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Re: [xmca] Re: ye



Yes, that's exactly it, Monica. I didn't realise you weren't a native speaker.

Just a warning/qualification on what I have said. I am not claiming that the concepts of Activity and Discourse ought to be identified; clearly they indicate different traditions of scientific analysis which pick out different objects from the flow of human life. I think I am suggesting though that both sciences ought to expand their self-concept so as to assimilate the gains of the other, creating a single, nuanced concept of Discursive Activity. This of course has nothing to do with assimilating practical actions with word meaning. But the distinction between practical intelligence and verbal thinking/action is developmentally overcome, ontologically, but also historically, I think.

Andy

Monica Hansen wrote:

Thanks, Andy. This does help. “Co” meaning the threads of activity and discourse can extend together, at the same time. Like co-chairs. I was following you! Thanks for the clarification. My misunderstanding was an example of how my discourse was not co-extending with yours. J I think I know English, but I am always learning new Discourses with a capital D.

Monica

*From:* Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
*Sent:* Wednesday, July 06, 2011 6:15 PM
*To:* Monica Hansen
*Cc:* 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'
*Subject:* Re: [xmca] Re: ye

What do I mean by "co-extensive"? If the activity is mathematics, by which I would mean doing mathematics from the point of view of a kind of sociology of science, and the Activity (system) is taken to be all the extended institutions of mathematics, mainly university departments, learned journals of mathematics, and so on, then this Activity is co-extensive with the discourse of mathematics. The Discourse overflows the bounds of the institutions into the general community (scienfitic concepts entering everyday life), and contradictions could arise here, because people's everyday Activity is not attuned to the practice and concepts of the institutions of mathematics. On the other hand, if we took, for example, a Men's Club in the old-fashioned sense of "My Fair Lady" as the Activity, and to be blindingly obvious, the Discourse of Feminism, then obviously when Feminism enters the Men's Club contradictions arise. But less obviously, the discourse within a factory - labour relations, command line management, mutual aid between workers, etc. - in tune with the activity of producing metal bars, or whatever, on a day-to-day basis, and the Discourse of Taylorist Scientific Management enters the factory, then again, contradiction: Taylorism is not the indigenous Discourse of that Activity.

Apart from obvious differences of location, there is also a developmental difference between Activities and Discourses, as Discourses have entered the language, but I think this is only relative. Where you have a distinct difference is in Theory: Discourse Theory and Activity Theory. Each has developed a whole body of theory, concepts and analytical tools, and I think these are distinct but could be merged.

Does that help?
Andy

Monica Hansen wrote:

Andy,

I think I am following your argument here, but I am wondering if you could clarify your use of **coextensive** in “And when in a given circumstance we have practical activity (making bars) and discourse (expert talk, issuing advice) going on together, then these different strands weave together as extended projects/concepts that lock into the overall social fabric by /not being coextensive/. I.e., a particular discourse is not excluively located within a certain "activity."” And as in your last sentence: “…because these threads are not coextensive.”

It is the relationality in both Activity and Discourse that is difficult to define and translate into research because of the necessity for a **unit** of analysis. The confusion about **discourse** comes from its ambiguous meaning, often used (or limited to use), as interchangeable with **unit** of study, a singular object (or molecular). This usage is reflected in monological approaches to language study versus dialogical approaches (Linell, 2009).

It strikes me: if we are using construction as a metaphor for knowledge building and mind making, maybe it is this metaphor that keeps us going back to the individual parts that are required for construction. Same with discourse: ...a discourse is constructed…And then we are inspired by the opposing direction of sequential processing (deconstruction). This tendency towards seriality is maybe the difficulty in defining instructional methods in both math and language. I am not saying the components and sequences are unnecessary (Pedagogical knowledge often being dichotomized as content and process), but beyond the parts, we are pulled back to the understanding of the elements in context, integrated, all happening simultaneously as important to both Activity and Discourse and I would say to borrow from the study David K cited before, the enactment of understanding in math or language arts.

Just thinking out loud,

Monica



*From:* xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu> [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden
*Sent:* Tuesday, July 05, 2011 10:24 PM
*To:* lchcmike@gmail.com <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
*Subject:* Re: [xmca] Re: ye

Thanks for that Mike. for resurrecting my original question (which may could not be clarified through difficulties in learning maths as I'd hoped) and for the Engestrom paper. As Engstrom says: "a theoretical integration of these two [talking and acting] has not yet been accomplished."

Engestrom is discussing exactly the problem of the relation of Discourse Analysis and Activity Theory, in the context of the relation between a Discourse and an Activity. In the fine detail of the performance of Activity and Discourse, the two are of course inextricable. The hope of some Discourse analysts to make conversation an object of analysis, while abstracting the conversation from what the talkers were trying to /do/ (or talking about) is clearly (to Activity Theorists and the participants, if not the analysts) vacuous. But also, it is obvious that if we try to make some kind of dichotomy between practical activity (as in making metal bars and operating machines) and discursive activity (talking about it, issuing commands, etc.) then we can't make any sense of Activity either. Even a dichotomy of Actions is problematic, but maybe has some sense. It is self-evident and obvious the distinction between words and practical actions, but speaking is also an action and all practical actions also have a symbolic effect.

To this end, the question of unit of analysis is raised. Engstrom wants to make a "situated activity system as the basic unit of analysis." But this defeats the purpose. It is actually taking the analytical road, not the road of Goethe and Hegel and Vygotsky, in my view. If we break the whole down into situated units which contain systems of activity, inclusive of the talk going on and the surrounding artefacts (machinery etc), then try to assemble the whole again, we find on the one hand the "long duration" concept of the specific industry producing metal components, and on the other, the "historically distinctive social languages at work, namely the social language of the machinists and the social language of the expert engineers." That is, there are /discourses/ (plural) sustained of course, by practical activity (visiting workshops, attending conferences, writing papers, having conversations) and mathematics is one of them. And when in a given circumstance we have practical activity (making bars) and discourse (expert talk, issuing advice) going on together, then these different strands weave together as extended projects/concepts that lock into the overall social fabric by /not being coextensive/. I.e., a particular discourse is not excluively located within a certain "activity."

So I don't think it works to take a molecule of talk-and-labour as a "unit of analysis" unless we just want to be analytical sociologists, and nor can we take (I believe) Discourses to be a particular variety of Activities (because the Actions entailed, meanings, are always inextricably connected with practical Actions, as per Bakhtin's Utterances). You can't have an Activity that doesn't include talk or a Discourse that doesn't include or imply practical actions as well as meanings.

So, for example, mathematics is a Discourse. There we have a unit of analysis. I believe Anna is in agreement here. Doing mathematics involves talking and all sorts of practical actions. It also has the structure and movement of a concept: a system of judgments - acts of thinking - of long duration, which has an internal unity thanks to the word. So the Activities (units of Activity) are long threads which are overlapping and interacting in the concrete situation, which gains its tensions, contradictions, its nature as a predicament, because these threads are not coextensive.

I think we have to merge the concepts of an Activity and a Discourse. They are inextricable.

Andy

mike cole wrote:

Dear Colleagues--
I am poking along at the question of activity and discourse.
While poking around, it occurred to me that Yrjo had written a paper on the
topic. The context is different-- a special issue of a journal on
organizational communication, but it
seems as if it might be relevant to Andy's question and Anna's answers.
mike ------------------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________________
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*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744 <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857 <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744 <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857 <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
MIA: http://www.marxists.org


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*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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