Ruqaiya, I like your mention of Vygotsky's analogy of the goose affecting
the flock with fear. Working with the population of student's I do, 16-21
year emotionally and behaviorally disturbed, I see this play out many times
where all of the interaction is based on reaction it is difficult to move
beyond basic levels of learning. I have your same worry that I have
limited knowledge of Activity Theory as well and so I spend a great deal
reading. I always tend to drift back to Vygotsky's Thought and Language to
ground my thoughts.
Gordon, could you please elaborate on Halliday's thoughts pertaining to the
discussion of concrete operational language v the conceptual language?
eric
"ruqaiya hasan"
<Ruqaiya.Hasan who-is-at ling To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
.mq.edu.au> cc:
Sent by: Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: LCA: LSV: Thought and language
xmca-bounces who-is-at weber.
ucsd.edu
06/29/2005 09:45 AM
Please respond to
xmca
Eric just very nicely summed up some of our problems: too many languages of
description, too many distinct orientations. But then the world was never
meant to be monochromatic, was it.
I have a worry that I don't really know much about AT only some of Yrjo's
work, and somethings by Mike Cole's; and occasional articles here and
there.
In thinking of AT as a framework for the analysis and description of social
practice, one problem I had was that I just didn't see how where you have a
'negotiated act' and an over-time performance of an activity eg say
education intention or purpose or goal could be taken as definitive. In
beginning an act I might have purpose such and so, intention this and that
but the other who is to respond and co-act may not have the same
orientation. I am thinking particularly of education where most of us
teachers take 'purposive' conscious planned action; but I don't know any
brave person in the teaching profession who will claim that the purpose is
achieved, that the person toward whom we have directed mediation has
actually actively engaged with it. Also many of our activities are so
complex: is it always possible to know what goal(s) we are aiming at, or
even to know when a goal has been achieved.
when it comes to the kind of activities that Eric was talking about, not
many are aware (counting out folks like us whose job it is to analyse) that
we are undertaking any activity. But as Eric says whatever we do, whether
we
know we are doing it or not, does have some interactive consequence; only I
am not very sure that very sure whether it is analogous to the goose
infecting the flock with fear (Vygotsky's analogy) or whether its a case of
developing 'higher mental functions'.
Phil wrote:
"...culturally mediated higher mental functions involve indirect
actions on the world that incorporate a "slice" of previously used
material matter into the current aspect of action. The cultural
artifact shaped by human practice that mediates the development of
higher mental functions offers the "benefits from the mental work that
produced the particular form of matter". Is this a history of
interaction in tools that Ruqaiya points to?"
yes Phil it is: but in fact if for the moment we do not think in terms of
high-ER mental functions -- just of mental functions -- it seems to me that
the cultural past (is there any other kind of past?) is always there
because
all of us have the culture of our "speech fellowship" (Firth's
classification) embodied in us, and it thus enters into all our activities.
Ruqaiya
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Chappell" <philchappell@mac.com>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 10:14 PM
Subject: [xmca] Re: LCA: LSV: Thought and language
Dear All,
I'm just recovering from a Bangkok lurgy that has laid me low for a few
days, and now catching up on the discussion. While there are several
things going on, Michael has called us to arms to extend the discussion
beyond the first generation of AT, amongst other areas, and Ruqaiya has
reminded us of the material/ideal issue. And Gordon and Lars have
discussed the transforming of a tool ( a genre) for immediate
communicative purposes. Ruqaiya wrote: "I feel that culture is
sedimented into the design and performance of concrete tools and that
the use of tools (may be not as elementary as tying the knot to
remember but others such as even using a spade or shovel) might itself
have a history of interaction at its supportive base".
In a paper by Wertsch and Cole
http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/colevyg.htm the authors wrote
that culturally mediated higher mental functions involve indirect
actions on the world that incorporate a "slice" of previously used
material matter into the current aspect of action. The cultural
artifact shaped by human practice that mediates the development of
higher mental functions offers the "benefits from the mental work that
produced the particular form of matter". Is this a history of
interaction in tools that Ruqaiya points to?
Further, in his introduction to this strand of the discussion, Gordon
referred to the work of Tomasello. I too find Tomasello's ideas of
interest, which are supported by a wealth of research. He and his
colleagues contend that "intentional instruction" is a human universal,
mediated mainly through language during intersubjective interactions
with others. As Gordon mentioned, humans have a biologically-based
predisposition to compare others with themselves, which in itself leads
to more sophisticated modes of cultural learning as learners discover
that people have different perspectives on social activity.
Just a couple of post-fever thoughts that may indeed carry the remnants
of my recent physical/mental state ;-)
Loads to discuss (as Michael pointed out) before Ruqaiya's paper (next
week).
Phil
On 29/06/2005, at 8:40 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> Hi all,
> in all of the discussion about Vygotsky and language here on this
> list, I have been lurking and wondering about the following points:
>
> 1. Why does nobody talk about those who took Vygotsky's work
> further--I mean in the sense that Yrjö called the work first
> generation AT, and the Leoton'evs (A.N & A.A.) second generation, and
> the current efforts third generation. Why don't we discuss on this
> list the subsequent developments, why do we think we have to go back
> to LSV?
> 2. In all of the discussions, I have not seen a single time the word
> "dialectics". And yet LSV uses it in his Chapter 1 of Thought and
> Language, and he articulates a number of dialectical relations in the
> chapter. Why is there no discussion about this?
> 3. Felix Mikhailov provides an interesting discussion of language,
> self, reality, etc. that builds on the work of all the giants
> preceding him, including LSV and ANL and AAL. Why do we not discuss
> his writings, which are dialectical and which take us away from the
> primacy of the word, this singular focus on something that Derrida
> called phallogocentrism (logos=word).
> 4. Why do we not discuss the relationship of meaning and word meaning
> and the thing subsequent authors call activity, the unit. . . I guess
> we could talk about the unit and its relevance to do the kind of work
> we do?
>
> Just some questions. . .
>
> Michael
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jul 01 2005 - 01:00:08 PDT