Re: [xmca] Alfred Schütz

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Andy, Martin

I appreciate both of you taking the time to guide me in my attempt to go
deeper into the materiality and ideality of words. I am not in a position
to form my own opinion on this theme but I seem to be filling out my ZPD a
little on this complex subject.

At this point the distinction between
 inner form as the *psychological* aspect of an action
contrasted with
inner form as gesture [or enactment] that is always embodied and displayed
as a particular *style*

Both these perspectives on inner form view a word *as* an action BUT where
they locate the action is open for further reflection.

Andy, the article Martin suggested I read by Elena Cuffari I found very
helpful in clarifying the centrality of gesture as profoundly implicated in
the formation of meaning.  Meaning as formed within multiple modalities.
Gesture, not as *romantic* and *natural* but rather gesture as
socioculturally and conventionally forming meaning as a dynamic
process between Merleau-Ponty's notions of sedimentation and spontaneity.

Elena is exploring another aspect of intersubjectivity and challenging our
canonical versions of what is assumed to be natural [and  romantic] and
what is sociohistorical in our notions of language and gesture.  Elena is
suggesting her style of HOW she perceives gesture and language as
multi-modal *ensembles* of meaningful action need to be viewed as
ambiguously interrelated and not as antithesis or dialectical.

Andy, Martin
I hope this topic will continue to be playfully and reciprocally explored
and will put in play the various cognitive paradigms as contrasted with the
more enactive, gestural, stylistic embodied notions of meaning formation.

Inner form as it is understood and interpreted and debated dialogically
seems to be an excellent entry point to further interpretation and possible
fusion of horizons in our understanding the centrality of language in human
becoming.

P.S Martin, I emailed Elena Cuffari and asked if her dissertation
[completed in 2011]is in the public domain as I do appreciate the
wonderful way she explores the various traditions and deepening
theconversation between the traditions. [I recognize Gadamer's notion of
hermeneutical reciprocal play in her style]

XMCA is such a wonderful community for *thinking out loud* and I want to
acknowledge my appreciation for the spirit of inquiry incorporated on this
site. It incarnates another modality of meaning making in a reciprocal
conversation and generating meaning.

