Thanks. The "sharing" or its impossibility goes in both directions. From one
language to another and back! If we put this issue back into the mind
construction frame we'll get an interesting and let's say 3D picture of what
could meaning construction mean in communication. There was recently a lot
of talk about this and people agree that we don't "share" but, let's say
"resonate", that we do not copy (decode) the other person's meanings, rather
we construct and reconstruct meanings from the activity, and those meanings
we construct are new and don't have to be a mirror image of the speaker's
meaning.
However, the issue of different languages brings us back a little bit, to
consider, at least, - shared conditions - for communication. Something has
to be the same, shared between all the members of one language to some
degree, or the communication (verbal at least) becomes impossible. I think
that in the light of the cultural-historical approach and in the light of
the agreement that meanings are not "shared - identical" but rather
dynamically (re)constructed in each instance of a discourse, that in the
light of all of that we still do have a problem of "shared - resonated".
What does really happen? What are the minimal conditions for verbal
communication and for meanings to start being constructed? What is the
nature of these conditions? I think we can imagine a continuum of different
conditions from one extreme, let's say: people of two different language
cultures which (cultures) don't have any contact with each other, in a
remote situation (over a phone - no non-verbal clues); to another extreme:
people who grew up together and work together, in a close live conversation
in a context of an activity they know well and have done many times before.
So, between these two extremes, what are other possibilities, when does
"understanding" start to break, when is the last possibility of
understanding left? I think we have a multidimensional phenomenon, in which
each dimension can have many values. But what matters is relationships
between these different dimensions (functions - for Vygotsky).
Now, if we try to answer Mike's "chocolate" problem and take up Gordon Wells
on his offer to catalogue all those instances we all agree upon some
principles, let's say that it would be interesting to find out whether we
all agree about certain communicational conditions (dimensions) and what
might these be?
I am just suggesting the "rules" of the game - but the game still has to be
played in other postings.
Ana
_________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
151 W. Tulpehocken St. Office of Mental Health and
Philadelphia, PA 19144 Mental Retardation
(215) 843-2909 [voice] 1101 Market St. 7th Floor
(215) 843-2288 [fax] Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 685-4767 [v]
(215) 685-5581 [fax]
E-mail: pshane who-is-at andromeda.rutgers.edu
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