RE: Gremlins and Engestrom

From: Phillip Capper (phillip.capper@webresearch.co.nz)
Date: Wed Mar 28 2001 - 23:04:14 PST


It is worth remembering the serious side of all this. xmca itself got into a
very vicious - and nearly fatal - situation a few years ago because so many
people in this forum were not native speakers of English (in any form), but
were not able to transmit that fact in written communication. Problems arose
about alleged sexist attitudes because some of these people wrote in English
by simply translating literally from their native tongues - some of which
have male and female nouns and linguistic forms.

These people became totally bewildered by the very angry responses of some
American members of the forum, but their very bewilderment was taken as
further evidence of their insensitivity. To this day there are some very
profound activity theorists who avoid xmca because of this experience. I
personally am sad that xmca seems much more monocultural than it used to be
before that event, but maybe I am wrong about that

Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand

Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Graham [mailto:phil.graham@mailbox.uq.edu.au]
Sent: Thursday, 29 March 2001 18:10
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: Gremlins and Engestrom

At 05:37 PM 28/03/2001 -0800, Paul Dillon wrote:
>I'm not sure just how this would work but
>maybe it would be useful to have something like a YOU that when spoken to a
>collective indicated something like, "all of you out there who share my
>surname, lineage crest, philosophical orientation, religion, etc."

I thought that a form for this had developed in the US: "Y'all", usually
followed by (in Hallidayan terms) a mental process. In Australia, the form
is "Youse", similarly followed, although the meanings of both (as always)
clearly change with context and function.

It's often entertaining to see US visitors to Australia struggling with the
massive gap between our countries' languages (I don't notice it so much in
the UK). When I was in Kansas last year, the person who delivered pizza to
my hotel room remarked to a friend: "That guy sure is havin' trouble
acquirin' the language".

It seems there was a kerfuffle over my asking for "capsicum" on a pizza.

On an earlier trip to the US, I was asked in all seriousness "what language
do you guys speak down there?".

Regards,
Phil



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