Agency and Consciousness in Discourse Self-Other Dynamics as a Complex System

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ISBN: 9780826474261 | 0826474268
Cover: Hardcover
Copyright: 12/23/2004

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Pioneering linguist Paul Thibault explores the ways in which agency and consciousness are created through transactions between self and other. Questions of agency and consciousness have often been omitted from discussions on discursive practice in the past; this book redresses the omission. Thibault argues that it is necessary to regard body-brain interactions in the context of the social and discursive practices that act upon human bodies. The author discusses and evaluates the work of linguists, psychologists, biologists, semioticians, and sociologists such as Basil Bernstein, Mikhail Bakhtin, J.J. Gibson, M.A.K. Halliday, Walter Kauffman, Lakoff & Johnson, Jay Lemke, Jean Piaget and Stanley Salthe, to develop a new theory of agency and consciousness.

List of Figures

viii

List of Tables

Preface

1 Introduction

(18)

1 Semiosis is a microcosm of human agency and consciousness

(1)

2 Alterity is a primitive intrinsic value that motivates self-nonself relations and meaning-making activity

(1)

3 Brain activity regulates body-world relations at the same time that body-world relations organize and shape body-brain systems and functions

(8)

4 Brain activity is contextually integrated to and participates in discourse

(2)

5 An outline of the arguments in this book

(6)

PART I: MEANING AND DISCOURSE

2 The Semiotic Mediation of Consciousness in Social Meaning-making

(36)

1 The diverse semantic scales of meaning-making

(1)

2 Indexical meaning-making practices and the semiotic grounding of consciousness

(4)

3 The deictic field of language and the texturing of consciousness

(2)

4 Karl Bühler's theory of the deictic field of language

(5)

5 Intertextual meaning-making practices and the entraining of individuals to ecosocial semiotic values and constraints

(2)

6 Lemke's theory of intertextual thematic formations

(2)

7 An analysis of the interaction of thematic patterns and genre in an instance of mother-child interaction

(3)

8 The context-sensitive and probabilistic nature of intertextual thematic formations

(3)

9 Social heteroglossia as a dynamical field of attractors and repellers and the individual's re-envoicement of voices and values

(2)

10 Meta-semiotic meaning-making practices, stratification, and the emergence of symbolic levels of neural organization

(7)

11 Life as a referent: iconic, indexical, and symbolic dimensions

(5)

PART II: AGENCY, OTHERNESS, AND THE SELF

3 Agency and Intentionality in Early Infant Semiosis

(22)

1 The timescales of development and individuation: preliminary questions

(1)

2 Early infant semiosis and the dyadic regulation of the body-brain system

(1)

3 Movement, consciousness, and proto-intentionality in infant semiosis: Trevarthen's account

(3)

4 A comment on Trevarthen's ascription of intentionality to the infant

(1)

5 Proto-genres and semiotically mediated agency in the indexical phase: some reflections on Perinat and Sadurni's interpretation of Piaget

(3)

6 Halliday's account of early protolanguage

(9)

7 The conscious and the material domains as the two primary modes of experience: implications for the self

(5)

4 Agency, Consciousness, and Meaning-making in Children's Play

(23)

1 The reconstitution of language and experience in symbolic play

(1)

2 Introducing the play episode: analytical preliminaries

(1)

3 Connecting the play episode to the context of culture of the participants

(4)

4 Reconstituting Harré's theory of agency in relation to interpersonal meaning

(4)

5 The take up and negotiation of agent positions in the play episode: an analysis

(7)

6 Consciousness, agency, and the negotiation of self-other relations in and through propositions and proposals

(3)

7 Agency, learning, and the zone of proximal development

(4)

5 Egocentric Speech and the Re-envoicement of Others' Meanings: Dialogue, Genre, and the Emergence of the Self

100

(29)

1 Re-envoicement versus internalization and appropriation

100

(1)

2 Egocentric speech, interpersonal meaning, and the development of self-reflexivity

101

(2)

3 Genre, dialogue, and the self-regulation of the individual

103

(1)

4 Vygotsky's theory of egocentric speech and ludic communication

104

(2)

