Mar 01
eldonepistemology, suitable quotations bateson
The relation between information and value becomes still more evident when we consider the asking of questions and other forms of seeking information. We may compare the seeking of information with the seeking of values. In the seeking of values it is clear that what happens is that a man sets out to “trick” the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He endeavours to interfere with the “natural” or random course of events, so that some otherwise improbable outcome will be achieved. For his breakfast, he achieves and arrangement of bacon and eggs, side by side, upon a plate; and in achieving this improbability he is aided by other men who will sort out the appropriate pigs is some distant market and interfere with the natural juxtaposition of hens and eggs…[..]..Briefly, in value seeking he is achieving a coincidence or congruence between something in his head – an idea of what breakfast should be – and something external, an actual arrangement of eggs and bacon..[..]..In contrast, when he is seeking information, he is again trying to achieve a congruence between “something in his head” and the external world; but now he attempts to do this by altering what is in his head.
Feb 28
eldonepistemology, materiality, mode and modalities, suitable quotations inter-modal tension, lemke
excerpt from: Lemke, Jay: Material sign processes and Emergent Ecosocial Organization: Downward causation and the levels paradigm
[accessed November 2000]
The reductionist trick was predicated on the assumption that the
different ‘pieces’ or views from different perspectives could always somehow
be neatly fit together. But we now know that material processes cannot be
comprehended, cannot be exhaustively described within any one single
self-consistent formal discourse. They always overflow the limited
possibilities of our semiotic models of them. It is only by building more
and more semiotic-discursive models, each internally self-consistent, but
not limited by requirements of mutual consistency with each other, that we
can, by adding together such ‘complementary’ views, attain to the most
complete possible account of material phenomena, including semiosis itself.
Thus we still come back to a version of ‘assemblage’ but hopefully a more
sophisticated one, one that takes into account our own role and perspective
as observers, as well as the material means by which we observe, compare,
and assemble — the material mediation of our semiotic practices.
…..
every process of semiosis is not just a social and
cultural practice, but also a material activity in which not just humans but
also non-human elements of the ecosytem participate.
Feb 26
eldoncontext, mode and modalities, suitable quotations hasan
Ruqaiya Hasan 1999: TEXT AND CONTEXT IN FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS
Edited by MOHSEN GHADESSY
So paraphrasing field as social activity does not recognise the verbal action aspect of social activity. Verbal actions such as those of explaining, defining, narrating, reporting, chronicling, lecturing and a myriad of others that I would describe as verbal actions are treated as a matter of mode in the current SFL models of context. From this perspective, the distinction between field and mode is suspiciously reminiscent of the distinction between the what and the how, the content and the style, which has always been popular in literary criticism.(270)
…the notion of social activity must be reconceptualised to cover both action and locution, both material and verbal action, and my recent exploration of the relations of context and text appears to support this position. (271)
Table 10 suggests that linguistic models of context which treat material action as a matter of field and verbal action as a matter of [ancillary] v. [constitutive] mode might have greater difficulty in identifying those environments where textual integration or co-location might be at risk (280-281)
3.4 Ancillary and constitutive verbal action: field or mode ?
… In agreement with other systemicists’ views, I too have typically treated the distinction between constitutive and ancillary as a matter of mode, even despite occasional misgivings (see Section 2.3 and footnote 58): I suggested, in fact, that the two terms refer to the two endpoints of a cline, viz., the role of language (see Hasan 1980, 1985b etc; for further discussion and development, see Cloran 1994). In SFL, persuasion, explanation, definition, etc, are described as categories of rhetorical mode.
…the role language is playing or what it is doing in the social situation (cf Halliday’s remarks in Ch1) are not aspects of mode, nor is rhetorical mode really a phenomenon that belongs in mode: rather, these various cases of speaking, viz., persuading, explaining, joking, narrating are cases of verbal action. There seems no reason for suggesting that instead of verbal action, they are just a modality or mode for bringing that action about, especially since the actions in question are un-doable any other way except verbally…
as the description of the field of discourse progresses in delicacy, it would become possible to identify the specific lexicogrammatical and semantic domains at risk in the realisation of specific choices from the systems of field: such work is in fact well under weigh (see Halliday & Martin 1993; also Matthiessen, in press). This claim takes us to a higher level concept, to what I have called genre specific semantic potential elsewhere (Hasan 1985b:98ff.) which consists of the meanings and wordings that are crucial to the identity of a register, which is naturally related to the notion of domain of signification. (287)
[my emphasis]
Feb 26
eldoncontext, instantiation, language and culture, suitable quotations hasan
Ruqaiya Hasan 1999: TEXT AND CONTEXT IN FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS
Edited by MOHSEN GHADESSY
From the point of view of instantiation, situation is to culture as text is to language; the first term of each proportion instantiates the second:
situation: culture :: text: language
From the point of view of realisation, language is to situation; the first term of each proportion realises the second:
language: culture :: text: situation
Current SFL models possess no satisfactory means of contextual and/ or registral changes which do not disturb the unity of the text, nor can they specify where i.e., in what kind(s) of social situation, such changes are most at risk.
