I'm just wondering about how to model the other than semiotic, given that
we have to render it semiotically to talk about it - is it worth
constructing a designed theory of the other than semiotic to talk about it
- or should we just trust to common sense language resources to model it -
which has the advantage that we already have a model of those linguistic
resources.
Re the quote from David, my impression working on text analysis, is that
usually the text does instantiate a system than can be modelled in some
sense as a finite pool of choices - a resource. But that novel
combinations of meanings can occur.. and the pool of meanings may be
reconfigured through evolutionary (culture) and developmental (individual)
processes - which is what I don't understand. For me the issue is how to
model metastability - inertia in relation to change. Too much focus on
change and dynamism seems to distract from the stability of our meaning
systems.
Jim Martin
On Tue, 13 Aug 1996, Judy Diamondstone wrote:
> Questions for Jim and David:
>
> Jim wrote:
>
> >So I guess I'm wondering, if for you, activity subsumes language, to what
> >extent, for me, can linguistics, or better semiotics, subsume activity?
>
> Jim, How can semiotics subsume what Jay referred to last winter or
> spring as the not-yet-semiotic? Are you supposing that the
> not-yet-semiotic can be systematized in some way?
>
> Also, David referred to " the messiness
> >of interacitons with tools. It assumes that the potential in the moment or
> >in the future is never a matter of choosing from a finite pool of meaning
> >potential.
>
> Jim, would you consider the meanings that CAN be made within a context of
> situation to be of some "finite", some determinate, range....? or
> (anyone with math background) would a theory of probabilities (which
> is what I take "meaning potential" to be about) preclude the problem of
> finite-ness?
>
> *
>
> David wrote:
> >
> >So, as you say, one issue for theory building is
> >>how to represent the new in relation to the old...
> ---
> >That relation, it seems to me, is historical, but a history that involves
> >very complex social interactions and cannot be read off texts alone....
> ---
> >It would be difficult to locate the where and when, the genesis, of the
> >"idea" (field choice) (appropriation) of using sexually explicit material
> >in eye-level bus adverts, among all this tenor of meetings taken and
> >reports exchanged, and so on, this array of genres written and otherwise,
> >this complex of large and intersecting networks of activity and the
> >conflicts and contradictions and exertings of power within among them over
> >whether or not to appropriate the material for the bus ad.
>
> David, What, in all this tenor, counts as activity, not text, as Jim
> defined text (instantiation of some semiotic system)? As I understand
> the above, you are referring to the relations among texts -- the
> historical relations linking texts to one another. Is that what
> activity theory subsumes, the relevant intertextual field, historicized?
> (I assume that there is not, in that "array of genres written and otherwise"
> events that cannot be factored into the making of meaning. Or is there...?)
>
> As you two have clarified your positions relative to one another, I've
> gotten more clear about my confusions.
>
> Thanks for your help.
> - Judy
>
>
>
>
>
> ....................
> 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
>
>