[Xmca-l] Re: Saussure vs Peirce

[David Kellogg]

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




On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 11:32 PM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:

>
> On Mar 17, 2019, at 11:06 PM, David Kellogg <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/20190321/ec886bf7/attachment.html