>
> Dale wrote:
>
> "Gary... I guess that is the real question: just what IS human
> thought?
> As participants in a logocentric culture we seem to equate that
> with
> language; or at least with some sense that there is a pre-
> linguist
> articulation of ideas that "forms" thoughts, rather like we
> "form"
> words. If "thinking" is limited to the manipulation of these
> discrete
> word-like concepts, then language is real close to the "center".
> On the other hand, if language/articulated
> thought/conceptualization is a
> separate thing we do, then it might be 'beside' thinking, or
> behind it,
> or even very FAR from the center. ... "
>
> Maybe I should resist the temptation on this one, but ... much as
> I want to inquire into the non-verbal dimensions of meaning-
> making, and the non-typological aspects of every sort of
> semiosis, I want to be careful not to return to the old notion
> that ideas or thoughts have a domain of their own which is then
> somehow imperfectly translated into words, pictures, gestures,
> etc. A great deal of the meaning we make is made only in and
> through the mobilization of these semiotic resources. That we
> also make meaning through the less theorized toplogical
> dimensions of semiotic resources, or through the infra-semiotic
> potential in all aspects of our being/doing-in-the-world seems
> clear and important. But the trick I think is to generalize our
> notion of semiosis and its resources, rather than to oppose them
> to something else. In the case of visual and gestural semiosis,
> the typological is not as supersalient as it is for language, and
> this is even true to some degree of _speech_ as opposed to
> language. I think it is very, very important how we conceptualize
> the relationships between the kinds of meaning-making we can
> account for with traditional typological notions of semiosis and
> all the rest that is left out. This should be done with
> considerable care and sophistication, or we may miss a great
> opportunity.
>
> As to how central language is to meaning-making in the broadest
> sense (i.e. to meaningful being/doing-in-the-world) I think that
> here and now it is very central indeed, and more so perhaps for
> people closer to the dominant 'ideal' (middle-class, middle-aged,
> eurocultural, masculinized, etc.) -- but that in principle, and
> across all varieties of human cultures and social categories, it
> need not be as central as it is for us.
>
>
> Perhaps the most important question is not what else could be central
> rather than language, but how else we might integrate other modalities
> with language so as to produce a better balanced, and so more useful
> total matrix of resources. The beginning of such an understanding
> may well lie in more clearly exposing the totality of that matrix
> as many different sorts of persons and communities now in fact
> deploy it, which may require highlighting the neglected modalities,
> but not conceptually opposing them to language. JAY.
>
>
> JAY LEMKE.
> City University of New York.
> BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
> INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
>
>
---------------------------------
Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at triton.unm.edu
---------------------------------