Research
Proposal For National Laboratories:
Ethnosemantic Daily Round Archives
Dr. Leon James
Dr. Diane Nahl
1978
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.
Background History
2.
The Daily Round as Laboratory
2.1. Two
Insufficiencies of the Experimental Method
2.2. The
Daily Round Archives
2.2.1. Ethnosemantics
2.2.1.1. The Hexagram System
2.2.1.1.1. Coded Wisdom
2.2.1.1.2. Language Teaching Pedagogy
2.2.1.1.3. Situational Predications
2.2.2. Applied
Psycholinguistics
2.3.
Special Projects
1.ÝÝ Background History
2.ÝÝ The Daily
Round as Laboratory:ÝÝ Foundations for
the Natural HistoryÝÝ of Community Life
3.ÝÝ Special
Project #l:ÝÝ The National Laboratory
for Community Cataloguing-Practices (CCP's)
4.ÝÝ Special
Project #2:ÝÝ The National Laboratory
for the Study of Natural Talk
5.ÝÝ Special
Project #3:Ý The National Laboratory for
the Educational Uses of Tourism
6.ÝÝ Special
Project #4:ÝÝ The National Laboratory
for Cross-Generational Integration
7.ÝÝ Special
Project #5:ÝÝ The National Laboratory
for Community-University Integration
8.ÝÝ Special
Project #6:ÝÝ The National Laboratory
for East-West Integration
1.ÝÝ Background History
This proposal is the outcome of our collaborative effort in
educational
linguistics and in applied psycholinguistics.Ý For the past ten years, we
have been involved in investigations that concern the
pedagogic uses of
language and literacy.Ý
One of us (LJ) was trained in experimental semantics
at McGill University in the 1950's and early 1960's.Ý The second author
(BYG) was trained in structural and applied linguistics at
Columbia and
Michigan overlapping the same period.Ý By 1968, the year our collaboration
started, both of us were convinced that the significant uses
of language In
the community could not be practically investigated through
the current
methodology
in use in the language sciences.Ý These
methods are generally
faulted by the insufficient recognition that actual language
use involves
the exchange
as the natural unit of behavior.Ý
Neither the word - as investigated by verbal learning techniques, nor the sentence - as
investigated
by psycholinguists and linguists, can give us adequate in
formation on the
process of natural talk.Ý
Talk manifests itself in several literacy
modalities:Ý
conversation; interior dialog (or "talking to oneself");
discourse thinking (or "inner speech"); reading;
and writing.Ý In all these
instances, discourse in the form of "strings" of
language segments, are
produced naturally and spontaneously.Ý The new methodology we have evolved,
and
which is here presented, formally recognizes "the exchange" as the
natural unit for investigating the phenomena of language use
(Jakobovits &
Gordon, 1978, a, b; 1977).
This recognition alters the basic approach of language
study, away from
a purely linguistic or psychological orientation (as
Jakobovits and Miron,
1967), and towards an orientation grounded in social
psychology and philosophy of education
(as In Jakobovits and Gordon, 1975-77).Ý
Of course,others have
contributed to this movement, and we need to acknowledge lines of
relationship.Ý We have done this elsewhere in greater
detail (see Jakobovits
and Gordon, 1978 a, b, c, d; 1977; 1975-77).Ý Briefly, we would like to
mention
the following three schools of thought to which our work relates in
historical origins:Ý
sociolinguistics; speech act theory; and ethnomethodology.
The sociolinguistic movementÝ (e.g. Gumperz and Hymes, 19ÝÝ ; Gumperz
and Gumperz,ÝÝ)
arose In the past fifteen years as an attempt on the
part of anthropological linguists and ethnographers of
speech to catalog
the correlations between linguistic behaviors and ordinary
social facts.
The chief result of this work has been to increase our awareness
of the
way in which language behavior varies with the social characteristics
of the talkers
(e.g., age, sex, education) and the characteristics of
the setting in which the talk takes place (e.g., street, bar, home).
Absent from this focus has been the investigation of the
individual's use
of talk, for example, for planning or rehearsing, for
transacting relation-
ship exchanges, for processing formation in communication,
and more generally,
for social competence in real life.
