>My take on activity theory (deriving from my reading of Engestrom's use of
>Leont'ev
I found _Learning by Expanding_ through ILL from Helsinki, which
seems wonderful from my initial scan, though I won't have hands on
it for long (since it's not renewable) -- I'd hoped to use it this
spring in a CHAT inspired seminar, but I'm dubious now that I'll have
time for YET ANOTHER course prep. But if not this spring then next!
What do you have of Engestrom's and where did you get it?
You wrote:
Once that material object
>and that action are brought into some joint activity (love-making, or
>diagnosing a heart ailment, for example) that "biological" or "natual"
>object and behavior becomes part of the cultural (semiotic) activity, in
>conjunction with other material objects, sometimes writing and speaking.
>
>In this account, semiotic systems derive from texts (as material objects),
>and not the other way around.
I don't quite get this. How are texts produced, how did they come about,
if not by drawing from some "pool" of potential meanings? I like
the move you take (via AT) of foregrounding joint activity, and I
suppose more reading of AT will help me to see better what you are
saying. But it sounds a bit like things just happen, man.
Also, I don't think of functional linguistics as about language but
about the ways that situated activities are realized in/through language.
The ground is interactional: goal-oriented activity. It's figured
through various means, including language; the figurings, the texts,
can then be used as tools in future activities.
I hope and assume somebody will respond to your question about
bracketing semiotic systems. I imagine some systemic reason for it,
based on past xmca discussions of eco-social systems, but I won't
try to pinch hit - even though there's no striking out on xmca!
- Judy
Linguists, choreographers, music theorists,
>and so on, may bracket off, for the purpose of analysis one kind of
>tool-in-use, leave others to worry about the other kinds (and the
>boundaries with the others--as with pictographic traditions writing,
>oscilliscopic representatios of sound that my wife uses every day as a
>radio journalist editing digital tape, words incorporated into
>archetectural structures and onto clothing . . .). The question is, for the
>analyist, I suppose, what is gained and what is lost by the bracketing?
>
....................
Judy Diamondstone diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Graduate School of Education Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place New Brunswick, NJ 08903
Eternity is in love with the productions of time. - W. Blake