Re: [xmca] Re: Word Meaning and Action: What' Plausible branch?

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

Martin Packer wrote:
> On Jun 17, 2011, at 10:45 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
>   
> > Listening to the word in context evokes certain feelings and ideas in you. 
> >     
> This is the account of word meaning that Joseph Gilbert was proposing, no?
No! I believe that the meaning you create by listening to the word is 
related to the physical form only insofar as the given physical form has 
been encountered previously or immediately in contexts in which activity 
mediated by the word vested meaning in the word. The account of how 
listening to a given word evokes thoughts and feelings in you the 
listener, though, is not given by Activity Theory. That would be a huge 
misunderstanding. It is found by psychological research.
> > Communication by means of a word generally means that both parties have participated in situations and projects where the word has been used in the way it is used in the immediate situation. This vests the word with meaning, "constitutes" it /as a word/. There is really nothing in the physical properties of the word that does anything more than smooth the path of meaning-making. There is no chemical formula for meaning. :)
> >     
>
> There is no essential difference between a word and a spade, then. You and I use a spade together to dig the garden, plant some tomatoes. The spade takes on a special significance for us. 
>   
The difference between word and a spade is that, as it happens, people 
do not pass each other shovels by way of chit-chat over coffee in the 
morning, or wave a shovel in the air to explain a point of philosophy. 
But, for example, deaf people use hand and finger gestures and 
deaf-blind people kind of scratch on your palm. Significance is vested 
in an artefact by the activity they mediate. Maybe there is a place 
somwhere where people communicate with spades.
> I don't buy it! But then, apparently I'm in the wrong thread. I thought that your statement about word-meaning was intended to be an interpretation of T&S. I can't even herd myself, apparently, let alone you other cats.
>   
OK, so let's relax a little over which thread is which. Surely, one has 
to believe that Activity Theory makes sense before you're going to be 
able to see it in Vygotsky's text.

So, you don't buy it. Do you accept that my reading of Vygotsky in terms 
of artefact-mediated activity is a legitimate reading? For that purpose 
we could consult other writers who hold the same position as I do, even 
if it is a mistaken one.

OR, you could elaborate for us the theory under which speech is not an 
activity, perhaps, just a way of transmitting ideas to a receiver who 
may or may not receive the message... or whatever your reading of 
Vygotsky is. I challenge you to present an reading of Vygotsky which 
escapes from what GH Mead called the "prisoner in a cell" metaphor of 
speech and thinking, by some other means.

Andy
> Martin
>
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--
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*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: 
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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