Re: [xmca] The Ubiquity of Unicorns: conversation

Very tricky project Peter. I've never analysed a
conversation in my life. It looks very tricky.

Bakhtin's utterances, as you and Mike agree, begin and end
with turn taking between speakers. So it is a transactional
unit, with people making moves. An utterance can be a nod or
a 30 minute monologue. Vygotsky's word meaning, as I
understand it, refers to systems of activity evoked by the
speaker by using the word, but originating in culture and
history, entering into the speaker's consciousness as a
concept. So both are quite social/societal in content.

In "The Autobiography of Alexander Luria" (2006) there is a
bit of private speech which is one of the few whose analysis
I know of. This piece is rife with traces of former speech
acts directed at Mom and Papa, and speech acts borrowed from
Mom and Papa, all about directing her own actions and
perceptions.

It seems to me that you have to have a concept of what
private speech is before you start analysing. And if that
doesn't work, you have to change your unit. But the unit is
not just a rule for dividing up the data. It has to be a
concept of the data. Are they "borrowed utterances"? Are
they "commands to self"? Or both: "Borrowed commands"?

Andy

Peter Feigenbaum wrote:
> Mike, it's my pleasure to enliven discussion! And thanks for posing some
> critical
> questions that keep my enthusiasm in line.
>
> 1) Regarding your first question--posed to Nacho (hola, Nacho!)--let me
> just add
> my own name to the list of private speech researchers who have failed to
> analyze
> the stream of private speech using "word meaning". While I have taken a
> critical
> stance toward my fellow researchers for not incorporating conversational
> or
> discourse analysis into their speech analyses (a stance most strongly
> expressed
> in the Robbins, et al. chapter), I, too, am guilty of not using "word
> meaning" as my
> unit of analysis. Until very recently, I had no idea how to do so, or what
> such an
> analysis might even look like.
>
> Also, I do not assert that the beautiful new book on private speech edited
> by
> Winsler, Fernyhough, and Montero (and it is, indeed, beautiful!) is devoid
> of an
> "interest" in meaning--what is missing from our collective work on private
> speech,
> I submit, is an "applied analysis" of meaning.
>
> 2) As for the role of the "utterance" in the analysis of word meaning, the
> initial
> problem confronting any speech analyst is how to divide the stream of
> speech
> into units. The units will depend, of course, on one's purpose. There are
> naturally
> occurring breaks--e.g., pauses, silences--that present themselves as "ripe"
> for
> segmenting the stream, but analysts disagree as to the length of time that
> should
> be used as a standard measure. Thus, some use pauses lasting only 2
> seconds
> and others use pauses lasting 3 seconds. Depending on the speaker's speed
> of uttering, this could mean the difference between segmenting the units
> into
> single sentences or segmenting them into multiple sentences. And if one
> applied
> a really stringent criterion, I could see the stream of speech being
> segmented
> into utterance units consisting of nothing more than individual words or
> short
> phrases.
>
> Which linguistic elements was Bakhtin referring to with regard to an
> "utterance"?
> A word? A phrase? A complete sentence? A lengthy monologue lasting several
> sentences? This technical issue seems to me to present a basic problem for
> any analysis of speech.
>
> Now, if we decide in advance which linguistic units we want to isolate
> within the
> confines of an "utterance"--let's say a complete sentence--we could do so
> by
> adjusting the pause interval to an appropriate length, and by using
> grammatical
> structure as a measure, and by using intonation as a measure (I use a
> "rising"
> intonation to identify the end of a question-form, "falling" intonation to
> identify
> the end of a declarative-form, and a "rising-falling" intonation to demark
> the end
> of an imperative, or command). Such a method puts the analyst in control of
> the linguistic units that are then regarded as an "utterance".
>
> Because Bakhtin was interested in the interaction of voices, and therefore
> approached the stream of speech from the vantage point of a dialogical
> analysis,
> he focused on the utterance as a sociolinguistic unit. Here I see a huge
> kinship
> between his approach and a conversational approach. The biggest stumbling
> block to bringing these two approaches together, as I see it, is how one
> construes
> the relationship between the initiation-response function and the
> linguistic form
> embodied in an utterance unit. Stubbs, a conversational analyst [see
> Stubbs, M.
> (1983). Discourse analysis: The sociolinguistic analysis of natural
> language.
> Chicago: The University of Chicago Press], defines initiation-response as
> an
> interactive unit in which an utterance initiated by one person is met with
> a
> responding utterance from another person. That is, dialogue is conceived as
> a two-utterance entity. However, my reading of Bakhtin (particularly, The
> Dialogical
> Imagination) leads me to understand that he viewed adult speakers as having
> learned to shift conversational voices from *between* utterances (and
> people) to
> *within* utterances (and individuals). That is, he conceived of dialogue as
> a two-
> utterance entity in which one utterance is voiced externally (explicitly)
> and the other
> is voiced inwardly (implicitly). If that's so, how are these two approaches
> to be
> reconciled?
>
> For the past year, I have been working with some student assistants who
