25/09/98 17:59

Firstly, we need to define what is useable meaning. The choice in my mind is quite clear. Either we develop our own meaning or we take someone else's meaning on board. Here we need to evaluate the cognitive processes one progresses through to decide how to confront meaning.

At this point in history, folks living in democratic countries, are free to meaningfullize, usually without dire consequences. When we are able to determine meaning for ourselves, then we have taken responsibility for our lives fully.

Within a Bohm paradigm we may discover new hues to consciousness that we had not considered before. There is this 'the other' who is the catalyst for us to see, hear, think what we had not seen, heard or thought before. Then again, we can go nowhere fast, and feel good because everyone else in the dialogue went nowhere fast too.

Within a debate paradigm we have this chance to defend or conquer. This is a favourite in political, psychological and religious debates. No one seems to want to hear an opposing view. Convert becomes the nature of the game. Debate; like philosophy, psychology, theology and politics is not humorous. Ever see a funny psychologists, theologist or politicians? When God handed out brains to this lot, there surely was no humour included. Debate is humourless (I do not mean sarcasm, which most people take as humour, but in reality is the lowest level of aggression there is) nothing funny about meaning is there? Of course I disagree and am willing to debate anyone on this. 

Because we have minds we can not help but to analyse. If we analyse we then believe we must have measurable meaning. If the purpose behind all our speech and action is to either pass on our interpretation of meaning, or to discover meaning anew, then maybe we have lost the plot.

We need to know who or what is defining meaning for us. Unless we are so incredibly strong that we have broken beyond the mass-mind or so weak we just swallow what is presented we can not evolve.  

Meaning should not be static. If we are where we were yesterday in today, then we have wasted the opportunity to learn, grow - evolve. The past several decades my personal wish and what I say every day is that I do not want to be who I was yesterday. I am not a quoting type of person but Paul's line that he dies daily for Christ has always appealed to me. I am not very religious so I would not care to define that, except to say that who I was yesterday died and in some metaphoric miracle; using Christ to equal Christos to equal Light, perhaps the Light of understanding, I awake again anew, and in a higher place than yesterday. Of course, more often than not, I am stupider than yesterday, but at least I am not the same, and within my stupidity there is the chance that tomorrow I will awaken with amnesia and be a better person for forgetting who I was today. (Now there is humour a politician, theologian, or psychologist would never cough up - and why would they?) 

This born again paradigm does not hold up in a debate paradigm. However, within the framework of Bohm Dialogue it is great. I am to the point of understanding meaning that I was unable to comprehend yesterday. The thought of preparing for a debate in the future, then arriving into the future with a new me and all that entails, is a very confusing thought. Maybe as the debate began I would take the side of the person I am debating against. Then to be an effective debate the other person would have to take the side of who I was going to be and define meaning in that other, who I was before, sense.

thankfully, as far as I have gotten as of: 25/09/98 17:59

Of course I am not so arrogant as to think that anyone actually reads this. My partner (the half that makes me better, which of course would make me the better half if I include her as a part of my half) doesn't have the time or patience to read this. I put it on the Internet - knowing no one will stop by. Keeps me as one of the few remaining humble Leos on the planet.

Re. Framework within which dialogue will work

Re. why do we communicate? Either because we are insecure or need to convert or get someone to see what we see to maintain our power and self-esteem; because we need to know what time the gym closes tomorrow; etc. We listen to learn - we communicate to inform others - then maybe communication is not a two-way thingie... We just talk to ourselves and sometimes a passing shadow answers.

Below Lasted updated Saturday, August 08, 1998 (long ways to go here - few links hooked up yet)

Returnability

MASTERS THESIS ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB UPON LITERATURE

THEORIES: 1. Discourse Analysis, 2. Corpus analysis; 3. Linguistic relativity (Humboldt, Sapir, Whorf) ; 4. semiotics (de Saussure, Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Umberto Eco) and linguistics; 5. hypertext; 6. Intertextuality (A-frames); 7. post-modern; 8. metaphysics [meta-ethical](Habermas); 9. Allusions ; 10. Genre theory 11. Transtextuality 12. Cyber-cosmos

PEOPLE: Barthes(4-A), Eco(4-B), Habermas(8-A), Humboldt(3-A), Kristeva(4-C), Rossi Sapir(3-B), de Saussure(4-D),Whorf(3-C),

1. Discourse Analysis. Focus of Discourse Analysis is not on the ideas, thoughts, plans, goals etc which exist independently of language. It is both, instead, both on what is said and done in the text:, a text's subject matter, and on how something is said - the total of the language mechanisms and strategies that operate in discourse. (Georgakopoulou p. 8)

2. Corpus analysis (corpus = a body of writing by a single author.The main body or substance of something.

3. Linguistic relativity (Humboldt, Sapir, Whorf) .Linguistic relativity (Humboldt, Sapir, Whorf) .that culture through language, affects the way in which we think, and especially our classification of the experienced world.

