[Xmca-l] Re: The Science of Qualitative Research 2ed

[David Kellogg]

Take a look at these clauses from Wacquant's data:

a) They ignorant. (489)
b) Someon tha' their min's thinkin' real low. (495)
c) He real tough. (496)
d) He been in jail. (496)
e) He aggressive; he's quick. (496)
f) (Y)ou not going nowhere. (513)
g) We lookin' at it 'cause we spectactors an' stuff (489)
h) We on the outsi' lookin' in but *he's* insi' lookin out (489)

Now, when I started reading this, I decided that the subject/object stuff
was a red herring. It's obvious, even in the epigraph, that subject/object
is a real distinction for the people in this article, so unless the author
is pulling our legs about trying to reconstruct how people themselves are
thinking about "the Sweet Science" and "The Manly Art", the subject/object
distinction is not only real, it's a central point of this article. Of
course, denying the distinction is a point of honor for academics (just
like winning prize-fights for boxers). But as soon as your subjects
(sorry--I mean your research objects) start saying things like h) you know
that you can't really do without the distinction after all.

So instead I was trying to work out the rule for when "to be" can be
deleted in the grammar and when it cannot. Labov has already written a lot
about this--he says it's phonological (you can delete it whenever you can
contract "to be" but not otherwise, so for example you can say "They're
ignorant" or "They ignorant" but you can't say "Yeah, it" instead of "Yeah,
it is"). The problem with this rule is that tells me what I can do, but it
doesn't explain the variation we see in  e) and h), where the speaker
starts with deletion but ends with completion ("He [is--deleted]
aggressive; he's quick"). Another problem is that, as Ruqaiya Hasan pointed
out, it assumes that phonology varies but semantics invariant (because I
write in standard English the DELETIONS are late appearing in that last
sentence, but in Wacquant's data the NON-DELETIONS appear late.) If
semantics were invariant, then Saint Augustine's theory of language in the
"Confessions" would be all we need to learn a foreign language.

My first theory was based on a) through c): it was that when "to be" is
ATTRIBUTIVE (that is, when it is used to introduce a nominal attribute in
the form of an adjective but not a verbal attribute in the form of an
adverb) you can delete it. It's a good theory: it would explain the
apparent free variation in e), for example. It would also allow
generalization to Chinese and Korean grammar (where adjectives are really
verbs and not nominals at all). But as soon as I got to d) and f) it is
clear that it won't work. If the speaker is thinking of "been in jail" and
"not going nowhere" as nominal attributes then the distinction between
attributive and non-attributive is a lot less meaningful to them than the
difference between subject and object.

So my second theory was an extension of Labov's theory. You delete "to be"
when the emphasis is on the lexical verb elements ("ignorant", "real low",
"real tough", "jail", "aggressive"). But you supply it for emphasis when
you are basically rephrasing for effect ("he's quick", "he's insi' lookin'
out". This accounts for the data a lot better, as you can see, and it
explains why the non-deletions are always late appearing in the clause
complex. But it still leaves open the question of why the speaker is
non-deleting.

At this point it occurred to me that thiis is an instance of speech
accomodation--the speaker is switching in the direction of Wacquant's
somewhat precious and precise (non-native) use of English, as a way of
showing that they respect him. So I deduced that Wacquant is white. Have a
look:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo%C3%AFc_Wacquant

Sure enough. It seems to me that overcoming the distinction between subject
and object is actually an interactional accomplishment, and it's not the
least of Wacquant's achievements in this article. But it's not something
that any researcher can afford to take for granted when they step into the
arena.



David Kellogg

Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'

Free e-print available (for a short time only) at

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full


On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 5:04 PM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
wrote:

> These are really interesting questions, a really good dialogue on what a
> critical non-dualist approach can be. Thanks for the attachment Martin
> (which does work in the link you sent last).
> Alfredo
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net>
> Sent: 04 January 2018 23:32
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Science of Qualitative Research 2ed
>
> The attachment doesn’t seem to travel well. Here’s a link:
>
> <https://publicsociology.berkeley.edu/publications/producing/wacquant.pdf>
>
> Martin
>
> > On Jan 4, 2018, at 5:20 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On Jan 4, 2018, at 5:11 PM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> I’ve attached the “point of view” article: everyone should have it!  :)
> >
>
>
>