Sometimes I would really like to be a mosquito in the room when
Martin is
giving his course on developmental psychology. But I would
probably want to
bite the student who asked if the replacement of social relations in
language (e.g. discourse) by psychological ones (e.g. grammar) is
a "fact"
or just one of Martin's ideas; the question strikes me as rather
more
bumbling and humbling.
Fortunately, I have my own Thursday night session, which this
semester is
all about systemic functional linguistics and conversation
analysis. Last
night we were discussing the difference between them, and I
pointed out that
the systemic view is quite consistent with the idea of language
as an
artefact and the conversation analysis view is much less so.
Take, for example, the problem of repair. A teacher walks into a
classroom.
T: Good morning, everybody.
Ss: Good morning, everybody!
T: !!!!
The conversation is broken. But in order to repair it, the
teacher does
not pull over and stop. The teacher has to keep going. The
teacher has to
find out what exactly the kids mean, if anything (are they simply
repeating
what they heard, as seems likely, or are they including their
classmates in
their reply to the teacher?)
This means that even quite simple conversations (the sort we
have with
third graders) are quite gnarly and knobbled; they have
convolutions and
introvolutions, knots and whorls and burls of negotiation.
Conversations
exhibit very few of the genetic or structural of mechanical
tools, and in
fact only resemble "tools" only if we take a quite narrowly
functionalist
squint and presuppose a coinciding will that wields them. It even
seems to
me that they are misconstrued when we say that they are artefacts.
I think the Romantics, especially Herder, would agree with this
view: I
think they would have been rather horrified at Andy's idea that a
body is an
artefact in the same sense as a tool is an artefact. They would
point out
that it is not genetically so; the body is a natural product and
not man
made. It is also not structurally so: unlike other artefacts,
much of its
structure reflects self-replication and not other-fabrication.
Of course,
we may say that a body is FUNCTIONALLY like an artefact, because
we use it
as a tool in various ways. But if we privilege this particular
interpretation of the body over the genetic, or the structural,
account, it
seems to me we get a pretty functionalist view of things. A body
involved in
a conversation is not an artefact; it's more like a work of art,
and the
gratuitous and organic complexity of conversation is an indelible
sign of
this.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Thu, 10/14/10, Paula M Towsey <paulat@johnwtowsey.co.za>
wrote:
From: Paula M Towsey <paulat@johnwtowsey.co.za>
Subject: RE: [xmca] Tom Toolery
To: ablunden@mira.net, "'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'" <
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, October 14, 2010, 5:40 AM
Hello Andy-of-the-5-o'clock-shadow
Yet it's a different kind of gnashing of teeth (and wailing and
weeping)
when the baboons at Third Bridge get stuck into the tinned
supplies...
Paula
_________________________________
Paula M Towsey
PhD Candidate: Universiteit Leiden
Faculty of Social Sciences
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: 14 October 2010 13:19
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Tom Toolery
My answer, Paula: yes.
My body, with its various parts, is an artefact; according to
context,
symbol or tool.
My face and my 5 o'clock shadow is a symbol just as much as the
shirt I
wear. My teeth a tool just as much as a can opener.
Andy
Paula M Towsey wrote:
For some inexplicable reason while watching Mike's blind man
with a stick
video, I remembered smsing Carol with a quirky question: if a
researcher
without a knife is trying to open an airline packet of peanuts,
and she
resorts to using her teeth, what tool is she using?
Though, perhaps the better question would be - is she using a
tool.?
_________________________________
Paula M Towsey
PhD Candidate: Universiteit Leiden
Faculty of Social Sciences
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--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
----
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%
7Eandy/>
Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
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