] Re: Saussure vs Peirce
Andy Blunden
andyb@marxists.org
Mon Mar 18 18:27:26 PDT 2019
Yes, all true, Martin, but in my view in saying that *a word
is a sign for a concept*, the real or imagined entity which
is deemed to be a /instance/ of the concept is a *moment**of
the concept*, as are the /practices/ whereby those instances
are subsumed under the universal. I should have made that clear.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 19/03/2019 1:29 am, Martin Packer wrote:
> Yes, it is indeed a trivial example. And yes, I agree that
> one needs all the utterances in a conversation to
> understand it. And equally, one needs all the conversation
> to understand a single utterance. More importantly, so do
> the speakers. But certainly an utterance can be comprised
> of a single word (Well; Rubbish; Eureka; or anything
> else), or even silence. And this implies that one needs
> all the conversation to understand a single word. To
> define a word solely as a sign for a concept seem to me to
> abstract it from its conversational, that's to say real
> world, context. A word *can* be a sign for a concept, but
> in practice*_it will also be a reference to a real or
> imagined concrete entity_*. To the extent that a science
> is a mediator, a tool, and not an abstract system it seems
> to me important to keep focus on how words are used in
> ongoing processes of conceptualization.
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>
>> On Mar 17, 2019, at 7:27 PM, Andy Blunden
>> <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>>
>> Martin, I get the point, but any complex process is made
>> up of units, many of them. That's the point of using
>> analysis by units. The excerpt you give is a trivial one.
>> In general you need /all/ the numerous utterances in a
>> conversation to understand an extended interaction. It is
>> like Engestrom who thinks when two activities interact,
>> we have to have a new "fourth generation" unit, i.e.,
>> two activity systems interacting. But that is only
>> because he took the activity system as a /system /not a
>> /unit /in the first place.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>> On 18/03/2019 9:14 am, Martin Packer wrote:
>>> Seems to me, David, that the notion that the basic unit
>>> is the pair is precisely what helps us understand an
>>> exchange such as:
>>>
>>> A. How are you?
>>> B. Fine, thanks, and you?
>>> A. XXX
>>>
>>> One pair is constituted by “How are you” and “Fine,
>>> thanks,” while “and you?” is the first part of a
>>> projected second pair. This is why one might have the
>>> intuition that speaker B is doing more than one thing
>>> (though I’d suggest 2, not 3), and that something more
>>> is expected from speaker A.
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Mar 17, 2019, at 4:17 PM, David Kellogg
>>>> <dkellogg60@gmail.com <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Well, Bakhtin is full of precisely the kind of
>>>> sloppiness that Andy is deploring, Helena. So for
>>>> example Bakhtin says that a whole novel can be
>>>> considered as an utterance. You take down the book and
>>>> open it. The novelist has something to say to you. He
>>>> says it. And then you close the book and you put it
>>>> back on the shelf.
>>>>
>>>> That's all very well, and it's very useful as a way of
>>>> showing that literature is not some "state within a
>>>> state": it is also made of language stuff, by people
>>>> who have a historical existence and not just an
>>>> afterlife. But it doesn't help Andy (or me, or my wife
>>>> who studies these things full time) distinguish
>>>> sub-units within the novel which will help us
>>>> understand how novels are structured, how this
>>>> structure has changed with their function, and how the
>>>> very functions have changed as literature has evolved.
>>>> And these WERE the problems which Bakhtin set himself
>>>> (e.g. in "Novel and Epic" and elsewhere).
>>>>
>>>> We see the same problem from the other end
>>>> (micro-rather than macroscopic) with the minimal pair
>>>> (originally, in the work of Sacks, "adjacency pair").
>>>> It's all very well and it's very useful as a way of
>>>> understanding how conversations get structured as they
>>>> go along, how people know when its their turn to talk
>>>> and how they know when the rules have been broken. But
>>>> it doesn't help us to understand, for example, why we
>>>> all feel that when you say "How are you?" and somebody
>>>> says "Fine, thanks, and you?" there seem to be three
>>>> utterances in the second pair part, and the exchange as
>>>> a whole doesn't seem finished, even though if we are
>>>> using turns as the element (pair part) of the minimal
>>>> pair, it really should be.