Speech art theory
has been an outcome of the work of the British Ordinary
Language Philosophers, particularly Austin (ÝÝÝÝÝÝ ) and as developed by
Searle (ÝÝÝÝÝÝ ), and
applied by Candlin (ÝÝÝÝÝÝ ) (see
Steinberg and
Jakobovits, 1971, for representative articles).Ý Speech act theory involves
the analytic orientation of identifying the proper
transactional rules, or
procedures in speech.Ý
A person's verbal behavior is seen as the outcome of
applying these procedural rules in talk.Ý The chief result of this work has
been to increase our awareness of a fundamental distinction between
the content
of speech and its transactional function.Ý
While content can be investigated
through
linguistic, logical, and discourse analysis methods, function relates
to the
social rituals practiced in a community.Ý
Thus, the study of natural
talk must include the social psychology of every day
affairs.
The school of ethnomethodology has introduced a new
and all important
methodological
structure:Ý no explanatory concepts may
be used which are
not drawn from among those to which the talkers themselves
are oriented
(Garfinkel, 1967; Goffman, 1972; James and Gordon, 1975-77;
Sacks, 1968;
Schien, 1978).Ý The
ethnomethodologists have increased our awareness of the
structural components of natural exchanges.Ý
For example, all conversations
take place within an episode, and an episode is organized
along sequential
procedures
of operation such as greeting, mentioning first topic, switching
topics, taking turns at talk, closing the conversation, etc.
To summarize our intellectual indebtedness, we can say that
sociolin-
guistics, speech act theory, and ethnomethodology have given
us the follow-
ing three principles in the study of language use;
(1) language behavior reflects social characteristics of the
talkers
and
varies with social setting;
(2) the transactional function of speech is different and
independent
of its
content;
(3) exchanges of talk occur within structured episodes whose
character
is organized by events as perceived and recognized by the
participants them-
selves .
These three principles serve as the background theoretical
framework
for our own work
which we shall now present.
2.ÝÝ The Dally Round as Laboratory:ÝÝ Foundation for the Natural History of
Community Life.
2.1 Two Insufficiencies of the Experimental Method as
Currently
Practiced In Psychological and
Educational Research.
The natural history methodology contrasts with the
experimental approach,
though both are empirical in the essential sense that
objective observations
and data records form the basis of defining facts.Ý In the experimental
approach, as currently practiced in the psychobiological and
educational
fields, the facts are engendered though statistical
determination of group
averages - usually in the form of direct contrasts between
treatment and control conditions.Ý If
contrasts reach pre-defined levels of significance, it is common practice to
then accept the differences as real.Ý In
that case, the investigators ordinarily argue by a series of inferences leading
up to implications of the findings for "real life" situations.Ý Two defects of this approach concern
us.Ý The first is the extrapolation
process of arguing from the controlled experiment to ordinary life.Ý We see this as
a serious problem in psychology and education.Ý As is known, experiments are 'set-ups' in
which volunteers come to "the lab", are asked to act in the role of
"a subject", are given instructions on what to respond to and how - whether
answering questions, figuring problems, interacting with others, responding on
instruments, and so on - and, finally, are "dismissed" to return to
their real habitat. ÝLeft behind are the
"subject's" record of responses, in multiple duplicates joined by other
subjects.Ý After statistical processing,
conclusions are stated and implications extrapolated.Ý The validity of this procedure is quite difficult to establish
since it takes an experiment to validate an experiment.Ý This rule of course contaminates the objectivity
of the assessment of experiments since the assessment itself is
required to be but another experiment.
The experimental approach as currently practiced in psychology and education is thus distinctly different from the experimental approach as practiced by physics, chemistry, physiology, etc.Ý In the latter case, the facts are not extrapolated:Ý the world of experimental set-ups is the same world as that of the organism, the rock, the planets.Ý Experimentation is a formal expression of controlled record-keeping of natural facts.Ý But
Ýthe case is different with the experimental
approach currently practiced in psychology and education.Ý The world of experimental set-ups is not
the same as the world of community life.Ý
The conditions are temporary and game-like in the experiment and hence,
extrapolation to the world of real life is a necessary step, creating a
"soft" gap that is a distinct dis-advantage for a research
orientation.Ý Chomsky (1968) and
Goffman (19ÝÝÝ ) have both written in
explicit terms on the lack of objectivity and weakness
of this extrapolation process.
