> Russ
>
> So I guess you enjoyed the title of Halliday's early account of language
> development - Learning How to Mean.
>
> JIm Martin
And I'm still having trouble with some of the language in this
discussion -- for example, in the recent exchange between Ken
Goodman and Dewey Dykstra.
Ken said, in part,
> For some time I've been equating the common sense term of "making
> sense of something" with the constructivist term, "constructing
> meaning".
And Dewey suggested these need to be kept separate to avoid confusing
two different (both active) processes.
My problem is that while what both say makes sense I want to point
at something else that I don't quite have the language for (sorry,
Mike, I'm still working on this): if you "make sense" of something
there's a strong indication for me that the "sense" you've made is
like an object, a more or less immutable, static concept that could
be passed to someone else. Similarly, if you "construct meaning"
the meaning you construct is a noun. I still feel that these ways
of talking miss, or background, something important, something
implicit in Halliday's use of "mean" as an (intransitive) verb.
-- Russ
__|~_
Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Department of English
St. Thomas University )_ __)_|_)__ __) PHONE: (506) 363-3891
Fredericton, New Brunswick | )____) | FAX: (506) 450-9615
E3B 5G3 CANADA ___|____|____|____/ hunt who-is-at StThomasU.ca
\ /
~~~~~~~~ http://www.StThomasU.ca/hunt/hunt.htm ~~~~~~~~