>>>>
>>>> Craig Brandist remarks that Bakhtin uses the term
>>>> "dialogue" in so many different ways that he has
>>>> rendered it meaningless. I think the same thing is true
>>>> of the way he uses "utterance".
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 1:47 AM Helena Worthen
>>>> <helenaworthen@gmail.com
>>>> <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I find it useful to think of an utterance as
>>>> bounded on two ends: on one, by the utterance to
>>>> which it responds, on the other, by the utterance
>>>> that responds to it. Thus you can discern
>>>> utterances within utterances. Minimally, a two
>>>> -part exchange, as Martin says; maximally, a whole
>>>> stream of briefer utterances bounded by their
>>>> prompt and response.
>>>>
>>>> Helena Worthen
>>>> helenaworthen@gmail.com
>>>> <mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Mar 17, 2019, at 9:32 AM, Martin Packer
>>>>> <mpacker@cantab.net <mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> According to conversation analysts, the minimal
>>>>> unit in conversation is the adjacency pair: a
>>>>> two-part exchange in which the second utterance is
>>>>> functionally dependent on the first.
>>>>> Question-answer; greeting-greeting; request-reply,
>>>>> and so on. An utterance, then, is both a turn and
>>>>> a move within a conversation. An utterance is
>>>>> *not* “complete in itself” - it is a component in
>>>>> a larger organization: at least a pair, and
>>>>> usually a much longer sequence.
>>>>>
>>>>> Martin
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mar 16, 2019, at 3:11 AM, Andy Blunden
>>>>>> <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I would have appreciated a definition of some
>>>>>> kind of what the writer actually means by
>>>>>> "utterance." In absence of that "the word, as a
>>>>>> compressed version of the utterance" is nonsense,
>>>>>> or at least a step backwards because it
>>>>>> obliterates a concept. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind
>>>>>> saying that the two are together the micro- and
>>>>>> macro-units of dialogue (or something having that
>>>>>> meaning). The same as Leontyev has two units of
>>>>>> activity: action and activity, and Marx has two
>>>>>> units of political economy: commodity and
>>>>>> capital. To theorise a complex process you always
>>>>>> need two units.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The rest of what you have cited reminds me of
>>>>>> what Constantin Stanislavskii said about the
>>>>>> units of an actor's performance:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/stanislavskii.pdf
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Andy
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> Andy Blunden
>>>>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>>>>>> On 16/03/2019 5:42 pm, Arturo Escandon wrote:
>>>>>>> Thanks for that conceptual jewel, mate.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Let me bring here Akhutina to further show their
>>>>>>> complementariness:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The minimal holistic unit of conversation is the
>>>>>>> utterance. An utterance, unlike a sentence, is
>>>>>>> complete in itself. The utterance always carries
>>>>>>> within it the marks and features of who is
>>>>>>> speaking to whom, for what reason and in what
>>>>>>> situation; it is polyphonic. An utterance
>>>>>>> develops from a motivation, “a volitional
>>>>>>> objective” and progresses through inner speech
>>>>>>> to external speech. The prime mover of the
>>>>>>> semantic progression (from the inner word that
>>>>>>> is comprehensible to me alone to the external
>>>>>>> speech that he, the listener, will understand)
>>>>>>> is the comparison of my subjective, evanescent
>>>>>>> sense, which I attribute to the given word, and
>>>>>>> its objective (constant for both me and my
>>>>>>> listener) meaning.Thus, the major building
>>>>>>> material for speech production is the living
>>>>>>> two-voice word. But polyphony is a feature of
>>>>>>> the utterance as expressed in the word; the word
>>>>>>> carrying personal sense is an abbreviation of
>>>>>>> the utterance. Thus, the utterance and the word,
>>>>>>> as a compressed version of the utterance, are
>>>>>>> the units of speech acts, communication, and
>>>>>>> consciousness.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Best
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Arturo
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Sent from Gmail Mobile
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Martin
>>>>>
>>>>> /"I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman
>>>>> or Dr. Lowie or discuss matters with
>>>>> Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware
>>>>> that my partner does not understand anything in
>>>>> the matter, and I end usually with the feeling
>>>>> that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
>
>
> Martin
>
> /"I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr.
> Lowie or discuss matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber,
> I become at once aware that my partner does not understand
> anything in the matter, and I end usually with the feeling
> that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)/
>
>
>
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