Re: timescale question

From: Steve Gabosch (bebop101@comcast.net)
Date: Thu Oct 16 2003 - 13:09:54 PDT


Hi Ben,

Thanks so much for bringing this up. I have been wanting to understand
these terms better.

from Dictionary.com:
Synchronic: Of or relating to the study of phenomena, such as linguistic
features, or of events of a particular time, without reference to their
historical context.
Diachronic: Of or concerned with phenomena, such as linguistic features,
as they change through time.

Examples might be: a study comparing accents in New York with accents in
Georgia in 2003 would be synchronic, but a study of the evolution of
accents in New York 1900 - 2000 would be diachronic.

I believe Saussure is attributed with creating these terms. But I have a
little trouble with this particular duality, as I do some others used by
structuralist-minded linguists (such as, for example, the
competence/performance duality). I see that distinguishing analyses of
comparisons over space from analyses of comparison over time can certainly
be useful (as can distinguishing general competence from particular
performance), but I have trouble seeing the categories, synchronicity and
diachronicity, as generally viable dualities for dialectical-minded
scientific analysis, which seeks out the dynamic oppositions and
transformations processes, and therefore usually needs to track both space
and time to get a realistic picture. Arbitrarily ignoring time or space
can be useful, of course, but only in limited ways, as analytical tools,
perhaps to reveal a special feature for specific analysis, in order to
better understand its relation to the whole. From this point of view, I
would hesitate to say that an analysis of "variables (e.g., the subject
being discussed, the people involved) [that] influence social interactions
in systematic, predictable ways across time" can be "non-time related" in
any general sense. Attempts to separate synchronicity from diachronicity
at the level of general, systematic analysis puzzle me. I think your
question on how to "weave these two analytic lenses together" is just the
right way to look at this topic.

Since you bring these terms up, I also have some questions about the terms
microgenetic, mesogenetic, and macrogenetic levels when they are used as
something more than just arbitrary conceptual structures to isolate
specific arenas in a process for analysis. From my observation of these
terms so far - they are still new to me - they are useful as placeholders
or shorthand references to compare various levels of time scale in an
analysis of a complex historical process. Generally speaking, these terms
strike me as not much different than using relative words like little, big,
in-between, fast, slow, etc. - they are ways of making quantitative
distinctions. Again, however, while it seems to me that these distinctions
can be quite useful for specific examinations, they don't carry the power
of more the universal dialectical oppositions inherent in systems in
general that is needed for more general and systematic
analyses. Dialectical oppositions such as form and content, abstract and
concrete, continuity and discontinuity, chance and necessity, the
particular and general among others seem to me to be much more enduring
across systems and over time and therefore stronger tools at the level of
general analysis.

On another angle, while these terms don't happen to come up in Lemke's
article "

Across the Scales of Time: Artifacts, Activities, and Meanings in Ecosocial
Systems," the article itself is of course very relevant to the timescale
question, and familiar to many (appeared in MCA in 2000). It is online at:

  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke/papers/across_the_scales_of_time.htm

Best,
- Steve



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