I have a grad student I will call Mr. Yu, who has an unendearing propensity to borrow my most beloved books for long periods of time. On the evidence of his essays, they do not always get read either; like many of us (like me!), he seems to assume that information stored extramentally in an artefact is as good as intermentally interiorized.
Two weeks ago he borrowed my precious copy of Halliday and Matthiessen's third edition of the Introduction to Functional Grammar, so I did not expect it back for a very long time. But on Thursday we were having a rather fraught discussion on how to differentiate between the Finite element and the Predicator in "likes" ("s" represents the finite, and the rest is the predicator, which you can see very clearly by asking "Mowgli likes bananas, doesn't he?").
In the middle of the discussion he turned to a classmate and explained it absolutely perfectly, using examples from KOREAN. My jaw dropped, and not just in astonishment (I know Mr. Yu well enough to know that he has kept his candlepower firmly under a bushel for a very long time). In Korean the Finite, which also realizes an interpersonal function, is where verbs inflect for honorification, and I had never really thought of it that way before. But by the light of Mr. Yu's explanation I could see instantly that he was right.
At the end of the class he returned my precious copy of Halliday's grammar rather the worse for wear. I admit that I winced for a moment; I almost felt as if I was being asked to choose between my beloved Halliday and my beloved grad student. But THAT was a choice easily made. "Mr Yu," I said, through my best autumn harvest smile, "the worst mistreatment one can give a good book is to preserve it from being read."
I guess I assume that the worst thing you can do to a video-blog is to leave it unwatched, and that the best way to express my interest in and appreciation for Professor Smagorinsky's work is to engage it critically. That is why I commented on it. Perhaps the word "complain" was a little too colored, although if you read what I wrote you will see I was agreeing with the complaint.
Anyway, Andy has now kindly invited me to join the video discussion. I don't have a webcam, though, and upon rereading the book I found that I had a lot more to say about it than I could easily put in an interview. More, I think that I would rather show paintings (including some of my own) to illustrate than just a talking head. Perhaps Paula might be interested in doing something on this, with her magic graphics wand?
So over the weekend I put the attached together. I realize that the length (fourteen pages!) is rather daunting, and also that I've really only touched the very first chapter (which I'm afraid disqualifies my effort as a kind of layman's intro to the subject that Andy really wants and needs here). But if nothing else maybe the lamentable state in which I am returning Professor Smagorinsky's readings will express some of the respect and admiration I have for his work.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Fri, 9/17/10, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Subject: Re: [xmca] A matter of priorities in different models
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Friday, September 17, 2010, 5:30 AM
At any time of day, I think it takes a certain amount of courage to put an unrehearsed talk on a difficult topic into the public domain. The talk was for educational purposes - the kind of thing which normally never leaves the lecture theatre - and needs to be viewed by aficienados with the generosity it deserves. I am sure many, many students of Vygotsky will enjoy the good humour and insight with which you contributed your observations, Peter. Hopefully others will be prepared to take the same risk.
Andy
smago wrote:
> Just a brief note on the vimeo I did with Andy: Because of time differences between Australia and EST USA, we scheduled it for 6 AM my time, which is several hours before I customarily have any human contact. I surely didn't mean to "complain a lot about how the essay never really gets over James and Lange," since complaining about anything is not my purpose in thinking about Vygotsky. The essay on which the interview is based will appear in MCA at some point (it was accepted over the summer) and I hope is more coherent in looking at both P of A and texts from later in LSV's career. p
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
> Sent: Friday, September 17, 2010 3:49 AM
> To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
> Subject: Re: [xmca] A matter of priorities in different models
>
> Dear Larry, Ana, and others:
> Vygotsky talks a lot about structure, but he is not a structuralist. He also talks a lot about function, but he is not a functionalist. He talks a lot about genetic explanation, but he is no genetic epistemologist (and condemns Piaget for substituting the genetic principle for causality).
> Sure, structure is terribly important to Vygotsky. In fact, STRUCTURE is the key to understanding the gap between his idea of a zone of proximal DEVELOPMENT as opposed to merely one of learning. New structures (e.g. role play, rule based games, arithemetic, algebra, complexes, the "measurement of generality" underlying concepts) allow the re-expression of learning in an infinite number of ways, quite independent of their content. So structural change is almost a touchstone of development vs. learning, the way in which we know that "one pfennig of development has given us a hundred marks of learning. Function is important too, and not just because form follows function; mental structures are the way they are because they do what they have to do. Function is important because mental functions, not behavior, provide the content of consciousness. I guess that's why I don't think that functions can really be said to be independent of context. When I
remember something, I remember a context, and I remember in a context, in more or less the same way that when I perceive something I perceive a background and I perceive it inside a situation.
