ed, yes, abstraction in terms of numbers and letters do not tend to
'stick' in my mind for long enough to make sense. a great source of pain
for me, just btw.
but, if anyone mentions redundancy (the *meta* elsewhere attached to
'communication' - sorry) i will of course find something to cite from
another dead white male whose abstractions have indeed made sense to me.
(he seems to have experienced wordle!)
"...This patterning or predictability of particular events within
a larger aggregate of events is technically called "redundancy."
The concept of redundancy is usually derived, as I have derived
it, by considering first the maximum of information which might be
carried by the given item and then considering how this total might
be reduced by knowledge of the surrounding patterns of which the
given item is a component part. There is, however, a case for
looking at the whole matter the other way round. We might regard
patterning or predictability as the very essence and raison d'etre of
communication, and see the single letter unaccompanied by
collateral clues as a peculiar and special case.
"The idea that communication is the creation of redundancy or
patterning can be applied to the simplest engineering examples. Let
us consider an observer who is watching A send a message to B. The
purpose of the transaction (from the point of view of A and B) is to
create in B's message pad a sequence of letters identical with the
sequence which formerly occurred in A's pad. But from the point of
view of the observer this is the creation of redundancy. If he has
seen what A had on his pad, he will not get any new information
about the message itself from inspecting B's pad.
"Evidently, the nature of "meaning," pattern, redundancy,
information and the like. depends upon where we sit. In the usual
engineers' discussion of a message sent from A to B, it is customary
to omit the observer and to say that B received information from A
which was measurable in terms of the number of letters transmitted,
reduced by such redundancy in the text as might have permitted B to
do some guessing. But in a wider universe, i.e., that defined by the
point of view of the observer, this no longer appears as a
"transmission" of information but rather as a spreading of
redundancy. The activities of A and B have combined to make the
414
universe of the observer more predictable, more ordered, and more
redundant. We may say that the rules of the "game" played by A and
B explain (as "restraints") what would otherwise be a puzzling and
improbable coincidence in the observer's universe, namely the
conformity between what is written on the two message pads.
To guess, in essence, is to face a cut or slash in the sequence of
items and to predict across that slash what items might be on the
other side. The slash may be spatial or temporal (or both) and the
guessing may be either predictive or retrospective. A pattern, in fact,
is definable as an aggregate of events or objects which will permit in
some degree such guesses when the entire aggregate is not available
for inspection."
[gregory bateson.
steps to an ecology of mind. 1972]
On Fri, January 28, 2022 9:52 am, Edward McDonald wrote:
Dear David and David and Chris and everyone:
Just a brief thought before I settle down to work.
I have to admit as soon as people resort to algebra they tend to lose me -
I never learned that useful trick of reasoning mathematically - and while
we're in full disclosure mode, I should confess that what we used to call
"Christian diagrams" leave me similarly "blur" - so to think about
something like metaredundancy I have to put it into "realised" terms.
What does it mean to "perform" language? We're very used to
approaching questions from the analyst's point of view - which of course
is
very necessary - but it tends to make us focus in on the particular aspect
we're interested in at the expense of the whole system - and that is of
course a system of systems.
The "performer", by definition, *has* to deal with the whole system, in
real time, and with limited if any opportunity for planning or repair.
What
this says to me is that much of the time "languaging" - like "musicking"
(the book of that name by music educationalist Christopher Small is well
worth reading) - must surely be operating at an unconscious level: we're
continually "actioning selections" - if I can put it that way - from the
relevant options as constrained by the context, but we're not in the
ordinary sense of the phrase "making choices". So what's the implication
of
that for our categories and analyses?
Firth refused to assign any ontological status to our "languag(ing) turn
back on itself" - so how are we "accessing" those relations of
metaredundancy and what's the nature of the "product" we come up with
through our analyses? Saussure placed semiology within social psychology,
and Voloshinov while of course highly critical of Saussure, picked up that
particular ball and ran with it in very illuminating ways - which of
course
have been very influential on SFL - that you may note (bolding added)
include the term "performance":
(1929/1973: 19-20, original emphasis):
That which has been termed âsocial psychologyâ and is considered
«â¦Â» as the
transitional link between the sociopolitical order and ideology «â¦Â»
is, in
its actual material existence, *verbal interaction*. «â¦Â» Social
psychology
exists primarily in a wide variety of forms of the âutteranceâ, of
little *speech
genres* of internal and external kinds â things left completely
unstudied
in the present day. *All these speech **performances*, are, of course,
joined with other types of semiotic manifestation and interchange â with
miming, gesturing, acting out, and the like.
Any thoughts?
best to all
Ed
On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 4:40 PM
ë°ì´ë¸ëì¼ë¡ê·¸_êµì_ìì´êµì¡ê³¼ <dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------
ë³´ë¸ì¬ë: David Rose <david.rose@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 2022ë 1ì 26ì¼ (ì) ì¤í 2:18
Subject: Re: [sys-func] Fwd: Re: Metaredundancy
To: ë°ì´ë¸ëì¼ë¡ê·¸_êµì_ìì´êµì¡ê³¼ <dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx>
Sure David, share away
I love your urge to spell or pronounce in a fruity way :) Itâs
intriguing
that pronunciation marks us in one or another community, and that it
gets
frozen after ~7 years. Tells us something important about lg evolution.
Although itâs least accessible to conscious choice, I know from being
a
second lg learner what a big deal can be made of it (not to mention
parenting and grandparenting).
This is also why early literacy teaching practices fail so many
children.
The conscious focus on graphology consumes their semiotic labour, so
they
cannot attend to LG, DS or register. An effective literacy approach
starts
from register, and brings lg strata to consciousness in steps.
David
