Re: [xmca] The Ubiquity of Unicorns: conversation

As a teenager one of my heroes was the mathematician Galois.
Without giving his life story, he died as he lived. He stood
up in the mess hall and proposed a toast to the Emperor.
Someone thought he was being ironic, challenged him to a
duel and shot him.

I will be very brief if I can, Peter, just taking up some
misunderstandings and going to the 1) and 2) at the end.

It is a contradiction in terms to say "conversation is a
unit". You can say "a conversation" is a unit, in which case
your comments about the Gettyberg Address can be multiplied
by 10. I think you must mean the subject matter of study is
conversation, I don't know. Still, many people go on about
"activity" being a unit of analysis, which is just as
senseless. [See Wertsch, "Vygotsky and the Social Formation
of Mind," p. 202 though Wertsch is confused too.] What does
"unit" mean to you?

I never said "conversation doesn't require an audience or
addressee." No comment possible.

I never said the Gettysberg address *cannot* be broken down.
I just said that it is an Utterance, just as David
explained. You can break anything down until you get to
quarks and strings, the point is: what is the unit for the
specific problem you are trying to solve? The Gettysberg
address was an act or a move in a war. An utterance.

[I confess to being a Bakhtin novice, but I do think that
the frame or genre of an utterance is part of the utterance
and is necessary to understand it and is part of the unit.
If delivered at a football match, the Gettyberg Address
would not be the same.]

Finally on the Q&A at the end.

You say: "private speech is used essentially to *comment
upon* ongoing action, wheras in the later stages it is used
essentially to *plan and regulate* ongoing action," which
tells me that the unit of private speech includes the action
it comments on and regulates. That's what you say. It is H2O
and if you try to study the H without the O you will never
get to the nature of the water.

You say: "they are included in the analysis." Of course. I
get that. Like someone who studies both H and O, but not H2O.

