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mysterious butterflies of the soul? One
linguistic perspective on the efficacy of meaning
in the mind-brain system

• David Butt
• Director, Centre for Language in Social Life
• Associate Professor, Dept of Linguistics
• Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
• David.Butt_at_ling.mq.edu.au

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CLSL projectsTransactions between matter and
meaning

• There can be no semiotic act that leaves the
  world exactly as it was before.
• M.A.K. Halliday (2002/1994) Collected Works V2

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anaesthetist
anaesthetic nurse
Anaesthesia
Surgery
assistant
surgeon
Nursing
scrub nurse
patient
scout nurse
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Context Field, Tenor, Mode

FIELD TENOR MODE social
activity social roles language role context
of care medical agents hierarchic? constitu
tes activity decide treatment
doctor/patient channel phonic clinical
trial? social distance low medium
spoken evaluate markers process sharing


Contextual Configuration
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Bearings Pathways Amplificatn Declaration
Enunciation Enactment

• Statement of equipoise
• Recommendation
• Confirmation of patient autonomy

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Declaration example 1

D Im comfortable personally with you having
either of these treatments but if you chose not
to come into the trial I would recommend that we
try (drug X) for a couple of months to see if it
works. I would like you to come into the trial
but certainly if you chose not to it doesnt
upset me and Im very comfortable to look after
you as I have been doing.
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Move
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Argument/trope
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325 then eventually you get to my old decrepit
age, 326 327 ok ?, so you get older. 328 So
the little mosquito changes into a
larva, 329 From the larva it goes into the next
stage 330 which is a pupa, 331 Like baby,
then you have .. um .. child 332 The pupas
like a teenager 333 which you people are
nearly getting to 334 and then you get to
adults, like myself, 335 ok? 336 So they
have a similar cycle of young to children,
teenagers, and adults. 337 And everything does
all that, 338 even plants go through that
339 You have the seed, 340 then you have
the small .. seedlings small plant, 341 then
you have a maturing plant 342 then youre
going to say a mature plant 343 which could be
a tree, 344 ok? 345 So its grows up through
those stages. 346 Right, so weve come to a
conclusion that all animals go through a life
cycle.
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Stratification of Surgical Culture
Environment (Policy and Resources)
Enactment (Mediating Organization)
Embodiment (Acting out the Surgical Process)
Substance (Materialization of Messages)
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Stratification of Surgical Culture
Climate/Weather
Fashions of Speaking
Risk Resolution Standardization
Environment (Policy and Resources)
Motivation?
Administrative demands
Trajectory of Training and Careering
Patel Case Hospital Income
Admin
Clinic
Enactment (Mediating Organization)
Dual Signatories?
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Stratification of Surgical Culture
Conventions/Assumptions
Enactment (Mediating Organization)
contingencies
Systems Phenomena Ranks/Scales
Rosters planned/actual
Isomorphism
Lists day-by-day
Roles
Volatility
Embodiment (Acting out the Surgical Process)
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Stratification of Surgical Culture
Taking Over AV Record
Embodiment (Acting out the Surgical Process)
Weather/Climate
Speech Function Gesture
Models of Disease/Health
Micro-Latent Patterns Thick Description
Scrub
Said/unsaid
Surgeon
Implicate Orders
Substance (Materialization of Messages)
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Communicative traffic - frequency directionality
scrub
surgeon
example 1 Could I have another haemostat thanks?
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Communicative traffic - speech function
scrub
surgeon
command offer question statement
Id like another haemostat thanks
(command) Heres another haemostat (offer)
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Dimensions for modelling variation in language
context
(Halliday 1978)
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CLSL projectmeaning to meaning

• Invisible harmony is stronger than visible
  harmony.
• Heraclitus on the Implicate Order

