Re: [xmca] my conjecture

Hi Haydi,

Your message came a bit garbled (some of the lines have mingled into
other places!) but let me try to guess what you asked and to answer. I
must first ask back:

You say: "Now, am I right in my conjecture you're somehow trying to
bridge a gap between supposedly two way of thought?" -- I am not quite
sure what you meant by "two ways of thought", but I can say the
following:

If under "two ways of thought" one thinks of two distinct acts: a)
creating a certain way to relate to the world (objects); and b)
creating a certain way to relate to others -- then our intention was
to investigate how these two acts become coordinated through mutual
processes of co-mediation. Our goal was to describe the way certain
dynamic acts become part of a new system of acting: how people's
relationships change, how they can be changed deliberately; how these
processes start to produce a new quality in the way people understand
and feel. One can call this "ways of thinking", because in a way they
are that, but our unit of description and analysis was always a unit
of acting that produces new meanings.
We distinguished acting that creates a play situation from acting
otherwise -- and described the construction of meaning as using the
relationships created in play situations to make comments about
aspects of the non-play situations. In other words -- we assumed that
interaction between the two frames of reference -- is necessary to
produce what otherwise is known as "meaning". In this article, we did
not discuss the difference that can be described as the difference
between "meaning" and "sense", as David K. implied might be necessary
to do. That is a whole different topic. However, what was important
for us in this article was to start exploring possible routes that
creation of new meanings can take as a dynamic process: From a.
creating a bifurcation point in relationships; though b. exploring
different ways of seeing the TOPIC (a communicational object) and at
the same time changing interpersonal relationships by creating
different rules of relating between characters in play/games; though
c. creating new ways of referring to new play creations (new symbolic
tools), to making new connections between the imaginary and the real
planes.

I don't know if I answered your question. But thanks for asking...
Tell me if that was ot what you meant to ask.

Ana

__________________________
Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
ana@zmajcenter.org
267-334-2905

On Jul 13, 2008, at 4:29 PM, Haydi Zulfei wrote:

> Dear Marjanovic-Shane ,
> As I'm always thinking of the convergences and divergences between
> the Activity Theory and the Cultural-Historical ( Activity
> Theory ) , while reading the article , I found this part of the
> article very fascinating and very close to my taste and hope :
> [Like Cole, we have assumed that symbols, signs, and other semiotic
> mediating artifacts (texts) gradually gain their referential (object-
> oriented) dimension within interactive communicative acts. However,
> we have also assumed that the object orientedness of communicative
> acts themselves represents a novel step in the development of
> communicational skills too. Langer (1979) discussed different ways
> in which some communicative devices are referential. She
> distinguished between signals and symptoms, on one hand, and
> symbols, on the other. The referentiality of signals and symptoms
> originates out of their internal relatedness to the objects they
> represent: They are an intrinsic part of them, or in some other way
> they are essentially
> related to the objects they signify. Like the sound of thunder and
> the lightning, they cannot be separated. Symptoms and signals are a
> part of an immediate situation they share with the referents. In
> contrast to symptoms and signals, according to Langer, symbolsare
> not a proxy for their objects, but are
> or a situation is not the same as to ‘react toward it’ overtly, or
> to be aware of its presence. In talkingvehicles for the conception
> of objects. To conceive a thingabout
> the things, that symbols directly “mean.”
> Now , am I right in my conjecture you're somehow trying to bridge
> the gap between the supposedly two ways of thought ? Now , I won't
> deal with *forms of thought* and whether the conjecture could go so
> far as to reach that point , too . And what about this reference of
> yours :
> Based on the analysis of metaphor development in children
> (Marjanovic-Shane, 1989)
> Best
> Haydi
> haydizulfei@yahoo.comthings we have conceptions of them, not the
> things themselves; and it is the conceptions, not(italics added; pp.
> 60–61)]
>
>
>
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Received on Sun Jul 13 21:33 PDT 2008