thanks for your patience, Peter.
Andy

Peter Feigenbaum wrote:
> Oh, boy. You sure know how to present some tough challenges, Andy!
>
> Yes, I guess I do conceive of an utterance as a limit case of a
> conversation. But
> I disagree that it is incoherent to speak of conversation as an irreducible
> unit of
> communication, and that conversation doesn't require an audience or
> addressee,
> and that the Gettysburg Address can't be broken down into smaller units,
> and that
> to do so would destroy its integrity as a conversational "move".
>
> I appreciate your skepticism, though. Experience shows that analysis is
> destructive
> if it is not counterbalanced by synthesis, which is why I believe LSV took
> such
> great pains to design word meaning as his irreducible unit of
> analysis--that is, to
> keep the integrity of the relationship between word and meaning intact when
> others
> would rend them apart.
>
> It is my impression that you don't accept my proposal that conversation is
> the
> missing layer in Vygotsky's concept of word meaning. That means you
> probably
> also don't accept my assertion that conversation is invoked along with a
> child's first
> word, or that conversation serves as the organizing principle for all
> subsequent
> communications using speech. This is going to be a tough sell!
>
> Please consider the following analogy: The structures of language--words,
> sentences,
> and conversations--are like the structures found in the construction
> trade--bricks, walls,
> and buildings. Of course, in neither case do these materials organize
> themselves;
> it takes a speaker and a builder, respectively, to construct the higher
> orders out
> of the lower ones. Now, your statement above about "no addressee" implies
> that
> sentences and conversations, just like walls and buildings, can be
> constructed without
> any *user* in mind--that is, no intended recipients, not even oneself. This
> strikes me as
> highly unusual behavior. Why build? Why talk?
>
> If you are willing to concede that these activities typically *do* have an
> intended
> user/audience in mind, then building and talking--regardless of the level
> of
> organization involved (let it be a single brick or a single word)--cannot
> be construed
> as anything but a social, collaborative activity. In the case of language,
> we call that activity "communicating with speech". You may disagree with my
> claim (made in an earlier exchange on this listserve) that "communicating
> with
> speech" and "word meaning" and "conversation" are one-and-the-same, but if
> so,
> please tell me how you see them as different. If you agree that they are
> essentially
> the same, then it follows that every word uttered (to someone or to the
> self) is a
> conversation. That is how I come to the conclusion that conversation is an
> irreducible quality of any analysis of speech communication. If I might
> distill
> Steve's earlier comments on this topic into my own words: You can take the
> word out of the conversation, but you can't take the "conversation" out of
> the word.
>
> Regarding the problem of segmenting a long stream of speech into units,
> let's
> assume that Bakhtin is right about breaking the stream into utterance units
> demarked by speaking turns. (To do so, we would definitely have to accept
> the
> idea that we are dealing with conversation and addressivity.) Each turn
> would
> constitute a "move" in conversation, and in this piecemeal fashion the
> topic
> of conversation would gradually develop. Perhaps the topic of conversation
> is planning an advertising campaign, in which case some of the "moves"
> might involve brainstorming, while others might involve formulating a plan
> of action based on the ideas that came from the brainstorming portion of
> the
> conversation. The net result of these individual micro-moves is a plan for
> the
> advertising campaign.
>
> If we consider the Gettysburg Address in a similar fashion, then each word
> and
> sentence, for example, has its part to play in the overall address and in
> its
> overarching message. Each part contributes something unique, and together
> they create a higher-order communication. What damage is performed by
> dissecting the Address into its constituent linguistic structures, so long
> as
> the integrity of the whole is also preserved? In fact, isn't the Address
> the
> marvelous entity that it is precisely because of its microstructure? What
> would
> happen if Lincoln changed a few words, or re-arranged the sentences a bit?
>
> Finally, as for your two questions to me:
> 1) "Is private speech always associated with practical actions?"
> Yes, private speech and practical action are closely associated. In the
> early
> stages, private speech is used essentially to *comment upon* ongoing
> action,
> wheras in the later stages it is used essentially to *plan and regulate*
> ongoing
> action. That is, the relationship between them "flips".
>
> 2) "If so, aren't these actions part of [my] unit of analysis?" Yes, they
> are included
> in the analysis insofar as they function as a "turn" in conversation. Let
> me put
> this as simply as I can: As a child starts to apprehend the conversational,
> turn-taking structure of speech communication, he or she starts to construe
> his/her own acitivity as a participant in dialogue. For example, after
> noticing
> a wonderful new toy, a child might blurt out (to herself): "What a great
> toy!"
> In my analysis, the psychic event of noticing the toy is a conversational
> (but, strictly speaking, nonlinguistic) initiation, while the overt
> utterance constitutes
> a linguistic response. Or "Ouch" after pricking oneself. Similarly, when a
> child
> is solving a practical problem, he might utter: "Wait!", followed by a
> moment of
> inaction. The utterance is a conversational (linguistic) initiation, but
> the momentary
> inaction constitutes a conversational (nonlinguistic) response. This is
> what it
> means to "think dialogically", in my opinion. Once the process is set into
> motion,
> **anything** can be construed as a participant in a conversation--your pet,
> the car
> that cuts you off on the highway, or the placement of a puzzle piece in a
> jig-saw puzzle. Like grammar, conversation supplies "slots". With
> conversation,
> the slots are for initiating and responding; therefore, even nonlinguistic
> action can
> be used to fill those slots.
>
> Once you understand how to use a hammer, everything becomes a nail.
>
> Peter
>
>
>
>
> Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.ne
> t> To
> Sent by: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> xmca-bounces@webe <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> r.ucsd.edu cc
>
> Subject
> 11/03/2009 08:30 Re: [xmca] The Ubiquity of
> PM Unicorns: conversation
>
>
> Please respond to
> ablunden@mira.net
> ; Please respond
> to
> "eXtended Mind,
> Culture,
> Activity"
> <xmca@weber.ucsd.
> edu>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Peter, it is very interesting to me to discuss something I
> know nothing about. How else can we subject our fundamentals
> to test?
>
> Firstly, Peter, I think it is incoherent for you to talk of
> "conversation" as an "irreducible functional unit."
> "Conversation" is the whole animal not the cell. And in any
> case, it's not actually a conversation, though you might
> conceive of it as a limit case of a conversation if you
> wanted to. But you could also conceptualise what is going on
> as a performance, and a performance requires a script,
> scenes and stage directions; it *can* have an audience but
> doesn't have to have an audience (addressee).
>
> Also, I don't think being a long monologue is any bar to
> being an utterance. Luther's 95 theses was an utterance in
> my reading, as was the Gettysburg Address. They can be
> broken down, but if they are, they cease to be an utterance
> and cannot be understood in that way as "a move".
>
> Question: is private speech always associated with practical
> actions? If so, aren't these actions part of your unit of
> analysis?
>
> Andy
>
> Peter Feigenbaum wrote:
>> So we must approach the problem from both a practical and a conceptual
>> perspective, and find a way to make them coincide. For Bakhtin, utterance
>> unit boundaries can be concretely identified by turn-taking. For
> Vygotsky,
>> word meaning is the irreducible unit of analysis, beneath which the
>> functional integration of word and meaning ceases to exist.
>> If conversation is, indeed,
>> that irreducible functional unit, then what is the smallest concrete form
>> conversation can take? It cannot be defined as a turn at talk, for some
>> turns can be quite extensive, such as a monologue consisting of multiple
>> sentences.
>> But if an individual utterance is defined in terms of a single word (at
>> minimum)
>> or a single sentence (at maximum), and these linguistic structures are
>> shown to have the functional properties of conversation (i.e., they
> participate
>> in an initiation-response structure with other utterance units or
> practical
>> activity),
>> then this unit would meet both the practical and conceptual criteria we
>> have been discussing.
>>
>> Of course, this does not address all of the problems associated with the
>> analysis of private speech utterances, for there is still the knotty
>> problem of
>> *who is conversing with whom*! But that moves the problem down a
> different
>> path, which is a whole other topic.
>
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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, 
Ilyenkov $20 ea
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