Re: [xmca] Re: Roaming, Scanning and the Objectivity of the SSD/Where is Development

[Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>]

Freedom, and different conceptions of it may be an interesting lens on Andrew's predicament, and on the general problems of a multiplex SSD.

Another favorite saying of mine: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. And again: Reculer pour mieux sauter (a sort of inverse of "one step forward, two steps back"), all of which serve to remind us that "development" is not all building, all cumulation, all additive, all progressive, nor, in mathematical terms a monotonic function.

There is always also a "destructive" component, a breaking down of existing organization in the process of re-composing into new organization (and I think that in the case of learning in the SSD, this is both material and semiotic, for I don't think one can really separate them in this sense). "Failure" can be part of the path to eventual success, and this, too is part of the relevance of the "revolution" and "crisis" metaphors for ontogenetic development.

Part of our freedom, in learning and development, is "freedom from" as well as "freedom to". Freedom from prior and externally imposed habits, norms, practices, and institutions. Freedom that may be in the sense of "Die Gedanken sind frei" -- that we may find ourselves in the material bondage of school, but we are still free to hate it, to resist it, or just to try to bring our own ways of learning and being and moving to it, whether some others within it like this or not. Freedom from the past, from our own past, from the historical dead hand embodied in institutions and artifacts (like classroom desks, like circles on the floor, like worksheets as exclusive-attentional-foci). And when we let go of what has been, we do risk failure, indeed we almost certainly lose something that before has been adaptive for someone and maybe for us, as we launch with risk into a domain of creation of something that is always still part old but also now part new.

That can feel exciting, but it can also feel (at the same time) frightening, uncomfortable, painful. We don't know how his situation feels to Andrew, and that's important, I think. And we don't know how his feelings have changed over some important time period (from strange, to confused, to restricted, to doing ok, to worried about the diagnosis, to ... ??), for this too is an important part of the semiotic aspect of the SSD, of Andrew's relation to and orientation towards the SSD (viewed externally, which we arrogantly call "objective", AND viewed "internally", i.e. phenomenologically from Andrew's and others' viewpoints, which we are then forced to call "subjective").

Maybe freedom is as much about how we feel as it is about what we do.

JAY.

PS. If a butterfly is dreaming it's me, I hope it's having a good time! :-)




Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke 

Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093







On May 17, 2010, at 9:32 AM, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:

