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Re: [xmca] Measuring culture
Dear David,
Thanks for the post. BTW I am not going *back *to universalism or universal
grammar or Jung, or anything Cartesian (since I never was there). I may be
reading the the Barfield passage wrong, but see the opposite in terms of
Deweyan/Vygotskian cultural-historical influences shaping metaphor creation.
Have a great succubus free weekend!
RL
On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 9:26 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
> Linguistics is stalked by a terrible succubus, the succubus of
> structuralist reification. I guess the worst example of this is the
> Chomskyan "revolution", a technical means of diagramming sentences which
> people mistook for the way in which people actually formulated them.
>
> When this was clearly disproved by psycholinguistic experiments in the
> sixties and seventies, it was immediately replaced with exactly the
> opposite idea: that potential language and real language are exactly the
> same thing; that is, everything that can be said actually is being said or
> has been said somewhere in the world. Ergo corpus linguistics, the
> linguistics of ever-larger computer corpora, is the real thing. I think
> that the "five million books" idea is just the latest instantiation of
> this opposite idea, which is ultimately behavioristic.
>
> As Andy says, real philosophy, and real science, is what starts where
> the popular myth, the current Zeitgeist ends. The problem is that the
> NEXT big thing, the NEXT popular myth, also starts where the current
> Zeitgeist ends; behavioristic "realism" in linguistics started exactly
> where the structuralist succubus expired (and, I might remark
> parenthetically, it started up precisely because we did not listen to
> Merleau-Ponty's remark to the effect that structuralism's main crime was
> not valuing structure ENOUGH to link it firmly enough to value).
>
> I'm afraid that's how I read the Owen Barfield quote Rob and Larry refer
> to below (though I'm ALSO afraid I will not have time to track it down and
> read it in context). It seems to me we are in danger of going back to the
> structuralist succubus: we are in danger of reifying the language system
> and attributing all of linguistic creativity to this great bag of God
> sentences.
>
> I don't believe language is an abstract system that is capable of
> generating any and all sentences. I believe in language that is still warm
> from the lips and breath of living breathing humans, and I believe that
> there is no actual poetry without an actual poet (whether that poet is
> wearing laurels or just wearing a baking cap and an apron). But I also
> don't believe that language and all of its poetic moments are just the sum
> total of everything that ever has been said, is being said, or even will be
> being said by living breathing people.
>
> If this seems like a contradiction, then it is only because we are not in
> the habit of thinking of potential as truly infinite (mathematicians had a
> similar problem explaining what it really means when we say something like
> given an infinite number of opportunities, everything that can happen will
> happen).
>
> Every unit of language, from sounds to words to the most complex and
> intricate of wordings, is both a car horn and a traffic light. That is,
> there is always some element (what Volosinov calls 'theme" and Vygotsky
> calls "sense") that is mutable and negotiable, where you have to look over
> your shoulder and see if you know the guy who is honking.
>
> In sounds, intonation and stress are like this. In words, the prefixes and
> suffixes and particles and pronouns. In sentences, subgrammatical fragments
> like "What about you?". But in language generally, this is the predominant
> nature of spoken discourse, and that is why it is consistently missing from
> the Google N-grams base (which would have you believe that swearing was
> invented in the late twentieth century).
>
> Then there is this other element (what Volosinov calls meaning proper and
> what Vygotsky calls "signification") that is quite fixed and systematic.
> Red always means stop and green always means go (although the precise
> meaning of yellow depends on where you are with relation to the
> intersection).
>
> In sounds, vowels and consonants are like this. In words, the common nouns
> and workaday verbs, the independent morphemes of all kinds. In sentences,
> the independent clauses that make up the overwhelming majority of our
> (non-novelistic and non-dialogic) written text. This is where we find all
> of our dictionary meanings, (and, alas, almost all of the meanings in the
> N-gram system).
>
> The infinite potential of language, which is what the poet exploits and
> which is why language is not reducible to the sum total of everything that
> has been, is, and will be said, is the product of the way these systems
> interact. So there is no contradiction. But if there were, it would only be
> a contra-diction; it would still be perfectly true.
>
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
> --- On Thu, 4/19/12, Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu> wrote:
>
>
> From: Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Measuring culture
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, April 19, 2012, 6:45 AM
>
>
> Hi Larry,
> I am intrigued with the passage from Owen Barfield.
>
> Which book is that found in?
>
> RL
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 1:53 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Andy, thanks for this post which I find exploring experience and
> culture.
> > These insights of Dewey's seems to parallel themes I've been reading in
> > Gadamer's perspective on prejudice .
> >
> > especially the section,
> >
> > It [experience] is filled with interpretations, classifications, due to
> > sophisticated thought,
> > which have become incorporated into what seems to be fresh, naive
> > empirical material. It would take more wisdom than is possessed by
> > the wisest historic scholar to track all of these absorbed
> > borrowings to their original sources. If we may for the moment call
> > these materials prejudices (even if they are true, as long as their
> > source and authority is unknown), then /philosophy is a critique of
> > prejudices/.
