[Xmca-l] Re: Contrasting 'use-value' & 'value'
lpscholar2@gmail.com
lpscholar2@gmail.com
Tue Apr 25 19:36:27 PDT 2017
And then we also have ‘the living word’ expressing a qualia of our temporal human/ity.
‘living’ possibly expressing David’s ‘wording’?
Also we might consider ‘the inner word’ and this notions relation to wording.
Inner as applied where? The person? The community? The singular plural?
An open inquiry
Sent from my Windows 10 phone
From: Andy Blunden
Sent: April 25, 2017 7:07 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Contrasting 'use-value' & 'value'
Since you answer my question with a question, I take it that
the answer is "yes."
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
On 26/04/2017 11:56 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> Andy--
>
> Are "life" and "living" two different words, or are they
> two different wordings of the same word?
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 11:42 AM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> David, after reading this fascinating 2-page narrative
> about Ricoeur and the structuralists out of the blue
> we get the conclusion: "And the power is not in the
> word, but in the wording." Have I missed something? Is
> "wording" ineffable?
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
> On 26/04/2017 7:13 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
> I remember Paul Ricoeur. He taught at a seminary
> at the University of
> Chicago when I was an undergraduate. I was a
> member of the campus Spartacus
> Youth Club, and it was the only place that would
> allow us a public space
> for meetings. I tried to sell him a copy of "Young
> Spartacus" once: I can't
> remember if he bought it or not. But I remember
> him as a French gentleman,
> personally quite conservative, but not at all put
> off by the presence of
> a screaming red nineteen year old who for
> inexplicable reasons had
> a Parisian accent and spoke the argot of the
> Versailles banlieue. Maybe he
> bought our French paper, Le Bolchevik.
>
> I have been reading a symposium "On Narrative"
> that was going on at UC when
> I was organizing against Milton Friedman's Nobel
> Prize (he was also a
> professor there at the time--he won the prize the
> same year that Saul
> Bellow, another UC professor, did). Ricoeur,
> Derrida, and Hayden White all
> took part.
>
> It was the heyday of structuralism, and Ricoeur's
> contribution is
> interesting because it's quite ANTI-structuralist:
> he points out that the
> effect of structuralism on narrative studies has
> been to de-historicize,
> de-memorize, dehumanize; to convert stories into
> exchange values rather
> than use values. So the elements that Propp
> discovers in Ludmilla and
> Ruslan (and the Firebird and its variants) can
> come in any order. In
> contrast, even the simplest act of repetition is
> historicized, humanized,
> and memorable. A use value and not an exchange value.
>
> Derrida ignores everybody else and embarks on his
> usual verbal
> pyrotechnics, but Hayden White develops Ricoeur's
> idea in a way I think I
> actually used in my "Thinking of Feeling" paper:
> human memory goes through
> stages: medieval annals, Renaissance chronicles,
> and the nineteenth century
> narrative, each of which adds something
> distinctive and makes the
> meta-narrative that they form together into
> something non-reversible and
> developmental. But now I see that the reviewers
> made me remove all that (it
> is just as well: sociogenesis is one story and
> ontogenesis quite another).
>
> Ruqaiya Hasan used to say that there is a certain
> unity imposed on
> experience by language, from "the living of life"
> to the child's first real
> morpho-phoneme. If you take the phrase "the living
> of life" just as an
> example, you can see some of what Ricoeur is
> trying to get at. On the face
> of it, the phrase is redundant: the word "life"
> seems to contain absolutely
> nothing that isn't already there in "living". Yet
> "of life" must mean
> something, otherwise it would not enable us to add
> the specifier "the" to
> "living".
>
> I think Ricoeur would say that "life" is a kind of
> de-historicized,
> de-memorized, de-humanized "living", one that is
> turned from process into
> entity, and made synoptical, like the various
> retellings in different
> orders of the four Gospels. Yes, it's a powerful
> way of speaking, but it is
> powerful the way that sculpture is rather than the
> way that painting is.
> And the power is not in the word, but in the wording.
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 4:31 AM,
> <lpscholar2@gmail.com
> <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Mike,
> There is a particular example that occurred
> here when Wolff-Michael
> referenced Ricouer’s 3 volume project
> exploring metaphor and narrativity
> and their common unifying theme existing
> within human temporality
> (finitude).
> Is there an expectation for ‘us’ to go back
> and reference Ricouer’s
> exploration of this relation in depth? Through
> reading and re-reading these
> works of scholarship.
