[Xmca-l] Re: Units, utterances, elements and systems

[Helena Worthen]

Another reason why an utterance is not a question of grammar (as in a sentence or phrase):

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/ <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-shallowness-of-google-translate/551570/>

Google Translate can translate sentences but not utterances.

Helena


> On Apr 14, 2019, at 8:28 PM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
> 
> Wow! Nothing like a few weeks off the keyboard to get some thinking time, eh Martin? You've created about a dozen threads here, so I'll help us manage that by renaming this thread, OK? :) I'll make my points in between your paragraphs.
> 
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
> On 15/04/2019 3:12 am, Martin Packer wrote:
>> Hi Andy,
>> 
>> I think I may have hijacked this thread; feel free to put it back on its tracks.
>> 
>> But I was responding to the proposal that "The minimal holistic unit of conversation is the utterance. An utterance, unlike a sentence, is complete in itself.” (It was Arturo quoting Akhutina.) In terms of your terminology of ‘unit’ and ‘system’ it seems to me contradictory: the utterance is a unit, but an utterance is complete. If it’s complete, that means it’s a ‘system,’ right? I was worried by the suggestion that an utterance “is complete in itself,” and that’s why I mentioned the assumption in Conversation Analysis that the minimal unit is always a *pair* of utterances (I may be putting the word ‘unit’ in their mouths). And these pairs are linked one after another, or embedded one within another, so that every conversation has its own unity...
>> 
>> And then a little later in the same quotation we find, "Thus, the utterance and the word, as a compressed version of the utterance, are the units of speech acts, communication, and consciousness.”   And you, Andy, proposed that word and utterance are micro and macro units. Organelles within cells within organs within bodies within ecosystems…?
> Yes. It is normal but not necessary for an analysis by units to have two units, like you say: cell and organism, organism and ecosystem, word-meaning and concept (LSV), artefact-mediated action and activity (ANL), commodity and capital (KM). And I see utterance as the unit of dialogue, demarcated by turn-taking, and as I read Bakhtin, this was his view. 
> I don't know what the units of an utterance would be, given that an utterance can be an entire novel or a single word. I would have to be more familiar with Bakhtin than I am.
> A turn in a conversation does not constitute a self-standing whole, but nor would two consecutive utterances; probably only a whole conversation of many utterances would. An utterance might be responding to the previous turn but one, after all. But as I understand this approach, you break the conversation down into utterances and then you figure out what 'move' was being made with each utterance. Utterances form a series that are taken as meaningful in relation to other utterances in the conversation. If you conceive of a conversation as a series of "moves" in that way, then obviously the utterance is the unit, the basic "move." That's why I see conversation analysis as suitable for tracking power relations, a collaborative search, etc.
> That is the point: the unit is a concept of the whole (a kind of language game, in this case perhaps).
> So a word could be an utterance (e.g. "No!"), but "word" is a different concept from "utterance." And "word" is a very problematic concept. "Word-meaning" on the other hand is not problematic, because in "word-meaning" "word" simply means the sound which is the tool for the act of meaning - it could be a phrase or a single word. Word-meaning or utterance, the difference is conceptual, not the number of sounds, etc.
> A commodity is not "complete in itself" either, you need the commodity for which it is exchanged. But you can understand "commodity" viscerally, without the concepts of money or capital. But not vice versa.
> System analysis is a fundamentally different approach from analysis by units. Engestrom's idea is an example of systems analysis. A system is made up of qualitatively different elements, whereas analysis by units considers a whole as made up of conceptually equivalent units. So (subject, object/outcome, instruments,  rules, community, division-of-labour) constitutes a system. Within well-defined the boundary conditions the system is analysed as a self-standing whole. If more or less the same entity is approached for analysis by units it is an activity - an aggregate of artefact-mediated actions. This is an essentially open-ended approach, because all these actions use cultural artefacts from the wider community and have objects which originate in the wider community as well.
> So the difference between 'system' and 'unit' is not whether something is "complete in itself," but the conceptual difference - taking it as made up of elements (H and O) or units (H2O). The contradiction can be resolved by saying that the unit itself is analysed as a system (e.g. a commodity is use-value and exchange-value, word-meaning is sound and meaning, and activity-system is that list of 6 elements); in that sense, the activity system can be a unit of a larger process, such as a social formation.
> 
>> 
>> Anyhow, looking back over the thread, one persisting issue seems to have been whether we can study language objectively. And that is nested (it seems to me; or perhaps it’s in tension with?) the issue of how best to conceptualize language. As a system? As talk? As conceptualization?  It’s intriguing that these issues prove so hard to resolve. I confess that I incline towards Haydi’s point that "Any word can be seen in its state of liquidity and flexibility.” I see this ‘liquidity’ in the changes in word meaning over time, in the ‘flow’ of sounds and words within and among communities as they come in contact, and in the ebb and flow of single conversations. But this may simply be my personal taste.
> 
> There is no doubt that there are many ways to conceptualise language-activity - many lenses each revealing different aspects of the whole. To my mind, the concept which get to the heart of what language is, is the relation between concepts and narratives. As I see it, concepts are meaningful only thanks to their place in a meaningful narrative, while narrative is (literally) inconceivable without concepts. Words of course are the tools and common substance which are used to realise both, and the analysis of words is a fascinating discipline in itself, but I do not believe that word-analysis is the best starting point for understanding language. It is just another lens, a side-view, so to speak. I believe that language pre-existed words, or at least, could have.
> 
> BTW, when you talk of "changes in word meaning over time," you have in mind that meaning= what is in the relevant dictionary or look-up table. That is not how I see it. "Word-meaning" in my view is an artefact-mediated action. "Meaning" is an act, realised at a certain time and place in speech. The dictionary, if it is any good, is simply a history of word-meaning, not a look-up table consulted by the speaker and listener.
>> 
>> I also find it helpful to try to step beyond subjective/objective: Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas were just two of the people who pointed out the need for a third category: language is ‘intersubjective’; it is (using Taylor’s phrase) "the common property” of a society - even though that property is being continually reproduced and transformed in and through people’s daily talk. 
> According to my reading, it was Karl Popper who invented the word "intersubjective" in the sense I think you are using it, but later it took on a new meaning, radically opposed to Popper's meaning, viz., the conception of social life in terms one-on-one unmediated interactions. In this latter case, culture (books, libraries, speech, machinery, etc.) is simply a background, whereas for CHAT, units of culture (i.e., artefacts) mediate units of action (behavioral deeds in which the aim differs from the goal). So, in my view, the earlier Popperian meaning of "intersubjectivity," which you ascribe to Taylor and Habermas, is more or less the same as "culture," (which I prefer) but it seems to me a little vague becauise "culture" in the special sense I use it pre-exists the interaction in question, while the more contemporary meaning implicitly excluding the already-existing means as if every communication is an original ab novo act of creation, is fundamentally incompatible with CHAT, and in fact, I believe, our chief protagonist.
> 
> Andy
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Mar 18, 2019, at 8:27 PM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Yes, all true, Martin, but in my view in saying that a word is a sign for a concept, the real or imagined entity which is deemed to be a instance of the concept is a moment of the concept, as are the practices whereby those instances are subsumed under the universal. I should have made that clear.
>>> 
>>> Andy
>>> Andy Blunden
>>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
>> 

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