Re: nonseparability between what and what?

From: Yan Guo (yguo@interchange.ubc.ca)
Date: Tue May 07 2002 - 10:03:44 PDT


Hi Mike,

My name is Yan Guo and I am a sessional instructor at the University of
British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Before Christmas, I defended my
doctoral dissertation on the intercultural communication processes between
Canadian teachers and Chinese immigrant parents. I have been quietly
following up with your discussions for a while and this is my first time to
be brave enough to participate.

I have a question about inseparability between person and context. To me,
person is context and context is person. When we talk about an activity, we
may have two kinds of context: local and global contexts. For example, when
I studied the parent-teacher conference in a Canadian secondary school.
Locally, I looked at the local context of the conference including timing,
room arrangement and format of presentation; Globally, I also looked at the
parent-teacher conference from perspectives of Canadian and Chinese
cultures including how their cultures influenced on what and how they
discussed at their conferences.

In sum, I don't think we can separate person from context. However, we have
to separate them for the purpose of data analysis.

Cheers,
yan

At 04:44 PM 5/6/02 -0700, Mike Cole wrote:

>Keith/Anna/whomever---
>
>Keith-- when we get to talking about inseperability between person and
>CONTEXT the issue is really complex and I do not know how to "solve"
>the problem in "general." Con-text. The text cannot exist except in
>(at least!) analytic seperation form the con-with. Mc Dermott has a
>very powerful demonstration of the relation of this issue to figure/ground
>in his article in the Lave Chaiklin (or is it Chaiklin lave) volume.
>
>As to internalization: What drives the people against this term is
>the phantom of copy theories in place of reconstrucitonist theories.
>
>Leontieve is crystal clear on the error of copy theories. But the problem
>persists in those (American?) folks who substitute social learning theory
>of the 1970's for CHAT.
>
>says me, inviting misunderstanding!
>mike



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