Thank You

Larry




On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Larry, I formed the view that for Vygotsky a word (i.e., a spoken word)
> was an action, and only thanks to people speaking words could words, as
> ideal types of material artefacts, acquire dictionary definitions, and
> become "objectified" in that sense. So my take on that discussion was that
> "inner form" referred to the inner or psychological aspect of an action (as
> in "inner speech"), which is both subjective and objective. This
> distinction is not found in the ideal typical "words" listed in
> dictionaries. As objectified or reified ideals they have only an outer form.
>
> But there are as many ways of reading Vygotsky as readers I am sure.
>
> Andy
>
> Martin Packer wrote:
>
>> Larry,
>>
>> I wasn't trying to take the discussion in any specific direction, but
>> Greg expressed curiosity about Merleau-Ponty's views on language. M-P wrote
>> quite a bit about language acquisition: he held the Chair in Child
>> Psychology and Pedagogy at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952.
>>
>> I find it interesting that M-P, like LSV, drew from Humboldt's writing on
>> language. Specifically, and again like LSV, he employs the notion of the
>> "inner form" of speech. When this topic has been discussed here on xmca we
>> have had a tendency to say that the inner form, what LSV terms 'meaning' as
>> distinct from 'sense,' is fixed and objective, rather like the dictionary
>> definition of a word.
>>
>> But dictionary definitions are written, and children don't hear the
>> definitions of words as they learn their first language. (If they do, I
>> imagine they ignore them.) M-P describes the inner form instead as a "style
>> of speaking," an organization prior to representation, an "immanent
>> meaning" to which the speaker has a "corporeal intentionality," a texture
>> which is grasped.
>>
>> It helps to know that M-P articulated an account of perception as in
>> general a practical  involvement in the world, in which each object is
>> always given only partially, incompletely and from a perspective, while at
>> the same time other perspectives are tacitly adumbrated, as are the other
>> things around the object. Each object mirrors all others. We are always in
>> a situation, a nexus of interrelationships into which our body too is
>> entangled. What he says about the word, then, is what he says about any
>> material entity. "Style" is the way an object invites, demands, a response
>> from us.
>> A child learns language in the here and now of concrete objects. As LSV
>> pointed out, words seem first to be taken by a young child as aspects,
>> features of the objects they name. A "gesture" is a movement, an action,
>> something understood not intellectually but as outlining a structure in and
>> of the world. Gesture requires taking up a position in the world, and
>> sharing that position with another. Gesture has style. To say that the
>> 'inner form' of a word is a gesture is to say that its meaning owes
>> everything to its corporeality - there is no word that is not being spoken
>> and heard. As spoken, a word is always a figure against an unspoken ground,
>> an island in a sea of activity. Dictionary definitions, in contrast, are
>> merely speech about speech, in which there can only be an external and
>> conventional relationship between word and meaning.
>> Consequently, I'm not sure about the centrality of reflection that you
>> emphasize. Notice that M-P writes:
>>
>> "On the condition that I do not reflect expressly upon it, my
>> consciousness of my body immediately signifies a certain landscape about
>> me..."
>>
>> In other words, we have consciousness in/of the world *prior* to
>> reflection, and the most important task is to grasp that. This is not to
>> say that reflection is unimportant, but by definition it is something
>> secondary, and derivative.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> p.s.: worth a look:
>> Cuffari, E. (2011). Gestural sense-making: Hand gestures as
>> intersubjective linguistic enactments. Phenomenology and the Cognitive
>> Sciences. doi:10.1007/s11097-011-9244-9
>>
>>
>> On Apr 28, 2012, at 6:16 PM, Larry Purss wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Andy, Mike, Martin
>>>
>>> Thanks for this lead.  I have been reading Gadamer's response to Habermas
>>> and the interplay between his notion of *traditions* and Habermas notion
>>> of
>>> *emancipation* within social theory.
>>>
>>> The two chapter's of Martin's book will help further the conversations on
>>> these themes.
>>>
>>> Martin, your conversation with David on the interplay of realization and
>>> instantiation and the centrality of the *relation between* these concepts
>>> seems central to this discussion.
>>>
>>> I also wonder about the interplay between realization and reflection and
>>> Gadamer's notion of multiple TYPES of reflection. Assertive reflection,
>>> thematic reflection, and what Gadamer names as  *effective reflection*
>>> where one engages with developing the skills to enter and participate
>>> effectively in playing the games without holding back and *merely*
>>> playing
>>> at playing the game.  Effective playing as having its *own* being and
>>> *we*
>>> enter this play and get *taken up* and *carried* along within the play.
>>> Not
>>> privleging either *subjective* consciousness or *objective* consciousness
>>> but rather privileging the play in which subjectivity and objectivity
>>> have
>>> their *ground* [metaphorically]
>>>
>>> Martin, I'm not sure if this was the direction you were taking
>>> theconversation, but it what I interpreted you saying.
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 3:51 PM, mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hi Andy et al -
>>>>
>>>> Martin's book, the science of qualitative research has a chapter that
>>>> traces Kant-Husserl-
>>>> Schutz - BergerLuckman that we r reading at Lchc. It helped me a lot to
>>>> sort out this branch
>>>> of thought. It is followed by a chapter that traces Heidegger - Merleau
>>>> Ponty- garfinkle.
>>>>
>>>> I have heard there is an electronic version, but do not know how to get
>>>> it. Working from actual hard copy!
>>>> Mike
>>>> On Apr 28, 2012, at 10:19 AM, Andrew Babson <ababson@umich.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> He was very influential to Garfinkel, and so from an intellectual
>>>>> historical perspective, the development of ethnomethodology,
>>>>> conversation analysis and modern sociolinguistics.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 4/28/12, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'd just like to share the attached article, written in 1945 by Alfred
>>>>>> Schuetz, a refugee from the Frankfurt School living in New York, like
>>>>>> so
>>>>>> many others. In the article he appropriates Wm James, GH Mead and J
>>>>>> Dewey, whilst coming from the Pheneomenology of Husserl, to adapt the
>>>>>> concepts of Pheneomenology to social theory. It is quite interesting.
>>>>>> He
>>>>>> remains, in my view within the orbit of Phenomenology, but readers
>>>>>> will
>>>>>> recognise significant points of agreement with AN Leontyev's Activity
>>>>>> Theory. What he calls "Conduct" comes close to "Activity," and he
>>>>>> introduces the concept of Action which is certainly the same as it is
>>>>>> for CHAT, and instead of "an activity" (the 3rd level in ANL's system)
>>>>>> he has "Project." But although this project has the same relation to
>>>>>> Action, it is a subjectively derived project posited on the world,
>>>>>> rather than project discovered in the world, and having a basically
>>>>>> societal origin. This is the point at which I think he confines
>>>>>> himself
>>>>>> to Phenomenology, and fails to reach a real social theory. The whole
>>>>>> business about "multiple realities" which gives the article its title
>>>>>> is
>>>>>> very tedious, but actually is valid in its basics I think.
>>>>>> Some of us on this list may appreciate him. He's a recent discovery
>>>>>> for
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> me.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Andy
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
>>>>>> ------------
>>>>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>>>>> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
>>>>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>>>>>> Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/**product/1608461459/<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608461459/>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/**product/1608461459/<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608461459/>
>
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