RE: Intentionality and Semiotics: What Lemke wrote

From: Cunningham, Donald J. (cunningh@indiana.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 21 2004 - 13:10:14 PST


Boy I hate to do this but I am going to have to bow out of the
discussion. I am leaving early tomorrow for the better part of two weeks
and will have only limited access to email. This is really interesting
to me and I hope I can pick it up when I get back..........djc

Don Cunningham
Indiana University

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Barowy [mailto:xmcageek@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 10:08 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Intentionality and Semiotics: What Lemke wrote

Don, here are some quick thoughts in response to the social semiotic
approach
to investigation that you posted and that I've found insightful.
Perhaps if
continuing some further clarity might result. I'll have to revisit
Jay's
book. I probably won't get the same things out of it this time around.

1. How does the performance of any particular socially meaningful
 action make sense to the members of a community?
(Along with questions 2, 4, 5, 6)

I think only a few activity theoretic studies apply an ethnographic
spin, I
hope someone posts refs to those they know about. CHAT seems focussed
more
on the social organization (and transformation thereof) of people who
are
doing something together, but yet, your above question refers to
"members of
a community" rather than "members of a social group". Community, to me,

indicates more joint intentionality than "social group", as also does
"system
of activity". Together with question 7, "What larger social patterns
does
the action belong to?" the two approaches seem nearer, although "social
patterns" e.g. trivially: triadic discourse, break the bounds of things
like
institutions, i.e. durable systems of activity, that CHAT works so well
to
analyze. Yet, what Yrjo terms "third generation", which analyzes
transformations in social organization across systems of activity, makes
it
possible to look at larger patterns, beyond institutions. Perhaps one
step
in the expansive methodology, looking for "models" (Wartofsky's second
order
artifacts) shared across systems, might be reinterpreted as looking for
"systems of signs" shared across communities?

Question 8, "How does it [action] tend to recreate or change the basic
patterns of the society? " seems entirely consistent with activity
theory, if
one realizes that one basic pattern has been the durable social
organization
with shared artifacts, intentionality, and a division of labor.

3. What are the parts and how are they related to each other?

I think i see connections here, but I'm not sure what you mean by parts.

Regarding where intentionality, or Leont'ev's object (what brings people

together to do something) stands in relation to semiotics, lets say
focussing
on social semiotics, it seems Jay has had this to say:

"While social semiotics does not accept intentional goals as a valid
principle
for defining actional units, it does agree with the developments of AT
in the
direction of understanding semiotic mediation (signs) in the same terms
as
artifact mediation (tools) in human activity. The later version of the
theory
has been developed particularly by Yrjo Engestrom. Vygotsky emphasized
originally the role of discourse in mediating action."

Activity Theory and Actant-Network Theory
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke/theories.htm

I'll throw this quote from Jay into the mix as well, because, while
discussing
(!!!) 3 activity theoretic methodologies (!!!) it raises the issue of
development (which brings in MIchael G's thread) -- and I'm wondering
how
development is studied in social semiotics? Is it more than the changes
in
the basic patterns of the society? What are its units? Could it be
changes
in meaning or changes in meaning-making?
 
 "One strand within AT research tends to focus on individual development
in
the context of local social interaction. In another, the unit of
analysis is
rather the activity itself, with a focus on its community history and
how it
comes to be part of the repertory of an individual. A fully
sociocultural
version of AT attempts to link subjects-in-development not only with the

social activities that link us to other subjects, but also to the
mediating
artifacts, tools, and symbolic systems of our communities, and to
relevant
larger scale cultural and social formations (e.g. norms and values, ways
of
speaking and acting)."



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