Re: [xmca] Capriccio

Dear David,

I like very much the metaphor of language as a jungle. Deleuze &
Guattari use in quite similar way (also Batesonian) the notion of
'mapping'. 'Mapping' is not representing a given world but creating
new circuits and new connections on the 'ground' of already existing
maps. These circuits are not ideal but are materialized, enacted and
performed similarly to the way you use the subway system.

I have never thought of using this metaphor to describe language
learning. However it seems very useful to me now, when I am thinking
about this. One could probably use such a metaphor to account for
remembering and forgetting, too (see Middleton & Brown (2005): The
social psychology of experience. Studies in Remembering & Forgetting,
Sage).

thank you for the input,

Michalis Kontopodis

research associate
humboldt university berlin
tel.: +49 (0) 30 2093 3716
fax.: +49 (0) 30 2093 3739
http://www.csal.de
http://www.iscar.org/de/culthistanthpsy/

On Mar 27, 2008, at 4:07 AM, David Kellogg wrote:

> Michalis:
>
> You are right, but it's the ECOLOGY part of it that is Batesonian.
> Van Lier really sees language as a jungle, and human language-users
> as tigers; the tiger does not "acquire" the jungle or "learn" the
> jungle (the way we seek to acquire or learn a language system) but
> only learns to use certain resources the jungle contains to get what
> the tiger needs. In the same way, I use only a very small part of
> the Seoul subway system; I have absolutely no need or inclination to
> learn the names of all the lines and stops or to memorize the entire
> map.
>
> And therein lies a crucial difference, at least to me. One reason I
> do NOT want to learn the names of all the subway lines and stops is
> that I know that I can access these in any subway station. Unlike
> the tiger, the human language learner has a way of acquiring useful
> areas of the language system on a "just in time" basis; when
> particular problems in meaning-making come up, we have ways of
> negotiating solutions on the spot. This is not simply an affordance;
> it is an affordance that allows me to create my own affordances as
> necessary. My approach to Korean is more like this: I want
> expandable affordances, not fixed dialogues for renting cars or
> opening bank accounts.
>
> This kind of expandable affordance does seem in an important sense
> "internal" to me, because I have volitional control over it. To use
> another analogy, it's like the browser in my computer and the
> internet. There is an important sense in which the internet is an
> affordance in the environment, quite external to my computer and
> independent of my will. But that suggests that the browser that I
> have, which is under my conscious control, is in some sense internal
> to my computer. The same thing happens when I use a dictionary, or
> ask a colleague the polite way to address him, or negotiate a thesis
> with a grad student.
>
> Richard Strauss' opera "Capriccio" is based on an old idea that
> Salieri used to try to win a one-act opera competition with Mozart
> (Mozart's contribution was "Die Schauspieldirektor"). Salieri's
> problem was this: When you write an opera, do you begin with a
> libretto, or a musical score?
>
> It seems a rather self-referential and even self-indulgent basis
> for an opera, but it was actually a response to the then
> contemporary debate between Rousseau and Rameau about whether the
> phylogenesis of music preceded that of language or not. Rousseau
> thought that music was the direct response to the natural jungle and
> that language was derivative and therefore debased. Rameau, who was
> more musical and less literary than Rousseau, took exactly the
> opposite position.
>
> Strauss's solution is, at bottom, a Vygotskyan one: a mediated
> response arises on the basis of a less mediated one:
>
> Flamand (the musician): The cry of pain preceded all speech!
> Olivier (the poet): But only words can truly explain suffering.
>
> This solution is actually reflected in almost every line of the
> opera, because it is written in a kind of "singspiel" in which every
> line begins with a strong melody but ends with conversational
> intonation. Not so very far from the ENDING of "Thinking and
> Speech" where Vygotsky replaces Goethe's "In the beginning was the
> DEED" with "In the BEGINNING was the deed".
>
> But it's what happens after the beginning that gets interesting.
> Perhaps language is a jungle, but it is a jungle that is made by
> man. That doesn't mean that ALL parts of it are under our control,
> but it DOES mean that some of them can be.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
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Received on Fri Mar 28 03:33 PDT 2008