> I myself turned to the preface of Ricouer’s 3
> volume exploration of this
> particular relation, metaphor/narrativity::
> Temporality.
>
> Without human temporality, narrativity and
> metaphor would not exist.
>
> On this listserve there was a glance or nod in
> Ricouer’s direction and
> then???.
>
> This month we are recycling themes which
> already exist in the archive, but
> is this recycling just repetition,, or
> renovation, or innovation?.
>
> Peg’s metaphor of leaving loose threads for
> others to return to expresses
> a temporal sense ability at odds with high
> impact journals.
>
>
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>
> From: mike cole
> Sent: April 25, 2017 11:02 AM
> To: Larry Purss
> Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Re: Contrasting
> 'use-value' & 'value'
>
> Right Larry. A lot of high impact journals
> (not all) are deeply
> a-historical.
>
> When my wife and I were writing a textbook, we
> had, with each addition,
> to cut out older refs. To be allow to refer to
> Gesell, Rousseau in a
> serious manner was a constant battle.
>
> But what the heck. In a lot of classes that
> use the textbook, students are
> not required to remember or re-cover material
> from the mid-term on the
> final exam. In a course on development in a
> field that makes a big deal of
> sequence and growth over time. Live for the
> moment, no need to know the
> history of behavior in order to understand it.
>
> Yes, mediation has not gone away, despite its
> claimed ailments and devious
> traps. :-)
>
> mike
>
> On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 2:00 PM,
> <lpscholar2@gmail.com
> <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:
> So... If more than 10 years old makes thinking
> and thought anethema WHAT
> does that say about the scope of thinking of
> high impact journals?
>
> When returning to wording, statement, and
> utterance I hope we also turn
> back to ‘mediation’.
> I have this definition of mediation to
> consider: (carrying across -within
> back/forth) BOTH (giving/receiving) within a
> singular relation
> This is felt differently than mediation:
> (carrying over to the other side)
> which may imply bridges required for joining
> or linking two pre-existing
> sides (first one and then the other).
>
>
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>
> From: mike cole
> Sent: April 23, 2017 9:54 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Contrasting 'use-value'
> & 'value'
>
> Hi David et al --
>
> Found my copy of Cole and Scribner! To my
> relief, it appears that somewhere
> along the way there was a misattribution of
> that quote you posted that
> Hasan criticized and that I wanted to disavow
> (but there it was in black
> and white!).
>
> So, apropos, we have a problem of context
> here. If you look at p. 25 of
> Scribner and Cole, you will find that the
> quotation was in a paper by Cole
> and Gay (1972) (A paper on culture and memory
> in the American
> Anthropologist I had did not recall the date
> of. If you go just one
> sentence above the quotation you find the
> following:
>
> *For instance, one anthropologist commented,
> upon hearing about the results
> of our first research in this area (Gay and
> Cole 1967): The reasoning and
> thinking processes of different people in
> different cultures don't differ .
> . . just their values, beliefs, and ways of
> classifying differ [personal
> correspondence ].*
>
>
> We were *contesting *this statement which was
> the anthropological consensus
> at the time. For those interested in our own
> views at the time,
>
> it is best to consult Chapter 8 of that book
> by Cole and Scribner on
> *Culture
> and Thought. *(Its all antiquarian stuff
> anyway. Its now 50 years since the
> first publication of that line of work!
> References more than 10 years old
> are anethema to HIGH IMPACT journals! :-)
> and :-(
>
>
> mike
>
>
> Which takes the discussion back to the
> discussion of wording, stating, and
> uttering.
>
> On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 1:39 PM, Wolff-Michael
> Roth <
> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com
> <mailto:wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Julian,
> I suggest reading Rossi-Landi, and Italian
> Marxist scholar, where I have
> taken this:
>
> Like other products of labor, signs,
> words, expressions,
> and messages have use value in
> communication and are subject to exchange,
> distribution, and consumption; the markets
> within which these
> products circulate as commodities are
> linguistic communities (Rossi-
> Landi 1983).
>
> An appreciation of his contributions by
> Cianca Bianchi states: "Through
>
> his
>
> "homological schema",
> material and linguistic production are
> conceived to be the result of a
> single process
> that is particular to human beings and
> that can best be understood in
>
> terms
>
> of work
> and trade. "
>
> Cheers,
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> --------------------
> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
> Applied Cognitive Science
> MacLaurin Building A567
> University of Victoria
> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth
> <http://web.uvic.ca/%7Emroth>
> <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/
> <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>>
>
> New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new->
> directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
> mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>
> On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 12:09 PM, Julian
> Williams <
> julian.williams@manchester.ac.uk
> <mailto:julian.williams@manchester.ac.uk>>
> wrote:
>
> Michael
>
> As you were - so we are entirely in
> disagreement, then.