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Opening stanza space in discourse
R I apologise for the interruption at the beginning.
C Its been a roller coaster for about three weeks. Panic full blown...
R It really seems that you did something that wasnt your fault, ups and downs..
C It just really hard to take my self I have to take responsibility. I saw it coming. When I came here I was really pepped up, but I still had enough incentive to understand the situation, but I kind of let it roll, I didnt put the brakes on or anything, and didnt do any of the things that could have help it from going where it went, you know? I just.. I cant help but blame myself for what happened.
R I imagine there was a conflict.
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Opening stanza space in discourse
Linguistic strata explanations of particular meanings in the text may draw on one stratum more crucially than the others, or may require a cross-calibration between the strata Linguistic strata explanations of particular meanings in the text may draw on one stratum more crucially than the others, or may require a cross-calibration between the strata
Context
Semantics Cohesion (across strata)
Lexicogrammar Cohesion (across strata)
Phonology (patterns of sound) Phonology (patterns of sound)
R I apologise for the interruption at the beginning.
C Its been a roller coaster for about three weeks. Panic full blown...
R It really seems that you did something that wasnt your fault, ups and downs..
C It just really hard to take my self I have to take responsibility. I saw it coming. When I came here I was really pepped up, but I still had enough incentive to understand the situation, but I kind of let it roll, I didnt put the brakes on or anything, and didnt do any of the things that could have help it from going where it went, you know? I just.. I cant help but blame myself for what happened.
R I imagine there was a conflict.
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Context Initiating topicality? (field)Initiating tenor? (tenor)Organizing? (mode)
Semantics Motifs Arguments Gambits Ripostes Rhetorical Patterns Cohesion Reference chains Lexical (word) deployments ellipsis/ substitution organic relations (e.g. conjunction)
Lexicogrammar Forms of potential wording interpersonally (mood/ modality) ideationally (transitivity/ taxis) textually (theme/news) Cohesion Reference chains Lexical (word) deployments ellipsis/ substitution organic relations (e.g. conjunction)
Phonology Form intonation key
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Semantics grammar
principle of expansion
I cant help
but blame myself
depth of tactic arrange-ment
for what happened
character of VOICE (middle or effective
transitive or intransitive)
(CLSL grammarians laugh at the counterpoint of
semantics to lexicogrammar)
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Inner and Outer Weathers
I was thinking in my room,
we might go round to Auntie Jennies.
if I put my shoes on
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Cross-stratal calibration (meaning is the three
levels combined)
Contextually
Framing
Concession (negotiating)
Contextual Resolution demanded here
we might go round to Jennies
Semantically (by message)
I was thinking ... in my room
if I put my shoes on
?
Grammatically (by clause)
??
Grammatical Platform allocated to this clause
??
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Analysis (1)
Cl ID Sp Clause text Pro-cess Proc type Agency Agent Medium Range
2_1 C Its been a roller coaster for about three weeks. be relational middle It life? Attribute a roller coaster
3_1 C Panic full blown none middle Carrier ?? Attribute Panic full blown
4_1 R It really seems that you did something that wasnt your fault, ups and downs.. do material effective Actor you C Goal did something that wasnt your fault, ups and downs..
5_1 C It just really hard not to take myself be relational middle Carrier It not to take myself Attribute really hard
5_2 C I have to take responsibility take material effective Actor I C Goal responsibility
6_1 C I saw it coming see mental middle Senser I C Phenomenon it coming
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Textual Weight and Grammatical Allocation
Key Actor
Subject
Theme
The doctor
examined the patient for 10 minutes
? 3 roles allocated together
The patient
was examined by the doctor for 10 minutes
The patient
was examined for 10 minutes
examined the patient
For 10 minutes
the doctor
was examined by the doctor
For 10 minutes
the patient
? ? 3 roles allocated apart ?
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Contextual analysis
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Semantics of turn-taking
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Techniques of Semantic Solidarity
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What is in a normal conversation?

• Can you have a normal conversation with him?
• I couldnt talk to him.
• Idiomatic use of normal is it non-technical?
  non-psychiatric? is this use of normal
  conversation non-therapeutic?
• Clearly, it is being used as a benchmark in some
  form of human evaluation, some evaluation of the
  psyche (as I characterised it previously for
  the purposes of this cross-disciplinary talk).

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What is in a normal conversation?

