Bill and all,
I am also at loss when it comes to phylogeny.
However, maybe we need to search for existing research on modes of
communication and modes of play in different species (some work on play in
animals exist).
And of course, a production of tools which is historically transferred from
a generation to another generation. Maybe we need to look for "cultural"
differences between different "tribes" of in each species under study: do
all bees dance the same dance? (metaphorically speaking).
Another thought - inspired by something written by Thibault: I (Ana) see it
necessary to describe language development in more detail than: (quote from
Thibault) "the child participates in and develops proto-genre structures of
dialogic exchange that regulate its "inner" and "outer" meaning-making
activity. This suggests that the child does not "acquire" abstract
syntactic forms as in transformational generative accounts of language
acquisition. Instead, the infant is apprenticed into (Kaye, 1982/1984) and
internalizes elementary dialogic structures that regulate and give shape to
relations between "self" and "nonself"." (page 303)
Thibault then quotes Halliday's example of incorporating a vocal act into a
diadic contextual activity.
At one point he says that the "instrumental"meanings ("Give me that" and
"give me that bird") are "more properly seen as INDEXICAL. - but in the
next paragraph (both on page 304), he says: "The child learns that he can
use an externally uttered physical sound to enact a demand for
goods-and-services. The child thus learns that he can use one vocal gesture
in contrast with some other to regulate in various ways his exchanges with
others according to his needs and desires. --> Thus, the SYMBOLIC use of
externally projected articulatory act to bring about perceivable results in
the external world is reentrantly mapped onto internal neural activity."
A HUGE JUMP! Two jumps - indeed. One between the "indexical" (pointing to
something contingent to the dialogue) and "symbolic" ( pointing to
something outside this space and time).
How does symbolic develop from indexical?
Indexical function is "non valuative" - it is a "stand in" or "stand for"
or just pointing to... Symbolic reference is already a part of a system ,
always slanted, from a perspective, with a particular significance. One
could say that a SYMBOL is an INDEX with a WINK - "if you know what I mean".
Third jump - the claim that this interacts with the neural development and
that it is "mapped onto internal neural activity".
Yes but how do we know that these social diadic exchanges have any
connection to the neural mappings? - THIS is the key!
***
I am in particular interested in the development between indexical and
symbolic modes of communication. However the explanations given by
Silverstein and Halliday and finally Thibault, all suggest to me that they
are in between two paradigms: where they want to bring in the social
communication into the development of symbolic mode of thinking, but they
still analyze symbols and indexes and icons only regarding their
relationship with an object or an abstract (and normative) category for
which they stand. There is an attempt to bring a dialogic, diadic
relationship into the process, but it remains just an outside force that
brings to an individual meanings that are "objective and independent of
individual intention per se." Thibault even continues: "This is why
symbolic reference supervenes indexical (and iconic) reference. (from
Deacon 1997/1998)".
However, while it is true that general literal meanings in a language are
bigger than an individual, it is not enough for me to say that an
individual get apprenticed into the language. I, rather think that each
individual has to reconstruct those meanings and that the process of
reconstruction is both interpersonal and personal, and very dynamic. ...
****
I will be away for the next week but I will try to find a computer with an
Internet connection and continue this most interesting discussion.
Ana
At 07:09 AM 7/5/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>Ana's reference to Bateson and play is a wonderful insight, having read Mike's
>plea for the bigger picture. "this is play" communicates to frame an activity
>among participants. What this (what we are communicating now arouind
>Thibault)
>seems to be about is just that (that being Mike's and Ana's ideas combined) --
>finding an interpretive frame for observing and thinking about human
>interaction.
>
>I complained about using spatial metaphors and suffering their excess semiotic
>baggage - levels implies hierarchy (especially, as B&G might argue is a
>phenomenon of capitalist society), but then there are layers, channels and
>dimensions, all of which can go on in parallel and mutual influence, i.e.
>bidirectional causality.
>
>Mike seems to say bio-evo-psychologists are playing a bigger game, and he
>doesn't want chat'ers excluded from it.
>
>How to take phylogeny into account for chat studies? Eeek! Tongue in cheek,
>does it not belong to the generations of researchers to follow? Is this too
>much to bite off?
>
>Although it makes sense, I am clueless.
>
>bb
>
>=====
>"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
>and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
>[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
>http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Aug 01 2001 - 01:00:56 PDT