Re: [xmca] Are Fleer and Hedegaard Bernsteinians?

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Mike:
 
I'm afraid EVEN the Bersteinian view (which really IS an ontogenetic one) is too synchronic and not developmental enough for what I want to do. I'm a teacher; I'm interested AT MOST in the interface between microgenesis and ontogenesis. 
 
You MIGHT be able to interest me in the interface between ontogenesis and sociogenesis if you can demonstrate that it's directly relevant, i.e. recoverable from classroom data. But I'm like Andrew; when people start talking about the origins of language I begin to scan the room, and if I can't do that my eyeballs are going to roll right back into my head.
 
I loved Andy's quote from von Humboldt, but only because it shows, once again, how unoriginal the most "original" Derridaisms are. I don't actually think it is true in any useful way that man ever had one language. The avowed irrelevance of Chomskyanism to teaching tells us that the before Babel links between all languages are too abstract to be very useful to anybody who does not already believe in them. 
 
The physical evidence is largely the other way around. I think that early man posessed hundreds of thousands of languages and that these have been gradually dwindling to only one. Even today, traveling around Tibet, you notice that Tibetan speakers often address each other in Chinese. This is because they lack a mutually intelligible dialect of Tibetan; even in the Lhasa valley you can tell the difference between speakers in one village and those in another. Physically cut off from each other by mountains, rivers, and above all the need to keep moving to maintain a livelihood, this must have been the situation for many of our ancestors. 
 
The dwindling of human languages should have been counterbalanced by the kinds of centrifugal tendencies that Bakhtin talks about. But the centripetal processes have been greatly accelerated by the physical, bodily eradication of minority language speakers, which is why English, probably the world's WORST world language in terms of its learnability (and its sheer phonological WEIRDNESS), is probably going to become, at least for a while, the real successor to the mythical tongue of Babel. 
 
The major cause of linguicide (first in North America and Australia, now in the Amazon and in Africa) is not the acquisition of English. It's not assimilation but extermination. This is why I have very little patience for the argument that, well, you see, languages don't exist anyway. Or if they do they are all the same. Or if they are not then there are languages being created as quickly as they die out. A tongue is not sound that can be manipulated to mean "ass" or "cul-ture" and giggles from schoolboys; it's a piece of flesh, and when you cut it, it bleeds.
 
But let us suppose that the idealists are right. Let's suppose that  the idea of sound as sign IS one idea and not many. Let us suppose that the idea of sound as sign does contain an insuperable, untranslatable opposition: Your sound is not my sound, and your sign is not mine.
 
The essence of language is not untranslatability but the very opposite: bootstrapping (that is, getting at one kind of meaning by using another, getting at ostension by using gesture, and gesture by using denomination, and denomination by using syntactization). Bootstrapping is nothing but a form of translation, every utterance is understandable, and translatable because it is "bootstrapped" by the material, referential, contextual substratum of language (not by endless oppositions of vowels and consonants or presences and absences).
 
Right up until the early sixties, it was quite normal to consider multilingualism a form of learning disability (and in particular a form of reading disability). Even Vygotsky worries about this a little bit in his essay on the "Multilingual Child" (Collected Works, Vol. 4, 253-259). If word meanings are really droplets of consciousness, isn't a bilingual a little bit schizophrenic?
 
No more than a man who has two eyes, and two ears and a nose with two nostrils. The key problem for Andrew, and for Andrew's teachers, is how to bootstrap READING and LITERACY by using the visual scanning skills he has (apparently) acquired. I don't think it's easy; the meanings of literacy are quite different from those of "machine gun conversation", and the differences run deep. But talk IS translatable into text and vice versa; they are, in the final analysis, all about the same thing, and when you have understood the one, then you can begin to understand the other.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Sun, 5/30/10, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:


From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Are Fleer and Hedegaard Bernsteinians?
To: "Wolff-Michael Roth" <mroth@uvic.ca>
Cc: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, May 30, 2010, 3:24 PM


David and Michael—



I have only read Derrida in English and that a long time ago and was pretty
thoroughly confused. I am confused by a lot of the recent exchange. I
greatly appreciate those parts of the discussion where you seek to rise to
the concrete in order that I can grasp the main points. From there it
becomes at least possible in principle to follow up. So, thanks. It is a
generous use of your time.



