>Paul Prior wrote:
>
>> 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?
I guess he would favor some Aristotelian approach to these issues, specially concerning the definition of terms. Of course, dictionary definitions are not the same as philosophical definition. But it seems that he would favor an universalist approach. It's not that we have to agree on that issue, we've been disagreeing on some matters for years, but this was starting to make dialogue difficult in relation to the "language as artifact" issue. Now we have settled that, I may use this approach. I also realized, however, that we have a slightly different concept of culture. My advisor seems not so much interested in local cultural differences.
Second problem, he says that the "speech genres" approach is not much different from Wittgenstein's approach on "language games", so why not use Wittgenstein's ideas instead?
In fact, I've even written before about lexicography using Wittgenstein's concepts, but now I think it is more useful to use the "speech genres" approach. So a problem for me might be, why is the "speech genres" approach more appropriate for this research than the "language games" idea? I guess I sould not use Wittgenstein's ideas isolated. So I
would have to link to other Wittgenstein's ideas. Where would this lead me? Bakhtin's approach seems to be less problematic, since there are many applications of his ideias in classroom practice that I've read about.
Anyway, based on some ideas suggested by Gordon and Phil, I would like
to focus on some notions of process and practice. And then maybe it will be
useful to re-read Russ Hunt's paper on Inkshead practice ... "Speech Genres, Writing Genres, School Genres and Computer Genres" which I read in 1998 and I think it can suggest some ideas on how to consider speech genres in the classroom. But it always remains a bit difficult to relate practice accounts with theoretical notions.
And I will also look at the books you mention and those Gordon mention. I was also interested in the article in MCA Mike mentioned, but I wasn't able to find MCA issues in the local libraries.
Elisa
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