> Here is what I think about in this quandry of who is the real andrew:
> 
> Another well-known part of the book, which is also found in Chapter 2, is 
> usually called "Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly" (莊周夢蝶 Zhuāng Zhōu mèng dié). Again, the names have been changed to pinyin romanization for consistency:
> Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and 
> fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't 
> know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and 
> unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had 
> dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. 
> Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. (2, tr. Burton 
> Watson 1968:49)
> 
> Who has nothing left to lose; Zhuangzi or the butterfly?
> 
> eric
> 
> 
> 
> 
> mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> 05/16/2010 08:57 PM
> Please respond to lchcmike; Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, 
> Activity"
> 
> 
>        To:     "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>        cc: 
>        Subject:        Re: [xmca] Re: Roaming, Scanning and the Objectivity of the SSD/Where   is 
> Development
> 
> 
> Janis Joplin: "Freedom's just another work for nothing left to loose."
> Very helpful thoughts, David. thanks.
> mike
> 
> On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 5:32 PM, David Kellogg 
> <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
> 
>> Well, of course, the word 'revolution', in the eighteenth century, 
> really
>> meant what it says: a turning point. It was largely Burke and the French
>> Revolution who were responsible for the rather sinister connotations of 
> the
>> word today.
>> 
>> Nevertheless I think there are at least three important senses in which
>> development is not simply a matter of twisting and turning, of looking
>> forward to see how far you have to go and looking back to see how far 
> you
>> have come. There are three sense in which, as Yrjo Engestrom has said, a
>> turning point in learning, a step forward in development, has to be
>> considered "destructive".
>> 
>> The only problem is that these senses really ONLY apply to the semiotic
>> conception of the SSD, and not to the objectivist one. Of course, I 
> don't
>> think semiosis can be said to be psychological as opposed to 
> sociological
>> (or vice versa); it has to be one hundred percent both. But the three 
> senses
>> in which ONTOGENETIC development (as opposed to sociogenetic 
> development) is
>> destructive only apply to the destruction of semiotic systems, not to 
> the
>> destruction of political or economic relations.
>> 
>> The first is that learning direction and learning momentum is destroyed.
>> It's well known that when the child begins to acquire GRAMMAR, as 
> opposed to
>> simple vocabulary, accuracy of expression undergoes a "U-shaped curve"; 
> as
>> soon as children begin to say "I goed" as oppose to "All gone", and the
>> possiblities for error are, quite literally, infinite, and it seems at 
> first
>> small consolation to say that the possibilities for creativity are 
> similarly
>> expanded, and if we restrict schooling to testing, as we have been very
>> recently encouraged to do we must inevitably correct "at first" to "at
>> last". The same thing happens when children begin to point instead of 
> grasp,
>> walk as opposed to crawl, use negation as opposed to simply cry and 
> scream.
>> 
>> The other two senses in which developmetn has to be considered
>> ontogenetically destructive have to do with my rather ill chosen phrase, 
> the
>> "disembodiment of meaning". It seems to me that a lot of the first part 
> of
>> T&S (esp. Chapter Two) is essentially about the disappearance of SOUND 
> from
>> speech: the disembodiment of meaning through self-directed and then 
> through
>> inner speech.
>> 
>> The second part of T&S is about another kind of disembodied meaning: the
>> disappearance of actual objects from the description of their qualities
>> (e.g. the disappearance of an actual block from size, and the 
> disappearance
>> of size as a holistic category from diameter and from height, and the
>> disappearance of actual objects from quanitity and actual quantities 
> from
>> numerical relations).
>> 
>> It seems to me that each development is revolutionary (at least in the
>> eighteenth century sense of the word) and that each involves the 
> apotheosis,
>> if not the physical destruction, of the corporeal components of meaning;
>> first, in the raw material of the sign, and second in its referent. And 
> each
>> involves loss, at least until such a time that Andrew can recognize that 
> the
>> silent meanings he experiences when he scans the words on a page instead 
> of
