Re: [xmca] Measuring culture

[Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>]

Yes Martin,
Thanks!
Hot debate indeed AND a corollary debate.........Is all "language" is
verbal?

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Robert,
>
> The issue of whether language shapes thought, and the specifics regarding
> the preferred frame of reference in different languages, is hotly debated,
> as I am sure you know. The following is an interesting route into the
> debate:
>
> <http://economist.com/debate/overview/190>
>
> Martin
>
> On Apr 19, 2012, at 10:30 PM, Robert Lake wrote:
>
> > *Linguistic relativity Continued.......*
> > *
> > *
> > From Lake, R. (2012). *Vygotsky on Education Primer.* (pp. 111-112).New
> > York. Peter Lang.
> >
> > Because each culture makes meaning in widely
> > diverse ways, language forms and usage might have
> > complex intricacies and shades of meaning on one
> > concept alone. The standard example of this is how
> > time is viewed differently by different cultures. (This
> > does not include the popular myth that the Hopi
> > tribe of Indians does not have a word for time—it is
> > simply not true.) However there are plenty of examples
> > from the present day that suggest ways that language
> > can shape thought. Consider the Australian
> > aboriginal language, Guugu Yimithirr, spoken in
> > north Queensland, which has no words for right or
> > left, in front of, or behind to describe location. Instead
> > they use the points of the compass even when
> > requesting that someone move over to make room.
> > They will say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you
> > where exactly they left something in your house,
> > they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the
> > western table.”
> > (Deutscher, G. (2010, August 29) Does your language shape how you
> > think? The New York Times Sunday Magazine, p. MM 42.)
> >
> > The effect on the thinking of this group is phenomenal
> > in orienting the speakers to their directional
> > spatial environment to such that roughly 1
> > out of every 10 words in conversational Guugu
> > Yimithirr includes either north, south, east or west
> > and is accompanied with precise hand gestures
> > (ibid). Consequently in this culture, language acquisition
> > involves constant awareness of spaces relative
> > to the points of the compass. Deutscher relays a fascinating
> > story about the ways that memory is stored
> > for the speakers of this language. The story also
> > serves as a clear example of Vygotsky’s notion of language
> > as a mediating tool as a means of creating
> > higher levels of consciousness through spatial kin -
> > es thetic approaches to meaning creation.
> > One Guugu Yimithirr speaker was filmed telling his
> > friends the story of how in his youth, he capsized in
> > shark-infested waters. He and an older person were
> > caught in a storm, and their boat tipped over. They
> > both jumped into the water and managed to swim
> > nearly three miles to the shore, only to discover that
> > the missionary for whom they worked was far more
> > concerned at the loss of the boat than relieved at
> > their miraculous escape. Apart from the dramatic
> > content, the remarkable thing about the story was
> > that it was remembered throughout in cardinal directions:
> > the speaker jumped into the water on the
> > western side of the boat, his companion to the east
> > of the boat, they saw a giant shark swimming north
> > and so on. Perhaps the cardinal directions were just
> > made up for the occasion? Well, quite by chance,
> > the same person was filmed some years later telling
> > the same story. The cardinal directions matched exactly
> > in the two tellings. Even more remarkable
> > were the spontaneous hand gestures that accompanied
> > the story. For instance, the direction in which
> > the boat rolled over was gestured in the correct geographic
> > orientation, regardless of the direction the
> > speaker was facing in the two films (ibid).
> > This story also serves as a reminder that linguistic
> > differences should not be viewed as liabilities. Instead
> > we should see them as assets to the entire family of
> > humans that keep homogeneity at bay by creating
> > spaces for multiple ways of thinking, communicating,
> > problem solving and being in the world.
> >
> > 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
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> >>> 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.
> >> __________________________________________
> >> _____
> >> xmca mailing list
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> >> __________________________________________
> >> _____
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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.
> > __________________________________________
> > _____
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
> __________________________________________
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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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