The second weakness that concerns us is the inability of the
typical
experiment to deal with individual behavior.Ý Statistical
processing of
data records yields distributional facts only.Ý Significance is always depen-
dent on inferences and assumptions about a non-existent
population to which
the experimental subjects are presumed to belong.Ý Hence all facts generated
by the
current experimental approach are facts about averages, not individuals
Skinner (ÝÝÝÝÝÝ ) has
consistently opposed this strategy of arguing by
averages, but the trend is common even among behaviorists.
In summary, the experimental approach as widely practiced
today in the
social, behavioral, and educational fields, has two serious
weaknesses.
First, it commonly uses a process of
extrapolation from experimental set-
ups to real
life situations, and further, it disallows any attempt at validat-
ing the extrapolation process except through another
experimental set-up of
the same kind.Ý
Second, it allows only procedures of analysis that deal with
group averages, excluding the analysis of Individual cases
in and of them-
selves.
The natural history methodology
contrasts with the above version of
the experimental approach on both points.Ý First, instead of individuals
who
come to the lab, we look upon the natural habitat of individuals as
the lab.Ý No two
worlds are created by the research in progress.Ý Second,
instead of statistical inferences about populations and
groups, we have
numerical and graphic descriptions of individual cases.Ý The natural
history
methodology is empirical:Ý objectivity
and replicability of obser-
vations are achieved through witnessing, i.e. the same
activity that serves
to define facts in the entire socio-legal spectrum of
community life.
The natural history methodology has beem enormously
successful in
biology,
anthropology, natural history, ethnography, anatomy, morphology,
and others.Ý In
psychology and education, it has not fared well.Ý There
is a prejudice against it that carries the label of
"soft research" (even
if "rich") in contrast to the "hard
rigor" of experiments.Ý Goffman
(1972,
and other books) has been a consistent and definitive
contributor to the
natural history methodology applied to the social study of
community life.
Lewin (1934,
and subsequent books) was influential in social psychology in
promoting a focus on the setting as the primary cause
of human behavior.
His
"action research", and "field theory" gave rise to many of
the current
topics In social psychology, including group dynamics,
changing interper-
sonal
attitudes, sociocultural Influences, and "ecological psychology"
(Barker,
1968).Ý Harre and Secord (1972) have
stated theoretical grounds for
adding a new important dimension to this list of
contributions to the natural
history
methodology.Ý This is the dimension
of documentary evidence as a
source of facts in social psychology - a possibility already demonstrated
empirically in the idea of "unobtrusive measures"
of behavior In settings
(Webb).
Building on the above developments, we evolved a theoretical
frame-
work and empirical procedures for an adequate methodology of
the daily
round as laboratory.Ý This theoretical framework we call
"ethnosemantics,"
and the empirical procedures we call "applied
psycholinguistics."Ý We
proceed with a brief exposition of both.
2.2Ý The Daily Round Archives;Ý Foundations for the Natural History of
Community Life.
2.2.1. Ethno-semantics.Ý The first phase of our theoretical develop-
ment is
reported in James and Gordon (1975-77).Ý
The essential com-
ponent of this work is our discovery in December of 1975 of
what we call
the hexagram of social settings.Ý
This is an ordered hierarchy that contains
six phases or stages.Ý
One might draw upon factor analysis by way of an
analogy to explain the hexagram system for classifying
social settings.
Assume that social settings are unitary elements each of
which has a title
(or name).Ý Assume
also that social settings fall into clusters which
themselves are titled.Ý
The titles for the clusters will be at a higher
level of abstraction than the titles for the items
themselves, as in
set theory.Ý Finally,
assume that the settings can be ordered by some para-
meter so that now they can be inter-correlated or graphed on
a contingency
matrix.Ý The factors or clusters thus extracted then
yield the defining or
underlying
dimensions.Ý We predict that six
underlying dimensions will be
found so that all social settings will be a known expression
of these six
dimensions simultaneously.