Below is one of a couple of messages that follow on and comment on recent
exchanges. This one re note from Michael (nice followup from von Humboldt,
Andy). The next from David’s note.



This makes good sense to me, but I did not get it from the quotations back
and forth that you two exchanged:


take a cultural-historical perspective on language, its roots, in the vocal
productions of those folks leaving Africa, the Proto-Indo-European, and how
languageS emerged from the very possibility of the sound becoming sign. All
languages realize this possibility, and so we ever only speak one language,
which is mine and not mine at the same time, which is always from the other
for the other . . . you find these themes in Bakhtin, Bakhtin/Volosinov, in
Mikhailov.

*Each of these statements also makes at least some sense to me, but none of
them appear to be making the point about the historical divergence of
languages. Each seems to be about the mutual constitution of self and other
in language (I would probably phrase it as language/culture). This goes
along with earlier discussion by Larry and others on infancy, but that is
for separate note.*

* *

*I assume that the asymmetry in what is stated below comes from the fact
that there are so many others and that (except for linguicide case david
talks about below) the other preceeds and follows us.*

DERRIDA, 1998, p.40
We only ever speak one language-and, since it returns to the
other, it exists asymmetrically, always for the other, from the other,
kept by the other. Coming from the other, remaining with the
other, and returning to the other.

MIKHAILOV, 2001, p.17
the subjective reality of an inner voice, born of its
externalization for the Other, and thus also for oneself as for the
Other within oneself.


BAKHTINE [VOLOCHINOV], 1977, p.123-4 (Fr., my transl)
Any word has two faces. It is determined as much by the fact that it
proceeds from someone as it is by the fact that it is directed toward
someone. . . .
Through the word I define myself with respect to the other, that is to say,
in the final analysis, vis-a-vis the collectivity



On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:

> Mike,
> take a cultural-historical perspective on language, its roots, in the vocal
> productions of those folks leaving Africa, the Proto-Indo-European, and how
> languageS emerged from the very possibility of the sound becoming sign. Alll
> languages realize this possibility, and so we ever only speak one language,
> which is mine and not mine at the same time, which is always from the other
> for the other . . . you find these themes in Bakhtin, Bakhtin/Volosinov, in
> Mikhailov.
>
> DERRIDA, 1998, p.40
> We only ever speak one language-and, since it returns to the
> other, it exists asymmetrically, always for the otlter, from the other,
> kept by the other. Coming from the other, remaining with the
> other, and returning to the other.
>
> MIKHAILOV, 2001, p.17
> the subjective reality of an inner voice, born of its
> externalization for the Other, and thus also for oneself as for the
> Other within oneself.
>
>
> BAKHTINE [VOLOCHINOV], 1977, p.123-4 (Fr., my transl)
> Any word has two faces. It is determined as much by the fact that it
> procedes from someone as it is by the fact that it is directed toward
> someone. . . .
> Through the word I define myself with respect to the other, that is to say,
> in the final analysis, vis-a-vis the collectivity
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> On 2010-05-27, at 9:30 PM, mike cole wrote:
>
> Michael and David-- You guys are talking over my head!
> What does Derrida say that David Ke is misunderstanding?
> Where is it said that LSV is beloved?
> What Bakhtin should we be reading to decode this?
> Which Mikhailov is in question here.
> lost in may grey on so cal.
> mike
>
> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 8:44 PM, Wolff-Michael Roth <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:
>
> > Hi polyglott, man of many words, scholar of many examples . . .
> impressive,
> > if it weren't for your misunderstanding of Derrida. Believe me, this
> > philosopher is worth being read well, as well or better than your beloved
> > Vygotsky. I am truly amazed in how similar his thinking is with that of
> > Bakhtin, whom Mikhailov appreciates a lot.  :-) Michael
> >
> > On 2010-05-27, at 7:02 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> >
> > Wolff-Michael likes this quote from Derrida:
> >
> > We only ever speak one language.
> > We never speak only one language.
> >
> > Butzkamm has a rather more realistic formulation, "We only learn language
> > once". He means, of course, that languages consist of other languages,
> much
> > as minds are made up of other minds (either in the form of discourse or
> in
> > the form of text).
> >
> > For example, our elementary English syllabus consists of mostly GERMANIC
> > nouns (e.g. "table" and "apple") but as the children grow older they will
> > acquire more LATINATE ones (e.g. "refrigerator" and "helicopter"). Korean
> > works the same way; yesterday at lunch we had a choice between a stately,
> > scholarly sounding restaurant with a Chinese name and more rustic,
> village
> > fare sold in a restaurant with a pure Korean title.
> >
> > You know, it turns out that the so-called "vocabulary explosion" is a
> kind
> > of myth, like the "explosive" economic growth of very poor countries. Any
> > normal human mind left in a social situation of development that is
> > sufficiently open to provide new word meanings at the proper rate (say, a
> > multilingual one, or just a reasonably challenging cognitive one) will
> > naturally continue to acquire vocabulary at roughly the same rate as a
> baby
> > all life your life long. The problem is that everyday life in a
> monolingual
> > capitalist society really doesn't supply this, so those of us who want to
> go
> > on learning new words in our fifties are really forced to emigrate.
> >
> > My Portuguese is only good for some things, but I do know the difference
> > between 'ser" and "estar". I originally thought it was the difference
> > between "etre" and "avoir" in French, because of course French uses "to
> > have" in many situations where English would use hte copula. Then I
> learned
> > some Spanish, so I figured it it was like the difference between "ser"
> and
> > "estar" in Spanish. This too is wrong.
> >
> > As far as I can figure out, "ser" is really about BEING or ESSENCE, and
> > "estar" describes ESTATE or temporality passing STATE. So the weather
> tends
> > to be "estar" and people, particularly in their class/national/gender
> > origins tend to be "ser".
> >
> > Now the reason I mention all this is that I've been worrying a little bit
> > about the references in Fleer/Hedegaard to "machine gun fire"
> conversation
> > in Andrew's household. We are not actually given any examples of "machine
> > gun fire" conversation, so the mind (well, my mind) inevitably associates
> it
> > with the constant moving around that seems to go on in the Peninsula
> family
> > which is semi-internalized by Andrew when he goes to school as
> "scanning".
> > That is, words are sprayed out in short bursts without any precise aim,
> > splattering whole rooms in a single salvo. It's not a very pretty
> metaphor,
> > but that seems to be what the authors are getting at.
> >
> > So what we get is a kind of "mismatch" hypothesis. The language of home
> > does not match the language of schooling, and this augurs poorly for
> > Andrew's cognitive development. Engestrom's article in the Daniels'
> > "Introduction to Vygotsky" also puts forward a similarly Bernsteinian