>> the people in a room are real experiences, lived experiences, and that 
> they
>> are shareable too.
>> 
>> I think that the restraint exercised on Andrew is objectively a step in
>> that direction, just as his transmutation of roaming to scanning is
>> objectively a step in that direction. But that's the problem: lived
>> experience is not entirely objective; it has to acquire all the 
> sweetness of
>> experience for others and for myself, the sweetness of lived experience
>> shared through words.
>> 
>> Kant really deceived us, deceived Hegel, deceived Leontiev, and deceived
>> Andrew, when he tried to tell us that freedom is nothing more than the
>> ability to make laws that we obey ourselves. That kind of freedom smacks 
> of
>> the same old slavery.
>> 
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Education
>> 
>> --- On Sun, 5/16/10, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> From: Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: Roaming, Scanning and the Objectivity of the
>> SSD/Where is Development
>> To: lchcmike@gmail.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Date: Sunday, May 16, 2010, 3:18 PM
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I was one of the participants in the LCHC discussion of Hedegaard & 
> Fleer.
>> I am perhaps not quite so worried about just what has been established 
> about
>> revolutionary development in the paper's reported data as Mike is, 
> though I
>> recognize his concerns.
>> 
>> H&F emphasize that we need to understand the SSD in terms of the
>> _relationship_ between child and his/her environments, and I assume that 
> it
>> is changes in these relationships that is involved in development. They 
> also
>> seem to frame the environments in terms of institutional values and
>> practices, and so the relationship presumably is in some important part
>> constituted by the child's participation in these and how they in turn
>> affect the child, directly and mediatedly (e.g. through caregivers, 
> other
>> participants, etc.)
>> 
>> Their argument I think is not simply that the child adapted home 
> patterns
>> of behavior (and values) to the classroom, and that the school failed to 
> be
>> aware of this and so was ill-prepared to support the child's 
> development,
>> but more generally that transformative crises in development occur 
> because
>> of tensions and contradictions within the SSD, and that these should be 
> seen
>> again in terms of the child's relationships to its various components. 
> Those
>> relationships are presumably relationships of participation (practices),
>> orientation (expectations, in both directions), and values (evaluations, 
> in
>> both directions).
>> 
>> A crisis here seems to come about because the addition of the school's
>> institutional context to that of the home provokes tensions and
>> contradictions of practices (roaming and scanning), but perhaps more
>> importantly of expectations and evaluations. Imagine looking at this 
> from
>> the child's point of view. School is a weird new place! an uncomfortable
>> place for this child. A place where you can't do what you're used to 
> doing,
>> and where you get judged very negatively for even creatively adapting 
> what
>> has worked for you in the past (at home), and in fact where you are 
> judged
>> as abnormal, defective, and diseased just for being yourself.
>> 
>> Moreover, I am not sure we analytically understand how to imagine the
>> child's sense of difference between home and school.
>> 
>> We are so accustomed to the idea of separate place, separate 
> institutions,
>> separate roles and behaviors that we may overestimate the child's sense 
> of
>> this. Perhaps the SSD is more unitary for him than it is for us. And 
> thus
>> its internal tensions and contradictions more perplexing, more keenly 
> felt,
>> more of a crisis than we might imagine?
>> 
>> Institutionally, and thence also practically and immediately, the change 
> in
>> the SSD viewed by us (additive, componential), and moreso as viewed by 
> the
>> child (according to LSV and H&F, relationally, participatively) is 
> resulting
>> in changes at home. The mother is more worried about the child, and 
> perhaps
>> acting differently toward him. The teacher and others are reacting to 
> the
>> diagnosis of ADD and the recommendation of medicating him. The change in 
> the
>> relational-participatory-SSD does go both ways, which I think is part of
>> what Mike was asking about.
>> 
>> What we don't see are more of the details of this picture, and a longer
>> time frame around it. More about the child's behavior in the classroom 
> and
>> at home (what else is he doing to make the teachers worry about possible 
> ADD
>> or ADHD? is he behaving any differently at home as the crisis unfolds?),
