Re: [xmca] Wells article

Sure and I'm Alexander the Grape.
  

Kevin Rocap <Kevin.Rocap@liu.edu> wrote:
  That was....

A Gordon Knot?

;-)

Paul Dillon wrote:
>
>
> It just ocurred to me that listserv threads are something akin to Andean quipu, threads with knots used to record every kind of information. But . . .
>
> Maybe Gordon could explain how what he's proposing relates to Habermas' theory of communicative action, a fourth level to the Weberian continuum, beyond strategic action, communicative action, with its own ideal state, oriented to reaching understanding. As far as I can tell, this wheel might already have been employed in building various kinds of vehicles. So maybe some clarification would be useful.
>
> Paul. Dillon
>
> "Worthen, Helena Harlow" wrote:
> Andy --
>
> Are you saying you don't see a useful difference between language being
> used to coordinate actions directed toward a shared goal, and language
> being used to create something that is not the shared goal of the
> participants, but something different? I think this is a useful
> distinction, because the latter would give us a name for the process we
> would expect to see if we could zoom in on and observe in slow motion
> (maybe in a transcript) the way words get turned, replaced, defined and
> re-defined in the process of negotiating an agree-upon text.
>
> Helena Worthen, Clinical Associate Professor
> Labor Education Program, Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations
> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
> 504 E. Armory, Room 227
> Champaign, IL 61821
> Phone: 217-244-4095
> hworthen@uiuc.edu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 6:15 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: RE: [xmca] Wells article
>
> Helena,
> I took it that Gordon ended up saying that Halliday's distinction cannot
> be
> sustained.
> Here is what he says:
>
> "From this work it has becomes apparent that the initial distinction
> made
> by Halliday (1978)
> between ancillary and constitutive discoursing, although useful
> conceptually, is an oversimplification
> of actual practice. The first and most obvious complication is that many
>
> interactions
> involve more than one genre, as when a shopper discusses the weather or
> current events in
> the course of a purchasing action.
> A second issue is that the distinction between ancillary and
> constitutive
> discoursing is
> not as clear-cut as Halliday suggested. Taking the football example from
>
> earlier, at various
> points before and during the game, the coach discusses strategy with the
>
> entire team and perhaps
> also with one or more individuals; he will probably also shout from the
> sidelines. Although the
> latter might fit Halliday's argument that "any instructions or other
> verbal
> interaction among
> the players are part of this social action" (p. 144), it is not so clear
>
> that the strategy talk before
> the team leaves the dressing room is entirely part of the "social
> action"
> of the game itself.
> However, the most difficult issue is that of determining what goals are
> involved in any
> action in which discoursing plays a part. The problem is that
> participants
> rarely announce their
> goals, expecting others to be able to deduce them from the situation and
>
> from the genre form
> they adopt."
>
> So I didn't follow this issue any further because I wouldn't support
> this
> particular dichotomy at any but a superficial level. I think discourse
> is
> always, along with other elements of material culture, part of
> constituting
> the project. I see conflict as essentially indistinguishable from
> collaboration and the material/ideal distinction between project also
> untenable. Anyway, Gordon gave three reasons for not making this
> distinction and that was good enough for me.
>
>
> Andy
> At 02:41 PM 1/10/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>> Hello, xmca:
>>
>> I'll take a shot at the Wells article, as usual, from the point of view
>> of a labor educator.
>>
>> As I read it, he's distinguishing between the use of language as
>> "ancillary" to an activity and the use of language that actually
>> constitutes what participants are doing. When people use language to
>> coordinate activity, that's "ancillary." When the thing that has to
>>
> "get
>
>> done" is itself made out of language (he gives the example of a meeting
>> with an agenda and agreed-upon decisions to be made - p. 167) then
>> that's "constitutive discoursing," the co-construction of "possible
>> worlds" (he references Bruner). However, he's saying, this distinction
>> has already been made (by Halliday). Wells then says that the
>> distinction between the two is not always clear, because people may be
>> co-constructing with different goals in mind. He lists some examples of
>> different goals in the middle of page 173.
>>
>> At this point, I am thinking that Wells is right but I'd like him to
>> give an example where people are co-constructing something but have
>>
> more
>
>> strikingly different goals in mind -- goals more different than the
>> goals of a trio of researchers observing their own discoursing or even
>> than the goals of a teacher and three students in a busy classroom.
>>
>> Of course I was reading this article keeping in mind the
>>
> co-constructive
>
>> constitutive discoursing that takes place when workers and employers
>> bargain a contract. The contract is an example of a "possible world."
>>
> It
>
>> is built up bit by bit over the years, written down and enforced
>>
> through
>
>> yards and yards, miles and miles of talk. In fact, both the contract
>>
> and
>
>> the process by which it is negotiated are negotiated. But most helpful
>> of all to me, as I try to understand what is actually happening when
>> people negotiate their conditions of work, was Wells' point that(p 174)
>> the "the participants are not interchangeable." Constitutive
>> discoursing (the co-creation of something through language) is
>> characterized by participants in an itneraction who are not
>> interchangeable. It is the different perspectives of the parties to the
>> negotiation that make the co-construction of something possible.
>>
>> I'm not convinced that the word "discoursing" is going to get into
>> popular use. It may be that Wells doesn't expect it to go much further
>> himself; in fact, he could be putting forth this term ironically, since
>> by the end of the article he appears to have pulled the plug on the
>> notion that discoursing is an activity in its own right.
>>
>> Is there a significant stream of argument that says that the use of
>> language for no other purpose (no co-construction, no constitution) is
>> in itself an activity? Wouldn't that be like carrying a tape recorder
>> down a busy street or drifting from channel to channel on the TV? But
>> then we'd be in the realms of art.
>>
>> I saw Chris Marker's movie, Les Chats Perches (?) last night. Now
>> there's a record of co-construction of an emergent text and possible
>> world.
>>
>>
>> Helena Worthen
>> Helena Worthen, Clinical Associate Professor
>> Labor Education Program, Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations
>> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
>> 504 E. Armory, Room 227
>> Champaign, IL 61821
>> Phone: 217-244-4095
>> hworthen@uiuc.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>
> Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
> AIM
> identity: AndyMarxists mobile 0409 358 651
>
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Received on Tue Oct 2 12:32 PDT 2007