Words & Minds  20980

• Preface
  • Transcriptions
    • Basic transcription symbols

1. Language as a tool for thinking[rtoc]
   • The evolution of language and thinking
   • Language and the joint creation of knowledge
   • Vygotsky’s ideas about language and thinking
   • Using language to get things done
   • The communal technology of language[/rtoc]
2. Laying the foundations[rtoc]
   • Context
   • Language and other systems for making context
   • Contextual clues
   • Making context
   • Conversational ground rules
   • Cumulative talk
   • Creating a context for working together
   • Intercultural conversations
   • Frames of reference[/rtoc]
3. The given and the new[rtoc]
   • Kind of common knowledge
   • A lesson in history
   • Techniques for building the future from the past
   • How do we make conversation flow?
   • Using ‘cohesive ties’ to create continuity
   • Computers and concordances[/rtoc]
4. Persuasion, control and argument[rtoc]
   • Lists and contrasts
   • Call and response
   • Metaphors
   • ‘At first I thought …’ ‘… and then he said …’
   • Courtroom conversations
   • Power or control?
   • Different types of arguments and discussion
   • Arguing your case
   • Ways of orienting to the minds of others[/rtoc]
5. Communities[rtoc]
   • How communities enable collective thinking
   • Genres and communities of discourse
   • Communities of practice
   • Virtual communities
   • Synchronous and asynchronous forms of computer mediated communication
   • The nature of CMC as a medium for collective thinking[/rtoc]
6. Development through dialogue[rtoc]
   • A socio-cultural perspective on development
   • Guidance through dialogue
   • Providing a ‘scaffolding’ for learning
   • Creating an intermental development zone
   • Learning together
   • Educating children in collective thinking
   • Encouraging exploratory talk
   • Identifying exploratory talk
   • The role of the teacher[/rtoc]
7. Conclusions[rtoc]
   • Our interthinking ancestors
   • Thinking communities
   • Interthinking in context
   • A persuasive argument
   • Ways of researching interthinking
   • Processes and outcomes[/rtoc]

[rnotes]

• Preface
  • Basic transcription symbols
    1. When someone continues after an interruption
       Ellen: But we had someone appointed to the PTE …
       Bill: Yeh
       Ellen: … who was earning about the top of the lower scale.
    2. Simultaneous speech
       Peter: OK, then I’ll [go.
       Donna:                          [so will I.
    3. Emphatic speech
       Hector: Even though I told him.
    4. Inaudible words/passages
       But if (…) knows.
    5. Words which are unclear or uncertain
       Alan: And (inevitably) so.
    6. Gestures and other non-verbal actions
       Anne: Hah uh (laughs).
       Trevor: OK (long pause).

1. Language as a tool for thinking
   • p. 1: ‘interthinking’ = thinking together
   • p. 3: ‘two heads are better than one’
   • “Perhaps because we do take it so much for granted, the role of joint mental activity in human creativity is often played down in explaining human achievements.”: individualism of most prize-giving in arts/science/industry.
   • ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’
   • The evolution of language and thinking
     • p. 4 Most chimpanzee/dolphin knowledge lost at death, sign-systems for specific purposes with bees.
     • Language as flexible, innovative, adaptable. People can create, share, consider new ideas, reflect together on their actions (e.g. evaluate joint activities with concepts like ‘plans’, ‘intentions’, ‘honour’ and ‘debt’). Words mean what we agree they mean. Can be created as required. Combined for infinite variety of meanings.
     • p. 5 ambiguity can be desirable, e.g. different productions of Shakespeare’s plays
     • “Because the meanings of words are not invariable and because understanding always involves interpretation, the act of communicating is always a joint, creative endeavour.
     • p. 6 importance of shared understanding and purpose: “well, if I was trying to get there I wouldn’t start from here”.
     • Babies don’t just copy, vbut have ppwerful ability to use what they hear to work out how their native language works, hence ability to become creative and produce unhead sequences of words conforming to basic grammar rules quickly.
   • Language and the joint creation of knowledge
     • p. 7 Are our thoughts shaped by language = linguistic determinism
     • do people who grow up speaking different languages speak think differently? = linguistic relativism
     • p. 8 Knowledge:
       • info held in a person’s brain
       • sum total of what is known to people in society
     • Scientists’ knowledge of many fields through language, not observation.
     • p. 9 Studs Terkel told be an interviewee “You know … until you asked me your questions, I never knew I felt that way.” Science teachers: in trying to explain a theory or procedure, aware of limits of own understanding.
   • Vygotsky’s ideas about language and thinking
     • Soviet psych of 1920s:
       • stimulus—response conditioning theory of Ivan Pavlov: hoped for truly scientific, objective, experimental study of behavior v
       • psychology as study of thought and consciousness, pursued through introspection and reflection.
       • p. 10 Vygotsky: psychology = relationships between thought, action, communication and culture. Marxist ideas of tools for beginnings of human society → language enabled our thinking/behavior to be distinct from animals.
     • Vygotsky: language as
       1. communicative/cultural tool
       2. psychological tool for organizing own individual thoughts, reasoning/planning/reviewing own actions
     • Fusion of language and thinking in early childhood → ‘verbal thought’
     • cultural and psychological uses integrated
     • humans as linked by language into historical, continuiong, dynamic, interactive, spiral of change.
     • Thought and Language posthumous (died at 37 in 1933) and banned by Soviet authorities.
     • little evidence from Vygotsky, but inspiration for more recent research.
     • p. 11 children as communicative/social well before first steps; failure is indication of physical/psych disability.
     • Michael Halliday: “When children learn language … they are learning the foundation of learning itself.”
   • Using language to get things done
     • Everyday speech: ‘just talking’ != ‘getting things done’ but “Wars have been ended, careers have been ruined and hearts have been broken because of what was said or written.”
     • Marrying, naming, inaugurating, condemning to death.
     • ‘I now pronounce you man and wife’; suitably qualified individual actually makes it so. → J. L. Austin’s ‘performatives’
     • p. 12: instance of an unordained assistant stepping in for late minister at marriage: were they actually married?
     • inform, promise, accuse, defend, lie, deny, order, persuade.
     • Religious conversion → conversation often key.
     • Arguments; domestic to theories of universe.
     • Science not simple proof/disproof: importance of argument in science.
     • Importance of argument being carried out between well-informed individuals withg commitment to pursuit of ‘the truth’.
     • Huxley v Wilberforce Oxford 1860 debate as key to success of Darwin’s theory of evolution, but most famous Huxley quote is about use of language (which side of his family is descended from an ape). → “This effective ‘put down’ of rhetoric is, of course, itself a rhetorical triumph.
   • The communal technology of language
     • p. 13 creation of new disctionaries: “specific kinds of activities require particular ways of talking and writing, and new types of activity are forever arising”. Languages used effectively for generations of farmers now changing to accommodate mech/tech.
     • Print and email: progress.
     • p. 14 Vygotsky tool analogy useful, but even better is Gordon Wells “whole tool-kit”. Children’s acquisition similar to other tools: observe experts at work + receive some guidance from them + try out tools for ourselves. “Learning how to use the functional artefacts of our society is not a matter of ‘discovery learning’, but rather a course of informal apprenticeship’.
     • Language use not learned in the abstract, but in intellectual life of particular communities.

[/rnotes]