At 11:03 AM 9/4/01 -0700, Mike wrote:
>
>Hi Alena--
>
>It is my impression (there have been a lot of lengthy thoughts put out here
>this morning/evening) that you believe the big lesson to be taken from
>Tannen is to avoid reduction of discussion to either the battle-winner-take-
>all-cut-their-heads-off approach, or to a non-critical, every-thing-goes-
>and-we-are-all-in-agreement. But as you point out, Tannen does not tell
>us how to avoid the fire when we jump out of the frying pan (just to mix
>metaphors-- its almost lunch time where I am).
>
>Play has often been a part of xmca discours, although bill's bunnies have
>been molting, or snoozing, or he has been looking elsewhere. I continue
>to find the idea of creating half baked ideas and inviting others, including
>ourselves, to bake them up into a tasty meal. Add the catharsis of beating
>down the bread from time to time before it goes in the oven (a favorite
>activity of ours during graduate school!) and the result might be
>pretty good.
>
>Is that a response? Did I miss something in the tide of words?
>mike
:) It has been a tide, hasn't it. Wonder what driftwood or more substantial
leavings it will deposit on the shore.
Yes, there's the bread-baking metaphor, but I spent a fair while sleepless
last night thinking about it. There's something there that is hidden in the
metaphor and it took me a while to find it.
The punching down of the bread -- do you know what that is for? To eliminate
large air bubbles and improve and refine the texture. And close-textured
bread
is very good. But there are breads that you make without beating the dough
down:
banana bread, for example. I make mine with chunks of banana, not mashed,
and chunky
walnuts and even Rice Krispies, and the textures are fruity and nutmeaty,
and the crumbs
are large and delicious. There are differentthings in each bite, not fine
sameness.
I think this list has some of both things, you know. There are threads
that don't
apparently lead to fine-textured analyses as well as those that at least
hope to do
that. They're rich and large-crumbed, and they are at least as valuable as
the fine-textured,
punched-down bread. Just a complementary metaphor, or expansion on the
metaphor.
Just a point of information: has anything gotten punched down and refined
here to the
point of entering someone's publication? That would be, maybe, one way of
seeing how
much the metaphor of bread-making and punching down really gets played out,
however
much we value it. (And who prefers punched-down bread to the other kind
and who
decides when the dough is ready for punching down -- or am I pushing the
metaphor too far?)
--Alena
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