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

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

I'll try to read the paper, Peter and Colin. Gotta learn who the anti-hero
interalists of language bad guys are and what it means.
Perhaps we can bundle with discussion of the MCA article de jour.
mike

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 2:25 AM, Jones, Peter <P.E.Jones@shu.ac.uk> wrote:

> Thanks mike
> Just a quick reaction as a coda. Totally agree re developmental standpoint
> but the question I think here is what it is we think that is developing. The
> language internalization view predisposes us to see 'what is developing'
> from a particular point of view, whereas if we look at the problem of
> linguistic activity (and the integration of communicative activity into
> one's life activity) differently then something else may emerge. Possibly in
> the 'say after me game' this is a more an issue of how the child
> contextualises the linguistic activity (ie how a particular sort of activity
> is seen as being 'the game') than about 'grammatical complexity' in the
> linguistic sense. Furthermore, I think the dynamic integration of
> communicative and practical activity by people in real contexts precludes
> any kind of in principle correlation between kinds of activity and 'level of
> grammatical complexity' such that from one we can predict the other or vice
> versa - cf the list of imponderables you mention at the end about situations
> and control etc.
> Regards
> P
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of Mike Cole
> Sent: 20 July 2009 17:21
> 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
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
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