On 15 June 2011 01:40, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
Messages in this thread that have appeared subsequently to the one
from
Andy that I'm responding to here have used "meaning" as a noun (it
seems to
me), thereby referring to meaning as something that is appropriately
signified by a noun.
Andy's post suggests using "meaning" as a verb (gerund or participle),
which I think is much better. The meaning of a word is something the
word
does (actually or potentially), not something it contains, conveys,
etc. A
person's meaning (like a word's meaning) is also something that the
person
does -- just as their dancing is something that they do.
This appears to be more a question of labeling phenomena than
disagreeing
about the phenomena per se. Though that's hard to tell without agreeing
on
the labels.
The 'doing' that you refer to is achieved by the person. The word,
sentence
or other phenomena doesn't do anything in this respect.
Meaning in the oxford dictionary is a noun, and its appearance in our
emails
here is as a noun. We can use "meaning" as a gerund, such as in "meaning
is
something that all people do" (which is rather infrequent usage). Though
we
do not use it as a gerund in "the meaning I interpreted" (which is
frequently used) or "He meant this meaning not that meaning" as in "He
wrote
this sentence not that sentence".
I'm not interested in turning over common usage of terms, this is what
we
have technical terms for. I can only suggest that you try a substitution
test, that clearly and unambiguously demarcates the term as a verb, to
check
that you're using the term consistently.
Huw
I am meaning this in the Peircean sense of meaning as sign-activity,
or
semiosis. Andy is suggesting a consistency with LSV.
But is not the "this" that I mean, when I say "I am meaning this,"
something that can be signified by the pronoun "this" (or the nominal
phrase, "my meaning")? I would answer again that what I mean is like
what I
dance. We can treat my "dance" as a noun that names a thing, but it
really
is a nominalized term for the dancing -- for something that is not
some
"thing," but (rather) some doing -- for what is fundamentally an
action or
activity. (And dancing/dance seems to align well with acting
(action)/activity.)
We can still differentiate among valid, less valid, or completely
deranged
ways a word can _mean_, as it's interpreted in the ongoing semiosic
generation of interpretants (Peirce), and such differentiations can be
along
the lines of hermeneutical, anthropological, or more juridical or
"official"
(as in David's Kangxi example) in/validity; but the array of actual or
potential meaning(s) that a word can do are all within the
potentiality of
the word's meaning.
I read David's post as not inconsistent with what I'm reading from
Andy,
except that instead of "meaning making," I would suggest "meaning
doing," or
the doing, not the making, of my meaning, or the meaning of a word.
What is your thinking?
On Mon, 13 Jun 2011, Andy Blunden wrote:
Mike, Vygotsky says in several places that the word is the sign for or
carrier of the concept. As I said earlier, in my reading word
meaning is an
artefact mediated action, the word being the artefact and the
meaning being
the action (both subjective and objective), invested with potential
for
meaning-with by activity-with. A concept is in my humble opinion a
cultural
unit or form of activity. So word meaning, once developed to the
point of
concepts, is related to concept as an action is to an activity.
Andy
mike cole wrote:
That is to compacted and complicated for me to be able to gloss to
myself,
David.
I am struggling with the polysemy of both "meaning" and "concept"
in this
discussion to make sense of their relationship very well. Ditto
sign and
symbol, although Huw's
note about signs and shadows nudged me along. I noted that Anton
referred
in
a recent note to "tool and sign/symbol" and wondered what he
meant, but
was
too preoccupied to ruminate.
Here is a thought I had while ruminating. Might it be appropriate
to say
that meaning is a tool of human processes of concept formation ?
mike
PS- There was a fascinating segment on the American Evening TV
Program,
60
minutes, this evening.. A controversy about "The N word" , the
banning of
Huck Finn, and the success of a book which substitutes the word
"slave"
for
the word "nigger." One proponent of the argument for using slave
was
teacher
who is shown in class discussing "the n word", asking her class,
"why do
we
say the N word instead of 'n-i-g-g-e-r' spelling it out?"
Now THERE is an example of the power of the book!! At least I am
not
alone
in my
confusions about such matters. :-))
On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 8:17 PM, David Kellogg
<vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
wrote:
This is Evald Ilyenkov, "The Concept of the Ideal', in "The Ideal
in
Human
Activity", Pacifica, CA: MIA, p. 268:
"The meaning of the term 'ideal' in Marx and Hegel is the same,
but the
concepts, i.e. the ways of understanding the 'same' meaning are
profoundly
different. After all the word 'concept' in dialectically
interpreted
logic
is a synonym for understanding the essence of the' matter, the
essence
of
phenomena which are only outlined by a given term; it is by no
means a
synonym for 'the meaning of the term' which may be formally
interpreted
as
the sum total of 'attributes' of the phenomena to which the term
is
applied."
Ilyenkov then goes on to discuss Marx's cuckoo-like propensity
"not to
change the historically formed 'meanings of terms'" but to
propose very
different understandings thereof, and thus to change the very
concept.
Three questions:
a) In addition to the ONTOGENETIC argument against the equation
of
meaning
and concept (viz. that if meaning were already equivalent to
concept
then
meaning could not develop into a concept), can't we make a
SOCIOGENETIC
one?
Doesn?t this sociogenetic argument explain both the cultural
adaptation
of
concepts over time (e.g. ?quantity? into ?operator? in math,
?grammar?
into
?discourse? in linguistics) and the cuckoo like exaptation of
other
people?s
terms to express quite different concepts by Marx and by
Vygotsky (e.g.
"egocentric", "pseudoconcept", etc.)?
b) Viewed sociogenetically, isn't this distinction between
conceptual
essence and word meaning the same as the distinction between
signification
value and sense value? That is, from the point of view of
Johnson's
dictionary (or the Kangxi dictionary, or the Port Royal grammar,
or any
other state codification of meaning) the state-ratified meaning
of words
is
their essence and the other, vernacular uses are simply senses,
folk
values,
the range of phenomena to which hoi polloi apply the words?
b) Isn't the OPPOSITE true when we look at the matter
microgenetically?
That is, from the point of view of interpersonal meaning making,
the
essence
of the phenomenon to which I apply the term in the given
instance is the
self-legitimated, auto-ratified, individually-approved sense
value and
the
signification value is simply the range of conventional
meanings, the
range
of conventional phenomena to which the word is applied and
misapplied by
others?
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org
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Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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