Re: some joint activity re contextless reading?

nate (schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu)
Sun, 28 Mar 1999 11:31:19 -0600

I would agree with Peter. Language not only comes from ways of thinking,
but in turn constrains how one thinks. I also think English tends to be
obsessed with the noun of things rather than the verb. My understanding
of Vygotsky is he described/discussed development, thought-language etc. as
a process or in more relational terms. Post-modernism has come up with
words like hybridity but even in attempting to describe the process in a
more relational way the term still has the feeling of a noun of sorts. For
me, this reminds me of Vygotsky's critique of the Gestalt's in which the
relationship or process was assumed rather than describing the process in a
dynamic way that was always developing.

Similar to Anna, I think, is that language especially of a global one like
english has the potential to change or at least constrain ways of thinking.
Some of the post stuff I have been reading has hinted at that in how in
english identity becomes a stable noun of sorts, rather than a verb or
something that is in the continual process of change. In reference to the
snow example, I recently read an interesting challenge to that on one of
Phil's links. It was something to the extent where a particular word would
be used to express what we would use a sentence to describe, such as one
word for "the snow is wet".

Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Smagorinsky <smago who-is-at peachnet.campuscwix.net>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 28, 1999 8:18 AM
Subject: Re: some joint activity re contextless reading?

> I think that the notion of a dialect is useful here--that language
> represents ways of thinking but in turn serves as a set of signs that
> guides ways of thinking. I've always assumed this to be a Vygotskian
> principle about the relationship between thinking and speech.
>
> Peter
>
> At 11:12 PM 3/27/99 -0700, you wrote:
> >While whorf felt that language shaped thought to the social
> >perspectives, I think that language develops to express cultural views.
> >It is not so much that thought is different in different languages but
> >rather language results from different social- and personal- ways of
> >thinking.
> >Ken Goodman
> >--
>