[Xmca-l] Re: Saussure vs Peirce

[Greg Thompson]

Andy,

Well...

-greg
p.s., Volosinov (Bakhtin?) has a lovely essay where he treats the word
"Well..." as an utterance (or that is one translation of it - the other is
"So").  So...

On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 6:15 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> Yes, so we're almost in furious agreement on 'utterance'. But this
> contradicted by Akhutina saying 'the word is a  compressed version of the
> utterance'. It is not. A 'word' is something else - it is a sign for a
> concept.
>
> The limit case of an utterance, such as when a person responds: "Rubbish!"
> is also stretching the meaning of 'word' to its limits, so I don't think
> this is what is meant. It is just wrong.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 18/03/2019 3:45 am, Helena Worthen wrote:
>
> 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> 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
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> 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)*
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
WEBSITE: greg.a.thompson.byu.edu
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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