[Xmca-l] Re: Saussure vs Peirce

[Helena Worthen]

I find it useful to think of an utterance as bounded on two ends: on one, by the utterance to which it responds, on the other, by the utterance that responds to it. Thus you can discern utterances within utterances. Minimally, a two -part exchange, as Martin says; maximally, a whole stream of briefer utterances bounded by their prompt and response.  

Helena Worthen
helenaworthen@gmail.com



> On Mar 17, 2019, at 9:32 AM, Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net> wrote:
> 
> According to conversation analysts, the minimal unit in conversation is the adjacency pair: a two-part exchange in which the second utterance is functionally dependent on the first.  Question-answer; greeting-greeting; request-reply, and so on. An utterance, then, is both a turn and a move within a conversation.  An utterance is *not* “complete in itself” - it is a component in a larger organization: at least a pair, and usually a much longer sequence.
> 
> Martin
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Mar 16, 2019, at 3:11 AM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> I would  have appreciated a definition of some kind of what the writer actually means by "utterance." In absence of that "the word, as a compressed version of the utterance" is nonsense, or at least a step backwards because it obliterates a concept. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind saying that the two are together the micro- and macro-units of dialogue (or something having that meaning). The same as Leontyev has two units of activity: action and activity, and Marx has two units of political economy: commodity and capital. To theorise a complex process you always need two units. 
>> The rest of what you have cited reminds me of what Constantin Stanislavskii said about the units of an actor's performance:
>> 
>> https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/stanislavskii.pdf <https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/stanislavskii.pdf>
>> Andy
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
>> On 16/03/2019 5:42 pm, Arturo Escandon wrote:
>>> Thanks for that conceptual jewel, mate. 
>>> 
>>> Let me bring here Akhutina to further show their complementariness:
>>> 
>>> The minimal holistic unit of conversation is the utterance. An utterance, unlike a sentence, is complete in itself. The utterance always carries within it the marks and features of who is speaking to whom, for what reason and in what situation; it is polyphonic. An utterance develops from a motivation, “a volitional objective” and progresses through inner speech to external speech. The prime mover of the semantic progression (from the inner word that is comprehensible to me alone to the external speech that he, the listener, will understand) is the comparison of my subjective, evanescent sense, which I attribute to the given word, and its objective (constant for both me and my listener) meaning.Thus, the major building material for speech production is the living two-voice word. But polyphony is a feature of the utterance as expressed in the word; the word carrying personal sense is an abbreviation of the utterance. Thus, the utterance and the word, as a compressed version of the utterance, are the units of speech acts, communication, and consciousness.
>>> 
>>> Best
>>> 
>>> Arturo
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Sent from Gmail Mobile
> 
> 
> 
> Martin
> 
> "I may say that whenever I meet Mrs. Seligman or Dr. Lowie or discuss matters with Radcliffe-Brown or Kroeber, I become at once aware that my partner does not understand anything in the matter, and I end usually with the feeling that this also applies to myself” (Malinowski, 1930)
> 
> 
> 

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