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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 6 (view source)
Revision as of 19:26, 17 August 2011
, 19:26, 17 August 2011→6.48. Discourse Analysis : Ways and Means
===6.48. Discourse Analysis : Ways and Means===
===6.48. Discourse Analysis : Ways and Means===
<pre>
Before the discussion of the A and B dialogue can proceed to richer veins of semantic structure it will be necessary to extract the relevant traces of embedded sign relations from their environments of informally interpreted syntax.
On the substantive front, sign relations serving as raw materials of discourse need to be refined and their content assayed, but first their identifying signatures must be sounded out, carved out, and lifted from their embroiling inclusions in the dense strata of obscure intuitions that sediment ordinary discussion. On the instrumental front, sign relations serving as primitive tools of discourse analysis need to be identified and improved by a deliberate examination of their designs and purposes.
So far, the models and methods made available to formal treatment were borrowed outright, with little hesitation and less recognition, from the context of casual discussion. Thus, these materials and mechanisms have come to the threshold of critical reflection already in play, devoid of concern for the presuppositions and consequences associated with their use, and only belatedly turned to the effortful work and odious formalities of self conscious exposition.
To reflect on the properties of complex and higher order sign relations with any degree of clarity it is necessary to arrange a clearer field of investigation and a less cluttered staging area for analytic work than is commonly provided. Habitual processes of interpretation that typically operate as automatic routines and uncritical defaults in the informal context of discussion have to be selectively inhibited, slowed down, and critically examined as objective possibilities, instead of being taken for granted as absolute necessities.
In other words, an apparatus for critical reflection does not merely add more mirrors to the kaleidoscopic fun house of interpretive discourse, but it provides transient moments of equanimity, or balanced neutrality, and a moderately detached perspective on alternative points of view. A scope so limited does not by any means grant a God's Eye View (GEV), but permits a sufficient quantity of light to consider how the original array of sights and reflections might have been created otherwise.
Ordinarily, the extra degree of attention to syntax that is needed for critical reflection on interpretive processes is called into play by means of syntactic operators and diacritical devices acting at the level of individual signs and elementary expressions. For example, quotation marks are used to force one type of "semantic ascent", causing signs to be treated as objects and marking points of interpretive shift as they occur in the syntactic medium. But these operators and devices must be symbolized, and these symbols must be interpreted. Consequently, there is no way to avoid the invocation of a cohering interpretive framework, one that needs to be specialized for analytic purposes.
The best way to achieve the desired type of reflective capacity is by attaching a parameter to the IF used as an instrument of formal study, specifying certain choices or interpretive presumptions that affect the entire context of discussion. The aesthetic distance needed to arrive at a formal perspective on sign relations is maintained, not by jury rigging ordinary discussion with locally effective syntactic devices, but by asking the reader to consider certain dimensions of parametric variation in the global IF's used to comprehend the sign relations under study.
The interpretive parameter of paramount importance to this work is one that is critical to reflection. It can be presented as a choice between two alternative conventions, affecting the way one reflexively regards each sign in a text: (1) as a sign provoking interest only in passing, exchanged for the sake of a meaningful object it is always taken for granted to have, or (2) as a sign comprising an interest in and of itself, a state of a system or a modification of a medium that can signify an external value but does not necessarily denote anything else at all. I will name these options for responding to signs according to the aspects of character that are most appreciated in their net effects, whether signs for the sake of objects, or signs for their own sake, respectively.
The first option I call the "object convention", recognizing it as the natural default of informal language use. In the ordinary language context it is the automatic assumption that signs and expressions are intended to denote something external to themselves, and even though it is quite obvious to all interpreters that the medium is filled with the appearances of signs and not with the objects themselves, this fact passes for little more than transitory interest in the rush to cash out tokens for their indicated values.
The object convention, as appropriate to an introduction that needs to begin in the context of ordinary discussion, is the parametric choice that was left in force throughout the treatment of the A and B example. Doing things this way is like trying to roller skate in a buffalo herd, that is, it attempts to formalize a fragment of discussion on a patchwork of local scales without interrupting the automatic routines and default assumptions that prevail on a global basis in the informal context. Ultimately, one cannot avoid stumbling over the hoofprints ("...") of overly cited and opaquely enthymemic textual deposits.
The second option I call the "sign convention", observing it to be the treatment of choice in programming and formal language studies. In the formal language context it is necessary to consider the possibility that not all signs and expressions are assured to denote or even connote much of anything at all. This danger is amplified in computational frameworks where it resonates with a related theme, that not all programs are guaranteed to terminate normally with a definite result. In order to deal with these eventualities, a more cautious approach to sign relations is demanded to cover the risk of generating nonsense, in other words, to guard against degenerate forms of sign relations that fail to serve any significant purpose in communication or inquiry.
