You wrote,
>For me the problem has been where to allow in a model the possibility of
>the meanings that haven't yet been meant, which must be somehow in the
>potential available in the present, as a result of the meanings immanent
>from the past.
Yes, a model of change has to account for the relation between past,
present, and future. And I would also hold out for a model that
overgeneralizes the present possibilities and future potentials. I would
perhaps go as far as to say that the undreamed of present choices and
amazing future potential are always constrained (I'm thinking of Mike
Cole's recent identification of genres with constraints) BUT NEVER FULLY
DETERMINED by a history of interactions.
People can drag in (sorry, appropriate) tools and uses from just anywhere
and combine them in any way--as they field linguist must do, by the way, to
learn a language, to make meaning (which I might tentatively define in a
pragmatic way as useful behavior together, almost always using tools,
including among others writing and speaking). It might not be useful (be
meaningful) and thus not be appropriated by others and thus not be
continued, much less stabilized into a genre to constrain future action.
But shit happens.
So, as you say, one issue for theory building is
>how to represent the new in relation to the old...
That relation, it seems to me, is historical, but a history that involves
very complex social interactions and cannot be read off texts alone (any
more than the field linguist or linguistic archeologist can read meaning
off of written texts alone).
To take your example of the eye-level AIDS prevention bus advert and the
innovation of strong sexual imagery in it. To explain the innovation using
the North American notios of genre (see Freedman/Medway's 1994 collection
intro) one would have to do the anthropologists'/sociologists' work of
tracing the various activity networks that contain the genesis of the
innovation.
To speculate a bit on what activity networks to look to (and the web of
written genres one might find), one might go to
the government agency that sponsored the public health campaign (with the
ususal bureaucratic genres of RFP, policy statements, etc.)
epidemiologists who provided data that spurred the government agency to
action (with genres of research articles, researach reviews,etc.)
the ad agency that the government hired (with genres of sales proposals,
market test reports, etc.)
any other organized stakeholder(s) a part of the change . . .
It would be difficult to locate the where and when, the genesis, of the
"idea" (field choice) (appropriation) of using sexually explicit material
in eye-level bus adverts, among all this tenor of meetings taken and
reports exchanged, and so on, this array of genres written and otherwise,
this complex of large and intersecting networks of activity and the
conflicts and contradictions and exertings of power within among them over
whether or not to appropriate the material for the bus ad. But if some
analyst (or law firm) had the need to find out (to satisfy curiosity or
assign legal blame), it might be possible to find out the genesis of this
"idea", this new meaning.
This is delving into what Latour calls the work of mediation, the messiness
of interacitons with tools. It assumes that the potential in the moment or
in the future is never a matter of choosing from a finite pool of meaning
potential.
Who knows, as you suggest, what sorts of actions might result from this ad,
both in likely genres (angry letters to the editor and the minister,
placards at demonstrations against the filth on our busses by another
activity network, organized by fundamentalist anti-condom groups) to less
likely ones that challenge generic description (a little old lady scrawling
SHAME across parts of the ad)? Of course, if fundamentalists all over the
city organized a campaign and appropriated the little old lady's action, if
they began doing the same or similar, we'd have an innovative action
operationalized--made a genre--which would constrain (but again never
determine) future actions.
Jim continues:
>Re the relation between activity theory and linguistics, I've sometimes
>wondered whether the best theory we have of activity is the one we've
>evolved through language, as opposed to ones we might design as academics.
>So that common sense everyday language (without grammatical metaphor in
>technical terms) is a good theory of activity. Would that be a meeting
>ground between activity theory and functional linguistics, or something
>that would get in the way.
My sense is that many of us in CHAT have got such a history of using the
term ACTIVITY in an academic way that it would be hard to see it in common
sense terms. And indeed, my dictionary has a bunch of definitions of
activity, not to mention those such as "classroom activity" or "sexual
activity" that have almost passed from specialist to common sense use. I
wish sometimes, when I'm trying to explain activity theory to others that
we had appropriated a different term. It makes the work harders sometimes,
to have to wrench the term into a specialist niche.
David R. Russell
English Department
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
USA (515) 294-4724,fax 294-6814
drrussel who-is-at iastate.edu