Paul-- The problem you identify in the following paragraph is one that
has been worrying me for a long time and one which Yrjo and I have
discussed often::
My concern is the flip side of this flexibility. One of the important
characteristics of theoretical activity is consistency of interpretation.
Among linguists, for example, there can be disagreement at the theoretical
level itself, but fundamentally there is a common recognition of such units
as morphemes, verb phrases, etc. From what I've seen there is no such common
agreement as to what constitutes a rule, a community, a tool, a subject, a
division of labor, and last but not least, an object or a motive. Almost
anything seems capable of becoming Similarly, and probably as a consequence
of this absenceof common use of the basic elements of the activity
triangle, there seems to be a wide and varied interpretation of what
constitutes a contradiction within the activity system let alone the level
of contradiction.......
-----
This issue has come up time and again in seeking to review articles that
adopt Yrjo's expanded triangle. the action/goal .... activity/object/motive
distinction appears to cause the most trouble. Hopefully careful reading of
LBE will bring further clarity, if not concensus. With respect to object,
Arne's writing on xlchc and discussion around it have been most helpful
to me, but I still suffer frequent confusion.
mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 01 2001 - 01:01:57 PDT