RE: [xmca] Intensions in context and speech complexity ; From 2-?

["Peg Griffin" <Peg.Griffin@att.net>]

To complicate the issue or just wish you well as you go off the topic...

Little ones I've known get very involved when adults copy them.  

Even very very little ones.  Gestures, vocal or not.  Language or not.  
Long exchanges when the adult appropriates the child's gesture as an
initiation to repeat.  
The child does a next -- sometimes the same act, sometimes different,
sometimes almost a challenge routine.

Joint act of communion if not communication in most senses of the word.

 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On Behalf Of Mike Cole
> Sent: Monday, July 20, 2009 12:21 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Intensions in context and speech complexity ; From
> 2-?
> 
> Ok. So speaking is a part of activity.
> But please explain the result of the difference between the two kinds
> of
> activities that generate
> two levels of grammatical complexity in activity-theoretic terms for me
> and/or performance terms.
> It is not just that the performances in the two situations are
> different.
> They are different in a way
> that is clearly linked to the language/thought/language game/life
> worlds,
> etc. related to the different
> situations vis a vis who is controlling the situation, who has the
> power,
> whose/what intentions are being
> performed/
> 
> Little ones CANNOT play the game of "say after me." Later they can play
> this
> game. I do not believe that
> invoking internalization is necessary or helpful, Peter, but I do think
> that
> an explanation not only of the difference but of the
> chronological, and dare I say it, developmental, difference requires
> explanation.  I further believe that what
> David Kel has been writing is relevant to this issue and that it is
> related
> to issues of language teaching/learning
> in school.
> 
> I appear an outlier here and will drop the issue. Thanks everyone for
> your
> efforts to penetrate my opaqueness.
> 
> --------
> On another (who knows, maybe even related!) matter. The polls for the
> new
> article in MCA remain open. Brenda
> is away this week and she mediates posting of abstracts and contacting
> the
> publishers to make the winning
> candidate for discussion available. So I will keep the polls open
> until,
> probably, next Tuesday. But please take
> a minute to check the polls and vote.
> mike
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 9:11 AM, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 9:05 AM, Lois Holzman <
> > lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org> wrote:
> >
> >> This formulation of the question is clarifying, Mike, and helps me
> realize
> >> that I can't answer it?
> >> because it is asking something in terms that frame the thing that's
> going
> >> on in a particular way that, to me, is too assumptive.
> >> I don't see it in terms of external constraints, intentions and
> goals - I
> >> don't have a mentalistic understanding of the social relational
> activity of
> >> speaking, creating conversation, playing with language.
> >> I can't see what is gained by invoking compliance, imposition,
> >> limitations, intentions and goals, and I feel that doing so obscures
> the
> >> "form of life"-ness. I'm with Wittgenstein on this - speaking is
> part of an
> >> activity, or of a form of life."
> >> An experimenter asking a child to "say what I say" is a particular
> >> language game, and the same child talking/babbling in another
> situation is
> >> another. If I understand, you're trying to find a reason that what
> the child
> >> says is different in the two. I guess I wonder why you think they
> wouldn't
> >> be. And why the direction to look is "internal."
> >> Lois
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Lois Holzman, Director
> >> East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy
> >> 920 Broadway, 14th floor
> >> New York NY 10010
> >> tel. 212.941.8906 ext. 324
> >> fax 212.941.0511
> >> lholzman@eastsideinstitute.org
> >> www.eastsideinstitute.org
> >> www.performingtheworld.org
> >> loisholzman.org
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Jul 20, 2009, at 10:56 AM, Mike Cole wrote:
> >>
> >>  Andy/David/ Lois:
> >>>
> >>> Why are the simplifications when children imitate sentences that
> carry
> >>> out
> >>> the intentions of others and limit their agency to
> >>> complying with external constraints imposed by others absent when
> they
> >>> carry
> >>> out their own intentions in speech acts that are instrumental to
> carrying
> >>> out those goals and may be more complicated, grammatically, than
> what
> >>> experimenters ask of them? I get the dropping out the subject part
> in
> >>> inner
> >>> speech, I think.
> >>> mike
