[Xmca-l] Re: What Are Halliday's "Magic Gateways"?

Mon Jun 22 14:44:34 PDT 2020

Word meaning (and any other unit of analysis) develops--the timescale of
its ontogenetic development is radically different from that of its
sociogenetic development, just as it must needs differ from its logogenetic
development.

Thought is not "expressed" in word meanings but only realized in or
"materialized" by them to the extent that the order of thoughts resembles
the order of words. Sometimes that's not very much!

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RzdehJzijYsaqz-5AtLPEOFKrKoijphlktXDFgtVfuqso4V3bjF7PgcmVTu90grfCYjxQg$ 
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological
Works* *Volume
One: Foundations of Pedology*"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RzdehJzijYsaqz-5AtLPEOFKrKoijphlktXDFgtVfuqso4V3bjF7PgcmVTu90goaLj3dKQ$ 

On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 9:35 PM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> the idea that using a cultural artefact an individual interacting with
> another individual brings the entire history and culture of which they are
> a part into their immediate interaction. Thus suspending the distinction
> between social theory and psychology.
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Hegel for Social Movements
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!Mih3wA!WofP7aaNDzNixfJP-qIT7_0DVixsUGJRwSFItiD3UtuFF0_Rs0ogKUvb2bFD5CxuKnSVgQ$>
> Home Page
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm__;!!Mih3wA!WofP7aaNDzNixfJP-qIT7_0DVixsUGJRwSFItiD3UtuFF0_Rs0ogKUvb2bFD5Cx4gCAe4A$>
> On 21/06/2020 10:15 pm, Anthony Barra wrote:
>
> And my other question (for everybody), which I think might elicit a nice
> range of responses, is:
>
> What do you think is the most powerful threshold concept in Vygotsky?
> i.e., what is the one concept, or insight, of Vygotsky's that, when fully
> understood, most opens up a new way of seeing?
>
> From Meyer and Land (2003): "Threshold Concepts’ may be considered to be
> “akin to passing through a portal” or “conceptual gateway” that opens up
> “previously inaccessible way[s] of thinking about something”
>
> Thank you!
>
> Anthony
>
> P.S.  The following excerpts might hurt more than help, or confuse more
> than clarify, but for convenience's sake, I'll copy and paste them here:
>
> Meyer and Land, 2003: "Our discussions with practitioners in a range of
> disciplinary areas have led us to conclude that a threshold concept, across
> a range of subject contexts, is likely to be:
>
>    1. Transformative, in that, once understood, its potential effect on
>    student learning and behaviour is to occasion a significant shift in the
>    perception of a subject, or part thereof.
>    2. Probably irreversible, in that the change of perspective occasioned
>    by acquisition of a threshold concept is unlikely to be forgotten, or will
>    be unlearned only by considerable effort.
>    3. Integrative; that is, it exposes the previously hidden
>    interrelatedness of something."
>
>
> Flanagan, 2020: "Examples of the threshold concept must be transformative
> and involve a traverse through a liminal space. They are likely to be
> characterised by many of, but not necessarily all of, the other features
> listed below:
>
>    1. Transformative: Once understood, a threshold concept changes the
>    way in which the student views the discipline.
>    2. Troublesome: Threshold concepts are likely to be troublesome for
>    the student. Perkins [1999, 2006] has suggested that knowledge can be
>    troublesome e.g. when it is counter-intuitive, alien or seemingly
>    incoherent.
>    3. Irreversible: Given their transformative potential, threshold
>    concepts are also likely to be irreversible, i.e. they are difficult to
>    unlearn.
>    4. Integrative: Threshold concepts, once learned, are likely to bring
>    together different aspects of the subject that previously did not appear,
>    to the student, to be related.
>    5. Bounded: A threshold concept will probably delineate a particular
>    conceptual space, serving a specific and limited purpose.
>    6. Discursive: Meyer and Land [2] suggest that the crossing of a
>    threshold will incorporate an enhanced and extended use of language.
>    7. Reconstitutive: "Understanding a threshold concept may entail a
>    shift in learner subjectivity, which is implied through the transformative
>    and discursive aspects already noted. Such reconstitution is, perhaps, more
>    likely to be recognised initially by others, and also to take place over
>    time (Smith)".
>    8. Liminality: Meyer and Land [4] have likened the crossing of the
>    pedagogic threshold to a ‘rite of passage’ (drawing on the ethnographical
>    studies of Gennep and of Turner in which a transitional or liminal space