p.225
Feb 17
eldoncontext, epistemology, suitable quotations bateson
I remember the boredom of analyzing sentences and the boredom later, at Cambridge, of learning comparative anatomy. Bothe subjects, as taught, were torturously unreal. We could have been told something about the pattern which connects: that all communication necessitates context, that without context, there is no meaning, and that contexts confer meaning because there is a classification of contexts. The teacher could have argued that growth and differentiation must be controlled by communication. The shapes of plants and animals are the transforms of messages. Language itself is a form of communication. The structure of the input must somehow be reflected as structure in the output. Anatomy must contain an analogue of grammar because all anatomy is a transform of message material, which must be contextually shaped. And finally, contextual shaping is only another term for grammar.
So we come back to the patterns of connection and the more abstract, and more general (and most empty) proposition that, indeed, there is a pattern of patterns of connection.
Gregory Bateson (1979) from the Introduction to “Mind and Nature”.
Feb 11
eldonlexico-grammar, suitable quotations
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 585, 586):
The grammar thus construes sensing as a bounded domain within our total experience of change. This picture is further enriched through lexis, prominently through lexical metaphors. Metaphors relating to space, with the mind as a container, a finite space or a physical entity reinforce the grammar’s construal of a bounded domain of sensing. …
This mind-space may enter into material processes of storing, searching, crossing, escaping etc, either as participant or as circumstance, and also into relational processes of “being + Location”. It is interesting to note that in these various lexical metaphors the Sensers are still very much present; they are not effaced. In fact, a number of these lexical metaphors constructed on the model of material clauses retain the option of projecting … [eg] he kept in mind that the moon was a balloon …
Feb 11
eldonannouncements, language and brain, language and culture conferences
First Notification
Fifth International Conference on Language, Culture and Mind
The Fifth International Conference on Language, Culture and Mind (LCM V) will be held on 27-29 June 2012 at the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon. It will be preceded by a Young Researchers Workshop on 26 June 2012 (same venue), in which young researchers will present their ongoing dissertation projects and current work.
The goals of LCM conferences are to contribute to situating the study of language in a contemporary interdisciplinary dialogue (involving philosophy, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, semiotics and other related fields), and to promote a better integration of cognitive and cultural perspectives in empirical and theoretical studies of language.
http://www.salc-sssk.org/lcm/
The theme for LCM V is
Integrating Semiotic Resources in Communication and Creativity
Plenary speakers:
· Nick Enfield, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
http://www.mpi.nl/people/enfield-nick
· Cynthia Lightfoot, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University
http://www.brandywine.psu.edu/Academics/faculty_cgl3.htm
· Dan Slobin, Departments of Psychology and Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=35
· Beata Stawarska, Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon
http://pages.uoregon.edu/uophil/faculty/profiles/stawarsk/
· Sherman Wilcox, Department of Linguistics, University of New Mexico
http://web.mac.com/swilcox/UNM/Welcome.html
The deadline for abstract submission will be Dec 15, 2011.
Detailed instructions for abstract submission and online registration for both LCM V and the LCM V Young Researchers Workshop will be included in the First Call for Papers that will be issued shortly.
Important dates
· Deadline for abstract submission: 15 Dec 2011
· Notification of acceptance: 15 Feb 2012
· Last date for early registration: 1 Mar 2012
· Last date for registration: 1 May 2012
· Final program publication: 15 May 2012
The International LCM organizing committee
· Alan Cienki, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Language and Communication
· Barbara Fultner, Denison University, Philosophy
· John Lucy, University of Chicago, Comparative Human Development and Psychology
· Aliyah Morgenstern, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, Linguistics
· Anneli Pajunen, University of Tampere, Finnish Language
· Esther Pascual, University of Groningen, Communication Studies
· Victor Rosenthal, Inserm-EHESS, Paris
· Chris Sinha, University of Portsmouth, Psychology
· Jordan Zlatev, Lund University, Linguistics/Cognitive Semiotics
LCM V Local organizing committee
· Ana Margarida Abrantes, Catholic University of Portugal, Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture
· Peter Hanenberg, Catholic University of Portugal, Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture
Feb 08
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhcontext, instantiation, realisation
Context is realised by language.
Registers are types of language (that realise types of context).
The context-language relation is value-token.
The register-language relation is carrier-attribute.
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