Hi, Mike [And hi to Paul Prior, whose replies I comment below in this email]
Thank you a lot for replying. I've read the chapter on artifacts in Cultural Psychology, and in fact I mention it in the thesis I'm writing on "Lexicography and Cognition". But that is the problem: I'm trying to understand my own thesis, to see if my thesis is a total mess, or if it makes sense after all. It makes a lot of sense for me to understand language - and speech genres à Bakhtin - as artifacts. And the way I see it, this way of seeing language is important to understand the work I'm doing in the thesis: which is understanding an electronic encyclopedic dictionary as some form of hybrid, of embedded artifacts, which is composed of the following artifacts: speech genres, dictionary, encyclopedia, hypertext, computer. I'm considering that a dictionary entry is a form of speech genre (written). If I use one such artifact in the classroom - an electronic dictionary - for me it makes sense to consider this artifact as a set of embedded artifacts, which I mentioned: speech genres, dictionary, encyclopedia, hypertext, computer (and also internet). Each of these artifacts had a different historical development. So I say that it is interesting to understand the development of each of these artifacts separatedly - even as they eventually become integrated. If we are to understand the role of this integrated artifact in the classroom, it is important to understand how each separated artifact developed and then became integrated.
But this line of reasoning is becoming a bit difficult, because I'm not able to argue in favor of (part of) language being an artifact. My advisor says it does not add any explanation power. It seems obvious to me that it is important to consider speech genres this way. But it is not obvious to my advisor. So where is the flaw, if there is one? Why is it important to consider language as an artifact? What cognitive phenomena this illuminates? Maybe there are lots of reasonings in this line that I'm not aware of. Maybe there are some evidences in the books you mention, but I may have forgotten, since it is written in English and my native language is Portuguese. I thought it might help if you could (or some of you could) explain that to me: which cognitive phenomena are better explained when we consider speech genres as artifacts? or language as an artifact? why is this important?
This is one question. Maybe an alternative question might be: what exactly I'm saying when I say that language - or speech genres - are artifacts? which kind of theory I'm subscribing to when I say that? or which worldview does this proposition - "speech genres are artifacts" - entail?
I understand that Paul Prior is trying to explain this in his mail, when he says [my interpretation, I may be seeing too much here] that the proposition *** language is an artifact *** entails:
- "that language is a concrete, historical phenomenon"
- "abstract, objectivist accounts of language" are not realistic or are not true [I may ask here: is this a point of departure or is this something that can be sustained by comparative exposition of linguistic problems? if the second, which?]
- it is important to consider different speech genres since one needs to account for "processes, for resources, for the contents, functions and social significations of texts in use" ... but do we have to consider speech genres as artifacts to observe their social or local significations in use?
Additional questions:
- if "language is a confluence of dispersed, ever-evolving artifacts", I'd like to ask: do these artifacts have something in common? or are they so different from each other as a pencil, a sofa, a lamp, a diesel motor, a spoon, a doll, a cake? if they differ in such a way ... is it by way of metaphor that we compare these differences to the differences between a pencil, a sofa, a lamp, a diesel motor, etc., or do we see those differences * because * each speech genre is an artifact like any other artifact and thus differ from each other in radical ways? do they differ from each other in this fashion *because* they are artifacts?
I'm not sure if these questions have already been researched and answered, by since I'm not able to answer them now, and this appears as a problem to me, it would help me a lot if you could answer - again - some of these questions I'm asking here.
Elisa
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:03:33 PST