RE: [xmca] Wells article

I should add a disclaimer that because my interest is in the really big
picture, it is probably a little "too easy" for me to say that such and
such distinction is unimportant. For educational psychologists etc there
may be important micro-distinctions which do not really interest me.

But firstly Helena I think the question being raised is really nothing to
do with language or what specifically is mediating the relations between
the participating individuals or subjects. Unless the object of one party
or group of parties is out to actually destroy the other party, then the
conflict/collaboration is always both a conflict and a cooperation, always
both a reconstruction of the shared objective and a construction of a new
project, both concretisation and implementation. As a labor educator you
will know that unless a group of workers negotiating are actually decided
upon bankrupting and destroying their employer, the resulting deal will
always be some kind of co-construction. And there is nothing of class
compromise in saying that. One day of course ... :-)

Texts extracted from a collaborative activity will I am sure be able to
assist in a forensic reconstruction of when it was that the shared
conception of what had to be done was concretised, changed, abandoned,
re-defined, argued over or whatever. But I really see little use in
dividing "talking" into constructive or ancillary.

Andy
At 07:00 PM 1/10/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>Andy --
>
>Are you saying you don't see a useful difference between language being
>used to coordinate actions directed toward a shared goal, and language
>being used to create something that is not the shared goal of the
>participants, but something different? I think this is a useful
>distinction, because the latter would give us a name for the process we
>would expect to see if we could zoom in on and observe in slow motion
>(maybe in a transcript) the way words get turned, replaced, defined and
>re-defined in the process of negotiating an agree-upon text.
>
>Helena Worthen, Clinical Associate Professor
>Labor Education Program, Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations
>University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
>504 E. Armory, Room 227
>Champaign, IL 61821
>Phone: 217-244-4095
>hworthen@uiuc.edu
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
>On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 6:15 PM
>To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>Subject: RE: [xmca] Wells article
>
>Helena,
>I took it that Gordon ended up saying that Halliday's distinction cannot
>be
>sustained.
>Here is what he says:
>
>"From this work it has becomes apparent that the initial distinction
>made
>by Halliday (1978)
>between ancillary and constitutive discoursing, although useful
>conceptually, is an oversimplification
>of actual practice. The first and most obvious complication is that many
>
>interactions
>involve more than one genre, as when a shopper discusses the weather or
>current events in
>the course of a purchasing action.
>A second issue is that the distinction between ancillary and
>constitutive
>discoursing is
>not as clear-cut as Halliday suggested. Taking the football example from
>
>earlier, at various
>points before and during the game, the coach discusses strategy with the
>
>entire team and perhaps
>also with one or more individuals; he will probably also shout from the
>sidelines. Although the
>latter might fit Halliday's argument that "any instructions or other
>verbal
>interaction among
>the players are part of this social action" (p. 144), it is not so clear
>
>that the strategy talk before
>the team leaves the dressing room is entirely part of the "social
>action"
>of the game itself.
>However, the most difficult issue is that of determining what goals are
>involved in any
>action in which discoursing plays a part. The problem is that
>participants
>rarely announce their
>goals, expecting others to be able to deduce them from the situation and
>
>from the genre form
>they adopt."
>
>So I didn't follow this issue any further because I wouldn't support
>this
>particular dichotomy at any but a superficial level. I think discourse
>is
>always, along with other elements of material culture, part of
>constituting
>the project. I see conflict as essentially indistinguishable from
>collaboration and the material/ideal distinction between project also
>untenable. Anyway, Gordon gave three reasons for not making this
>distinction and that was good enough for me.
>
>
>Andy
>At 02:41 PM 1/10/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >Hello, xmca:
> >
> >I'll take a shot at the Wells article, as usual, from the point of view
> >of a labor educator.
> >
> >As I read it, he's distinguishing between the use of language as
> >"ancillary" to an activity and the use of language that actually
> >constitutes what participants are doing. When people use language to
> >coordinate activity, that's "ancillary." When the thing that has to
>"get
> >done" is itself made out of language (he gives the example of a meeting
> >with an agenda and agreed-upon decisions to be made - p. 167) then
> >that's "constitutive discoursing," the co-construction of "possible
> >worlds" (he references Bruner). However, he's saying, this distinction
> >has already been made (by Halliday). Wells then says that the
> >distinction between the two is not always clear, because people may be
> >co-constructing with different goals in mind. He lists some examples of
> >different goals in the middle of page 173.
> >
> >At this point, I am thinking that Wells is right but I'd like him to
> >give an example where people are co-constructing something but have
>more
> >strikingly different goals in mind -- goals more different than the
> >goals of a trio of researchers observing their own discoursing or even
> >than the goals of a teacher and three students in a busy classroom.
> >
> >Of course I was reading this article keeping in mind the
>co-constructive
> >constitutive discoursing that takes place when workers and employers
> >bargain a contract. The contract is an example of a "possible world."
>It
> >is built up bit by bit over the years, written down and enforced
>through
> >yards and yards, miles and miles of talk. In fact, both the contract
>and
> >the process by which it is negotiated are negotiated. But most helpful
> >of all to me, as I try to understand what is actually happening when
> >people negotiate their conditions of work, was Wells' point that(p 174)
> >the "the participants are not interchangeable." Constitutive
> >discoursing (the co-creation of something through language) is
> >characterized by participants in an itneraction who are not
> >interchangeable. It is the different perspectives of the parties to the
> >negotiation that make the co-construction of something possible.
> >
> >I'm not convinced that the word "discoursing" is going to get into
> >popular use. It may be that Wells doesn't expect it to go much further
> >himself; in fact, he could be putting forth this term ironically, since
> >by the end of the article he appears to have pulled the plug on the
> >notion that discoursing is an activity in its own right.
> >
> >Is there a significant stream of argument that says that the use of
> >language for no other purpose (no co-construction, no constitution) is
> >in itself an activity? Wouldn't that be like carrying a tape recorder
> >down a busy street or drifting from channel to channel on the TV? But
> >then we'd be in the realms of art.
> >
> >I saw Chris Marker's movie, Les Chats Perches (?) last night. Now
> >there's a record of co-construction of an emergent text and possible
> >world.
> >
> >
> >Helena Worthen
> >Helena Worthen, Clinical Associate Professor
> >Labor Education Program, Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations
> >University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
> >504 E. Armory, Room 227
> >Champaign, IL 61821
> >Phone: 217-244-4095
> >hworthen@uiuc.edu
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >xmca mailing list
> >xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
>AIM
>identity: AndyMarxists mobile 0409 358 651
>
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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435, AIM
identity: AndyMarxists mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Mon Oct 1 18:53 PDT 2007