Re: [xmca] Re: A Failure of Communication

[<vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp>]

Mike and all,
Please attach the link to the whole article (and the whole magazine) 
again. I have millions of excuses why I don't have time to search for it.
 So what!  So does everyone.  I have one passionate reason to ask for a 
helping hand here.  I want to focus on the language of the tribe, at 
least today! It isn't about a Rosetta Stone at all. In my world of 
technologists, "soft" communication skills are valued as an aside, if at 
all. The bridge-making of language can be both explicit and implicit, 
intuitive or counterintuitive - and go either way in nuance.  To end 
with Eliot: For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our 
business.  It's a Quixotic venture, but the path to better, more 
articulate, more productive language, is nonetheless a valid path.
Vandy


----- Original Message -----
> 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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