>> more about the mother's behavior (how is her behavior toward him 
> changing as
>> the school-and-diagnostician impact her?) at home, and ultimately more 
> about
>> what happens next (this is the first 2 months of a much longer study).
>> 
>> I take it that what we have here is the hypothesis of a precipitating
>> crisis in the relational-SSD, and I think the paper establishes the
>> plausibility of the hypothesis and of the theoretical conception of the 
> SSD
>> (though maybe not so clearly stated) behind it, but perhaps does not 
> quite
>> establish a case for "revolutionary development", but only for the first
>> stages of a developmental crisis that must play out over a longer 
> timescale.
>> 
>> JAY.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Jay Lemke
>> Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
>> Educational Studies
>> University of Michigan
>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
>> 
>> Visiting Scholar
>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
>> University of California -- San Diego
>> La Jolla, CA
>> USA 92093
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On May 16, 2010, at 2:13 PM, mike cole wrote:
>> 
>>> David et al--
>>> 
>>> David has a far better mastery of the notions of neoformation in
>> relatation
>>> to SSD and central/peripheral lines of development than I do. There is
>> much
>>> in his note I find puzzling and interesting, but am unable to 
> appropriate
>>> sufficiently to paraphrase for purposes of the present discussion. I
>> agree
>>> entirely on the relational notion that SSD is a relational concept and
>>> (following at least from Dewey!) reject the notion of situation as 
> being
>>> external to the child, psychologically speaking. But I struggle with 
> the
>>> idea of psychological processes that are entirely internal as well.
>>> 
>>> Consequently, i restrict my comments here to join David in asking 
> where
>>> there is evidence of development, let along revolutionary development, 
> in
>>> this paper. It is there rhetorically in the introduction, but I cannot
>> see
>>> evidence of it in the data presented. Andrew scans with his eyes at
>> school
>>> and with his feet at home. Assuming scanning with feet preceded 
> scanning
>>> with eyes does not by itself indicate development does it?
>>> The period of time for this fragment of the larger project introduces
>> Andrew
>>> after he has been in school for a while, so we do not know the history 
> of
>>> scanning with eyes, whatever we think of its developmental status
>> relative
>>> to scanning with feet. In fact, so far as I can tell, we have no 
> evidence
>>> for processes of change of any kind such that we could say, for 
> example,
>>> that practices at home influenced practices at school or vice versa, 
> or
>> that
>>> we see the process of development in situ.
>>> 
>>> What am I missing?
>>> mike
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 9:08 PM, David Kellogg 
> <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Dear Carol and Larry (and Mike too, because I think this is really 
> ONE
>>>> thread and not two)
>>>> 
>>>> I think Bernstein says somewhere that the key question for sociology 
> is
>> how
>>>> the outside becomes inside. That is, of course, the key question for
>>>> sociocultural psychology as well. It seems to me that as long as we
>> conceive
>>>> of the social situation of development as a physical site for 
> activity,
>>>> there is essentially no way to answer it, and we are always left
>> puzzling
>>>> about how one child can be two places at the same time.
>>>> 
>>>> I think that when Leontiev and Vygotsky split (and I think the split 
> was
>> a
>>>> genuine one), it was essentially over this question. Leontiev decided
>> that
>>>> Vygotsky had made speech the "demiurge" of thinking. and he saw this 
> as
>>>> leading in the direction of idealism. In response, Leontiev took
>>>> an OBJECTIVIST position; the child develops by adapting to the
>> environment,
>>>> by making the demands of that environment his own, and by mastering 
> the
>>>> environment by allowing it to master his own demands. But if we 
> replace
>> the
>>>> word "master" with "accomodate" and "assimilate", we have, as Kozulin
>> points
>>>> out, a straightforwardly neo-Piagetian theory, except that, being a 
> good
>>>> Stalinist, Leontiev does not see any basic contradiction between 
> other
>>>> regulation and self regulation.
>>>> 
>>>> Besides the problem of the child being two places in one time, there 
> are
>>>> two additional problems with this objectivist definition: the
>>>> putative mutual INFLUENCE of the child (or at any rate the child's
>> central
>>>> neoformatoin) and the social situation of development, and the 
> INTERNAL