> A genetic account "explains" function in much the same way that function has to explain structure. But Vygotsky does not really describe his psychology as a genetic psychology, at least not in Chapter One of Thinking and Speech. The term he uses is "causal dynamic", and in Chapter Two he lays out exactly what that means in philosophical terms: psychological phenomena are caused, and not simply reversible functions of experience the way they appear in Piaget. The arrow of development runs from communication to cognition and it is not any more reversible than the arrow of time.
> We all know that the arrow of time ran out on Vygotsky. One of the things we learn from reading the latest revelations from the Vygotsky archive is that Thinking and Speech was really a Prolegomena to a much larger work on the subject of consciousness. I had always assumed that his great unfinished work was the textbook on Child Development we see outlined in Chapter Five. But I see from Zavershneva 2010 that I was probably wrong.
> Vygotsky died with a gigantic three volume work on consciousness itself on his mind. He wanted initially to co-author with Leontiev and Luria, and only reluctantly took it upon himself when both of his dear disciples proved unreliable. So I am quite willing to re-read the last sentence of Vygotsky's hasty preface to Thinking and Speech ("This investigation is broken off on the very threshold") in that dark light.
> What would the great three volume "Capital" of consciousness have contained? Well, I think the very first volume would have had to revisit his long essay on the emotions. In Peter Smagorinsky's vimeo talk on "The Psychology of Art", he complains a lot about how the essay never really gets over James and Lange. But I think that a lot of the work that Professor Smagorinsky is really looking for really right under his nose, in "The Psychology of Art".
> He's right, of course: this is EARLY Vygotsky, and I think that a reworked "Psychology of Art" would have been much more precise about the higher esthetic concepts that he thinks distinguish successful art from the mere "social expression of emotion". I think it would have been every bit as precise as Chapter Five and Chapter Six of Thinking and Speech and might even bear more than a passing resemblance to them. I even think we would get a real sense of what artworks mediate these higher emotions and how, just as we get a sense of how systematic school instruction mediate science concepts in Chapter Six. Does that mean "cold cognition" in art, that is, a system of abstract esthetic concepts that have nothing to do with interpersonal contexts? I doubt it. On the contrary. The RELATIONAL aspects of communication in Tolstoy, for example, are large as life and twice as natural. David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
> .
> --- On Thu, 9/16/10, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> Subject: [xmca] A matter of priorities in different models
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, September 16, 2010, 10:03 PM
>
>
> Ana Mike and David K
>
> The thread that recently discussed Bahktin's and Vygotsky's alternative
> perspectives was thought provoking.
> Mike mentioned that we must bracket out some perspectives in order to focus
> and elaborate other perspectives. He also mentioned that it's very difficult
> to remain self conscious of our biases.
>
> I agree that whenever we bracket out and turn a searchlight on phenomena, we
> are going to leave other aspects of the phenomena in darkness. However, it
> is possible to try to become conscious that one is braceting out phenomena
> for particular purposes and try to gain insight into the value's implicit in
> what is bracketed out.
>
> I'm reposting one particular paragraph written by Ana that speaks to this
> issue of bracketing and hoping for further comments by others.
>
>
> "Although Vygotsky criticized Gestalt Psychology for the lack of the
> dynamic, developmental approach to the relationship between language and
> thought, he himself looked at the change of the relationship between
> language and thought as a change in structural and functional aspects of
> language and thought -- as decontextualized - synchronic categories. In
> addition, although Vygotsky insisted on the unity of the affective and
> intellectual aspects of language-thought and on the "union of generalization
> and communication", his analysis of communication stayed focussed on
> transformations of conceptual categories (generalization) and did not
> concern RELATIONAL aspects of communication. Was the relational aspect of
> communication somehow there, but just backgrounded? I think it is the matter
> of priorities -- not just research priorities, but the priorities IN THE
> WHOLE MODEL and the analysis of development." [Ana]
>
> What do others think of Ana's suggestion that Bahktin's and
> Vygotsky's theoretical models focus on different priorities.
> A similar question was recently posted by Peter S recently when he asked
>
> "what are the foundational concepts which inform the CHAT perspective?"
> when he was opening debate on this month's article.
>
> I personally am attempting to deepen my understanding of the "intersection"
> of these different priorities in a spirit that I believe was reflected in
> Ana's thought provoking analysis.
>
> Larry
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
Attachment:
Beginning.doc
Description: MS-Word document
_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca