Boundary managers

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

At 17:19 16/11/02 +0100, Timothy Mason wrote:

>One thing I think I know about discourse is that terms can slip from one
>discursive domain to another, changing meaning and role, and occasioning
>clarity/perplexity or whatever.

Hey, I believe I know that too. That intertextual slippage is, I believe,
something that chimps can't do ;-) .

>If people who study primates - or bees or sub-nuclear particles - find a
>use for the term 'discourse' - or for terms such as 'dance', 'language'
>and so on - then they will use them. Boundary managaers may well feel
>moved to condemn, but the best they can hope to do is to wag a stern
>finger at any illicit border-crossing.

I don't think this is merely a territorial issue warranting zones of
exclusion to be discursively bombed by border patrolling aircraft.

What I still don't understand (and I'll stop here) is why expressions such
as "gibbon communication" or "gibbon interaction" would not be good enough
to give account of what's being observed among gibbons.  To me the burden
of proof still rests on the proponents of discursive slippage ;-), and I'm
afraid no solid arguments have been presented in this very interesting
discussion why "gibbon discourse" is better than "gibbon communication" or
"interaction". To start with, except Ron, Kerim and myself no one has
stated what understanding of "discourse" they're working with in order to
apply it to gibbons, so the whole debate is proceeding *ex negativo*.

Best,
-celso
Celso Alvarez Cáccamo
lxalvarz at udc.es


>         Best wishes
>
>                 Timothy Mason
>
>
>Celso Alvarez Cáccamo wrote:
>>Kerim,
>>I admit to certain circularity in my reasoning: if agency is human
>>agency, then non-human primates don't have agency (though they do
>>transform contexts, but in qualitatively different ways: in humans there
>>is deliberately planning to create new forms of social organization, to
>>reinstate old ones, etc.). And if agency is a constitutive part of
>>discourse, then non-human primates can't have discourse. We haven't
>>introduced ideology centrally in the discussion, but here is yet another
>>point of difference.