>>>> nature of the crisis. Neither one sits well with an objectivist
>> definition
>>>> of the social situation of development, and both are completely
>>>> comprehensible if we see the SSD as being semiotic in nature.
>>>> 
>>>> Marilyn Fleer and Marianne Hedegaard, just like our previous article 
> for
>>>> discussion by Beth Ferholt and Robert Lucasey, speak of a reciprocal,
>>>> dialectical, mutual influence between the child's central 
> neoformations
>> and
>>>> the social situation of development. This two-way traffic provides 
> the
>> whole
>>>> content of the central line of development. But if we see the social
>>>> situation of development as a physical site for physical activiteis 
> like
>>>> roaming or scanning, it's very hard to see this as more than just an
>> empty
>>>> slogan. In what way does Andrew's roaming "change" the layout of his
>> home?
>>>> How does his scanning behavior fundamentally alter the school as an
>>>> institution? His whole tragedy, and his LACK of development, consists 
> in
>>>> this: it does not.
>>>> 
>>>> More--Vygotsky clearly says that the roots of the crisis are 
> INTERNAL,
>> not
>>>> external, and that the content of the crisis consists of changes of 
> an
>>>> INTERNAL nature and not a conflict between the child's will and the
>>>> environment (see p. 296 of Volume Five, where this is stated in
>> completely
>>>> unambiguous language). But if the crisis is just the result of moving
>> from
>>>> one environment to which Andrew has fully adapted (home) to another
>> where he
>>>> is less well adapted (school) then there is no serious sense in which
>> this
>>>> statement is true; the roots of the crisis are external, and they are
>>>> precisely caused by a conflict between the child's burgenoning 
> volition
>> and
>>>> the implacable brick wall of the school.
>>>> 
>>>> Vygotsky would have none of this; he insisted on a SEMIOTIC social
>>>> situation of development after the age of one, and even before one, 
> the
>>>> social situation of development is both objective (because it is 
> social)
>> and
>>>> subjective (because it is semiotic).The examples he gives us of 
> social
>>>> situations of development are always RELATIONSHIPS: the child's
>>>> physiological independence in contradiction with biological 
> dependence,
>> the
>>>> child's hypersociality in contradiction with his lack of speech, the
>> child's
>>>> "autonomous" speech/walking/thinking in contradiction with the 
> child's
>>>> understanding of other's speech/actions/thoughts, etc.
>>>> 
>>>> It seems to me that as soon as we accept that the social situation of
>>>> development is a semiotic and not a physical construct, all of the
>> problems
>>>> simply fall away. Of course the child is NOT two places at one and 
> the
>> same
>>>> time; the child simply relates to all the places that the child is
>> through
>>>> the same semiotic relationship: ostension, indication, naming, and 
> only
>>>> later signifying. Of course, the child DOES have a mutual influence 
> on
>> the
>>>> social situation of development, because the child's semiotic system 
> is
>> both
>>>> linked to and distinct from larger cultural semiotic system in which 
> it
>>>> develops. Of course, the crisis IS fundamentally internal in its 
> genetic
>>>> roots; the semiotic system at any given age period is the
>> superproductive
>>>> but largely untapped semiotic resource brought into being by the 
> child's
>>>> central neoformation, and the pressure of its superproductivity on 
> the
>> main
>>>> line of development is what engenders the crisis.
>>>> 
>>>> Larry, the reason why I used the term "disembodiment of meaning" to
>> refer
>>>> to the next zone of development (for Andrew, and also for my own 
> mastery
>> of
>>>> Korean) is that I think development involves SYSTEM and not
>>>> simply LIFEWORLD. In Chapter Five of Thinking and Speech, Vygotsky
>> argues
>>>> that children notice difference before they notice similarity because
>>>> differences depend simply upon lifeworld perceptual cues, but
>> similarities
>>>> depend on a system: we must imagine a superordinate concept of which
>> both
>>>> similar objects are exemplars.
>>>> 
>>>> The problem for both Andrew and myself is that we have locked 
> ourselves
>> in
>>>> the lifeworld. Andrew and I are both dependent on concrete, tangible,
>>>> physical, kinesthetic perceptible clues, and we are limited to 
> noticing
>>>> differences: he depends on roaming and scanning, and I depend on a
>> losing
>>>> strategy of trying to infer grammatical similarities and semantic
>> meanings
>>>> from the infinite pragmatic varieity of intonation and facial
>> expression.
>>>> 
>>>> Yet for both of us, the lifeworld provides abundant resources for
>> breaking
>>>> out of the lifeworld. In Andrew's case, it is the BOOKS to which he 
