Re: levels

From: Judith Diamondstone (diamonju@rci.rutgers.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 05 2001 - 17:01:29 PDT


Hi, Bill -- Thanks for making a connection between Mike's interest in
Thibault & Ana's in play. Like Ana, I'm interested in play as
proto-languaging and as proto-activity. (Chimps, of course, play, though
not with rules, and I think they don't as easily mistake their play for
serious business as we do.) Theories of cultural development would be
woefully inadequate without an account of play, performance, make believe,
at the level of culture.

I loved the Thibault article; it pulled so much together for me. I regret
that I can't write a more in-depth response at the moment.

Judy

/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Ana's reference to Bateson anplay is a wonderful insight, having read
Mike's plea for the bigger picture. "this is play" communicates to frame
an activity
>among participants. What this o(what we are communicating now arouind
Thibault)
>seems to be about is just that (that being Mike's and Ana's ideas
combined) --
>finding an interpretive frame for observing and thinking about human
>interaction.
>
>I complained about using spatial metaphors and suffering their excess
semiotic
>baggage - levels implies hierarchy (especially, as B&G might argue is a
>phenomenon of capitalist society), but then there are layers, channels and
>dimensions, all of which can go on in parallel and mutual influence, i.e.
>bidirectional causality.
>
>Mike seems to say bio-evo-psychologists are playing a bigger game, and he
>doesn't want chat'ers excluded from it.
>
>How to take phylogeny into account for chat studies? Eeek! Tongue in cheek,
>does it not belong to the generations of researchers to follow? Is this too
>much to bite off?
>
>Although it makes sense, I am clueless.
>
>bb
>
>=====
>"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
>[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
>
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