[Xmca-l] The Presence of the Present

[David Kellogg]

Last week I took the airport express from Incheon International Airport
back to Seoul Station. When I got out at Seoul Station and took the
elevator to transfer to the Number One subway line, I got my carry- on
luggage stuck in the door, and I was startled to hear the robotically sweet
robotically feminine voice in the elevator say:

"The doors close. The doors open. The doors close. The doors open. The
doors close. The doors close. The doors open. The doors close. The doors
open. The doors open. The doors close..."

Three things occurred to me in quick succession while I was trying to
disengage my carry-on carrion from the vulture jaws of the elevator door.

First of all, the robotically sweet robotically feminine quality of the
voice had nothing to do with mechanical speech synthesis (the voice is
actually based on a real human voice, as it happens it is the voice of our
current Foreign Minister, Kang Kyeong-hwa, who was the announcer on the
Seoul subway when I first moved to Seoul); it has to do with the ability of
the voice to repeat itself without any change in intonation or underlying
frustration level.

Secondly, the grammar is not actually wrong, but it is not canonical; i.e.
for statistical reasons it means something rather different than the
presence of the present. In English, we say:

"I like Seoul. I love Seoul. I want the Number One line. I wish to
transfer."

We also say, at our peril:

"I'm liking Seoul. I'm lovin' Seoul (c.f. the now discontinued "i'm lovin'
it" campaign at McDonald's). I'm wanting the Number One line (Indian
English). I'm wishing to transfer (ditto)."

But the meaning is rather different. This is because mechanical--or, as
Halliday would put it, material--processes canonically take the "present in
the present" tense: "The doors are opening" and "The doors are closing".
But psychological--or, as Halliday would put it, mental--processes
canonically take the "simple present" tense: "I like Seoul".

Canonically just means "more often than not". But of course canons are
cultural, and they need to be explained. And that brings me to the third
thing which occurred to me (rather more slowly than the first two) as a
consequence (though not actually concurrently with) my struggle with the
elevator door.

It's this: mental processes are what they are because they do not have any
clear beginning or endpoint that is shareable and observable to others;
their presence is instead made present by reflection upon psychological
experience.

That is why we say "I wish" and not "I am wishing". That is why we leave
them in the simple present and do not typically try to express them in the
"present in the present" (i.e. "present continuous", although actually they
are neither present nor continuous).

In this way, English grammar expresses the very Russian notion of
"perezhivanie".

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
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