• The generic character of conversation varies in
  many ways even within my individual experience.
• Queensland road cattle men around Gin Gin
  in 1971 Time Time Rhythm of a topic a
  roll your own cigarette must stop Land Rover

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1. William James on self
2. Ovids cry from exile Are you there?
3. Lady Sarashina (1008- ? )As I crossed the
   bridge of dreamsRecollections of Women in 11th
   Century Japan (1971, Penguin, trans. Ivan
   Morris)

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Lady Sarashina (Ch. 18, pp. 83-88)
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Data from Ruqaiya Hasans ARC Project on
Semantic Variation, conducted at Macquarie
University in 1980s. (M mother C her child,
approx. 3 years old)
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Every text is a pulse of semantic energy on three
simultaneous trajectories
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Idiomatically, two kinds of conversation
We need to catch upWell enjoy catching up We need to talk
I am involved with you (our relationship drives the meeting) We may find business to share Friends ? Multiplex Network I am implicated in your affairs (our histories and probable futures motivate the meeting) We may find that we turn out to have a lot in common Multiplex Network ? Friendship
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Tone of the two kinds
We need to catch upWell enjoy catching up We need to talk
Conviviality assured(Reconfirm this tone and incorporate construals of recent experience) Adversarial potential(Avoid this tone by talk)
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Risk of the two kinds
We need to catch upWell enjoy catching up We need to talk
S/hes changed S/hes become self-absorbed Wasted time Covertly teleological S/hes a wanker S/hes giving nothing away Wasted effort Overtly teleological
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Topics of the two kinds
We need to catch upWell enjoy catching up We need to talk
Probabilistic Categorial (even when approached obliquely, e.g. through rugby update, union to ministry, hawkers food at uni housing in an Asian capital)
Centripetal- epicycles of topicality- all part of one affective system Centrifugal- whorl around that business find others
Business/ Money/ Housing- unquestioned sharing- friends of friends- you support friends Multiply topics to create centripetal business links supported by quasi-friendship
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Syntagm of the two kinds
We need to catch upWell enjoy catching up We need to talk
Univariate syntagm? Non-linear syntagm? (oxymoron?) Moves forward inclusive by default mechanism for breaching boundaries without sanctionsI know I can say this to you you wont take it the wrong way you wont think Im ___Just between us Multivariate syntagm? Moves forward - exclusive by defaultThats your business, mate of courseThats not for me to sayi.e. protecting boundaries and groups care in maintaining these ostentatiously correct
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Affective Principle versus Pre-emptive Diplomacy
Principle (1)

• Affective Principle (We need to catch up
  Well enjoy catching up)
• Plum et al.
• Recursive/ Cyclic (but not exact repetition, so
  recursion of what?)
• Ideationally
• Initiate React Elaborate
  Predict
• Problems Outcomes Judgements Plans
• (Realis/ ?
• Irrealis) Mitigating blame
• Common feeling is the basis for a shared plan of
  action

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Affective Principle versus Pre-emptive Diplomacy
Principle (2)

• Pre-emptive Diplomacy Principle (We need to
  talk)
• Recognition/ ? Exchange ? Problems
  ? Joint Compliment of
  Actuals on Horizon Strategy
  
• Your place In fact, its
  Shared Perception is doing
  better/ worse/ well in the
  balance/
• problems
• Complimentary solidarity
• Shared perception forms the basis for
  establishing affective solidarity switch over

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Psychotherapeutic Conversation

• takes from both these lines of structure
• is a response to both patterns of semantic
  pressure
• We are products of the semantic pressures (just
  as we are an artefact of gravity)
• Brought together by perceived needs of one side
• (By whom? This determines a good deal.)

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Setting out from meaning

• Consciousness can be characterised, for most
  human purposes, as the meaning potential opened
  up as you become able to make yourself the topic
  of your own discourse.

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Meaning and self

• The self grows in complexity as your talk gives
  you
• Widening opportunity of interactions, and
• Deepening potential for involvement

Talk takes you across the community (more complex connection) Talk takes you across the community (more complex connection) Talk takes you more deeply into a relationship (greater engagement) Talk takes you more deeply into a relationship (greater engagement)
Same two conversation types Same two conversation types Same two conversation types
We need to talk We need to talk We need to catch up We need to catch up
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Therapist Commitment to Care Academic Anticipatory Theory Legal framework Professional framework (1) (2) (3) Is it exchange of goods and services? Advice? An interpretation?
? ? Is it exchange of goods and services? Advice? An interpretation?
Repercussive advisory role Repercussive advisory role Is it exchange of goods and services? Advice? An interpretation?
? ? Is it exchange of goods and services? Advice? An interpretation?
Patient Commitment to ? Legal requirement? Medical injunction? (avoid hospitalisation) Perceived discomfort of own situation Extrinsic benefits Patient Commitment to ? Legal requirement? Medical injunction? (avoid hospitalisation) Perceived discomfort of own situation Extrinsic benefits Is it exchange of goods and services? Advice? An interpretation?
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Language Development and the Self (3)Semiotic
view of double in consciousness?
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Cycles of Narrative and of Narratology
Maximal PERTURBATION
STASIS disturbed STASIS restored
Generic Structure Potential (GSP) Hasan
1984 (ltPlacementgt)Initiating EventSequent
EventFinal Event(Moral)(Coda) ( )
optional element order specified order
unspecified lt gt potentially interspersed with
adjacent element limits of interspersion
or ordering potential repetition
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Affective Cycles Semantic Motifs (Cohesion as
evidence)
Panic full blownRoller coaster
Function/ Dysfunction
Betrayal vs Entrapment
Disgust
Gift
Perturbed system already (see Sunday Tape also)
Diary checks for next appointment
Gift Existentialist Play Sartre versus Freud
All childhood Thats bullshit Academic
treatment lifts logogenetic and ontogenetic into
phylogenetic/ cultural vector
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Blow ups flow on acid eating away at me

• Therapist
• 1 Ha! ... does that mean
• 2 If you stopped
• 3 him doing that to you
• 4 You would do it less to the children?
• 5 Is that it?
• She replies
• 6 well I might feel better about myself
• 7 Yeah. I might, mm
• 8 cause he stopped for a few days
• 9 I think
• 10 it was last week
• 11 or, I dont know
• 12 I think
• 13 there was some abatement
• 14 and then it just
• 15 just for a couple of days
• 16 as if it was
• 17 I dont know

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Clause Architecture
6
7
21

12
8
11
9
19
14
15


13
10
20
17
16

18
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Exchange 1

• T It seems like you had to look after her
• look after her feelings how she feels
• youve been very careful not to upset
• her Its almost like youve been
• mothering her as it were you
• 135 P I didnt see it like that
• 136 T No

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Exchange 2 (7 months later)

• 449 T You didnt know
• 450 P No I didnt know. . . . And it makes me a
  little bit
• angry too because of the way she is
  now as though
• she wants heaps of attention like I
  said she wants me
• to be the mother and mother her
• 451 T Mmm
• 452 P When she
• 453 T shes never been
• 454 P Never mothered me
• ( indicate brief pauses)

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Affective cycles

• Interpersonal or modal rather than an event-based
  syntagm
• Modal the traditional theories of modes
• e.g. Dorian mode fortitude/ action
• the feeling is a function of the pattern in
  music the particular arrangements

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Instantial weight
1 Status/depth Primary Hypotactic Hypot2 Rankshifted b in r/shifted R/s in R/s
1 Status/depth 5 4 3 2 1 0
2 Finiteness Tense Modality Non-finite Pred Nominalized Minor Exclam/ Voc
5 4 3 2 1 0
3 Process Material Behavioural Verbal Mental Existential Relational
5 4 3 2 1 0
4 Voice Middle Domain (Circ/Range) Middle Effective (Operative) Eff (Receptive) Agent Eff/Rec -Agent -Voice
5 4 3 2 1 0
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Instantial weight (continued)

5 Agent/Role X Acts (Med/Actor) X acts on Y(Agent/Actor) X is acted upon (Med/Goal) X is Domain(Range like) X is Circ (Circ/Inst) Experiential occluded
5 Agent/Role 5 4 3 2 1 0
6 Subject X is Subject Complement Predicator Adjunct Vocative Occluded
5 4 3 2 1 0
7 Theme Marked as Theme Complement Adjunct Predicator 3rd Person 1st/2nd
5 4 3 2 1 0
8 News Marked News (Theme) News Only Non-final Marked Final (eg Pred) Final Unmarked Theme only
5 4 3 2 1 0
9 Person Realized as 1st As 2nd As 3rd (particular) As 3rd (homo-phoric) General Thing/Stuff No reference
5 4 3 2 1 0
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Logogenesis and instantial weight
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Lexis versus Lexicogrammar

• Words, and the illusion of meaning contained in
  the word rather than in its evanescent,
  contextual relations
• An illusion of us isolating words on the basis of
  their highest probability of use (typically in a
  noun form thingification)