> must
>>>> apply his scanning skills. For me, it is the disembodied GRAMMAR and
>>>> VOCABULARY to which I must apply my inferential bag of tricks. The
>> problem,
>>>> and here is where I find myself in complete agreement with you, is 
> that
>> in
>>>> both cases there is no affective payoff, there is no concrete, 
> tangible,
>>>> embodied answer to the question "Why should I care?"
>>>> 
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> Seoul National University of Education
>>>> 
>>>> --- On Sat, 5/15/10, Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> From: Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>
>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Is the Transition from "Roaming" to "Scanning"
>>>> Developmental?
>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>> Date: Saturday, May 15, 2010, 9:50 AM
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> David,
>>>> you mention that the next step in development is written language as 
> the
>>>> process of the "disembodiment of meaning".  I wonder what types of
>>>> institutional structures create the contexts that will facilitate the
>>>> emergence of this new "disembodied" relation to meaning.
>>>> How secure does Andrew feel in the " traditional institutional
>> structure"
>>>> of school.
>>>> As a counsellor working in school settings I've observed over and 
> over
>> with
>>>> many "anxious" students who are roaming the classroom to stay 
> connected
>>>> [much like Andrew] that there is not the affective climate [for a
>> particular
>>>> student] to refocus on learning to write.
>>>> My introducing the notion of a "lifeworld" is pointing to a 
> suggestion
>> that
>>>> learning to write [and developing a disembodied relation to meaning]
>>>> requires a developmental situation that is relational and supports
>> Andrew
>>>> to stay connected to the other students and teacher.  Until these
>> relational
>>>> patterns of connection are established [or he develops a more
>> encapsulated
>>>> individuated identity that can navigate rationalized institutional
>> systems]
>>>> learning to write may not be a priority for Andrew.
>>>> David I don't want to assume that learning to write cannot be done in 
> a
>>>> relational lifeworld conext [not an either/or tension] but that 
> depends
>> on
>>>> the types of school "traditions" that we historically develop.
>>>> Nietzsche, in talking about traditions and institutional structures 
> said
>>>> "The overthrow of beliefs is not immediately followed by the 
> overthrow
>> of
>>>> institutions; rather the new beliefs live for a long time in the now
>>>> desolated and eerie house of their predecessors, which they 
> themselves
>>>> preserve, because of the housing shortage."
>>>> I believe we could create institutional structures that are both
>> nurturing
>>>> and develop writing but it requires examining the  rationalized 
> systems
>> and
>>>> the presuppositions that keep the traditional beliefs of the purpose 
> of
>>>> school alive.
>>>> 
>>>> Larry
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>
>>>> Date: Saturday, May 15, 2010 4:03 am
>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] Is the Transition from "Roaming" to "Scanning"
>>>> Developmental?
>>>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>> 
>>>>> D
>>>>> 
>>>>> It may be a forced "development", insofar as Andrew would never
>>>>> be able to
>>>>> roam the class physically, that much is clear. We don't for
>>>>> example know if
>>>>> his language changed from home to school.How much of the other
>>>>> children'slanguage was he constructing? Insofar as this was
>>>>> qualitative research,
>>>>> David is correct in his analysis of the flaw.
>>>>> 
>>>>> My sister learned Icelandic by watching Icelandic subtitles of
>>>>> mainly German
>>>>> films when her second child was newborn.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Carol
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 15 May 2010 08:55, David Kellogg
>>>>> <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> The Seoul subway has installed televisions on most cars for
>>>>> public service
>>>>>> announcements, but they are silent and subtitled. The
>>>>> subtitles go by pretty
>>>>>> fast, and the announcers are usually young and extremely
>>>>> attractive (in a
>>>>>> blooming, refreshing, corn-fed, healthy but quite unsexy way
>>>>> that reminds me
>>>>>> of my own students).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So I often find myself concentrating on the features of the
>>>>> speaker, and
>>>>>> trying to lip-read rather than struggling with the text. After
>>>>> only a few
>>>>>> journeys, I began to discover certain things about Korean
>>>>> sentence structure
