RE: [xmca] Re: ye native speakers of English

[Monica Hansen <monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu>]

Andy: 

I'm so glad you didn't realize! I AM a native speaker of common American
dialect of English that in my formative years had nothing to do with
academia --I'm still trying to move beyond it ;). 

In a developed discourse, or "tradition of scientific analysis", common
words are often appropriated and nuanced in a way that may be different from
use in another discourse community. When reading posts or any text, I roll
along merrily thinking I understand what is being said-- unless there is a
burr or sticking point, something that does not resonate. "Co-extensive" was
one of these points for me, a little reminder that I cannot assume everyone
uses words in the same way. To me, an opportunity for clarification and
further education.

Thanks so much for your help.

Monica


-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 7:30 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: ye

Yes, that's exactly it, Monica. I didn't realise you weren't a native 
speaker.

Just a warning/qualification on what I have said. I am not claiming that 
the concepts of Activity and Discourse ought to be identified; clearly 
they indicate different traditions of scientific analysis which pick out 
different objects from the flow of human life. I think I am suggesting 
though that both sciences ought to expand their self-concept so as to 
assimilate the gains of the other, creating a single, nuanced concept of 
Discursive Activity. This of course has nothing to do with assimilating 
practical actions with word meaning. But the distinction between 
practical intelligence and verbal thinking/action is developmentally 
overcome, ontologically, but also historically, I think.