The above factor analytic approach, assuming it is feasible,
would
lack a theoretical rationale for the ordering of the
factors.Ý The only one
that would be available is the eigen value correlate known
as "amount of
variance extracted" (as, for example, in the Varimax
Rotation procedure,
see Osgood, May, and Miron, 1974, for further details).Ý But this is an
empirical outcome of the sample, rather than a theoretical
rationale.
Though a process of intuitive synthesis we were fortunate to
stumble upon
the hexagram series, and at the end of the first phase of
this new develop-
ment,
we are able to state the functional characteristics of the series.
The
first array ("a") is composed of the numerical sequence for the six
phases.Ý Array "b" presents a geometric
analogy where it can be seen that
each phase builds on the preceding one through the addition
of a new
dimension known as "degrees of freedom."Ý In array "c", the sequentiality
of the phases is logical and derives from the natural
characterisites of
social
settings.Ý Thus, "birth" is
the logical beginning phase to enculturated
community life.Ý
"Childhood" is the second phase that adds underlying notions
to the developing person such as "socialization"
and "family structure."
"Education" is a third dimension that adds a new
component to the second,
e.g. "assimilation training" and
"communicative exchanges" or "social com-
petence."Ý Given
the first three stages, the fourth adds the notion of
"argument", i.e. the ability to construct logical
inferences, a capacity
often referred to as "reasoning ability" or
"common sense."Ý The fifth
stage provides a "frame" for arguments that
includes such notions as
"intention" and "background
context."Ý Finally, the sixth phase
adds the
notion of "topic", i.e. the "content" of
discourse.Ý We may summarize these
relations through the following matrix:
Note that a number of slots remain blank in this matrix,
suggesting that social concepts exist which would naturally fall in those
slots. The following presents a solution to filling the matrix:
PhasesÝÝÝÝÝ
|
|
I |
II |
III |
IV |
V |
VI |
|
A |
Birth |
Childhood |
Education |
Argument |
Frame |
Topic |
|
B |
Enculturation |
Socialization |
Assimilation |
Involvement |
Scheduling |
Understanding |
|
C |
Individuals |
Family structure |
Idealology |
Feeling |
Management |
Enactment |
|
D |
Information |
Standards |
Communicative Exchanges |
Reasoning Ablility |
Intention |
content |
|
E |
Curiosity |
Ethnicity |
Social Competence |
Common Sense |
Background Context |
Event |
The fact
that arrays of concepts exist which can be ordered into a
filled-out matrix of the order of six, is, we feel, an
impprtant discovery
for semantics, which is the branch of the language sciences
that deals with
the coherence of discourse, i.e. prepositional statements
about the world.
We need
of course to establish this fact more fully, and as well, we need to
show that the hexagram matrix is a universal conceptual
system independent
of culture, nationality, and historical epoch.
We have only begun this second phase of our work on
ethnosemantic
structures, but we can present three initial
applications.Ý The first Is
a demonstration of the algorhytmic power of the hexagram
matrix to generate
discourse segments that function as logical verbal
propositions.Ý The second
application is the use of the system for the analysis of a
particular social
setting.Ý The third application demonstrates the use
of the hexagram system
for the
solution to a specific theoretical problem in psycholinguistics.
2.2.1.1.1.Ý Coded
Wisdom
We have stated that the hexagram system may be a natural
ethnosemantic
framework for classifying social settings in a
community.Ý For example, in
considering the natural phenomenon of topicalization
in discourse (i.e.,
"what people talk about"), we have shown how this
can be broken down into
a phases behavior containing six stages,
VIZ.Ý TOPICÝÝÝÝ FRAMEÝÝÝÝ
ARGUMENT
EDUCATIONÝÝÝÝ
CHILDHOODÝÝÝÝ BIRTH.Ý This hierarchical sequence in fact
represent a systhesis of the processes that lead up to the
visible phenome-
non of
TOPIC.Ý The sequence is to be seen as
formulaic and prepositional.
This means that paraphases eixst for rendering explicit the
underlying
argument represented by each sequence in the hexagram matrix.Ý Th