Re: [xmca] Shotter on Clark

A few quiet moments before the next tumult, Tony. I'll try to articulate my
thoughts re Shotter's review
of Clark.

First, I am STILL glad, as Shotter also celebrates, that Clark is examining
joint action as the locus of language acquisition/use. (I should add here
that, havng reluctantly finished David Copperfield, I am reading Putnam's
Pragmaticism, and am on the chapter about Wittgenstein as pragmaticist, a
felicitous coincidence, although I prefer the luxury of Dickens, who has
somehow captivated me in "late middle age.").

My thought when reading the first couple of chapters of Clark and now
reading Shotter's review, is that the term, ACTIVITY is missing. It is
missing
both from Clark and Shotter. I like joint mediated ACTIVITY as a unit of
analysis for lots of reasons and from this discussion I come away kind of
reinforced in that proclivity. It relates to terms like "spontaneous" and
that "spontaneous reactions between us are "the prototype of a way of
thinking and not the result of thought." After writing this, John uses the
term activity(top p. 3).

I am pretty certain we have to stick with the retrospective construction of
meaning (contra herb c/descartes etc) but we have to have a place to be when
retro-specting" and that heterochrony is afforded by activity.

So my next step would be, given the time (I hear the car in the driveway)
would be to look for the conditions that make the use of the term,.
spontaneous, reasonable.

quickly
mike

On 9/3/07, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
>
> Mike,
>
> Thank you for referring us to Shotter's review. It is remarkable in
> several respects, not least the clarity of thought and expression.
>
> (htm version of the review is at
> http://www.mCassey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/clarke.htm )
>
> While I can see how Clark would have appeared interesting in terms of
> "unit of analysis," it seems that viewing Shotter as differing with him on
> THAT would be to suggest that the difference is methodological, when it
> seems to me there's a more profound ontological difference between them.
> Shotter is challenging the idea that this "unit of analysis" is even real,
> not just its value for methodology.
>
> From a CHAT perspective, the relationship between Shotter's "spontaneous
> interaction" and Wittgensteinian "rules" bears analysis in relation to
> that between "operations" and aspects of "actions" and/or "activities."
> The idea of "spontaneity" needs interrogation, it seems to me.
>
> What do you think?
>
> On Sun, 2 Sep 2007, Mike Cole wrote:
>
> > I prefer to think of it as early in the month, Jay.
> > Lots of good sugggestions there, some of which I am already considering
> or
> > have decided upon.(olson, where is your review?)
> > My mind this morning is going to burke and dramatism, ritual, etc.
> >
> > On a slightly different topic I attach John Shotter's interesting review
> of
> > herb clark on joint, mediated, activity, as the unity of analaysis in
> the
> > study
> > of language/communication. The review lays out a really principled
> > difference in the directions used for adopting this unit of analysis.
> >
> > I am undecided between raw bakhtin and a mixture of short originals and
> > explications by clark and holquist on chronotopes and dialogism.
> >
> > Remember, I am teaching in a comm dept, not an ed department: both
> easier
> > and harder.
> > mike
> >
> > On 9/1/07, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Mike,
> >>
> >> Maybe getting a bit late in the week for these suggestions, but I
> >> certainly find computer games, and much of the related new-media
> culture to
> >> have interesting implications for how different media afford us
> different
> >> "minds".
> >>
> >> Very interesting to me is the work of Henry Jenkins, see essays in his
> (1)
> >> Convergence Culture, and (2) Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers. Also useful of
> >> course is Jim Gee's _What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning &
> >> Literacy_. There are interesting pieces by Constance Steinkuehler (now
> >> faculty at Wisconsin, former student of Gee's) on games and learning,
> and by
> >> Mimi (Mizuko) Ito (Annenberg School, USC) on mobile phone culture in
> the US
> >> and Japan. These are all more 'communication & society' oriented than
> >> education oriented, though of course "learning" is a pivot term twixt
> the
> >> two.
> >>
> >> Ricki Goldman (NYU, ex MIT Media Lab) has been thinking and writing
> about
> >> how video, particularly the making of amateur video, is a
> tool-for-thought.
> >> She has an essay on this, and I have something related, in the new
> _Handbook
> >> of Video Research in the Learning Sciences_, edited by Goldman, Roy
> Pea, et
> >> al., just published.
> >>
> >> The new McLuhan, in some respects, is Lev Manovich, and he does have
> >> interesting things to say along these lines about new media in _The
> Language
> >> of New Media_. I think he even pays homage to Marshall.
> >>
> >> There are some useful citations at:
> >> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke/courses/NewMediaSyllabus.htm<
> http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke/courses/NewMediaSyllabus.htm>
> >>
> >> and
> >>
> >> http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jaylemke/courses/737-video/737video.htm
> <http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke/courses/737-video/737video.htm>
> >>
> >> though these do not have the more complete bibliographies which are on
> >> intranet sites on our campus. If you like, I can send or post them.
> >>
> >> JAY.
> >>
> >> PS. your idea of using Turkle and Wisdom of Crowds is creative, though
> the
> >> latter disappointed a bit. And then there's always David Olson's _The
> World
> >> on Paper_ (and my review of it!), if you want to really get your
> students
> >> embroiled in the debates about writing as tool-for-thought!
> >>
> >> BTW, Michael Halliday has written an extremely sophisticated essay
> >> critiquing the narrowness of traditional cognitive science views of
> mind,
> >> based on his general theory of meaning, which largely says that mind
> _is_
> >> the process of construing/constructing meaning with symbolic resources,
> >> particularly those of language and its implicit categories/relations.
> The
> >> critique mainly says that cogsci does not understand the linguistic
> basis of
> >> our culture's own folk theories of mind well enough to achieve its aim
> of
> >> getting beyond them to something more "scientific". It can also be read
> as a
> >> meta-theory of language as a tool-for-thought, and as an analysis of
> how
> >> language is used differently to think 'scientifically' vs. in other
> ways. I
> >> think it is beyond most grad students, however, and it requires a
> reasonable
> >> background in the concepts of functional semantics and grammar. It's
> >> published as chapter 14 in _Construing Experience through Meaning_,
> Halliday
> >> & Matthiessen, 2000.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> At 06:12 PM 8/29/2007, you wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear Xmca-ites---
> >>
> >> Toward the end of the month I will begin teaching a grad course on
> >> mediational theories of mind.
> >> I would love suggestions for interesting readings.
> >> We will be looking in a sort of "mcLuhanesque" way at the affordances
> of
> >> different kinds of mediators
> >> in human action/activity/mind.
> >>
> >> So, language and thought
> >> writing
> >> film
> >> music
> >> tv
> >> rituals
> >> games
> >> .........
> >>
> >> Starting with early 20th century writers of general familiarity to
> members
> >> of this list, I have been thinking about including
> >> such works as Cszikentmihalyi, "meaning of things," Turkle's recent
> >> "evocative objects," and perhaps something on mediated
> >> behavior in large groups such as "the wisdom of crowds."
> >>
> >> Any and all suggestions warmly welcomed. So much going on its hard to
> even
> >> think about how to begin to think about this
> >> upcoming fall!!
> >>
> >> mike
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> xmca mailing list
> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>
> >>
> >> Jay Lemke
> >> Professor
> >> University of Michigan
> >> School of Education
> >> 610 East University
> >> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> >>
> >> Tel. 734-763-9276
> >> Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
> >> Website. www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
> >> <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke%A0>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK DE 19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
> are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
> -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
>
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Received on Mon Sep 3 17:43 PDT 2007