Lexicographers
Lexical meaning
Component meanings
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Similarity and Identity Chains in the Horse text
Identity chains for plausible resolutions of
it seeing.., horse, penis, sex, memory,
image, feeling, thought
Chain connection between plausible tokens for
each instance of ambiguous it. The more this
blue spreads across the line, the more ambiguous
the reference is.
Similarity chain (NB some chains are part SC and
part IC)
64
5 J A few of us went out 6 to see the
horses. 7 Everything was fine, 8 and we were
heading back9 seeing the horses, its like,
its really disgusting. 10 Everything was fine
11 and we go to start heading back. 12
Th Mmmm hmmm13 J Then it came again,
14 everything was relaxed ( )15 That's when I
think 16 is it me 17 or is there a connection?
18 Is it something that is real you just
remember, 19 I just keep seeing what was
happening in my teenage years. 20 I would see
something
Fused/ ambiguous it in episodes reports of
dissociation
clauses 5-17, starting off as narrative
65
J it
(clauses 1-32)
see horse
penis sex memory image feeling thought
woman

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De-fusing unhelpful associations (resolving
ambiguous chain tokens)
clauses 69-70

• 69 Th It seems like it is seeing the
  horse's penis or the ponies penis you
  immediately felt bad,
• 70 like associated it with something sexual?
• Like you were bad for seeing the horse's the
  pony's penis.
• 72 J No
• 73 T No. ((Laughs))
• 74 J It is just the thoughts associated.

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1. therapist offers resolution ( ) for
ambiguous cataphoric/ homophoric reference
(penis, sex)2. patient cataphorically resolves
other key chains (images, thoughts) 3. therapist
offers these back as unambiguous central tokens
in interacting chains4. patient works with this
unambiguous reference in the same interacting
chains
J it
(concluding cl 69-103)
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final clauses
Working with the more resolved ambiguity (Note
Token Value structures)
clauses 94-103, ending text episode
94 Th You see the pony's penis 95 well for that
matter one can see, you know, pictures 96 and
one can see naked bodies in reality.
Mmmm. 97 J Yes. 98 Th But does that mean
something sexual? 99 But it seems like the
association... 100 J It doesn't, 101 it
shouldn't 102 but with me it does. 103 Th Yes.

69
Identity Chains for ambiguous items are now
resolved distinctly (seeing, penis, sexual,
image) and interacting with key Similarity Chain
(real/made up)(note the absence of the
horizontal spread of blue)
clauses 94-103, ending text episode
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73
J it
(cont. cl 33-68)
see horse penis
sex memory image feeling thought
woman
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• Such a way of ascending to abstractness, a
  kind of inverted reductionism, inevitably leads
  to an overgeneralized nullity, in which the whole
  richness of concrete events is lost. (Luria 1987
  676)
• Luria, A. R. (1987) Reductionism in psychology.
  In R. L. Gregory (ed.), The Oxford Companion to
  the Mind, Oxford Oxford University Press,
  675-676.

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• The way of ascending to the concrete, i.e. the
  inclusion of the event in a rich net of
  relations, preserves the whole complexity of
  events, while at the same time revealing new and
  essential relations and thus providing the most
  important steps to the discovery of the essence
  of the phenomenon or event, as opposed to its
  scientific explanation. (Luria 1987 676)

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Exploring and Contesting Techne

• Techne (Gk t????) art, skill, trade, science,
  artifice, cunning, trick work of art (make the
  latent nature of these publicly available
  implicate order ? explicate)
• Linguistic realization of crucial
  psycho-therapeutic tools (elaborated on next
  slide) alignment coupling fragmentation
  dissociation metaphoric scatter formulation
  of dilemmas agency/ non-agency

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Linguistic realization of crucial
psychotherapeutic (abstract) tools
Alignment Semiotic cues/ scaled linguistic iterations/ even enhancing isolation-alienation but in attendance/ making a space
Coupling Connection and (somewhat differently) warrant/invitation
Fragmentation Recounts disentangling past, near past, immediate, gnomic (future projections may be attached to fears expressed in the immediate turn 51)
Dissociation Avoiding the vortex between the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is
Metaphoric scatter Focalisation/ intensification/ bodily index of
Formulation of dilemmas Antithesis parallelisms icons of in the balance of of tension (turns 47, 49, 125, 67)
Agency/ Non-agency Wide bandwidth of realizations