[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [xmca] Intensions in context and speech complexity ; From 2-?



Peter,
I had a read of your paper.

You argument hinges on the proposition that Vygotsky uncritically accepted "the language myth" as the foundation of his psychology. You explain this myth via Harris on p. 168. It's more or less the spontaneous, common sense view of language. But Peter, I can find no point of contact between this myth and what I have read in Vygotsky, except that in a certain sense I think Vygotsky assumed the existence of the myth as a background in explaining his contrary view. I recall nothing of this in what you taught me in that van in England in 1984. I don't believe in the "myth" and yet to an extent of 99% my knowledge of linguistics comes from Vygotsky. The proposition is not believable.

Why the need to shoot down Vygotsky at this time?

Also, I think it is a mistake to think that the word "internalisation" connotes one specific set of ideas along with it. And actually the same applies to many words. People brought up in China speak Chinese. People brought up in England speak English. Was it in their genes? Did they reinvent the language personally? *Some* kind of internalisation is part of any rational theory of psychology. One of the first things I learnt from Vygotsky was how learning is an active process of appropriation and even invention. This does exclude the idea of "internalisation."

Andy

Jones, Peter wrote:
Hi all
I take the liberty of attaching a recent published paper on the theme of vygotsky's conception  of the transformation of external into inner speech in case it may be of some interest. The abstract is rather stark and possibly unhelpful in tone but I hope there is something a bit more comprehensible and relevant within!
All v best
Pete E  Jones

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Mike Cole
Sent: 20 July 2009 15:57
To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Intensions in context and speech complexity ; From 2-?

Andy/David/ Lois:

Why are the simplifications when children imitate sentences that carry out
the intentions of others and limit their agency to
complying with external constraints imposed by others absent when they carry
out their own intentions in speech acts that are instrumental to carrying
out those goals and may be more complicated, grammatically, than what
experimenters ask of them? I get the dropping out the subject part in inner
speech, I think.
mike

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

Mike, my reading of Vygotsky's explanation of the process of speech being
abbreviated as it transforms into silent speech, as I recall, is that the
child for example leaves off the subject of a sentence for example, because
they already know the subject, and such like. I.e., as I read it, they carry
dense elements of context internally so that the verbal instruction to
themselves carries that context implicitly. Just like if I say "Pass me
that" the hearer won't understand without the help of a shared visual field.

So intention is part of the context, but it is the context, and it's
various mental representations and cues which is relevant, isn't it?

So for example, the continued presence of all the elements of a snippet of
dialogue act as cues which would allow something to be repeated, because the
entire act in response to cues in the context can be repeated.

But also, relevant to a topic we have been discussing, Mike, the project of
which the speech act is a part has to be understood and shared by the child
if they are to make sense of it, and of course psychological testing is not
generally such a project.

I don't really know if that's relevant to the distinction you're after
Mike.

Andy


Mike Cole wrote:

David's note of a few days ago on 3-7 year old changes in egocentric
speech
reminded
me of an old article by Slobin and Welch (reprinted in Ferguson and
Slobin,
*Studies of Child Development, 1963)
*that it took a while to track down. The study is often cited in studies
of
elicited imitation where an adult says some
sentence and asks a little kid to repeat it. Kids simplify the sentence in
normal circumstances ("Where is the kitty"
becomes "where kitty") and other such stuff. There is a pretty large
literature on this.

But when I went to find the phenomenon in the article that had most struck
me, I could not find it in the recent lit
on elicited imitation. The phenomenon seems relevant to the monologic,
dialogic etc speech discussion.

The phenomenon is this:  When a 2yr/5month old child is recorded saying
 "If
you finish your eggs all up, Daddy, you
can have your coffee." they can repeat this sentence pretty much as it is
right afterward. But 10 minutes later it has
become simplified a la the usual observation.

Citing William James (the child has an "intention to say so and so")
Slobin
and Welch remark:

If that linguistic form is presented for imitation while the intention is
still operative, it can be faily successfully imitated. Once the intention
is gone, however, the utterance must be processed in linguistic terms
alone
-- without its original intentional and
contextual support."  In the absence of such support, the task can strain
the child's abilities and reveal a more limited competence than may
actually
be present in spontaneous speech (p. 489-90).

This kind of observation seems relevant in various ways both to language
acquisition in school settings and to my reccurrent
questions about the social situation of development. Is it relevant to the
discussion of egocentric and social speech, David?
mike
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca


--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden (Erythrós Press and Media) http://www.erythrospress.com/
Orders: http://www.erythrospress.com/store/main.html#books


_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden (Erythrós Press and Media) http://www.erythrospress.com/
Orders: http://www.erythrospress.com/store/main.html#books

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca