Re: [xmca] Alfred Schütz

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Martin
Thanks for this lead to Elena Cuffari. I will respond after reading the
article.


For others interested in this approach fusing phenomenology, pragmatics,
and gestural studies see the following link to TESIS [Toward an Embodied
Science of Intersubjectivity]
Martin, I ppreciate your continuing engagement in conversations on this
theme.  Your explanation of *inner* meaning of words was very helpful See
the link to TESIS
http://tesisnetwork.wordpress.com/members/

Larry



On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Larry,
>
> I wasn't trying to take the discussion in any specific direction, but Greg
> expressed curiosity about Merleau-Ponty's views on language. M-P wrote
> quite a bit about language acquisition: he held the Chair in Child
> Psychology and Pedagogy at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952.
>
> I find it interesting that M-P, like LSV, drew from Humboldt's writing on
> language. Specifically, and again like LSV, he employs the notion of the
> "inner form" of speech. When this topic has been discussed here on xmca we
> have had a tendency to say that the inner form, what LSV terms 'meaning' as
> distinct from 'sense,' is fixed and objective, rather like the dictionary
> definition of a word.
>
> But dictionary definitions are written, and children don't hear the
> definitions of words as they learn their first language. (If they do, I
> imagine they ignore them.) M-P describes the inner form instead as a "style
> of speaking," an organization prior to representation, an "immanent
> meaning" to which the speaker has a "corporeal intentionality," a texture
> which is grasped.
>
> It helps to know that M-P articulated an account of perception as in
> general a practical  involvement in the world, in which each object is
> always given only partially, incompletely and from a perspective, while at
> the same time other perspectives are tacitly adumbrated, as are the other
> things around the object. Each object mirrors all others. We are always in
> a situation, a nexus of interrelationships into which our body too is
> entangled. What he says about the word, then, is what he says about any
> material entity. "Style" is the way an object invites, demands, a response
> from us.
>
> A child learns language in the here and now of concrete objects. As LSV
> pointed out, words seem first to be taken by a young child as aspects,
> features of the objects they name. A "gesture" is a movement, an action,
> something understood not intellectually but as outlining a structure in and
> of the world. Gesture requires taking up a position in the world, and
> sharing that position with another. Gesture has style. To say that the
> 'inner form' of a word is a gesture is to say that its meaning owes
> everything to its corporeality - there is no word that is not being spoken
> and heard. As spoken, a word is always a figure against an unspoken ground,
> an island in a sea of activity. Dictionary definitions, in contrast, are
> merely speech about speech, in which there can only be an external and
> conventional relationship between word and meaning.
>
> Consequently, I'm not sure about the centrality of reflection that you
> emphasize. Notice that M-P writes:
>
> "On the condition that I do not reflect expressly upon it, my
> consciousness of my body immediately signifies a certain landscape about
> me..."
>
> In other words, we have consciousness in/of the world *prior* to
> reflection, and the most important task is to grasp that. This is not to
> say that reflection is unimportant, but by definition it is something
> secondary, and derivative.
>
> Martin
>
> p.s.: worth a look:
> Cuffari, E. (2011). Gestural sense-making: Hand gestures as
> intersubjective linguistic enactments. Phenomenology and the Cognitive
> Sciences. doi:10.1007/s11097-011-9244-9
>
>
> On Apr 28, 2012, at 6:16 PM, Larry Purss wrote:
>
> > Andy, Mike, Martin
> >
> > Thanks for this lead.  I have been reading Gadamer's response to Habermas
> > and the interplay between his notion of *traditions* and Habermas notion
> of
> > *emancipation* within social theory.
> >
> > The two chapter's of Martin's book will help further the conversations on
> > these themes.
> >
> > Martin, your conversation with David on the interplay of realization and
> > instantiation and the centrality of the *relation between* these concepts
> > seems central to this discussion.
> >
> > I also wonder about the interplay between realization and reflection and
> > Gadamer's notion of multiple TYPES of reflection. Assertive reflection,
> > thematic reflection, and what Gadamer names as  *effective reflection*
> > where one engages with developing the skills to enter and participate
> > effectively in playing the games without holding back and *merely*
> playing
> > at playing the game.  Effective playing as having its *own* being and
> *we*
> > enter this play and get *taken up* and *carried* along within the play.
> Not
> > privleging either *subjective* consciousness or *objective* consciousness
> > but rather privileging the play in which subjectivity and objectivity
> have
> > their *ground* [metaphorically]
> >
> > Martin, I'm not sure if this was the direction you were taking
> > theconversation, but it what I interpreted you saying.
> >
> > Larry
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 3:51 PM, mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Andy et al -
> >>
> >> Martin's book, the science of qualitative research has a chapter that
> >> traces Kant-Husserl-
> >> Schutz - BergerLuckman that we r reading at Lchc. It helped me a lot to
> >> sort out this branch
> >> of thought. It is followed by a chapter that traces Heidegger - Merleau
> >> Ponty- garfinkle.
> >>
> >> I have heard there is an electronic version, but do not know how to get
> >> it. Working from actual hard copy!
> >> Mike
> >> On Apr 28, 2012, at 10:19 AM, Andrew Babson <ababson@umich.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> He was very influential to Garfinkel, and so from an intellectual
> >>> historical perspective, the development of ethnomethodology,
> >>> conversation analysis and modern sociolinguistics.
> >>>
> >>> On 4/28/12, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >>>> I'd just like to share the attached article, written in 1945 by Alfred
> >>>> Schuetz, a refugee from the Frankfurt School living in New York, like
> so
> >>>> many others. In the article he appropriates Wm James, GH Mead and J
> >>>> Dewey, whilst coming from the Pheneomenology of Husserl, to adapt the
> >>>> concepts of Pheneomenology to social theory. It is quite interesting.
> He
> >>>> remains, in my view within the orbit of Phenomenology, but readers
> will
> >>>> recognise significant points of agreement with AN Leontyev's Activity
> >>>> Theory. What he calls "Conduct" comes close to "Activity," and he
> >>>> introduces the concept of Action which is certainly the same as it is
> >>>> for CHAT, and instead of "an activity" (the 3rd level in ANL's system)
> >>>> he has "Project." But although this project has the same relation to
> >>>> Action, it is a subjectively derived project posited on the world,
> >>>> rather than project discovered in the world, and having a basically
> >>>> societal origin. This is the point at which I think he confines
> himself
> >>>> to Phenomenology, and fails to reach a real social theory. The whole
> >>>> business about "multiple realities" which gives the article its title
> is
> >>>> very tedious, but actually is valid in its basics I think.
> >>>> Some of us on this list may appreciate him. He's a recent discovery
> for
> >> me.
> >>>> Andy
> >>>> --
> >>>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>> *Andy Blunden*
> >>>> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
> >>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> >>>> Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608461459/
> >>>>
> >>> __________________________________________
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