> > theory, and suggests three basic ways of overcoming the mismatch.
> >
> > a) Davydov and Schmittau: Providing sufficiently powerful CONCEPTS that
> > will allow the child to take their school understanding into the
> mismatched
> > extracurricular world.
> >
> > b) Lave and Wenger: Provide experiential communities of practice that
> allow
> > the child to take the extracurricular world into the mismatched school.
> >
> > c) Learning by expanding: that is, EXPANDING the school until it merges
> > with the community and expanding the child's extracurricular world until
> it
> > is one with the school.
> >
> > Engeström, Yrjö (2005) Non scolae sed vitae discimus: Toward overcoming
> the
> > encapsulation of school learning. 157-176. in Daniels, H. (ed.) (2005) An
> > Introduction to Vygotsky. Hove and New York: Routledge.
> >
> >
> > It seems to me that each view is Utopian in its own way (in a good way!)
> > but that all may actually be unnecessary. There are a couple of things
> > wrong, EMPIRICALLY wrong, with the Bernsteinian mismatch view, at least
> as I
> > understand it.
> >
> > a) By the time kids get into high school--even middle school--they are
> not
> > talking like their parents. They talk like each other. So how can a
> learning
> > deficit be blamed on a home language?
> >
> > b) If anything, middle class home language is LESS strongly framed than
> > working class language, and yet middle class kids DO do better in school.
> >
> > c) None of this appears to apply at all to bilinguals, at least not above
> a
> > certain threshold. Bilinguals have a cognitive edge in every subject,
> even
> > nonllinguistic ones, and it's lifelong (so that, for example, bilinguals
> > actually do better when they get Alzheimer's!)
> >
> > In the 1950s, Stalin wrote an essay on "Marxism and Linguistics" in which
> > he criticized Vygotsky's friend and teacher J. Ia. Marr for arguing that
> > language was "superstructural", and did not by itself create class
> > differences but rather reflected them. Stalin, who was obsessed with the
> > idea of stability in nation states, argued that language was base; if you
> > control language, you control the nation state and everybody in it as
> well.
> > Interestingly, Marr had argued against explicit instruction in grammar,
> and
> > some of Chapter Six of Thinking and Speech, in which Vygotsky defends
> > grammar instruction, is a polemic against his friend.
> >
> > I remember that part of the excitement of reading Vygotsky for the first
> > time was the realization that here was somebody who did NOT make Piaget's
> > mistake of thinking that language was pure epiphenomenon and on the other
> > hand recognized that at any one moment language is a small part of some
> > larger picture we can call culture (much of which is also made up of
> > language, but language in the form of text rather than in the form of
> > ongoing dicourse). So in that sense language is not destiny; it's a
> matter
> > of "estar" rather than "ser".
> >
> > It's not that we only speak one language: it is that we only learn
> language
> > once.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> > --- On Thu, 5/27/10, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Cognitivist theory & language learning
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date: Thursday, May 27, 2010, 4:06 PM
> >
> >
> > The Davids have provided professional answers to your question, Tony.
> > Just a couple of thoughts of a different sort.
> >
> > The message got me to wondering, again, about AA Leontiev's work on
> second
> > language learning which was discussed here a long time ago (at something
> i
> > code as "here" but not sure where it was except on line and somehow
> > connected with LCHC).
> >
> > My own limited experience is that learning a language outside of the
> > context
> > of its use in locally organized activities in that language is
> > extra-ordinarily problematic. Perhaps, as David Ke suggests, because one
> > has
> > to solve Plato's learning paradox. But my solution to that paradox is to
> > place it inside of culturally organized activity which presupposes it has
> > been solved, which is exactly what Tony cannot do.
> >
> > I learned a lot more Russian in Moscow the first time we went than my
> wife
> > did, although once we were there with a newborn, she did a lot more
> > learning
> > than I did. Why?
> >
> > First time she was not allowed to work and only got out of the student
> role
> > when she got into a practicum journalism experience, but unfortunately
> from
> > the perspective of language learning it was at the English language
> > Newspaper, Moscow News. Made perfect sense in its way. Meantime, i was in
> > the middle of a group of Luria co-workers whose English was minimal, who
> > had
> > serious work to do, who had to get me to understand and coordinate or
> risk
> > harm to someone. Never mind saying it just right,
> > just get what has to be said out there in a way that others can work
> with,
> > and over time, you improve from myriad and confusing sources of feedback.
> >
> > Second time I spent most of my time reading over horrible translations of
> > thesis for a conference from Russian to English and fixing them within
> > heavy
> > constraints while my wife had to be darn sure our two month old survived,
> > which required her to deal with a tough old nanny, curious Russian
> > pediatricians with ideas she did not love and had to argue with,