>>>>>> that I had pretty much ignored in both my speaking and my reading.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> One is that every Korean utterance tends to end with an
>>>>> INTERPERSONAL> element. Grammatically, this marked by the
>>>>> presence or absence of an
>>>>>> honorific at the end of the verb (and thus the end of the
>>>>> sentence). But
>>>>>> visuallly, it is usually marked by a smile (informal) or a
>>>>> slight bow
>>>>>> (formal). Where particles in middle of the sentence contain
>>>>> epistemic or
>>>>>> deontic elements, you see pretty much the same thing.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Now, the way I discovered this was to IMAGINE the intonation
>>>>> without any of
>>>>>> the grammar or vocabulary while trying to "lipread" and
>>>>> checking my
>>>>>> hypotheses against the subtitles. In other words, intonation
>>>>> and facial
>>>>>> expression represents a kind of "internalization" of the external
>>>>>> grammatical markers.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> This internalization is less complete in women and young
>>>>> people and more
>>>>>> complete in men and elderly people; that is, women and young
>>>>> people tend to
>>>>>> rely more on intonation and facial expression to convey the
>>>>> interpersonal> element of their speech and the less telegenic
>>>>> men and older people tend to
>>>>>> rely on grammar and vocabulary.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Marilyn Fleer and Marianne Hedegaard, in their article, appear
>>>>> to assume
>>>>>> that Andrew's replacement of "roaming" behavior by "scanning"
>>>>> behavior is a
>>>>>> similar instance of development. Bodily displacement has been
>>>>> "internalized"> by the displacement of eye contact.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The problem I have with this extremely intriguing idea is that
>>>>> it appears
>>>>>> to me to be, like my own discovery of the connection between facial
>>>>>> expression and grammatical honorifics, a step sideways rather
>>>>> than forwards;
>>>>>> I can't see how it will lead to WRITTEN LANGUAGE, which seems
>>>>> to me to be
>>>>>> the real next step in the disembodiment of meaning, both for
>>>>> me and for
>>>>>> Andrew.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I guess this is related to what I see as the chief THEORETICAL
>>>>> flaw in the
>>>>>> article, which is the interpretation of "social situation of
>>>>> development" in
>>>>>> a rather objectivist "community of practice" sense rather than
>>>>> a semiotic
>>>>>> one. I note that there is no actual verbal data from Andrew at
>>>>> all, and only
>>>>>> one page of verbal data from his mother.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It seems to me that life is full of nonadaptive sidesteps, and
>>>>> classroom> life is especially so. For hundreds of years, it was
>>>>> assumed that
>>>>>> translation was a step forward in foreign language learning;
>>>>> the mapping of
>>>>>> foreign sounds onto native word meanings represented the
>>>>> acquisition of
>>>>>> vocabulary. This is undoubtedly true in many cases, and it may
>>>>> be truer as
>>>>>> we move upwards, towards more universal concepts. But in every
>>>>> language> there are certain core structures (e.g. tenses and
>>>>> articles and so on) which
>>>>>> are untranslatable, and the attempt to translate them only
>>>>> leads to trouble.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Now, the current dogma is that it's better to GESTURE than to
>>>>> TRANSLATE. I
>>>>>> am unconvinced. The mind is an economical thing; and it seems
>>>>> to me to
>>>>>> likely that I will remember the gesture and the pragmatic
>>>>> circumstance and
>>>>>> not the word or the semantic meaning, just as I understand and
>>>>> remember the
>>>>>> English and forget the Korean when I translate.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It seems to me that the transition from translation to
>>>>> gesture, like the
>>>>>> transition from roaming to scanning and the transition from
>>>>> relying on
>>>>>> intonation to relying on facial expression, may be yet another step
>>>>>> sideways.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> David Kellogg
>>>>>> Seoul National University of Education
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> WORK:
>>>>> Visiting Researcher
>>>>> Wits School of Education
>>>>> HOME
>>>>> 6 Andover Road
>>>>> Westdene
>>>>> Johannesburg 2092
>>>>> 011 673 9265  082 562 1050
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> xmca mailing list
>>>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>>>> 
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>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
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