>Bill Peneul's comments on addressivity in the invocation of rules in play
>point toward the way in wich we imagine ourselves into social forms and
>communicative interaction, attending to personal need, perception, and
>desire while seeking the social forms that will give shape,
>intelligibility, and realizability to social action.
>
>Just before LSV's quotation on rules that I invoked a few days ago, LSV
>also says "If all play is is the realization in play form of tendencies
>that cannot be immediately gratified, then elements of imaginary
>situations will automatically be part of the emotional tone of play
>itself. "
> The imagined rule, perceived as a socially available rule or type
>or tool, becomes a means of realizing impulses and carries the expressive
>force of the impulse that drives the imaginative creation and perhaps
>also the anticipated gratification imagined in the projected state to be
>realized through the forms of rules.
> The data of rule discussions and negotiations, which several
>people on the list have reported, show attempts by the participants
>trying to create the gratificcation of their own desires within the
>public space of the game--with at times the maintenance of that public
>space--the continuation of play-- being the overriding need because no
>other desire can be explored for its social gratification without the
>maintenance of the play space.
> The rule discussions also serve to triangulate the participants
>into a more closely shared and interpretable set of behaviors.
> This approach towards perceived rules and potential social tools
>for creating desired states allows for both strongly aligning and
>strongly resistant forms of orientation toward the perceived rules (as
>well as all stances in the middle) at the same time as providing for an
>orientation outwards into social roles and relations and symbols and
>practices which provide the means for the social realization of the self.
> I hope I have not been too obscure. Please ask for
>clarifications.
>
> By the way, my own students, who were mostly literature grad
>students, took these issues in the direction of the kind of play spaced
>literature provided, from the stance of writers and readers, and in
>relation to the perceived rules of literary order and the idiosyncracy of
>individual creation.
>
>Chuck Bazerman
>
>
>On Tue, 13 Feb 1996 BPenuel who-is-at aol.com wrote:
>>
>> The anticipatory dimension of addressivity is one (and there are probably
>> many others) way that rules "get into" activity. People articulate their
>> assumptions about what others anticipate themselves (e.g. "Now this won't
>> result in a waste of taxpayer dollars") or about what they might value (e.g.
>> "This is no 'pork' program you're funding here") in local activity settings
>> into utterances.
>>
>> Both local activity setting rules generated and larger cultural voices can
>> get incorporated into utterances here, which makes the operation of the power
>> or influence of rules very local in one sense (in that they can be observed
>> and constructed in concrete utterances) and cultural in another (in that they
>> respond to voices that might be attributed to larger social practices).
>>
>> So from the standpoint of the utterance, I might argue that the way _rules_
>> are referenced in action is closely allied with what is _anticipated_ and
>> _addressed_ by speakers implicitly or explicitly as
>> governing/constraining/empowering interaction. The problem for the analyst
>> becomes, "how can I identify the voices being addressed?" Naming these is
>> itself a tricky interpretive act, but there is probably no way out of that
>> reflexivity....
>>
>
>
Peter Smagorinsky
University of Oklahoma
College of Education
Department of Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum
820 Van Vleet Oval
Norman, OK 73019-0260
(405)325-3533
fax: (405)325-4061
smagor who-is-at aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu
psmagorinsky who-is-at uoknor.edu