Special K-Dragon to Sunny (In Answer to Homework)

[kellogg]

I think that one of the problems with yes/no ("existence") questions is that sometimes the answer is "maybe" or "it depends".

I think that Halliday's right: crying is an act of communication for a fourteen day old child (two weeks old). And Mr. Yun's right too; at that age, sound comes first, and meaning follows on, when Mommy understands what the crying really means, and when Nigel understands that Mommy understands what the crying really means.

But I also think that the situation is very different for a fourteen year old child, or, for that matter, a thirteen-year-old sixth grader. For the fourteen year old, crying is often a REFUSAL to communicate (and that is why fourteen-year-olds will sometimes go somewhere private, hiding in their own rooms, when they cry).

When the sixth grader DOES have something to say, it often happens that thinking (meaning) comes first, and speech (sound) follows accordingly. Our job is to find out how this dialectical transformation happens; we want to better understand it, so that we can help when things go wrong.

Our first job, though, is to find out WHERE it happens. We discussed this a LOT last night, and I think we made some good progress on a number of important issues. A lot of the progress we made was in making distinctions: between a unit of analysis and an element, between generalization and abstraction, between external, mechanical association and intrinsic, organic integration of sound and meaning.

These distinctions are really EXISTENCE questions: Is it A or B? Is a phoneme a unit or an element? Is the child's use of "to be" a generalization or an abstract analysis? What about the child's use of "Rabbit" without a 관사? When we play "Zeeto, Zeeto, Zeeto" are we using a mechanical, associative approach or are we integrating sound and meaning? When Maria teaches the children to sing "Do Re Mi", is meaning and sound associated from the outside or integrated from within?

I DON'T think we really made progress on the key issue of what a good unit of analysis for "Listen and Repeat" or for "Let's Sing" or for "Listen and Answer", or even (Ms. Choe's problem) where the emotional coloration of an utterance lies. To solve this problem, we need to go a step beyond the existential question.

We need an ESSENCE question: WHAT is the unit of analysis for phonology, for lexicogrammar, for text and discourse? How big is it? How small can we make it without "smashing" it into bits that no longer have the properties of the whole? These are not yet explanatory questions, but they are no longer existential. They are essential questions.

Here's what Sunny has to say:

1. Is crying or laughing an act of social communication? What about "Listen and Repeat"? How about "Let's sing"?

울음이나 웃음 소리는 일반적으로 communication에 속한다고 생각하지만, [생각과 말]의 책에 의하면 an act of social communication은 act of thinking의 report 여야 하는데 울음이나 웃음은 thinking을 반영한다고 보기 어렵다.

 울음이나 웃음은 사고를 통해 나오는 소리라기 보다 본능적인 반응에 가깝다고 생각한다.

Good! Actually, I agree completely with Sunny. I think this is perfectly correct.

But I ALSO agree with Halliday (so long as he is telling the truth!). For Nigel, it's communication. But for the fourteen-year-old, it isn't.

You see, a contradiction is not always a paradox (like "This statement is a lie"). Sometimes a contradiction is simply a knot, a riddle, a puzzle created by development. For the fourteen-day-old Nigel, crying is not entirely an instinctual act (because Nigel learns to STOP crying) and for my forty-three year old wife, crying is not always a meaningful one.

On Sunday nights my wife watches a drama on TV (I think it is called 유망의 불것 or something like that). Sometimes she cries. 

Now, when I watch the drama, I want to laugh. The acting is silly, and the story is completely absurd (actually, the story I told Cherry about my Aunt Ann and my Uncle Burt and my Cousin Cat is a kind of tame version of it). My wife is a Ph.D. in literature, and she cries, even though she knows the whole thing is ridiculous. How can I explain this?

Well, I think one explanation is really Vygotsky's explanation about the startled goose. When somebody cries, we see them crying and we also cry, just as when a goose starts to shriek and fly away and all the other geese do the same thing.

It's not really a thinking response (though it DOES represent a developmentally progressive response in a small child). It's more like contagious emotion. It's the kind of thing we often see in a classroom, when the whole class becomes noisy and excited, or the whole class becomes tense and apprehensive.