>    has to be traversed; “in short, there is no simple passage in learning from
>    ‘easy’ to ‘difficult’; mastery of a threshold concept often involves messy
>    journeys back, forth and across conceptual terrain. (Cousin [2006])”.
>
> Thank you!  (And thanks again to David, re: magic gateways)
>
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> On Saturday, June 20, 2020, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> You know, nothing is quite as complicated as trying to be simple about
>> something complex. So Anthony wanted me to talk about a "threshold concept"
>> in Halliday, and even gave me chapter and verse about what this might
>> involve.
>>
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/6qf1qz__;!!Mih3wA!RzdehJzijYsaqz-5AtLPEOFKrKoijphlktXDFgtVfuqso4V3bjF7PgcmVTu90gpFNp6Zgw$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/6qf1qz__;!!Mih3wA!R1tuEz28TKCRX-z854TQcafClzwE-T5yfevnoxkw5DRwjpbz239rg0baB8eFK_R16hv7mQ$>
>>
>> Halliday was, first and foremost, a teacher like you and me. That's why
>> he rejected the whole distinction between grammar and vocabulary, it's how
>> he ended up involved in the Chinese revolution, it's why he asked--and even
>> answered--teacherly questions like "How big is a language?" (depends on
>> where you are and where you are going, but it can be calculated) and "Does
>> Chomsky's distinction between surface and deep structure help you teach or
>> learn anything at all?" (no) and "What is 'difficulty' and how much of it
>> can we blame on the text rather than the child?" (it depends on how willing
>> you are to divorce the text from the child's understanding of it).
>>
>> I think that precisely because he was a teacher like you and me, he
>> wouldn't have liked the concept of "threshold concept": a single "aha"
>> moment that retrospectively transforms the way you think about a whole
>> domain like language. Yet in another sense, precisely because he was a
>> teacher like you and me, he inisisted on free choice (yes, with consent!)
>> as the organizing principle of lexicogrammar ("grammar-and-vocabulary",
>> where the "and" is to be understood in a fully Spinozan way). So he sees
>> child development as a series of magic gateways--the differentiation of
>> meaningful choices, some of which are more meaningful than others. The most
>> meaningful one is not "that gateway"--the one you are looking back upon in
>> satisfaction--but "this gateway"--the one you find yourself on the
>> threshold of.  The magic is simply in the fact that you know that beyond
>> that gateway there are even greater gateways.
>>
>> Or rather more delicate gateways. Halliday used to say that you can
>> really start anywhere when you are describing a complex phenomenon, so long
>> as you remember that beyond one degree of delicacy there are infinitely
>> others. So I think that the description I gave of the magic gateway here is
>> adequate at about eighth grade level, with two amendments:
>>
>> a) The "iinterpersonal metafunction" is singular and not plural.
>> Functions like "Mood" are sub-functions of this single uber-function that
>> is the child's magic gateway into the whole of language. And of course
>> beyond that gateway lie other gateways, e.g. "Subject", "Finite", etc.  The
>> same is true of the "textual metafunction" (Theme, Rheme) and the
>> "ideational metafunction" (one of the very rare sources of disagreement
>> between Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan was that she insisted that there were
>> really two different ideational metafunctions, the logical and the
>> experientail, while Halliday preferred to see them as subfunctions of one).
>>
>> b) The "who" (interpersonal), the "how" (textual) and the "what"
>> (ideational) are not the names of questions ("Who are you?", "How are you?"
>> and "What are you made of?"  are not three different metafunctions). They
>> are labels for the metafunctions, attempts by me to simplify a complex
>> terminology. But a name is just a gateway, and beyond each vague name there
>> must necessarily be a more delicate and therefore more definite one.
>>
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
>> Outlines, Spring 2020
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!RzdehJzijYsaqz-5AtLPEOFKrKoijphlktXDFgtVfuqso4V3bjF7PgcmVTu90grfCYjxQg$ 
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!UeTMSuYY3iGYNI80NGkgVW3vksPeX6xhNqXG1qffMzIs4RXePyHwgPaQtDiL035DfoBa0w$>
>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume
>> One: Foundations of Pedology*"
>>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!RzdehJzijYsaqz-5AtLPEOFKrKoijphlktXDFgtVfuqso4V3bjF7PgcmVTu90goaLj3dKQ$ 
>>
>> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UeTMSuYY3iGYNI80NGkgVW3vksPeX6xhNqXG1qffMzIs4RXePyHwgPaQtDiL035f0sEiOg$>
>>
>
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