> have
> been helping me to segment conversation into sequences of utterances, and
> it turns out to be incredibly difficult to agree on what constitutes a
> sequence--
> if you push the analysis hard enough. For example, looking at a play
> episode
> in which a lone, older child is talking to himself aloud as he fantasizes,
> my assistants
> tended to regard the whole play episode as one long conversation. When I
> pressed them to divide the whole episode into sub-topics, this could be
> done,
> but they complained of its arbitrariness because the sub-topics could be
> divided
> even further into smaller conversational sequences. When I then took it
> upon myself
> to push the analysis as far as it would go, I discovered--to my initial
> surprise--that
> the lowest granular level was the individual utterance, not a two-utterance
> sequence.
> Bakhtin seemed to be right, I concluded, for the simple reason that every
> single
> utterance both *responds* to the prior utterance and also *initiates* the
> next one.
> That is, it links both backwards and forwards. The only possible exceptions
> to this
> are the initial utterance in a sequence, and the final one.
>
> So, Bakhtin's notion that every utterance "anticipates" a response from the
> listener
> makes sense to me--with inner speech, it is possible to simulate the
> listener's
> response before one utters--enabling the speaker to adapt the utterance
> before
> producing it.
>
> I'm afraid that this is where my thinking comes to an end. More work to do
> on that!
>
> 3) Finally, with regard to published work that folks can read, I suggest
> starting with
> my latest chapter in the Winsler, Fernyhough, and Montero volume [(2009).
> A. Winsler,
> C. Fernyhough, and I. Montero (Eds.), Private speech, executive
> functioning, and the
> development of verbal self-regulation. New York: Cambridge University
> Press].
> That's where my most developed thoughts on the topic can be found. I will
> supply
> a "pdf" of that chapter below, but PLEASE go out and buy that book--it's
> magnificent!
>
> Also, as requested, I will supply in a subsequent email a "pdf" of my
> chapter in the
> Robbins and Stetsenko volume---ANOTHER magnificent book! [(2002). D.
> Robbins
> & A. Stetsenko (Eds.), Voices within Vygotsky’s non-classical psychology:
> Past,
> present, future. New York: Nova Science Publishers.]
>
> Thanks to all for your indulgence. I hope I have provided some food for
> thought.
>
> (See attached file: Feigenbaum_Development of Communicative Competence.pdf)
>
> Best wishes, Peter
>
> Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
> Associate Director of Institutional Research
> Fordham University
> Thebaud Hall-202
> Bronx, NY 10458
>
> Phone: (718) 817-2243
> Fax: (718) 817-3203
> e-mail: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu
>
>
>
> mike cole
> <lchcmike@gmail.c
> om> To
> Sent by: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> xmca-bounces@webe <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> r.ucsd.edu cc
>
> Subject
> 10/31/2009 08:39 Re: [xmca] The Ubiquity of
> PM Unicorns: conversation
>
>
> Please respond to
> lchcmike@gmail.co
> m; Please respond
> to
> "eXtended Mind,
> Culture,
> Activity"
> <xmca@weber.ucsd.
> edu>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> As usual, tardy to the party. Very interesting comments on private speech,
> thanks for starting it Peter.
>
> A couple of questions for different xmcaonaughts:
>
> What about Peter's observation, Nacho?
> "Personally, I don't know of one private speech researcher who uses LSV's
> concept of word meaning when analyzing speech data--and to me, that
> suggests
> something is very wrong." That beautiful new book you have published on
> private speech is devoid of an interest in meaning? Really?
>
> And Peter, what about Andy's comment, which also struck me, that when you
> talk about your data, your unit of analysis appears to be the utterance, a
> la Bakhtin. And Bakhtin makes central to his analysis the idea that words
> are always characterized by addressivity. Seems like grist for your mill.
> But utterance is absent from your jpeg figure, and Bakhtin from your
> discussion thus far. And does conversation start with the first
> recognizable
> word spoken by the child? All Samoan children are said by their parents to
> have as their first word, shit (or so ethnographers have claimed). What
> would that imply for addressivity of first words, I wonder.
>
> Someone asked about availability of published work for folks to read; might
> you post your article from the Robbins et al book? And, of course, we would
> be glad to post a video session and transcript. The topic seems of great
> importance, and not unrelated to the once and future thread of the
> "Vygotsky
> blocks" methodology. Any private speech observed there, Paula?
>
> Thanks again for the enlivening discussion.
> mike
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Peter Feigenbaum
> <pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>wrote:
>
>
>> On Oct 29, 2009, at 5:03 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>>
>>> I see you use utterance as a unit of analysis. In the previous mail
>>> you referred to using "conversation", but utterance is surely the
>>> unit of which conversation is made up. Do you have Bakhtin's idea in
>>> mind for "utterance" at all? Otherwise the notion of "turn taking"
>>> in private speech is very challenging, isn't it?
>>>
>>> All sounds fascinating,
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, 
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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