> 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.
The way you're approaching your data sounds reasonable. I don't know what
to say about the advisor issue; it is difficult sustaining dialogue across
theoretical divides, especially when power is such an obvious issue. What,
by the way, is your advisor's understanding of language and dictionary
entries? That they are not cultural phenomena?
In any case, I think the advantage of seeing things as artifacts is that
you can ask what affordances have been designed in. For example, language
as a cultural-historical artifact displays certain affordances for
patriarchal gender socialization (e.g., in English the noun pairs,
mistress-master, lord-lady, etc., where the feminine takes on sexualized
senses). If you view utterances (Bakhtin) as artifacts, then the histories
are powerful ways of shaping current interactions. A nice example of this,
and it sounds relevant to your research, would be Griffin et al "Creating
and Reconstituting Contexts for Educational Interactions, Including a
Computer Program" (in Contexts for Learning, edited by Ellice Forman,
Norris Minick, and C. Addison Stone, Oxford, 1993). In their analysis of a
simple computer program (The Pond), they came to realize that the screens
and menu options of the program, artifacts, were powerfully shaping (not of
course determining) the children's interactions with the program, other
students, the teachers. They came to see these screens as the frozen
voices of the programmers, representing their ideologies of education.
That chapter is a nice illustration of what is the general argument,
displayed in many research studies, that tools or artifacts or social
practices are formed in particular cultural-historical conditions and that
those conditions are then embedded within them as affordances.
> 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?
> 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?]
I'm not sure here what you mean by a comparative exposition of linguistic
problems, but I'd say it is both a point of departure and one that can be
easily followed into varied programs. Abstract objectivist analyses for
example cannot account for what Gordon talks about, the many forms of
co-production. A simple example in English would be the use of the
definite article (the). Its usage cannot be understood in terms of the
nature of the world (there is only one sun) or immediate linguistic context
(first use indefinite, second definite) or formal issues (singular vs.
plural, count vs. noncount). Usage does involve all of those things, but
it also involves intertexuality (histories of usage, like "in hospital" in
the UK vs. "in the hospital" in the U.S.) and intersubjectivity (a
speaker's/writer's sense of what the listener/reader knows, of how to
constitute contexts, e.g., if I say "I saw the president," will you
understand it as the president of the country or the president of the
university). You might find Herbert Clark's _Arenas of Language Use_
useful (University of Chicago, 1992). And Voloshinov develops the critique
by looking at another area that abstract objectivist approaches offer no
real purchase on, various forms of weaving others' words into yours, not
limited to traditional direct and indirect speech.
> - 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?
Artifacts have something in common if they are products of related
histories (kind of co-genetic relations) if they are products of
centripetal cultural-historical forces. For example, the IRE
(initiation-reply-evaluation) discourse is not only found in schools. It
is also found in game shows, board games like Trivial Pursuit, certain
kinds of political or religious trials, etc.
Paul Prior
p-prior@uiuc.edu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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