Bruce tells me that my problems with receiving xmca messages has been fixed.
We'll see.
Based on my readings of Wells, Halliday, and Hasan, I find the proposal for
the complementarity
of LSV, Halliday, and Bernstein compelling. This past winter I conducted a
graduate class where
we read Jim wertsch's 1985 book on Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind
which Ruquaiya
refers to in her first article in the readings. Jim focuses there on
discourse and propositional referentiality
and his commentary seems important background for actually working out a
unified cultural historical
approach that incorporates contemporary work on lexiocgrammar. But I do not
know how to bring that
into a discussion that is already packed with things to read.
I also believe that the work of Ochs and Schiefflin, who make a strong case
for the idea that the acquisition
of language is simultaneously acquisition of the sociocultural order into
which children are born needs to be
brought into the discussion. It seems to fit very well with Halliday's
emphases but does not seem to been
into the discussion by SFL folks, or at least, not in my limited reading.
Does anyone else think this work
relevant?
There is one point on which I think Ruqaiya errs in her discussion of
Luria's Central Asian work (if I understand her
characterization correctly) and it is important to get straight in seeking
to deal with issues of cultural historical variation
in thought. It is not the case that Luria claimed that Uzbeki peasants lack
higher psycholgical functions. All humans
are said to have higher psychological functions by virtue of the fact that
their thought and action is mediated by
culture. Rather, as Wertsch discusses, LSV and ARL believed that one must
include an analysis of evolution/development
of cultural means as a cultural historical process. They use the term
"rudimentary" mediational means, for example, in
connection with what they referred to as "primitive peoples." Specifically,
Luria believed that traditional central asian
peasants used functional graphic modes of mediation which were superceded by
taxonomic logical modes of mediation
associated with literacy, schooling, and involvement in industrial modes of
life.
I have my quarrels with Luria's conclusion and share scepticism about the
enthusiasm for schooling that Luria espoused. But
it is not correct, in my view, to believe that he attributed only elementary
(not culturally mediated) forms of mental life
to Uzbeki peasants.
This issue may not be central to the question of the complementarity of the
views of Halliday and Vygotsky, but it certainly
touches directly on questions of Bernstein/Luria/LSV connections, so I
wanted to raise it here. I still have Ruqaiya's second paper to get
through and look forward to others comments on this work.
mike
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