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>  Mike, my reading of Vygotsky's explanation of the process of
> speech
> >>>> being
> >>>> abbreviated as it transforms into silent speech, as I recall, is
> that
> >>>> the
> >>>> child for example leaves off the subject of a sentence for
> example,
> >>>> because
> >>>> they already know the subject, and such like. I.e., as I read it,
> they
> >>>> carry
> >>>> dense elements of context internally so that the verbal
> instruction to
> >>>> themselves carries that context implicitly. Just like if I say
> "Pass me
> >>>> that" the hearer won't understand without the help of a shared
> visual
> >>>> field.
> >>>>
> >>>> So intention is part of the context, but it is the context, and
> it's
> >>>> various mental representations and cues which is relevant, isn't
> it?
> >>>>
> >>>> So for example, the continued presence of all the elements of a
> snippet
> >>>> of
> >>>> dialogue act as cues which would allow something to be repeated,
> because
> >>>> the
> >>>> entire act in response to cues in the context can be repeated.
> >>>>
> >>>> But also, relevant to a topic we have been discussing, Mike, the
> project
> >>>> of
> >>>> which the speech act is a part has to be understood and shared by
> the
> >>>> child
> >>>> if they are to make sense of it, and of course psychological
> testing is
> >>>> not
> >>>> generally such a project.
> >>>>
> >>>> I don't really know if that's relevant to the distinction you're
> after
> >>>> Mike.
> >>>>
> >>>> Andy
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Mike Cole wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>  David's note of a few days ago on 3-7 year old changes in
> egocentric
> >>>>> speech
> >>>>> reminded
> >>>>> me of an old article by Slobin and Welch (reprinted in Ferguson
> and
> >>>>> Slobin,
> >>>>> *Studies of Child Development, 1963)
> >>>>> *that it took a while to track down. The study is often cited in
> >>>>> studies
> >>>>> of
> >>>>> elicited imitation where an adult says some
> >>>>> sentence and asks a little kid to repeat it. Kids simplify the
> sentence
> >>>>> in
> >>>>> normal circumstances ("Where is the kitty"
> >>>>> becomes "where kitty") and other such stuff. There is a pretty
> large
> >>>>> literature on this.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> But when I went to find the phenomenon in the article that had
> most
> >>>>> struck
> >>>>> me, I could not find it in the recent lit
> >>>>> on elicited imitation. The phenomenon seems relevant to the
> monologic,
> >>>>> dialogic etc speech discussion.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The phenomenon is this:  When a 2yr/5month old child is recorded
> saying
> >>>>> "If
> >>>>> you finish your eggs all up, Daddy, you
> >>>>> can have your coffee." they can repeat this sentence pretty much
> as it
> >>>>> is
> >>>>> right afterward. But 10 minutes later it has
> >>>>> become simplified a la the usual observation.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Citing William James (the child has an "intention to say so and
> so")
> >>>>> Slobin
> >>>>> and Welch remark:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If that linguistic form is presented for imitation while the
> intention
> >>>>> is
> >>>>> still operative, it can be faily successfully imitated. Once the
> >>>>> intention
> >>>>> is gone, however, the utterance must be processed in linguistic
> terms
> >>>>> alone
> >>>>> -- without its original intentional and
> >>>>> contextual support."  In the absence of such support, the task
> can
> >>>>> strain
> >>>>> the child's abilities and reveal a more limited competence than
> may
> >>>>> actually
> >>>>> be present in spontaneous speech (p. 489-90).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> This kind of observation seems relevant in various ways both to
> >>>>> language
> >>>>> acquisition in school settings and to my reccurrent
> >>>>> questions about the social situation of development. Is it
> relevant to
> >>>>> the
> >>>>> discussion of egocentric and social speech, David?
> >>>>> mike
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> xmca mailing list
> >>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>  --
> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> >>>> Andy Blunden (Erythrós Press and Media)
> http://www.erythrospress.com/
> >>>> Orders: http://www.erythrospress.com/store/main.html#books
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> xmca mailing list
> >>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>>
> >>>>  _______________________________________________
> >>> xmca mailing list
> >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> xmca mailing list
> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca