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Re: [xmca] fetishism | word meaning



David:

It seems to me that you are calling into play much more abstract and complex analytical tools than need be and thereby confusing and obscuring the picture. Understanding speech/language is really not that elusive, if one looks at it from its base. What is going on with vocal communication, whether human or otherwise, is that body sounds are being produced by an organism and heard by another organism. Part of the body of the sending organism has evolved specifically as a facilitator of sound production and part of the body of the receiving organism has evolved specifically for receiving those body vibrations. What is being communicated is vibrations, - movements -, of the body. The pattern of movements of one body is imparted upon another body. Somehow these patterns of movement communicate goings- on of the sending organism. This communication is accomplished simply by moving the body of the receiving organism in the same pattern as the body of the sending organism is moving. Think of how the touch of a friendly, gentle person communicates a feeling of that intent to the recipient of that touch. Now, think of the the sudden, rough, jarring touch of an attacker. What is communicated by that touch? One organism's motion is transferred to an other organism. This communication does not require interpretation or decoding. How do mothers comfort a crying baby? How does an old-time cowboy soothe the cattle? How does the drill sergeant instill in his charges the "fighting spirit" that he intends to? All these communications are accomplished by the producer of the vocal sounds imparting particular patterns of bodily vibrations of the receivers of those sounds. There is meaning in the motion. There is emotion in the motion. Using emotionally evocative vocal sounds to refer to things does not rob them of there meaning: it adds another layer of meaning. That second layer is usually the only one we civilized beings acknowledge. After all the years that linguists have been trying to figure out how spoken language works, don't you think that if they were asking the right questions, they would have answers by now? It seems that many of us exhibit behavior that precludes their clear perception of situations that they have a vested interest in not seeing clearly. We humans derive a false sense of security from the familiar relationship between our body/vocal sounds and the things that make up our world. To see clearly the connection between the word and the thing would strip away the feeling of false security provided to us by our mother tongue. Speech evolved by primal principles and is not the invention of some calculating wizard. Speech can be understood, (as a phenomenon), by applying our knowledge of those principles. O what a tangled web we weave when we attempt to explain something, - in this case, speech ), while avoiding recognition of its primal origins. Applying Occam's razor would probably be helpful.

	J.G.

On Jun 7, 2011, at 5:22 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

Joseph:

Nobody is being difficult. The theory you are putting forward here is called "direct speech perception". The idea is that phonemes are themselves present in the sound waves, and do not have to be reconstructed by the receiving brain. It's a very radical, empiricist theory that has long been associated with behaviorism (Watson, for example, was a strong proponent of direct perception).

Imagine that you want to convey the letter "A" to me in South Korea. You could rig up a digital camera and send me an image. I would not need to "know" anything about language to get your message; what I see is what I get. That's direct perception.

But that isn't the way we did it. Instead, my computer has a software system that "knows" what an "A" is, and on a given signal will produce it for me. I in turn reconstruct what you mean from the "A" produced by my computer. That is mediated perception.

Vygotskyans,including myself, have always been suspicious of direct perception, and for good reason. As Vygotsky says, it doesn't appear to tell us what is specifically human about human speech (animals, for example, can convey emotion through vocal sounds, but they do not have human speech). This doesn't bother behaviorists; on the contrary, it's one of the strengths of the theory as far as they are concerned. I find it very...well, difficult. But I would say that the difficulty is not in me.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Tue, 6/7/11, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> wrote:


From: Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] fetishism | word meaning
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Tuesday, June 7, 2011, 5:01 PM


Do you really need clarification or are you merely being difficult?

        J.G.

On Jun 7, 2011, at 2:11 PM, Huw Lloyd wrote:

On 7 June 2011 21:31, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> wrote:

Do you hold that vocal sounds affect us emotionally/feeling-wise?


Hi Jospeh,  I'm assuming this question is directed at me?

They are capable of emotional influence. Though this a function of the person, rather than the sound. For example, deaf people aren't influenced
that much.

It's not clear to me how this relates to your usage of "are" in "words are
vocal sounds".

Will let you mull it over.

Huw



        Joseph Gilbert


On Jun 7, 2011, at 10:25 AM, Huw Lloyd wrote:

On 7 June 2011 16:27, Joseph Gilbert <joeg4us@roadrunner.com> wrote:

  Words are vocal sounds. Vocal sounds are meaningful.


I think you have an elision here, Joseph.

If you take "are" as the plural of "is", you're effectively saying:

"A word is a sound, sound is meaningful."

Hence you appear to be conflating the relation of equivalence with
aggregation:

(Spoken) Words are (composed of) vocal sounds.

Just as you might say "Pyramids are (composed of) stone" rather than
"Pyramids are buildings".

Huw





               Joseph Gilbert


On Jun 6, 2011, at 9:15 PM, Tony Whitson wrote:

Peirce explicitly contended that the meaning of any sign (including
words,

thoughts, arguments, feelings, or whatever), _qua_ signs, lies in the virtuality of potential future interpretations (just by virtue of the fundamental nature of what it is to be a sign, i.e., in the activity of
sign-relations).

Also, notice that I'm using "meaning" as something that we -- and our words, thoughts, etc. -- DO, not something they contain, convey, etc. I recently noticed similar usage in the title of Jay's MCA review of
Sfard's
book, which speaks of "Meaning Mathematically," not "mathematical
meaning."
The latter locution could mean the same as Jay's, but it also would
allow
the more familiar reading of "meaning" as a noun. If we need to begin meaning differently than how we might be heard to mean in positivist discourse, I think we need to begin choosing speaking that resists
assimilation to that discourse.

On Mon, 6 Jun 2011, mike cole wrote:

The poem is neat and your explication brings to mind a recurrent
thought

when I encounter the core idea of "the thought is completed in the
word."
I
(think I) know what LSV and Mandelshtam are saying, but I always have
this
thought that the thought is not yet completed, not in so far as it is
taken
up, perhaps transformed, and comes back again at a later time, in some
new,
albeit related, form, to begin that side of the cycle over again.
mike

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu>
wrote:

I clipped the wrong line from Martin's post in that last message. I

meant
the Dickinson verse in reponse to the line that now appears below from
Martin.

In Dickinson's verse, what's not timeless is not merely the meaning
that
a
word does as a lexical unit in a language (i.e., in the philological
sense),
but even in a specific utterance the word spoken continues meaning, as
it
continues living, non-timelessly.


On Sun, 1 May 2011, Tony Whitson wrote:

  On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Martin Packer wrote:



For LSV word-meaning is not timeless. It changes over time; he
didn't


  study philology for nothing!



  A word is dead

    When it is said
  Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
  That day.

    --Emily Dickinson

I find it helpful to think of meaning as something that words do --
not
something they contain, convey, etc.


  Tony Whitson

UD School of Education
NEWARK  DE  19716

twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________

"those who fail to reread
  are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
                -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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  Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK  DE  19716

twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________

"those who fail to reread
  are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
                 -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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