Re: [xmca] Those Pesky emotions in the ZPD

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Thanks, Larry, for your thought-provoking quotes, your thoughtful comments, and above all for changing the subject line. Of course, it goes without saying that emotions are not mostly adjectives; an adjective is merely a type of word. As Bakhtin reminds us, personal emotion is an inseparable part of every word meaning, but the part of speech is not. 
 
I suspect that If anything English tends towards verbs in expressing emotion, partly, I think, because of a general emphasis on individual activity in English grammar (SVO, the hero slew the dragon, instead of SOV, once upon a time, a dragon and a hero did combat). In Korean, "feeling" is mostly nominal, and "kibun" (individual emotion) is a kind of microcosm of "bunwigi", social emotion.
 
Mr. Bae Hicheol, a valued member of our Vygotsky translation team who is, along with his fellow teachers, the target of very nasty government witch-hunt, pointed out to me this morning that the distinction between "vertical" and "horizontal" isn't simply a distinction between "hierarchy" and "democracy", or even between concrete, syntagmatic relations of the sort we find in e-motions that are produced as a result of action in a concrete situation (e.g. conversations about everyday matters) and the abstract, paradigmatic relations we find in sicence concepts. 
 
It's a distinction between quantitative, gradualistic, incremental learning (e.g. times tables, lists of likes and dislikes, simple categories of good and bad guys) and qualitative, revolutionary, paradigm-shifting development (e.g. access to algebraic relations, principles of artistic taste, concepts of justice and fairness). 
 
Yrjo Engestrom pointed out that "horizontal" movement eventually involves transgressing boundaries. But we can often move pretty far, at least in language learning, without a fundamental paradigm shift.  For example, if you are at the stage of ostension, everything becomes an object you can hold (and emote over). Of course, you rapidly run out of things within arms reach, but there is a simple strategy for coping with that which does not restructure the language system; you simply crawl a little ways further. The same thing is true of  indicatory reference, where everything either near or far becomes an object you can point at. It is even true of naming. 
 
It's really only when we start to talk of things that cannot be seen (the past, the future, the imaginary character, the abstract principle) that we need a signifying function at all. But as soon as we do this (even when we are talking perfectly concretely, but about things we want or things we miss) we knock our heads against a very hard paradigm ceiling which only NEGATION can really shatter.
 
I don't think e-motion is any different, at least in principle. It's actually possible to go on feeling your own feelings and expressing a vast variety of your own feelings without any fundamental, qualitative growth. Development arises when, in the course of role play, it becomes necessary to feel feelings that you don't actually feel, or feelings that someone else is feeling. It's precisely at this point that emotion becomes the basis of esthetics, and even the basis of ethics.
 
Here are some kids role playing "The Bremen Town Musicians" in a fifth grade English class in a public school here in Seoul. The donkey leaves his master to become a Beatle in Hamburg, and meets a hound-dog along the way.
 
T: (pointing to the third picture) Dog! Yes, he ... they met ... they meet a 
Ss: Dog! 
T: Dog. What are they saying to the dog? 
Ss: Can you join us? 
T: Can you join us? Let's go together. Can you join us? And the dog says ... 
S1: See you again. 
S2: Sure! 
S3: Who are you? 
S4: Do you want to die? 

 
Now, you might think that S4's comment is simply being sassy, because of course "Do you want to die?" is the way that Korean yakuza threaten each other. But it comes up again when the dog and the donkey meet a mouse:
  

T: The donkey, the cat, the dog says to the mouse ... ?
S: Can you join us?
T: Can you join us?
S9: Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!
T: The mouse says ...
S: Sorry, I can't. I'm play computer game.
S: Do you want to die?
 
Now at this point the teacher might respond. Of course, "Do you want to die?" could mean something like if you DON'T want to die, you have to go to Bremen and join my rock band. But another child has a better idea and suggests, with the teacher's help, that the mouse might have a very good reason for not joining.  
 

T: Sorry, I can't. Why? Why do you think ... he says "Sorry, I can't"?
Ss: *&^%$#@!
S: I don't like cat!
T: Why do you think he says "Sorry, I can't."?
S21: I'm tired!
S: Teacher! Because I don't like *&^%$
S: Tired! I'm tired!
S: I don't like YOU!
T: Uh? Jerry can't join them? Jerry? Jerry? The mouse can't join them?
S!: Ah! Ah! (pointing to the cat in the book) Tom! Tom!
T: Yes, his name must be Jerry. Why ... why can't he join them?
S: Ah! ... Mouse doesn't like cat!
KT: Because the mouse ...
S: don't like cat.
T: doesn't like the cat. He is (gesturing of being scared) scared of ...
S: cat.
KT: the cat. Yes, maybe ... maybe. What ... what ... what happens next?
 
Now we have an interesting twist in the tail. Can the story accomodate it? Can Tom provide some kind of safety guarantee? Will he keep to it? Here some real development seems not only possible but inevitable. 
 
Of course, it's easier to get to ascend to this point if you see individual feelings ("I don't like you") as a descent of social emotion to the individual in the first place ("Can you join us?")! 
 
This is the day after Seolal, here in Korea--the rice harvest festival when everybody goes home (via a three day traffic jam) to bow to their elders and hope for a prosperous new year. Hope works better in large groups. Let us all pitch in and hope for bigger harvests, smaller traffic jams, and a world in which witches get to go hunting instead of being hunted like mice.
 
David Kellogg and Friends
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Mon, 2/15/10, Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca> wrote:


From: Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>
Subject: [xmca] Those Pesky emotions in the ZPD
To: "Activity eXtended Mind, Culture," <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, February 15, 2010, 2:45 PM













David and Ana 
I thought I would start a new post so we don't loose focus on the dialogical functions of development in the other thread.  I've attached the Chaiklin article on the ZPD to help clarify David's recommendation we not loose focus on the notion of development of higher mental functions. 
However the place of emotions in development also needs articulation and therefore this new thread that focuses more centrally on pesky emotions.
I want to quote a passage from Gordon Well's and Guy Claxton's edited volume Learning For Life in the 21st Century on page 8 of the introduction which is inviting reflection on e-motions and identity formation.
 
"We must ask how can the concept of individual agency be reconciled with the strong emphasis on socialization/enculturation that is taken to be a central feature of sociocultural theory, as well as of most public education.?  We might also note here  that traditionally education has tended to IGNORE social and emotional development, concentrating almost exclusively on intellectual development, and, more specifically, on the acquisition of bodies of formalized knowledge. From a CHAT perspective, however, all human activity is inherently social and IMBUED WITH EMOTION.  Along with other more HUMANISTIC perspectives, which are also challenging the status quo, CHAT therefore invites us to inquire how educational activities can be designed to engage the active involvement of the student as a 'whole person' and to contribute positively to IDENTITY FORMATION." (page 8, emphasis added)
 
Wells and Claxton also quote Vygotsky on this same theme.
 
"Thought has its origins in the MOTIVATING sphere of consciousness; a sphere that includes our inclinations and needs, our interests and impulses, and our AFFECT and EMOTION ... A true and complex understanding of another's thought becomes possible ONLY when we discover its real AFFECTIVE-VOLITIONAL basis. (Vygotsky, 1987, page 282, emphasis added)
 
 As Vygotsky, Wells, Claxton, (and many others in the CHAT community, the larger sociocultural community, and the even larger humanistic community) make clear  those pesky emotions have a place in our ongoing discourse on the ZPD. 
 
Ana's account of the complexity of the ZPD and the many functions and dimensions of development (not learning) of the whole person invites us to elaborate the "affective-volitional basis" as foundational to our continuing dialogue.
 
Larry
 
 
 
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