>
> For me the E-V and U-V of a dialogic
> exchange has nothing essentially
>
> to
>
> do with the sensual and super sensual
> moments of the 'word' as per
> Vygotsky. And I don't see at all how
> these really confer 'value' in any
> Marxist sense of the term on
> speech/utterance (etc etc).
>
> I am guessing that we are back with
> analogy of 'commodity' and 'word'
>
> in
>
> dialogue, rather than a holistic
> understanding of discourse in the
> totality of social-economic relations,
> and so we have made no progress
> here.
>
> We can take this up another time perhaps.
>
> Julian
>
>
>
> On 22/04/2017 19:47,
> "xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of
> Wolff-Michael Roth"
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of
> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com
> <mailto:wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> Julian,
> E-V and U-V, but not of the kind
> that you are talking about, the
>
> abstract
>
> .
> . . You can look at it like LSV,
> who emphasizes that the word has a
> sensible (material) part and a
> supersensual (ideal) part, not in the
> abstract, but concretely realized
> in every exchange. Michael
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> ---------------
>
> ------
> Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne
> Professor
> Applied Cognitive Science
> MacLaurin Building A567
> University of Victoria
> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth
> <http://web.uvic.ca/%7Emroth>
> <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/
> <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>>
>
> New book: *The Mathematics of
> Mathematics
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new->
>
> directions-in-mat
>
> hematics-and-science-education/the-mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>
> On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 11:38 AM,
> Julian Williams <
> julian.williams@manchester.ac.uk
> <mailto:julian.williams@manchester.ac.uk>>
> wrote:
>
> M.
>
> Um, hang on a minute - I agree
> with everything you said here (I
> think..).
>
> So I suppose this means you
> agree(d) with me; een though I
> thought I
>
> was
>
> challenging your view. I
> thought you were trying to
> find E-V and U-V
>
> in
>
> the dialogue-in-itself, where
> I think it's value has to be
>
> understood
>
> by
>
> the way it is mediated through
> the wider field of
> discourse/practice
> (i.e.
> In its meaning/sense in terms
> of the real exchanges taking
> place in
> practice).
>
> So the point is that one can
> only understand the exchanges
> taking
>
> place
>
> within the wider context- the
> worker exchanges 10 hours of
> labour
>
> for
>
> the
> commodities required to keep
> themselves alive for a day …
> but this
>
> has
>
> to
> be understood within the
> system that allows the
> capitalist to
>
> exploit
>
> those 10 hours for a profit,
> and pay wages that do not
> allow the
>
> worker
>
> to
> purchase the goods they this
> produce (or their
> equivalent)…. There
>
> are
>
> obvious analogies in discourse
> too.
>
> Julian
>
> Ps I see I have raised
> 'mediation' now - oops.
>
>
>
> On 22/04/2017 19:15,
> "xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of
> Wolff-Michael Roth"
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of
> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com
> <mailto:wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> Julian,
> My sense is that you are
> referring to macro-issues,
> you need to
>
> stand
>
> back,
> abstract, and look from
> the outside at a system,
> let it unfold in
>
> front of
>
> your eyes.
>
> I am concerned with the
> actual constitution of
> society in
>
> individual
>
> exchanges, actual
> relations between two or
> more people, the
>
> "ensemble"
>
> of
>
> which constitutes society
> (Marx, Vygotsky,
> Leont'ev). I am thus
>
> concerned
>
> with actual exchange
> relations, the kind Marx
> refers to in the
>
> first
>
> 100
>
> pages of das Kapital,
> where he has the tailor
> exchange a coat with
>
> the
>
> weaver receiving two yards
> of cloth . . . The tailor
> exchanges
>
> his/her
>
> cloth with others, like
> the farmer, for 40 bushels
> of grain . . .
>
> In
>
> my
>
> work, I am following them
> around, concerned not with
> "meaning" or
>
> "ideal"
>
> in the abstract but as
> realized in every THIS
> occasion of a social
> relation.
>
> My sense is that the
> differences you point out
> (attempt to) lie
> there---perhaps.
