Re: weather/climate crossed with inside/outside

Arne Raeithel (raeithel who-is-at informatik.uni-hamburg.de)
Mon, 22 Apr 1996 16:10:36 +0200

First Jim:

At 16:08 19.4.1996, James Robert Martin wrote:
>Mike - Halliday has described semiosis as emerging in our species as a
>means of reconciling the tension between consciousness (the inside) and
>the material world (the outside). Does that resonate with what you mean?

Then Mike:

At 16:35 21.4.1996, Mike Cole wrote:
>... I have been mulling over how to respond to Jim
>Martin because while I can see how to reconcile Halliday and CHAT
>vis a vis weather/climate, the inside/consciousness, outside/material
>distinction that you raised in your note, Jim, does NOT sit well.
>I guess in my interpretion (other chat-ers bail at will!) consciousness
>is the process of resolution of inside and outside in which both
>inside, outside, and medium of interaction are mixtures of the ideal
>and material. That may be confusing, but what I am most concerned about

And Jim again:

At 12:02 22.4.1996, James Robert Martin wrote:
>I think I'm lost now - too much distance between models. Maybe Jay or
>Gordon can unravel the translation. Sorry.

I'll try some logical tool here; the fourfold table.

inside outside
consciousn. material w.
------------ ------------ ------------
"weather"
parole (1) (4)
speech proc.
------------ ------------ ------------
"climate"
langue (3) (2)
lang.struct.
------------ ------------ ------------

While I cannot say who, there were some on XMCA who tried to
connect the two dichotomies in a straight way, leaving only
two interesting cells, namely:

(1) utterances as happening "in" the hearer/speaker =?= parole
(2) societal language structure as observed =?= langue

Is this maybe how the terms were used by their inventor?

Evidently, however, cells (3) and (4) may also be filled
with sense:

(3) the long term regularities of a language of which a
subject is (a) aware, or (b) could be so, if reflection
were done on them;
(4) the real short term patterns of the spoken as observed
by (not only) linguists.

No doubt, I have changed the sense of inside/outside a little
bit:
-- "inside" being taken as the origo-centered view on the matter
-- "outside" being the observer's view on the same matter
(de-centered).

Note that looking at the weather, and looking at the climate,
are both de-centered stances of an observer (4 and 2). The
origo-centered stances on weather/climate are hard to establish;
a little while ago, Jay Lemke was telling us about a colleague
who is able to look outside from the heart of a tornado as if
it was a he or she...

Now, while weather and climate do not seem to have to be
mediated, it is clear that inside and outside must be.
Halliday, Jim says, calls the mediation semiosis,
and Mike, no doubt, would call it either activity or functional
system or context.

I confess that I am not at all confused: Semioses, as well as
human activity, are indeed a "mixture" of the material and the
ideal, a thirdness that connects every-thing and -body.

If you wish, you may expand the above to a nine-fould-table
(three by three), adding five kinds of mediating...

Enough sign-play, back to work: Arne.

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