Is it instinctual? Actually, I think Sunny has it perfectly right: it is CLOSE to being instinctual. But it is also subject to conscious and deliberate control. (For example, my wife can always just change the channel!)

"Listen and Repeat"과 "Let's sing"은 학생들의 영어에 대한 이해 정도에 따라 an act of social communication이라 할 수도 있고 아니라 할 수도 있다.

영어 수업을 영어로 진행하다보면, "Listen and Repeat"과 "Let's sing"처럼 쉬운 교실영어도 학생들이 언어로 이해하고 받아들이기 보다 소리로 이해하는 경우가 많은 것 같다. 그 의미를 잘 모르기 때문에 Listen이 뭐지? repeat이 뭐지? 아, 듣다 따라하다 구나 하며 뜻을 해석해야 할 필요가 있기 때문에 반응이 느리다. 그나마 Listen이나 repeat의 의미를 모르는 학생들은 반응할 수가 없다. 그래서 마음이 급할 때는 의미가 곧바로 잘 전달이 되는 한국말로 대신하기도 한다. 반대로 "Listen and Repeat"과 "Let's sing"의 의미를 잘 이해하고 있는 학생들은 그 의미를 곧바로 받아들여서 교사가 원하는 대로 반응하는 것을 보면 "Listen and Repeat"과 "Let's sing"의 경우에는 상황에 따라 다르다고 생각한다.

Good! Once again, I agree completely.

But once again, I would rather REPHRASE the question as a wh-question. How much social communication is there? I think the answer is never NOTHING. But the answer is never EVERYTHING either.

Take this song:

"Hey, how are you Jinho? Hey, how are you Jinho?

Oh, I am very well. Oh, I am very well. Oh, I am very well!

Whao, whao, whao!" (Fifth Grade, Lesson One, Let's Sing)

Even just looking at the words, we can see that some parts of the text are more communicative than others. "How are you?" is an act of social communication. But "Whao, whao, whao!" is not, and of course "hey" is somewhere in between, and the repetition, which serves an important MUSICAL purpose, does not serve any social-communicative function that I can see.

As soon as we think of it as a living classroom activity, the question of "how much" social communication is going on becomes even clearer. Here are THREE possibilities. Which is MOST social communicative?

a) T: Let's sing together. 시시시작! (everybody sings everything).

b) T: Now, over here (or: "boys"), you are Jinho. And over there ("girls"), you are Nami. Nami asks, and Jinho answers. Nami? (The "Nami" half of the class sings "Hey, how are you...?" and the Jinho half of the class sings "Oh, I am very well" and both sides sing "Whao, whao, whao!")

c) T: Good. Now--WE sing and...상영 아! YOU answer! (The whole class sings "Hey, how are you, 상영!" very loudly and 상영, who doesn't like to sing alone, answers quietly without singing that he is not very happy because he hates singing.)

You can easily imagine a), b) and c) as a MICROGENETIC sequence: the teacher begins with a), and ends with b) and c). Do you think it corresponds to an ONTOGENETIC sequence as well? Do you think that the 조기 영어 teacher does a) while the sixth grade teacher tries to do b)?

2. Vygotsky says that a word that is not reported is not a word-value. What about a word that does not realize any thinking?

[생각과 말]에 의하면 의미가 없는 낱말은 공허한 소리일 뿐, 더 이상 말의 영역에 속하지 않는다고 하였다. 위에서 언급된 울음이나 웃음 소리가 그 예가 될 수 있다.

Good! Sunny goes back to the example of crying, and as I said I think she's right for TWO reasons:

a) Crying is often completely private, not social-communicative at all, in older children and in adults.

b) Crying does appear to be at least partly "instinctual", that is, it is a kind of contagion of emotion rather than a reference to a common, shared act of thinking (my wife does not actually think what the imaginary billionaires and their long-lost offspring are supposedly thinking).

But Sunny's point deserves to be generalized. Phonemes by themselves do not realize any thinking. Words by themselves do not realize very much. Names by themselves do not realize very much thinking, and neither do pictures by themselves.

In fact, ANYTIME we find that we are using language, and we cannot really pose and answer this question, I think there are words that do not realize any thinking:

Who is saying what to whom and why?

Special K-Dragon said this to Sunny (in answer to her homework)