>
> Michael
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> ---------------
>
> ------
> Wolff-Michael Roth,
> Lansdowne Professor
> Applied Cognitive Science
> MacLaurin Building A567
> University of Victoria
> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth
> <http://web.uvic.ca/%7Emroth>
> <http://education2.uvic.ca/
>
> faculty/mroth/>
>
> New book: *The Mathematics
> of Mathematics
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new->
>
> directions-in-mat
>
> hematics-and-science-education/the-mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
>
> On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at
> 10:24 AM, Julian Williams <
> julian.williams@manchester.ac.uk
> <mailto:julian.williams@manchester.ac.uk>>
> wrote:
>
> Michael
>
> Going back many, many
> posts now: almost 24
> hours worth, I think.
>
> When I wrote this:
>
> 'Thus, I suggest, the
> 'exchange/use value' of an
>
> utterance/dialogic
>
> exchange maybe ought
> to be examined in the
> ideological context of
>
> its
>
> relationship with the
> 'whole' of social
> re/production where class
>
> power
>
> becomes visible. I
> don't know how to do
> this, but the argument is
>
> there
>
> in
> Bourdieu: the power
> relations between
> people are part of the
> capital-mediated
> structure of relations
> in a field (including the
>
> field
>
> of
> opinion/discourse),
> and this explains the
> forms of discourse that
> express
> these power
> relationships and help
> to hold powerful
> positions in
>
> place
>
> in
> the field. In this
> view it is not
> possible to identify the
>
> 'value'
>
> of an
>
> utterance or a sign
> outside of this wider
> analysis… and an
>
> analysis
>
> of
>
> the
> particular
> discursive/cultural
> field within its wider
> sociality.'
>
> The sort of thing I
> had in mind was this
>
> 'word/utterance/statement'
>
> of
>
> yours (I care not at
> the moment which of
> these is chosen - in
>
> this
>
> context
> I am not clear it
> matters, though I
> recognise that every
> work was
>
> once
>
> an
> utterance and a speech
> act… and that parsing
> into words is a
>
> relatively
>
> recent cultural artifice):
>
> '…. My personal
> inclination would be
> to take Ricœur as more
> authoritative
> on the subject than
> any or most of us'
> (see below)
>
> I think the 'value'
> (i.e. exchange value)
> of this statement of
>
> yours
>
> in
>
> my
> frame has to be
> understood in the
> context of its
> function/workthe
> academic field (or
> this section of it),
> how power is exerted here
> through
> reference to
> 'authorities' like
> Ricoeur (NB not just
> 'authors'
>
> like
>
> the
>
> rest of us? ), whether
> this is really useful
> in helping the
>
> community to
>
> progress its
> understanding of the
> issue for practical
> purposes
>
> (e.g.
>
> How
>
> many of the readers of
> this post have
> seriously read Ricoeur
>
> enough
>
> to
>
> get
> the point?).
>
> How our community of
> discourse comes to be
> structured so that
>
> power
>
> 'works' like this -
> that is a wider issue
> - and here it does get
>
> hard
>
> for
> us academics to see
> ourselves as we
> perhaps could or should be
>
> seen.
>
> Michael: I hope you
> don't take this cheeky
> affront too
>
> personally:
>
> I
>
> could
> do the same to most of
> the posts that one
> reads on xmca, and
>
> probably
>
> my
> own- I don't mean to
> suggest that they have
> no use-value, and
>
> certainly
>
> not that the
> collective dialogue
> has no use value. Yet
> still… we
>
> should
>
> recognise that there
> is a power game in
> this field of
>
> discourse/opinion,
>
> if we are to
> understand one another
> well. It may even be
> argued
>
> (with
>
> some
> merit?) that a quote
> appealing to Marx - or
> even Ricoeur - has
>
> some
>
> use
>
> as
> well as exchange value
> (or lets say merit) in
> linking ideas to a
>
> body of
>
> previous revolutionary
> work.
>
> Hugs!
>
> Julian
>
>
>
> On 21/04/2017 16:53,
> "xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf
>
> of
>
> Wolff-Michael Roth"
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf
>
> of
>
> wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com
> <mailto:wolffmichael.roth@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> Ricœur (1985), in
> *Time and
> Narrative 2*, uses
> the following
>
> distinction
>
> for the purposes
> of theorizing the
> difference between
> narrated
>
> time
>
> and
>
> time of narration.
> Accordingly,
> "narrative posses"
> "the
>
> remarkable
>
> property" "of
> being split into
> utterance
> [*énociation*] and
>
> statement [
>
> *énoncé*]."
