A somewhat larger scale and distributed role of concealment (or "masking")
might be the way professions reduce the perception of the underdeterminacy of
their supporting and constitutive justifications. In my own research I have
come to focus on what I characterize as the professionalist curriculum
(teamwork, cooperation, presentational & communication skills,
entrepreneurship, etc.) and note little distinction between math/science and
humanities curricula when I do so. Even at the secondary level, there exist
significant elements of masking as groups learn to (re)present their findings
and hence their group/themselves in a "better light."
I do not read anything particularly sinister into this but have become curious
about what pressures the shift from industrialism to the "knowledge era" are
creating. Certainly it is quite possible to imagine professional networks
becoming quite as pernicious, hegemonic, and disingenuous as their more
maligned corporatist and/or bureaucratic counterparts and thus keeping at bay
more authentic speech forms (assuming we could ever tell the form from the
substance in any case).
No matter, there will always be surcease in the warmth of companionship and
celebration: A very merry season to you all then (& g'night Gracie).
ciao, Rolfe
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Rolfe Windward (UCLA GSE&IS, Curriculum & Teaching)
ibalwin who-is-at mvs.oac.ucla.edu (text)
rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu (text/BinHex/MIME/Uuencode)
CompuServe: 70014,00646 (text/binary/GIF/JPEG)
"I respect belief, but doubt is what gets you an education." W. Mizener
------------------------------TEXT-OF-YOUR-MAIL--------------------------------
> Resent-Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1995 21:29:00 -0800 (PST)
> Date: Sun, 17 Dec 95 23:48:52 EST
> From: Jay Lemke <JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
> Subject: Ritual discourses
> To: X-MCA Discussion List Group <xmca who-is-at WEBER.UCSD.EDU>
> Resent-Message-ID: <"dToIH3.0.TU1.RmFrm" who-is-at weber>
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>
> Some of our recent discussion of the artificiality of dissertations
> and, in some people's views, other forms of academic and school
> discourses, in classrooms as well as in writing, raises interesting
> problems about the functions of these ceremonial or ritual
> discourse formations and the activities they help constitute.
>
> One assumption in many of these comments, and perhaps implied
> but not intended in my own, is that _communication_ is the primary
> function of discourse, spoken or written. I do not believe that
> this is a useful assumption. It certainly seems to lead to the
> sense that when we produce discourses in situations where there
> is very little likelihood of communication, that the discourse
> production is in vain. Even if we eliminate internal speech and
> prayers as effectively communicative in special senses, however,
> we are still left with a range of other uses and functions of
> discourse.
>
> Poetic discourse, and a lot of less artistic production, is
> often not communicative. The activity is the production itself,
> the discourse product the goal. There is no further goal, no
> larger activity. Not all discourse production is _instrumental_
> in this sense.
>
> One can debate the subtleties of whether misleading communication
> is communicative or not, but as Erich Steiner long ago argued
> in _The Tower of Babel_, many uses of language have as their
> primary function the concealment of meaning, the creation of
> a 'smokescreen' or distraction behind which we can enjoy some
> real privacy in a world where most discourse is taken as a
> way into our private spaces. Discourse can be camouflage, it
> can create 'cover' in which we can hide our Selves.
>
> Ritual and ceremonial discourse is certainly the most prominent
> case, I think, of essentially non-communicative discourse. Here,
> as in poetic production (of some kinds), it is merely the creation
> of the discourse as such that matters, or if it is instrumental
> as mediating some further activity, then the goal of that activity
> is not communication but action, causation, transformation of
> the social and/or material world. The performative dimension of
> language is not essentially communicative.
>
> Somewhere on the border is the interactive dimension of discourse
> production: from phatic communion to the establishment of intimacy,
> there is simultaneously a communicative dimension and a performative
> one, creating the social bond or relationship at the same time as,
> and sometimes by means of information communicated or representations
> of a state of affairs presented or announced.
>
> When we reexamine this wider range of basic discursive functions
> (and there are more variants surely) in a more macro-social
> perspective, so that we do not assume that the functions of
> discourse production are always limited to the here and now,
> we begin to realize that many of the indexical functions of
> language (and other forms of semiosis) help to knit together
> social communities (e.g. speakers of the same dialect) and
> create social structure (e.g. language differences). Discourses
> embody ideologies and support power and privilege far beyond
> the moments and situations in which ideological language is
> uttered, written, heard, or read.
>
> What is true of language content in this way is also true of
> language forms, like genres. From Foucault to Bazerman, we
> know that discourse forms, like activity structures in general,
> are units of social organization. The activity of writing a
> dissertation, painful to read because of its ritualized
> register features (hyper-academese) and largely unread, binds
> the writer into a network of people and activities, interdependent
> and historically evolving, that is one of the things we mean
> by a field or a discipline. Communicative dysfunction does not
> mean that other functions of discourse are not operating full-steam.
>
> And, yes, 'tis an ill wind that blows no good. Some people
> doubtless find some value in the task of writing these
> monstrosities. (Remember that I am not dismissing the value
> of the research, just of the desirability of the genre
> conventions and the unnecessary labor of writing them.) Any
> large writing task is good practice for future book authors
> ('rehearsal'), and write long enough in almost any expository
> genre about something and you will learn a lot about it and
> about yourself. I am sure some people actually enjoyed
> writing theirs. Some people make a life's work of it. I once
> read a 1000 pages that was only a third of the projected
> dissertation, and it was a marvelous work of historical
> and linguistic-theoretical analysis. Imagine that the authors
> of a book actually took all their notes and all their
> data and presented it in expository form so that one had
> a complete discursive record in coherent prose of the entire
> enterprise, and not just the highlights and results and
> enough evidence to be convincing. Imagine the archival
> function taking over from the communicative one. The
> ultimate dissertation ... but who would read it? And would
> having written it lead to a better book?
>
> As to the ritual character of much classroom discourse,
> I think enough has probably been written on that subject.
> It is precisely this ritual character which has led so
> many people to wonder what the non-communicative functions
> of this discourse are, and to call so repeatedly, and so
> vainly, for 'authentic conversation' in classrooms. Don't
> hold your breath, friends ... all those other functions
> are not soon going to disappear, and the evidence of
> history is that they are not compatible with the dominance
> of the communicative function. Dissertations, however,
> very likely will disappear before the institutions that
> support them do.
>
> Christmas does eventually come! JAY.
>
>
> (Why wait for Christmas? Hanukkah is here!)
>
>
> JAY LEMKE.
> City University of New York.
> BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
> INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
>