RE: [xmca] Re: ye

[Monica Hansen <monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu>]

Andy,

I think I am following your argument here, but I am wondering if you could
clarify your use of *coextensive*  in "And when in a given circumstance we
have practical activity (making bars) and discourse (expert talk, issuing
advice) going on together, then these different strands weave together as
extended projects/concepts that lock into the overall social fabric by not
being coextensive. I.e., a particular discourse is not excluively located
within a certain "activity."" And as in your last sentence: ".because these
threads are not coextensive."

 

It is the relationality in both Activity and Discourse that is difficult to
define and translate into research because of the necessity for a *unit* of
analysis. The confusion about *discourse* comes from its ambiguous meaning,
often used (or limited to use), as interchangeable with *unit* of study, a
singular object (or molecular). This usage is reflected in monological
approaches to language study versus dialogical approaches (Linell, 2009). 

 

It strikes me: if we are using construction as a metaphor for knowledge
building and mind making, maybe it is this metaphor that keeps us going back
to the individual parts that are required for construction. Same with
discourse: ...a discourse is constructed.And then we are inspired by the
opposing direction of sequential processing (deconstruction). This tendency
towards seriality is maybe the difficulty in defining instructional methods
in both math and language. I am not saying the components and sequences are
unnecessary (Pedagogical knowledge often being dichotomized as content and
process), but beyond the parts, we are pulled back to the understanding of
the elements in context, integrated, all happening simultaneously as
important to both Activity and Discourse and I would say to borrow from the
study David K cited before, the enactment of understanding in math or
language arts. 

 

Just thinking out loud, 

 

Monica




 

From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2011 10:24 PM
To: lchcmike@gmail.com; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: ye

 

Thanks for that Mike. for resurrecting my original question (which may could
not be clarified through difficulties in learning maths as I'd hoped) and
for the Engestrom paper. As Engstrom says: "a theoretical integration of
these two [talking and acting] has not yet been accomplished."

Engestrom is discussing exactly the problem of the relation of Discourse
Analysis and Activity Theory, in the context of the relation between a
Discourse and an Activity. In the fine detail of the performance of Activity
and Discourse, the two are of course inextricable. The hope of some
Discourse analysts to make conversation an object of analysis, while
abstracting the conversation from what the talkers were trying to do (or
talking about) is clearly (to Activity Theorists and the participants, if
not the analysts) vacuous. But also, it is obvious that if we try to make
some kind of dichotomy between practical activity (as in making metal bars
and operating machines) and discursive activity (talking about it, issuing
commands, etc.) then we can't make any sense of Activity either. Even a
dichotomy of Actions is problematic, but maybe has some sense. It is
self-evident and obvious the distinction between words and practical
actions, but speaking is also an action and all practical actions also have
a symbolic effect.

To this end, the question of unit of analysis is raised. Engstrom wants to
make a "situated activity system as the basic unit of analysis." But this
defeats the purpose. It is actually taking the analytical road, not the road
of Goethe and Hegel and Vygotsky, in my view. If we break the whole down
into situated units which contain systems of activity, inclusive of the talk
going on and the surrounding artefacts (machinery etc), then try to assemble
the whole again, we find on the one hand the "long duration" concept of the
specific industry producing metal components, and on the other, the
"historically distinctive social languages at work, namely the social
language of the machinists and the social language of the expert engineers."
That is, there are discourses (plural) sustained of course, by practical
activity (visiting workshops, attending conferences, writing papers, having
conversations) and mathematics is one of them. And when in a given
circumstance we have practical activity (making bars) and discourse (expert
talk, issuing advice) going on together, then these different strands weave
together as extended projects/concepts that lock into the overall social
fabric by not being coextensive. I.e., a particular discourse is not
excluively located within a certain "activity."

So I don't think it works to take a molecule of talk-and-labour as a "unit
of analysis" unless we just want to be analytical sociologists, and nor can
we take (I believe) Discourses to be a particular variety of Activities
(because the Actions entailed, meanings, are always inextricably connected
with practical Actions, as per Bakhtin's Utterances). You can't have an
Activity that doesn't include talk or a Discourse that doesn't include or
imply practical actions as well as meanings.

So, for example, mathematics is a Discourse. There we have a unit of
analysis. I believe Anna is in agreement here. Doing mathematics involves
talking and all sorts of practical actions. It also has the structure and
movement of a concept: a system of judgments - acts of thinking - of long
duration, which has an internal unity thanks to the word. So the Activities
(units of Activity) are long threads which are overlapping and interacting
in the concrete situation, which gains its tensions, contradictions, its
nature as a predicament, because these threads are not coextensive. 

I think we have to merge the concepts of an Activity and a Discourse. They
are inextricable. 

Andy

mike cole wrote: 

Dear Colleagues--
 
I am poking along at the question of activity and discourse.
While poking around, it occurred to me that Yrjo had written a paper on the
topic. The context is different-- a special issue of a journal on
organizational communication, but it
seems as if it might be relevant to Andy's question and Anna's answers.
 
mike
  
 

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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
<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857> &pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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