Mike, bb
I think in speech act theory you already have a framework. The
smallest building block is a speech act, which bridges across two
turns, and therefore is a social phenomenon, though you have the
performance (locution), an intention (illocution), and effect
(perlocution) which constitute its irreducible moments.
Thus, a question does not exist in itself. Whether something comes to
be a question depends on the two speakers who, together, achieve
things such as question-answer, or the (in)famous I-R-E sequence. For
we can never know whether a teacher Initiates such a sequence--all
students have to say is f... off, and you have a very different
sequence, no initiation...
Michael
On 14-Oct-06, at 10:01 PM, Mike Cole wrote:
Could the following be taken as a rough synonym for joint mediated
activity,. Bill?
"In the co-construction of a text, the smallest building block is the
Move,
for example a "question"
or an "answer.'" However, it is the Exchange -in which such
reciprocally-related moves combine-that
constitutes the minimal unit of spoken discourse."
I am pushing toward the issue of meaning making in my own odd way.
mike
On 10/14/06, bb <xmca-whoever@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Thanks Mike, those background texts are very helpful, and I
> appreciate the
> time you have taken to locate them, and reproduce them here.
>
> While on travel, I've been reading closely Gordon Well's 1996 paper
> in MCA
> and I can see this metaphor of interweaving providing a visual for
> the way
> sequences and episodes of communication, while beginning and ending,
> contribute to the continuitiy of conversations, of texts, much as
> fibers
> begin and end while making up a continuous thread (and
> communication on xmca
> certainly can be considered supporting data that is in our faces,
> which I
> will exploit in a moment).
>
> To pursue what is relational with communication, drawing upon
> Halliday and
> Hasan, there is a taxonomy of how reference is made in text -- with
> reference being one form of relation, typically unidirectional.
>
> For example, for me to now Address Andy's claim that writing with a
> relational lexicon is the use of "motherhood" words is to make a
> reference
> from this posting before you to that of Andy's -- and that of
> Andy's does
> not reference this posting, having preceeded it in time, and without
> anticipation for this posting. My posting is in relation to Andy's
> -- and
> taking Michaels post in perspective, both are constitutive of a
> greater
> textual whole. The full exchange: Andy's post, my response, Andy's
> response, and this follow-up is an instance of a sequence of moves
> in which
> those of Andy and mine are mutually (reciprocally) constitutive, each
> contributes to making the next, as each is in response and in
> reference to
> the other, i.e. in relation to the other. Gordon writes:
>
> "In the co-construction of a text, the smallest building block is the
> Move, for example a "question"
> or an "answer.'" However, it is the Exchange -in which such
> reciprocally-related moves combine-that
> constitutes the minimal unit of spoken discourse." (p. 78)
>
> Does this make sense?
>
> bb
>
>
>
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> > What follows are raw materials that are the beginning of a
> response to
> bill
> > barowy's inquiry involving the use of the metaphor of
> interweaving in
> > discussions of persons, actions, agency, situatedness, etc.
> >
> > I do not come to this discussion as a philosopher, let alone a
> Marxist
> > scholar and dialectician. To some this would automatically
> exclude me
> from
> > any serious
> > discussion of cultural historical activity theory. I am an auto-
> didact
> in
> > these matters, coming to them through an odd pathway derived from
> American
> > pragmatism,
> > via behaviorism and skinner (of easy to trash fame) and experimental
> > psychology of learning. It was issues of cultural variation and
> processes of
> > development that led me to chat long after I worked with Luria.
> >
> > But perhaps consideration of the following statements by three
> scholars
> who
> > I take to be, on the surface at least, as markedly different from
> each
> other
> > as one could hope to find, both in their disciplinary
> allegencies, the
> > empirical phenomena they studied, and their philosophies of science.
> What
> > strikes me is the similarities in their intuitive efforts to deal
> with
> the
> > heterogeneity of the constituents of human
> experience/nature/consciousness,
> > the issue of relations of individual elements to their
> > putative wholes, continuity/discontinuity, and the necessity for the
> study
> > of such phenomena over time.
> >
> > I will try to return to the specific text under discussion later
> this
> > weekend if I can make it through the 101 spotted promotion files
> that I
> am
> > privileged to read and comment on about this time of year.
> >
> > So, here are the meditations, for your consideration
> > mike
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> > -------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > The world is full of partial stories that run parallel to one
> another,
> > beginning and ending at odd times. They mutually interlace and
> interfere
> at
> > points, but we cannot unify them completely in our minds. In
> following
> your
> > life-history, I must temporarily turn my attention from my own.
> Even a
> > biographer of twins would have to press them alternately upon his
> reader's
> > attention. It follows that whoever says that the whole world
> tells one
> story
> > utters another of those monistic dogmas that a man believes at
> his risk.
> It
> > is easy to see the world's history pluralistically, as a rope of
> which
> each
> > fibre tells a separate tale; but to conceive of each cross-
> section of
> the
> > rope as an absolutely single fact, and to sum the whole longitudinal
> series
> > into one being living an undivided life, is harder. We have
> indeed the
> > analogy of embryology to help us. The microscopist makes a
> hundred flat
> > cross-sections of a given embryo, and mentally unites them into one
> solid
> > whole. But the great world's ingredients, so far as they are beings,
> seem,
> > like the rope's fibres, to be discontinuous cross-wise, and to
> cohere
> only
> > in the longitudinal direction. Followed in that direction they are
> > many.(William James, *Lecture 4 Pragmatism - the one and the Many)*
> >
> > I'll tell you what I like to think about: sometimes I like to
> think of
> a
> > rope. The fibers that make up the rope are discontinuous; when you
> twist
> > them together, you don't make them continuous, you make the thread
> > continuous. . . . even though it may look in a thread as though
> each of
> > those particles are going all through it, that isn't the case.
> That's
> > essentially the descriptive model. . . . Obviously, I am not
> talking
> about
> > the environment. I am not talking about inside and outside. I am
> talking
> > about the conditions of the system (quoted in McDermott, 1980, p.
> 14‑15).
> >
> >
> > Each of these children was seen to engage in a great many behavior
> episodes
> > a day]; the number of things a child did in a day, according to our
> criteria
> > of episodes, varied approximately from 500 to 1,300. . . . Most
> of the
> > episodes did not occur in isolation. Behavior was more often
> like the
> > interwoven strands of a cord than like a row of blocks in that
> the molar
> > units often overlapped. . . . Most of the overlapping was a
> matter of
> the
> > intersection of the whole of a short episode and a relatively
> small part
> of
> > a longer one. . . . The behavior continuum was cord‑like, too,
> in the
> sense
> > that overlapping episodes often did not terminate at the same
> time but
> > formed an interwoven merging continuum (Barker and Wright, 1966, p.
> 464).
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 16:03:20 +0000
> Subject: [xmca] interweaving
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>
>
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