5 The linguistic characteristics of egocentric speech

106

(1)

6 Egocentric speech, practical activity, and the self's emergence as agent

107

(2)

7 The imperative and indicative modes and the learning of the reflexive interpretation of self and other

109

(2)

8 Indicative mood, reflection, and the development of dialogical thinking

111

(1)

9 Egocentric speech, self-awareness, and identity

112

(1)

10 Egocentric speech and the dialogical negotiation and emergence of a self-referential perspective

113

(4)

11 Egocentric speech, indexical and symbolic modes of semiosis, and the development of the metaredundancy contextualization hierarchy

117

(1)

12 Egocentric Speech and the Emergence of Agency

118

(1)

12.1 An example of egocentric speech in children's play: an analysis

118

(1)

12.2 Re-envoicing the social semiotic

120

(1)

13 Genre as social activity structure-type

121

(4)

14 The emergence of a self-referential perspective: the closing of the meta-loop on the "me" sector of the dialogic loop

125

(1)

15 Value, self-organizing context-sensitive constraints, and the semantic honing of the agent's action trajectory

126

(3)

6 Agency in Action: from Multimodal Object Text to Performance in the Building of Semiotic Bridges between School and Home

129

(34)

0 Preliminary observations on the episode to be analysed and its transcription

129

(1)

1 The emergence of meaning across diverse timescales

129

(2)

2 The distribution of participant roles in the experiential space-time of the activity: an analysis of the location and distribution of consciousness across the "inner" and "outer" domains in relation to verbal and mental processes

131

(6)

3 Agency, viewpoint, and the locus of control of the activity

137

(2)

4 The semiotic integration of pictorial, graphological-typological, and linguistic resources in the child's copy book

139

(2)

5 The school copy book as semiotic-material artifact

141

(1)

6 Sound events and sound acts

142

(1)

7 Written script and vocal performance

143

(2)

8 The activity-dependent nature of the contextualization of the written script

145

(1)

9 The phonetic characteristics of the sounds

146

(2)

10 Meaning, text, and performance

148

(1)

11 Sound metaphor

149

(3)

12 Agency, individuation, and self-organization: body dynamics, action, and the building up of viewpoints in the perspective of the self

152

(5)

13 Multimodality, learning, and the development of knowledge through the agent's own meaning-making activity

157

(6)

PART III: CONSCIOUSNESS

7 Reflexive (self-)consciousness, Conscience, and the Dialogical Basis of Intrapersonal Moral Consciousness

163

(22)

1 Consciousness is a relation between self and world, not access to a state

163

(4)

2 The self-reflexive structure of (self-)consciousness

167

(2)

3 The foregrounded differentiation and emergence of an inner self-perspective against a background of self-nonself relations and transactions

169

(3)

4 The inner self-perspective as semiotic reorganization across levels of neural networks

172

(2)

5 Selves, states of consciousness, and the integrating function of the trajectory

174

(2)

6 Natsoulas's discussion of the interpersonal meaning of the terms "conscious" and "consciousness"

176

(3)

7 Extending the interpersonal sense of consciousness to the intrapersonal domain of conscience and consciousness

179

(3)

8 Guilty conscience and the feeling body

182

(3)

8 Interpersonal Meaning, Exchange, and the Dialogic Basis of Consciousness

185

(29)

1 Genre finalization and the dialogic negotiation of semiotic and material friction

185

(3)

2 The dialogic negotiation of semiotic and material friction: an example from children's play

188

(2)

3 Finiteness, arguability, and the grounding of propositions in the perspective of the self

190

(4)

4 The semantic interact as interface between body-brain system and ecosocial semiotic system

194

(1)

5 Mood, the semantic interact, and the dialogic frame in action: illustrations from a dispute

195

(4)

6 The interpersonal enactment of semiotic-material action trajectories in the transactions between self and nonself

199

(2)

7 Limitations of the view that higher-order conscious thinking is propositional in the truth-conditional sense

201

(1)

8 Agency and Halliday's theory of clause-as-exchange

202

(2)

9 Exchange, friction, and goal-seeking

204

(1)

