[xmca] Re: A Failure of Communication

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

As usual, i forgot an "attachment". Here is the abstract from Chuck's
paper. Note in particular the last sentence with respect to Elliott.
mike
-------------
>From the perspective of writing, concepts are most readily identified
through conceptual words deployed by writers to evoke conceptual meanings
in readers. Although every word has some conceptual
weight, this article focuses on words associated with core ideas or
classifications or connections of domains of thought—the kinds of terms
attended to in the history of ideas that are at the forefront of
discussions in disciplines and that undergraduates grapple with. Such
concepts are fluid within historically evolving and socially varying
situations, and specific conceptual terms circulate within specific
epistemic communities as part of specific intellectual practices,
associated with specific genres.
These domain-specific conceptual terms create challenges of internalization
for novices, and become the basis for thought gists of those enculturated
into disciplinary w ays of thought. In each new communicative situation
calling for new statements, however, internal gists must be externalized to
create publically shareable articulations of thoughts, undergoing the
disciplines gaining the understanding and engagement of readers within the
epistemic activity system.


-----------------------
>
> T. S. Elliott from “East Coker”
>
>
>
> So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
>
> Twenty years largely wasted, the years of *l'entre deux guerres*
>
> Trying to use words, and every attempt
>
> Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
>
> Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
>
> For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
>
> One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
>
> Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
>
> With shabby equipment always deteriorating
>
> In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
>
> Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
>
> By strength and submission, has already been discovered
>
> Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
>
> To emulate—but there is no competition—
>
> There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
>
> And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
>
> That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
>
> For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
>
>
>
> The whole poem is here: http://allspirit.co.uk/coker.html
>
>
>
>
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