I concur wholeheartedly with Bill. The problem lies when terms become
reified without a coordination of perspectives on that term i.e.
positioning the term within its varied contexts of use and making clear its
selected referential/contextual meaning for which it has been selected to
represent. This is certainly a major problem in my field: second language
education, in which terms from bygone and shifting paradigms are employed
to represent fundamentally new or repositioned constructs. Hence a whole
corpus of terms from computers and computational theory/information
processing are still (!) in vogue to discuss/explore/interpret language
learning albeit through different lenses. As Bill says, the challenge is to
collaboratively work to negotiate the meanings that are useful to us,
something I am finding an incredible challenge when following the
discussions of Gordon's paper, and in my attempts to interpret my classroom
data and relate those interpretations to others' work. I am still very
foggy on when is a sign and when is a tool, and I sighed relief when Albert
raised this a few days ago.
Phil
At 21:34 8/11/02 +0000, you wrote:
>to avoid some words because of their meanings in other contexts. Many of us
>understand on xmca (especially given the uncountable times Jay has written
>about it, or the number of times it appears in seminal writings) that words
>conjure meanings in the contexts in which they are used. Sentences,
>paragraphs, papers, journals and venues of inquiry all contribute to shaping
>what meanings are made of a word. So by example, physicists have no trouble
>using "force" and "momentum" which are far more specific in their use than
>that of the sports announcer at the football field. Chemists, Biologists,
>and
>Physicists, when push comes to shove, have fundamentally different uses for
>"energy". (This point i make from the experience of having been a postdoc
>trying to coordinate physicists, chemists, and biologists to create an
>undergraduate inter-disciplinary course).
>
>The bottom line is that, IMHO, the specific selection of a word is less
>important than how strongly structured is its use in context. Systems,
>Ecology, Structure, Process, and so on, are all words with meanings in other
>disciplines -- the challenge is whether we can collaboratively work to
>negotiate the meanings that will be useful to us.
>
>bb
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