Re: Quack! Quack! Quack! (2)

Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann who-is-at igc.apc.org)
Thu, 18 Apr 1996 11:37:53 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Jim, My heart reaction to your message was "YUM!" Thank you for
explaining the weather/climate analogy, which I now understand and
whose dialectical component I also agree much with. After reading
Bill's message which appeared shortly on my screen after yours, I thought
that we may need to insert situation theory and emergence concepts
in there too, but to me that does not really completely change the
relationship between langue and parole, including any degrees of
prognosis. There are examples and counter examples (different kinds of
navigotors...) which perhaps can all be reconciled seeing action
with differnt stances, positions. And yes no doubt that we have had
enough of socio-cognitive splits when hyphens are trying hard to
describe the intimate relationship between both terms. Sorry to have
sounded as though I were fracturing things again, I agree and understand
the issues subsumed.

Francoise
Francoise Herrmann
fherrmann who-is-at igc.org

>
> Francoise
>
> Halliday's weather/climate analogy is drawing on the notion of time
> depth. From a short time frame we can only observe the weather; but from
> a longer time frame we can generalise weather into climate - and use
> climate then as a way of predicting weather - probabilistically of
> course. With language, he's saying that with a short time frame, what we
> see of language are texts, but that given a longer time frame we can
> generalise these into a system which predicts what might come next. In
> these terms, langue is a kind of phylogenetic record - the store of
> meanings that are imminent and relevant to the yet to be spoken. Parole - A
> text
> is the new meaning we make in relation to what has been - the weather we
> experience as a result of our semiotic climate. And of course, every
> experience of weather changes the climate - maybe only in small ways -
> but the whole process of instatiating langue in parole is dynamic,
> dialectical... . What I was querying was your association of the
> cognitive with language and the social with parole, which I don't think
> is wise. Or at least, we've had more than enough of it.
>
> Jim Martin
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