Andy

Monica Hansen wrote:
>
> Thanks, Andy. This does help. "Co" meaning the threads of activity and 
> discourse can extend together, at the same time. Like co-chairs. I was 
> following you! Thanks for the clarification. My misunderstanding was 
> an example of how my discourse was not co-extending with yours. J I 
> think I know English, but I am always learning new Discourses with a 
> capital D.
>
> Monica
>
> *From:* Andy Blunden [mailto:ablunden@mira.net]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 06, 2011 6:15 PM
> *To:* Monica Hansen
> *Cc:* 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'
> *Subject:* Re: [xmca] Re: ye
>
> What do I mean by "co-extensive"? If the activity is mathematics, by 
> which I would mean doing mathematics from the point of view of a kind 
> of sociology of science, and the Activity (system) is taken to be all 
> the extended institutions of mathematics, mainly university 
> departments, learned journals of mathematics, and so on, then this 
> Activity is co-extensive with the discourse of mathematics. The 
> Discourse overflows the bounds of the institutions into the general 
> community (scienfitic concepts entering everyday life), and 
> contradictions could arise here, because people's everyday Activity is 
> not attuned to the practice and concepts of the institutions of 
> mathematics. On the other hand, if we took, for example, a Men's Club 
> in the old-fashioned sense of "My Fair Lady" as the Activity, and to 
> be blindingly obvious, the Discourse of Feminism, then obviously when 
> Feminism enters the Men's Club contradictions arise. But less 
> obviously, the discourse within a factory - labour relations, command 
> line management, mutual aid between workers, etc. - in tune with the 
> activity of producing metal bars, or whatever, on a day-to-day basis, 
> and the Discourse of Taylorist Scientific Management enters the 
> factory, then again, contradiction: Taylorism is not the indigenous 
> Discourse of that Activity.
>
> Apart from obvious differences of location, there is also a 
> developmental difference between Activities and Discourses, as 
> Discourses have entered the language, but I think this is only 
> relative. Where you have a distinct difference is in Theory: Discourse 
> Theory and Activity Theory. Each has developed a whole body of theory, 
> concepts and analytical tools, and I think these are distinct but 
> could be merged.
>
> Does that help?
> Andy
>
> Monica Hansen wrote:
>
> Andy,
>
> I think I am following your argument here, but I am wondering if you 
> could clarify your use of **coextensive** in "And when in a given 
> circumstance we have practical activity (making bars) and discourse 
> (expert talk, issuing advice) going on together, then these different 
> strands weave together as extended projects/concepts that lock into 
> the overall social fabric by /not being coextensive/. I.e., a 
> particular discourse is not excluively located within a certain 
> "activity."" And as in your last sentence: ".because these threads are 
> not coextensive."
>
> It is the relationality in both Activity and Discourse that is 
> difficult to define and translate into research because of the 
> necessity for a **unit** of analysis. The confusion about 
> **discourse** comes from its ambiguous meaning, often used (or limited 
> to use), as interchangeable with **unit** of study, a singular object 
> (or molecular). This usage is reflected in monological approaches to 
> language study versus dialogical approaches (Linell, 2009).
>
> It strikes me: if we are using construction as a metaphor for 
> knowledge building and mind making, maybe it is this metaphor that 
> keeps us going back to the individual parts that are required for 
> construction. Same with discourse: ...a discourse is constructed.And 
> then we are inspired by the opposing direction of sequential 
> processing (deconstruction). This tendency towards seriality is maybe 
> the difficulty in defining instructional methods in both math and 
> language. I am not saying the components and sequences are unnecessary 
> (Pedagogical knowledge often being dichotomized as content and 
> process), but beyond the parts, we are pulled back to the 
> understanding of the elements in context, integrated, all happening 
> simultaneously as important to both Activity and Discourse and I would 
> say to borrow from the study David K cited before, the enactment of 
> understanding in math or language arts.
>
> Just thinking out loud,
>
> Monica
>
>
>
> *From:* xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu 
> <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu> 
> [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] *On Behalf Of *Andy Blunden
> *Sent:* Tuesday, July 05, 2011 10:24 PM
> *To:* lchcmike@gmail.com <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>; eXtended Mind, 
> Culture, Activity
> *Subject:* Re: [xmca] Re: ye
>
> Thanks for that Mike. for resurrecting my original question (which may 
> could not be clarified through difficulties in learning maths as I'd 
> hoped) and for the Engestrom paper. As Engstrom says: "a theoretical 
> integration of these two [talking and acting] has not yet been 
> accomplished."
>
> Engestrom is discussing exactly the problem of the relation of 
> Discourse Analysis and Activity Theory, in the context of the relation 
> between a Discourse and an Activity. In the fine detail of the 
> performance of Activity and Discourse, the two are of course 
> inextricable. The hope of some Discourse analysts to make conversation 
> an object of analysis, while abstracting the conversation from what 
> the talkers were trying to /do/ (or talking about) is clearly (to 
> Activity Theorists and the participants, if not the analysts) vacuous. 
> But also, it is obvious that if we try to make some kind of dichotomy 
> between practical activity (as in making metal bars and operating 
> machines) and discursive activity (talking about it, issuing commands, 
> etc.) then we can't make any sense of Activity either. Even a 
> dichotomy of Actions is problematic, but maybe has some sense. It is 
> self-evident and obvious the distinction between words and practical 
> actions, but speaking is also an action and all practical actions also 
> have a symbolic effect.
>
> To this end, the question of unit of analysis is raised. Engstrom 
> wants to make a "situated activity system as the basic unit of 
> analysis." But this defeats the purpose. It is actually taking the 
> analytical road, not the road of Goethe and Hegel and Vygotsky, in my 
> view. If we break the whole down into situated units which contain 
> systems of activity, inclusive of the talk going on and the 
> surrounding artefacts (machinery etc), then try to assemble the whole 
> again, we find on the one hand the "long duration" concept of the 
> specific industry producing metal components, and on the other, the 
> "historically distinctive social languages at work, namely the social 
> language of the machinists and the social language of the expert 
> engineers." That is, there are /discourses/ (plural) sustained of 
> course, by practical activity (visiting workshops, attending 
> conferences, writing papers, having conversations) and mathematics is 
> one of them. And when in a given circumstance we have practical 
> activity (making bars) and discourse (expert talk, issuing advice) 
> going on together, then these different strands weave together as 
> extended projects/concepts that lock into the overall social fabric by 
> /not being coextensive/. I.e., a particular discourse is not 
> excluively located within a certain "activity."
>
> So I don't think it works to take a molecule of talk-and-labour as a 
> "unit of analysis" unless we just want to be analytical sociologists, 
> and nor can we take (I believe) Discourses to be a particular variety 
> of Activities (because the Actions entailed, meanings, are always 
> inextricably connected with practical Actions, as per Bakhtin's 
> Utterances). You can't have an Activity that doesn't include talk or a 
> Discourse that doesn't include or imply practical actions as well as 
> meanings.
>
> So, for example, mathematics is a Discourse. There we have a unit of 
> analysis. I believe Anna is in agreement here. Doing mathematics 
> involves talking and all sorts of practical actions. It also has the 
> structure and movement of a concept: a system of judgments - acts of 
> thinking - of long duration, which has an internal unity thanks to the 
> word. So the Activities (units of Activity) are long threads which are 
> overlapping and interacting in the concrete situation, which gains its 
> tensions, contradictions, its nature as a predicament, because these 
> threads are not coextensive.
>
> I think we have to merge the concepts of an Activity and a Discourse. 
> They are inextricable.
>
> Andy
>
> mike cole wrote:
>
> Dear Colleagues--
>  
> I am poking along at the question of activity and discourse.
> While poking around, it occurred to me that Yrjo had written a paper on
the
> topic. The context is different-- a special issue of a journal on
> organizational communication, but it
> seems as if it might be relevant to Andy's question and Anna's answers.
>  
> mike
>   
>  
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> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: 
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744 
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> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: 
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744 
> <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
> Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857 
> <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
> MIA: http://www.marxists.org
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*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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