> > and the ability to elbow her way to hot water in a dorm full of folks
> with
> > sharp elbows and tongues.
> >
> > Pushkin is said to have said that the best way to learn a foreign
> language
> > is in bed. That presupposes various linguistic and non-linguistic forms
> of
> > interaction with a fair amount of emotional infusion, but the idea seems
> > right.
> >
> > Wonder what Plato would have advised?
> > mike
> >
> > On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 5:35 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
> >> wrote:
> >
> >> Tony, David:
> >>
> >> Last night in my grad seminar, we discussed "the belly button is bigger
> >> than the belly". This is a Korean expression we use as shorthand to
> refer
> > to
> >> a whole range of problems, from quite theoretical to very practical,
> > which
> >> have in common the underlying difficulty that context is always richer,
> > more
> >> complex, and more difficult to understand than any text which attempts
> to
> >> realize it even though when we present it in the form of a picture or a
> >> video or a Korean text it looks extremely straightforward.
> >>
> >> For example, when the teacher wants to teach something like "Hi, I'm
> >> Zeeto", the teacher needs to use a picture of Zeeto introducing himself
> > to
> >> some non-Zeeto, Typically this involves getting the children's
> attention,
> >> giving them information (e.g. "This is Zeeto") and then checking
> >> understanding ("Who?"). Even if we break it up into very small
> > utterances,
> >> the learning "belly button" is rather bigger than the teaching belly.
> >>
> >> The same problem happens when we want the children to repeat. (Now, YOU
> > are
> >> Zeeto. Listen, Zeeto! "Hi, I'm Zeeto". Repeat, Zeeto!) and when we want
> > to
> >> check understanding. (we end up saying things like "What did Zeeto say
> > when
> >> he wanted to introduce himself to Julie?"). We are always left a little
> > like
> >> the little Saint Augustine asking Saint Monica, 'Mommy, what does "mean"
> >> mean?'
> >>
> >> I suppose it all goes back to Plato's problem. The belly button problem
> > is
> >> really all about the attempt to understand a more powerful system
> > (context)
> >> with a less powerful one (text). And so too is the cognitivist approach
> > to
> >> any quintessentially social phenomenon. The answer to "Who am I?" is
> > really
> >> not "Well, who is asking the question?" but rather "Who wants to know
> and
> >> why?"
> >>
> >> I think for that reason David Ki's response, which is basically to stand
> >> outside Tony's question in such a way that it unasks itself, is really
> > the
> >> right one. But Tony probably wants something more heuristic, something
> > that
> >> stands inside the question and explodes it.
> >>
> >> The two most common verbs a learner of Portuguese probably needs (and
> > needs
> >> to distinguish) are "ser" and "estar". But they are neither things we do
> >> frequently nor things we rarely do and they are neither mental verbs nor
> >> action verbs. More, the all important distinction between them cannot be
> >> understood as any of the above.
> >>
> >> David Kellogg
> >> Seoul National University of Education
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --- On Mon, 5/24/10, Tony Whitson <twhitson@UDel.Edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> From: Tony Whitson <twhitson@UDel.Edu>
> >> Subject: [xmca] Cognitivist theory & language learning
> >> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> Date: Monday, May 24, 2010, 9:12 AM
> >>
> >>
> >> I'm using a variety of tools for learning Portuguese, including dubbed
> > and
> >> subtitled movies as well as books written for instruction. In one of
> > these,
> >> following a list of sixteen first-conjugation verbs, I find this helpful
> >> advice:
> >>
> >> ====================
> >> In order to learn these verbs, try to first memorize them by putting the
> >> verbs into lists or categories. Can you divide the above list into
> > "things
> >> that I do often" and "things that I rarely do"? How about dividing the
> > list
> >> into "action verbs" and "mental verbs"? Whatever categories you chose to
> >> organize the verbs, the important thing is that you find a way to
> process
> >> and arrange these new pieces of information in your brain. Once you have
> >> done this, it will be easier to retrieve the information later.
> >>
> >> (Source: Ferreira, Fernanda L. The Everything Learning Brazilian
> > Portuguese
> >> Book: Speak, Write and Understand Portuguese in No Time. Avon, Mass.:
> > Adams
> >> Media, 2007., p. 111)
> >> ====================
> >>
> >> I see this as an extraordinarily clear and straightforward expression of
> > a
> >> view of learning that I find quite common in education circles. I expect
> >> that I'll be using it as a clear example of wrong-headed thinking about
> >> learning.
> >>
> >> Maybe others will find similar value in this example; but I'm also
> > writing
> >> to ask if anyone has equally clear and succinct examples to share that
> > could
> >> be used to show what's wrong with this, and how to understand learning
> > more
> >> appropriately, instead ... things that would be clear and easily
> > accessible
> >> for people in education for whom the cognitivist approach seems to be
> > right?
> >>
> >> Muito obrigado,
> >>
> >> 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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> >>
> >>
> >>
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