> To introduce this
> distinction, it
> suffices to recall
> that the
> configurating
> act presiding
> over emplotment is
> a judicative act,
> involving a "grasping
>
> together."
>
> More
>
> precisely, this
> act belongs to the
> family of reflective
>
> judgments.1
>
> We
>
> have
> been
> led to say
> therefore that to
> narrate a story is
> already to
>
> "reflect
>
> upon"
>
> the event
> narrated. For this
> reason, narrative
> "grasping
> together" carries
>
> with
>
> it
>
> the capacity
> for distancing
> itself from its
> own production and
> in this way
>
> dividing
>
> itself in two. (p. 61)
>
> My personal
> inclination would
> be to take Ricœur
> as more
>
> authoritative
>
> on
>
> the subject than
> any or most of us.
>
> Michael
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> ---------------
>
> ------
> Wolff-Michael
> Roth, Lansdowne
> Professor
> Applied Cognitive
> Science
> MacLaurin Building
> A567
> University of Victoria
> Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
> http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth
> <http://web.uvic.ca/%7Emroth>
> <http://education2.uvic.ca/
>
> faculty/mroth/
>
> New book: *The
> Mathematics of
> Mathematics
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new->
>
> directions-in-mat
>
> hematics-and-science-education/the-mathematics-of-
>
> mathematics/>*
>
> On Thu, Apr 20,
> 2017 at 10:38 PM,
> David Kellogg
>
> <dkellogg60@gmail.com
> <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>>
>
> wrote:
>
> I think that
> "statement" is
> too tight, and
> "utterance" is too
>
> loose.
>
> A
>
> statement is
> an
> indicative-declarative
> wording of
> some kind:
>
> we
>
> don't
>
> usually refer
> to commands
> (imperatives),
> questions
> (indicative-interrogatives),
> or
> exclamations
> as "statements"
>
> because
>
> their
> primary
> purpose is not
> to state facts
> (that is, if
> there are
>
> facts,
>
> they
>
> are ancillary,
> and not
> constitutive:
> we can have a
> command, a
>
> question,
>
> or
> an exclamation
> without any
> statement of
> any state of
> affairs,
>
> e.g.
>
> "Look
>
> out!" "Why?"
> "Oh, no!"). So
> "statement" is
> too narrow.
>
> An utterance,
> as Bakhtin
> defines it, is
> simply the
> stretch of
>
> language
>
> we
> find between
> two changes in
> speaker (this
> is why a book is a
>
> single
>
> utterance).
> This is an
> entirely
> descriptive
> unit: if I give
>
> you
>
> a
>
> tape
>
> of
> listening test
> dialogues for
> the Test of
> Proficiency in
>
> Korean,
>
> you
>
> will be
> able to tell
> me exactly how
> many
> utterances
> there are in each
>
> dialogue,
>
> and
> even whether
> the speakers
> are men or
> women, without
>
> understanding
>
> any of
>
> the language.
> As a link
> between
> thinking and
> speech, such a
>
> unit
>
> is
>
> beside
> the point. So
> "utterance" is
> too broad.
>
> And linking
> thinking and
> speech IS the
> point. I think
> you and
>
> Vygotsky
>
> are
> using the word
> "holophrase"
> somewhat
> teleologically,
> like a
>
> fond,
>
> but
>
> expectant,
> grandpa. You
> both think
> that the baby
> who says
>
> "mama"
>
> really
>
> means a
> holophrase
> like "Mama,
> put me in the
> high chair". It's
>
> not
>
> the
>
> case
> that "Mama" is
> a reduction of
> a full
> sentence (like
> "Fine,
>
> thanks,
>
> and
>
> you?"). It's
> more like the
> Ur Wir, or
> "Grandwe", the
> "we" that
> pre-exists
> "me" and "you"
> the way that
> my grandpa
> pre-existed
> me. I am
>
> also
>
> using
>
> the
> word "wording"
> teleologically,
> you notice:
> "Mama" is,
> from the
>
> child's
>
> point of view,
> meaning and
> sounding, but
> not wording at
> all.
>
> But
>
> teleology
> is very useful
> here; indeed,
> I think that
> teleology in
> speech
> ontogenesis
> is a more
> useful
> principle than
> evolution:
> there is, after
>
> all,
>
> a
>
> "complete
> form" right
> there in the
> environment.
