Just before LSV's quotation on rules that I invoked a few days ago, LSV
also says "If all play is is the realization in play form of tendencies
that cannot be immediately gratified, then elements of imaginary
situations will automatically be part of the emotional tone of play
itself. "
The imagined rule, perceived as a socially available rule or type
or tool, becomes a means of realizing impulses and carries the expressive
force of the impulse that drives the imaginative creation and perhaps
also the anticipated gratification imagined in the projected state to be
realized through the forms of rules.
The data of rule discussions and negotiations, which several
people on the list have reported, show attempts by the participants
trying to create the gratificcation of their own desires within the
public space of the game--with at times the maintenance of that public
space--the continuation of play-- being the overriding need because no
other desire can be explored for its social gratification without the
maintenance of the play space.
The rule discussions also serve to triangulate the participants
into a more closely shared and interpretable set of behaviors.
This approach towards perceived rules and potential social tools
for creating desired states allows for both strongly aligning and
strongly resistant forms of orientation toward the perceived rules (as
well as all stances in the middle) at the same time as providing for an
orientation outwards into social roles and relations and symbols and
practices which provide the means for the social realization of the self.
I hope I have not been too obscure. Please ask for
clarifications.
By the way, my own students, who were mostly literature grad
students, took these issues in the direction of the kind of play spaced
literature provided, from the stance of writers and readers, and in
relation to the perceived rules of literary order and the idiosyncracy of
individual creation.
Chuck Bazerman
On Tue, 13 Feb 1996 BPenuel who-is-at aol.com wrote:
>
> The anticipatory dimension of addressivity is one (and there are probably
> many others) way that rules "get into" activity. People articulate their
> assumptions about what others anticipate themselves (e.g. "Now this won't
> result in a waste of taxpayer dollars") or about what they might value (e.g.
> "This is no 'pork' program you're funding here") in local activity settings
> into utterances.
>
> Both local activity setting rules generated and larger cultural voices can
> get incorporated into utterances here, which makes the operation of the power
> or influence of rules very local in one sense (in that they can be observed
> and constructed in concrete utterances) and cultural in another (in that they
> respond to voices that might be attributed to larger social practices).
>
> So from the standpoint of the utterance, I might argue that the way _rules_
> are referenced in action is closely allied with what is _anticipated_ and
> _addressed_ by speakers implicitly or explicitly as
> governing/constraining/empowering interaction. The problem for the analyst
> becomes, "how can I identify the voices being addressed?" Naming these is
> itself a tricky interpretive act, but there is probably no way out of that
> reflexivity....
>