10 Grammatical mood and the negotiation of friction

205

(2)

11 Proposals, propositions, and the discursive negotiation of moral values

207

(1)

12 The semantics of the lack in propositions and proposals

208

(2)

13 The self as a totality of integrities in various historically emergent semiotic orders

210

(2)

14 The constitutive character of our moral being and the semiotics of exchange

212

(2)

9 Dialogic Closure and the Semiotic Mediation of Consciousness in Ecosocial Networks

214

1 Beaugrande's distinction between the hard-coupling and the soft-coupling of material base and data field in a model of post-classical cognition: implications for the emergence of the semiotic objects of symbolic consciousness and the Principle of Alternation

214

(2)

2 Lexicogrammar, consciousness, and the three-level hierarchy

216

(3)

3 The integration of meanings on diverse scalar levels of semiotic organization

219

(2)

4 A textual example of semiotically mediated symbolic consciousness and the three-level hierarchy

221

(4)

5 Lemke's Principle of Alternation and topological vs typological modes of semiosis

225

(1)

6 The dynamics of higher-order consciousness and the Principle of Alternation

225

(1)

6.1 Alternation and the reopening of closure

226

(1)

6.1.1 Material closure

226

(1)

6.1.2 Autocatalytic closure

227

(1)

6.1.3 Informational closure

227

(1)

6.1.4 Semiotic closure

228

(1)

6.1.5 Dialogic closure

228

(2)

6.1.6 Self-referential closure

230

(1)

7 Rethinking the notion of consciousness as representation

231

(2)

8 Consciousness as integration hierarchy of semiotic levels: iconic, indexical, and symbolic dimensions

233

(4)

9 Biological value or mental function?

237

(2)

10 The metafunctional shape of symbolic consciousness

239

(6)

11 The emergence of new levels of semiotic organization between already existing scalar levels

245

(4)

12 Semiotic-dynamical heterarchy and semiotically mediated consciousness in ecosocial networks

249

(6)

PART IV: METAPHOR AND SYSTEM COMPLEXITY

10 Metaphor as Multiplication of Meaning Potential and its Implications for Consciousness

255

(24)

0 Preliminary observations

255

(1)

1 Lakoff and Johnson's theory of metaphor as conceptual mapping from one domain to another

255

(1)

2 Towards an alternative: children's symbolic construal of spatial proximity as categorial similarity as semiotic reorganization across levels

256

(3)

3 The two-way and hybrid nature of metaphor as multiplication of meaning potential

259

(1)

4 Extending the view of metaphor as two-way construal of semiotic domains: Halliday's theory of grammatical metaphor

260

(5)

5 Congruency and non-congruency with respect to lexical metaphor: lexicogrammatical and semantic aspects

265

(4)

6 Experiential and interpersonal grammatical metaphor in a text

269

(7)

7 Interpersonal metaphor and symbolic consciousness

276

(3)

11 Metaphor as Semiotic Reorganization across Levels

279

(36)

1 Lakoff and Johnson's theory of embodied realism

279

(2)

2 Towards an ecosocial semiotic account of metaphor

281

(1)

2.1 Rethinking the implications of embodied realism for metaphor in language: a systemic-functional view

281

(1)

2.2 From Edelman's general cognitive mechanisms as providing the basis for linguistic structures to a three-level account of language as emergent between the body-brain and the ecosocial system

283

(4)

3 The metaphorical reopening of embodiment across scalar levels: creating links between body-brain system, meaning, and world

287

(7)

4 Proto-metaphor in children's symbolically mediated play activity

294

(10)

5 Grammatical metaphor as semiotic reorganization of lexicogrammatical potential in discourse

304

(2)

6 Linguistic and visual metaphor in a child's multimodal construal of white blood cells

306

(4)

7 Visual semiosis and visual metaphor

310

(2)

8 Metaphor and Lemke's Principle of Alternation

312

(3)

Appendixes

315

(18)

References

333

(12)

Subject Index

345

(8)

Index of Names

353

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Agency and Consciousness in Discourse Self-Other Dynamics as a Complex System

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Agency and Consciousness in Discourse Self-Other Dynamics as a Complex System

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