>
> The problem
> with Thinking
> and Speech is
> that, unlike
> Capital,
>
> the
>
> author
>
> died in the
> middle of
> writing it,
> and it had to
> be eked out
>
> with
>
> his
>
> old
>
> articles. So
> although
> Chapter One
> and Chapter
> Seven really do
>
> use
>
> wording
> and not word
> as a unit of
> analysis (and
> the "phoneme" is
>
> really
>
> the
>
> morpho-phoneme,
> e.g. a Russian
> case ending,
> something Vygotsky
>
> probably
>
> learned all
> about from his
> old professor
> Trubetskoy and his
>
> classmate at
>
> Moscow
> University
> Jakobson). you
> also have
> Chapter Five,
> which
>
> our
>
> late,
>
> beloved friend
> Paula Towsey
> loved so much.
>
> She had
> reason:
> Chapter Five
> is Vygotsky,
> and so it's
>
> brilliant.
>
> But
>
> it's
> OLD Vygotsky,
> 1928-1929
> Vygotsky (that
> was the year that
>
> Trubetskoy
>
> and
>
> Jakobson left
> Moscow for
> Prague and set
> up the Prague
>
> Linguistic
>
> Circle
>
> which
> eventually
> became
> systemic-functional
> linguistics).
>
> Chapter
>
> 5
>
> is based on
> something from
> the German
> idealist
> psychologists
>
> Reimat
>
> and
>
> Ach, who
> really DID
> believe in
> one-word
> concepts. And
> so we
>
> have
>
> this
>
> weird
> block-like
> model of word
> meaning.
> Vygotsky tries
> to disenchant
>
> and
>
> de-fetishize
> the blocks by
> saying the
> concept is
> really the
>
> process
>
> of
>
> relating the
> word meaning
> to the block,
> but that still
> means
>
> that
>
> a
>
> concept
> is an
> abstraction
> and a
> generalization
> of some block-like
>
> quality.
>
> Chapter Six is
> better,
> because here
> the "model" of
> word
>
> meaning
>
> is a
>
> RELATOR, like
> "because" or
> "although".
> Notice that
> these are
>
> the
>
> kinds
>
> of
> words that
> preliterate
> children do
> not consider
> words. And in
>
> fact
>
> that's
> why Piaget got
> the results he
> did--the kids
> really couldn't
>
> figure
>
> out
>
> what
> he meant when
> he asked them
> to explain
> what the word
> "because"
>
> meant
>
> in
>
> a
> particular
> sentence--they
> assumed he
> wanted to know
> what the
>
> sentence
>
> meant, because
> asking what a
> word like
> "because"
> means in a
>
> sentence
>
> without the
> rest of the
> sentence is
> really a
> little like
>
> asking
>
> if
>
> there
>
> are more white
> flowers or
> more flowers
> in a bouquet
> of red and
>
> white
>
> flowers. But
> suppose (over
> a period of
> some years) we
> give the
>
> kid
>
> the
>
> following
>
> utterances-cum-statement/wordings-cum-wordgroup/wordings-cum-words.
>
> a) A rational,
> designed, and
> planned
> economy is
> possible in
>
> the
>
> USSR.
>
> (Why
> is that,
> Teacher?) Oh,
> it is just
> because all
> the means of
>
> production
>
> belong to the
> workers and
> peasants.
> b) Planned
> economy is
> possible in
> the USSR
> because all the
>
> means
>
> of
>
> production
> belong to the
> workers and
> peasants.
> c) All the
> means of
> production
> belong to the
> workers and
>
> peasants
>
> so
>
> economic
> planning is
> possible in
> the USSR.
> d) Workers and
> peasant's
> ownership of
> the means of
> production
>
> means
>
> socialist
> construction
> is possible.
> e) Public
> ownership of
> production
> enables social
> construction.
> f) the
> proprietary
> preconditions
> of construction
> g) socialist
> property forms
> h) socialist
> property
> i) socialism
>
> By the time
> the child is
> the age when
> children beget
> other
>
> children,
>
> this child
> will see that
> the clause
> wording "all
> the means of
>
> production
>
> belong to the
> workers and
> peasants" has
> become a
> nominal group
>
> wording
>
> "public
> ownership",
> and the
> nominal group
> wording "a
> rational,
>
> designed,
>
> and planned
> economy" has
> become a
> single,
> block-like word
>
> "socialism".
>
> And
> because for
> Vygotsky the
> "internal"
> really means the
>
> psychological,
>
> while
>
>
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