4. semiotics and linguistics (de Saussure, Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Umberto Eco): Formal semiotics is difficult to disentangle from structuralism (Claude Levi-Strauss - anthropology, Jacques Lacan - psychoanalysis)

4C. Kristeva: intertextuality. influenced by work of Bakhtin. Charts a three-dimensional textual space (intersecting planes which have horizontal & vertical axes") whose 3 "coordinates of dialogue" are the writing subject, the addressee (or ideal reader), & exterior texts...any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption & transformation of another. Kristeva,

Intertextuality, Hypertext

5. hypertext

6. Intertextuality (Kristeva)- The semiotic notion of intertextuality introduced by Kristeva is associated primarily with poststructuralist theorists. Each media text exists in relation to others. TEXTS OWE MORE TO OTHER TEXTS THAN TO THEIR OWN MAKERS.

A. FRAMES (Chandler) 'Texts are framed by others in many ways. Most obvious are formal frames: a television programme, may be part of a series and part of a genre (such as soap or sitcom). Our understanding of any individual text relates to such framings.

Texts provide contexts within which other texts may be created and interpreted.

7. post-modern

8. metaphysics (Habermas)

8-A Habermas. 'One of the most famous phrases of the discourse ethics of Jurgen Haberas is: in discourse the unforced force of the better argument prevails. ('what others are saying could be right')

META-ETHICAL

An issue of the analytic philosphy and of the linguistic turn. theory that is convinced all moral questions could sufficiently be handled on the neutral and theoretical level of language analysis

propedeutic - a reflection which clarifies the use of moral jugments in terms of language analysis.

Meta-ethical reflections are a part of discourse ethics in defining what is a moral question and what is not.

Habermas combines theoretical meta-ethical statements with the practical world - the "lifeworld" contexts in his discourse ethics.

Gimmmler 'The Discourse Ethics of Jurgen Habermas'

http://www.lcl.cmu.edu/CAAE/Home/Forum/meta/background/agimmler.html

9. Allusions: part of all media; see the 'Mechanics of Allusion'

10. Genre theory

11. Transtextuality Gerard Genette ("Palimpsestes" 1982)

Five subtypes of Genette's 'transtextuality' (Chandler: Semiotics for Beginners - http://www.aber.ac.uk/~dgc/sem09.html)

1.intertextuality: quotation, plagiarism, allusion (a text's allusions to itself)

2.paratextuality: relation between a text and its 'paratext' - that which surrounds the main body of text (titles, headings, prefaces, epigraph, dedications, acknowledgments, footnotes, illustrations, dust jackets, etc)

3.architextuality: designation of a text as part of a genre or genes

4.metatextuality: explicit/implicit critcal commentary of one text on another

5.hypotextuality: relation between a text and a preceeding 'hypotext' - a text or genre on which it is based but which it transforms, modifies, elaborates or extends (including parody, spoof, sequel) Chandler adds hypertextuality to this list: 'text which can take the reader directly to other texts'

(http://www.aber.ac.uk/~dgc/sem09.html).

12. Cyber-cosmos

Cybernetics & Human Knowing

A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics & Cyber-Semiotics

Vol. 1 no. 1 1992

'cybernetics'

- a form of cross-disciplinary thought which made it possible for members of many disciplines to communicate with each other

easily in a language which all could understand'

a branch of mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness and information (Gregory Bateson - family thearpist)

the science of effrective organization (Stafford Beer - organizational philosopher)

the science of defensible metaphors (Gordon Pask - cybernetician)

Re. Revolution in Poetic Language

the 'Mechanics of Allusion' -

* recognition of marker

* identification of evoked text

* modification of the initial local interprestation of passage

* activation of evoked text

Umberto Eco stresses that culture is a collective experience.

1. originally to write a novel and change it into a hypertext document. And write a shorter thesis on the affects of the World Wide

Web on narrative discourse..

2. next idea: to write a series of short stories which Sacha would illustrate and I would put into hypertext/CD

3. write a complete 150,000 word thesis on the theoretical approach of meaning in hypertext.

4. combine the above three: 1998

A. Write novel (edit TRYTHIS)

1. Twelve chapters: Two chapters per month complete end of 1998. DO AT UNISA - WORD 7 (print-out chapter every other week

read on train etc. edit and complete/re-write at UNISA in-between weeks. Hypertextual version = 1999

2. Six children's stories: hardcopies completed end 1998

with hypertext completed end of 1999

a. activities centred around the story

b. read aloud with scrolling or stilled pictures

c. recreate story - multiple endings etc.

3. Thesis: approximately 50,000 words complete end of 2000

a. the influence of hypertext on literature and society44