> >
> >
> > I would like to juxtapose, or put in play, these insights of Dewey's
> with a
> > quote from Owen Barfield,
> >
> > More particularly, it (i.e. pleasure) can be aroused by a language which
> is
> > at an earlier stage of development than the one which is our own, because
> > it is the nature of language to grow less figurative, less and less
> couched
> > in terms of imagery, as it grows older. We notice, we relish figurative
> > quality in older language, and we EXPERIENCE this figurative element in
> the
> > same way in which we experience those new metaphors which poets make for
> > us. But it does not follow from this (and this is where most of the
> > philologists of the 19th Century and the early twenties have really made
> > their mistake) it does not follow from this that that figurative element,
> > that presence of living memory, that we find in earlier language was
> made,
> > invented, created by the individual genius of a poet. On the contrary,
> it
> > couldn't have been. It was simply there in the language as such; it was
> a
> > 'given' kind of meaning, a 'given' kind of imagery.
> >
> > I also want to bring in Emily's comment posted today,
> >
> > I just wanted to call attention to play as in the way play ' plays '
> us...
> > Gadamer talks about this in Truth and Method, noting that when we engage
> > in in play, play can overtake and seem to become something more that the
> > participants.
> >
> > As I read Dewey's, Barfield's, and Gadamer's notions of experience I see
> a
> > theme of experience and expression as playful.
> >
> > Larry
> >
> >
> >
> > More parti
> > On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 9:37 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Wagner, your post sent me into my book of the writings of John Dewey,
> > > where I became happily lost for half an hour. I couldn't find the
> maxim I
> > > was looking for, but this one will do:
> > >
> > > "Experience is already overlaid and saturated with the products of
> > > the reflection of past generations and by-gone ages. It is filled
> > > with interpretations, classifications, due to sophisticated thought,
> > > which have become incorporated into what seems to be fresh, naive
> > > empirical material. It would take more wisdom than is possessed by
> > > the wisest historic scholar to track all of these absorbed
> > > borrowings to their original sources. If we may for the moment call
> > > these materials prejudices (even if they are true, as long as their
> > > source and authority is unknown), then /philosophy is a critique of
> > > prejudices/. These incorporated results of past reflection, welded
> > > into the genuine materials of first-hand experience, may become the
> > > organss of enrichment if they are detected and reflected upon. If
> > > they are not detected, they often obfuscate and distort.
> > > Clarification and emancipation follow when they are detected and
> > > cast out; and one great object of philosophy is to accomplish this
> > > task." (PJD 276)
> > >
> > > The quote I was looking for and couldn't find made an allusion to
> Hegel's
> > > famous aphorism:
> > >
> > > "As for the individual, every one is a son of his time; so
> > > philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as
> > > foolish to fancy that any philosophy can transcend its present
> > > world, as that an individual could leap out of his time or jump over
> > > Rhodes." (Pref. Phil Rt.)
> > >
> > > and went on to say that while no philosophy worthy of the name can
> simply
> > > reflect the prejudices of its own times, it is given by its own times
> the
> > > prejudices against which it must protest. Those who are blindly swept
> > along
> > > by the fashions of the times are quite incapable of doing this and are
> > not
> > > worthy of the name of philosophy or science.
> > >
> > > Andy
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Wagner Luiz Schmit wrote:
> > >
> > >> Hello,
> > >>
> > >> I don't know if you already saw this... I am still thinking about it
> and
> > >> what to say about it...
> > >>
> > >> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/**pt-br/what_we_learned_from_5_**
> > >> million_books.html<
> >
> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/pt-br/what_we_learned_from_5_million_books.html
> > >
> > >>
> > >> A new tool or a new way to reduce human to numbers? In some places i
> > >> already see scientists from fields like neuroscience, evolutionary
> > >> psychology and etc pointing to me and saying "Marx? Vygotsky? Gosh you
> > are
> > >> obsolete and should be in a Museum". And they have funding...
> > >>
> > >> Just trowing toughs...
> > >>
> > >> Wagner Luiz Schmit
> > >> ______________________________**____________
> > >> _____
> > >> xmca mailing list
> > >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > > --
> > > ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> > > ------------
> > > *Andy Blunden*
> > > Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1<
> > http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
> > > Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> > > Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/**product/1608461459/<
> > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608461459/>
> > >
> > >
> > > ______________________________**____________
> > > _____
> > > xmca mailing list
> > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/**listinfo/xmca<
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca>
> > >
> > __________________________________________
> > _____
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
>
>
>
> --
> *Robert Lake Ed.D.
> *Assistant Professor
> Social Foundations of Education
> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> Georgia Southern University
> P. O. Box 8144
> Phone: (912) 478-5125
> Fax: (912) 478-5382
> Statesboro, GA 30460
>
> *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
> midwife.*
> *-*John Dewey.
> __________________________________________
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>
--
*Robert Lake Ed.D.
*Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA 30460
*Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
midwife.*
*-*John Dewey.
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