Whenever a greater degree of care is required, it becomes necessary to replace the object convention with the sign convention, which presumes to take for granted only what can be obvious to all observers, namely, the phenomenal appearances and temporal occurrences of objectified states of systems. To be sure, these modulations of media are still presented as signs, but only potentially as signs of other things. It goes with the territory of the formal language context to constantly check the inveterate impulses of the literate mind, to reflect on its automatic reflex toward meaning, to inhibit its uncontrolled operation, and to pause long enough in the rush to judgment to question whether its constant presumption of a motive is itself innocent.
In order to deal with these issues of discourse analysis in an explicit way, it is necessary to have in place a technical notation for marking the very kinds of interpretive assumptions that normally go unmarked. Thus, I will describe a set of devices for annotating certain kinds of interpretive contingencies, called the "discourse analysis frames" (DAF's) or the "global interpretive frames" (GIF's), that can be operative at any given moment in a particular context of discussion.
To mark a context of discussion where a particular set J of interpretive conventions is being maintained, I use labeled brackets of the following two forms: "unitary", as "{J| ... |J}, or "divided", as {J| ... | ... |J}. The unitary form encloses a context of discussion by delimiting a range of text whose reading is subject to the interpretive constraints J. The divided form specifies the objects, signs, and interpretive information in accord with which a species of discussion is generated. Labeled brackets enclosing contexts can be nested in their scopes, with interpretive data on each outer envelope applying to every inclusion. Labeled brackets arranging the "conversation pieces" or the "generators and relations" of a topic can lead to discussions that spill outside their frames, and thus are permitted to constitute overlapping contexts.
For the present, I will consider two types of interpretive parameters to be used as indices of labeled brackets.
1. Names of interpreters or other references to context can be used to indicate the provenance of the objects and signs that make up the assorted contents of brackets. On occasion, I will use the first person singular pronoun to signify the immediate context of informal discussion, as in "{I| ... |I}", but more often than not this context goes unmarked.
2. Two other modifiers can be used to toggle between the options of the object convention, more common in casual or ordinary contexts, and the sign convention, more useful in formal or sign theoretic contexts.
a. The brackets "{o| ... |o}" mark a context of informal language use or ordinary discussion, where the object convention applies. To specify the elements of a sign relation under these conditions, I use a form of presentation like the following:
{o| A, B ||| "A", "B", "i", "u" |o}.
Here, the names of objects are placed on the left side and the names of signs on the right side of the central divide, and the outer brackets stipulate that the object convention is in force throughout the discussion of a sign relation that is generated on these elements.
b. The brackets "{s| ... |s}" mark a context of formal language use or controlled discussion, where the sign convention applies. To specify the elements of a sign relation in this case, I use a form like:
{s| [A], [B] ||| A, B, i, u |s}.
Again, expressions for objects are placed on the left and expressions of signs on the right, but formal language conventions are now invoked to let the alphabet letters and the lexical items of a formal vocabulary stand for themselves, and denotation brackets "[]" are placed around signs to indicate the corresponding objects, when they exist.
When the information carried by labeled brackets becomes more involved and more extensive, a set of convenient abbreviations and suggestions for "pretty printing" can be followed. When the bracket labels become too long to bother repeating, I will leave the last label blank or use ditto marks, as with {a, b, c| ... |"}. When it is necessary to break labeled brackets over several lines, multiple dividers "|" and dittos """ can be used to fill out corresponding columns, as in the following text.
{I, o| A , B
|||||| "A", "B", "i", "u"
|""""}
A notation for discourse analysis ought to find a crucial test of its usefulness in whether it can help to disclose structural properties of interpretive frameworks that would otherwise escape the attention due. If the dimensions of interpretive choice that are represented by these devices are to serve a useful function, then ...
Although these devices for discourse analysis are bound to seem a bit ad hoc at this point, they have been designed with a sign relational bootstrap in mind, that is, with a view to being formalized and recognized as a species within the domain of sign relations itself, where this is the very domain that is laid out as their field of application.
One note of caution may help to prevent a common misunderstanding. It is futile to imagine that any system of interpretive markers for discourse can become totally self sufficient, like the Worm Uroboros, determining all aspects of interpretation and eliminating all ambiguity. The ultimate appeal of signs, and signs upon signs, is always to an intelligent interpreter, a reader who knows there are more interpretive choices to make than could ever be surrendered to signs, and whose free responsibility to appropriate interpretations cannot be abdicated to any text or abridged by any gloss on it, no matter how fit or finished.
In a sense, at least at first, nothing is being created that could not have been noticed without signs. It is merely that actions are being articulated that were not articulated before, and hopefully in ways that make transient insights easier to remember and reuse on new occasions. Instead, the requirement here is to devise a language, the marks of which can reflect the ambient light of observation on its own process. It is not unusual to succeed at this in artificial environments crafted especially for the purpose, but to achieve the critical angle in vivo, in the living context of a natural language, takes more art.
</pre>
===6.49. Combinations of Sign Relations===
===6.49. Combinations of Sign Relations===