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

Fri Jan 5 15:31:56 PST 2018

Fair enough David. Not being a linguist myself, I am not looking for what you see in the data. 

By the way, it’s not Lukacs vs.Heidegger, it’s Lukacs and Heidegger. For example:

Goldmann, L. (1979). Lukács and Heidegger: Towards a new philosophy. Routledge and Kegan Paul. 

Martin

> On Jan 5, 2018, at 6:21 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Sorry, Martin. I wasn't very clear.
> 
> Compare:
> 
> a) "Phonology is variable but semantics is invariant."
> b) "Phonology is variable but semantics invariant."
> c) "Phonology variable, but semantics is invariant."
> 
> What is the difference between a) and b)? Nothing, you might say, but if
> you say that you are taking the position that grammar varies without any
> variation in semantics, which is exactly what Ruqaiya Hasan and William
> Labov dispute.
> 
> Labov: "Sentences a) and b) are two lexicogrammatical variants of a single
> thought. They are both standard English."
> Hasan: "Sentences a) and b) are two different lexicogrammatical
> realizations of two slightly different thoughts, because a) stresses the
> parallelism and therefore asserts that the two propositions are inseparable
> but b) does not.
> 
> Now consider a) and b) on the one hand and c) on the other. What's the
> difference? Well, you might say, a) and b) are standard English, but c) is
> not.
> 
> Fine. Now, this does suggest that there is a rule of standard English which
> says that elision works anaphorically (i.e. referring back). What we see in
> Wacquant's data is elision that is cataphoric (i.e. the omission refers
> FORWARDS and not back). That's not explained in any of Labov's articles on
> AAVE, so far as I know. And that's what interests me in this article,
> because I find the business of subjects and objects (e.g. Lukacs vs.
> Heidegger) too abstract and unprogrammatic to be resolvable in any useful
> way. This seems more like a solution-sized problem. But then, I am a
> linguist.
> 
> I also think that the issue of whether AAVE is a phonological variant or a
> semantic variant is important for education. Vygotsky's account of
> education is (to my reading) essentially an account of ontogenetic semantic
> variation,and his account of cultural history is essentially an account of
> sociogenetic semantic variation. You know that that the question of whether
> thinking varies the way that speech does is heavily moralized in a lot of
> critical pedagogy; you commented on this in your 2001 book with Mark Tappan.
> 
> 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 Sat, Jan 6, 2018 at 7:18 AM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
> 
>> I’m a bit confused, David. (h) is from the epigraph, in which a boxer is
>> describing what it’s like to be *turned into* an object by ‘outsiders,’ who
>> judge boxing without knowing it. That's, to say, "they lookin' at it from a
>> spectator point of view” (489).  (But notice how the speaker invites the
>> audience to tun things around and imagine *being* the critic, the
>> spectator, the fans: that's why in (h) it is “we” on the *outside* and “he”
>> (the imagined performer) on the *inside.* So *here* there are objects and
>> subjects. But in the gym?
>> 
>> Also, I’m not sure why you are focused on the copula? Didn’t Labov
>> describe the rules for this in NNE? I be forgetful about that.
>> 
>> In fact, I’m not sure why you focused on the grammar at all. Wacquant’s
>> analysis is focused on “tropes.” It’s a weakness of the article that it
>> doesn’t describe or illustrate how he went about this analysis, it only
>> displays his results. But those are very interesting, I think.
>> 
>> Wacquant is French and white. He proposes in his book (and in the article
>> too I believe) that it was a combination of luck, hard work, and being
>> French that enabled how to become accepted by the members of the gym. In my
>> opinion, this is yet another example of the ‘boundary’ myth in fieldwork:
>> the idea that one crosses a frontier and becomes accepted “as a native.”
>> It’s clear in some of his data that the boxers displayed awareness of
>> Wacquant's difference, and even of the fact that he was a “teacher” who was
>> writing a book. But yes, in several respects overcoming the distinction
>> between subject and object is indeed an interactional accomplishment, not
>> to be sneezed at.
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> p.s. Here’s Malinowski passing as one of the natives...
>> 
>> Or the link in case the image doesn’t travel:
>> <https://australianmuseum.net.au/uploads/images/32691/
>> malinowski%20trobriands%20aa%20aa_big.jpg>
>> 
>>> On Jan 5, 2018, at 4:57 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 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!
>> :)
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>> 