SUO: Re: Conformance, Modularity, Compartmentality
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I gave a description of a typical conformance situation
that represented it as a two-part communication process:
| Once again, let me try to establish the totally naive point
| that the only reason why anybody would ever desire to conform
| to the dictations that happen to be recorded in some dictionary
| is if that dictionary conforms to something independent of itself,
| like actual usage in some community. Moreover, the best reason why
| anybody would want to conform to the usage embodied in some community
| is if that usage enables that community to conform to some reality
| independent of itself. None of this robs dictionaries of their
| power to innovate and to regulate usage, but it does require
| dictionary makers to be cognizant of what it is they can
| and cannot have power over.
In one phase of the communication process, the dictionary serves as a sign,
indicating the usage that is actualized in a certain community of interest,
and providing individual users with information about patterns of sign use
that they may choose to imitate, thereby affording these signs with a very
simple kind of interpretive processing in the forms of individual sign use.
Let's call the actual usage in the community a "Culture Of Interest" (COI):
| s = Standard Diction
| /
| /
| /
| COI = o---------@
| \
| \
| \
| i = Individual Usage
In the other phase, I take the customs and practices of
this community, of which sign usage is an integral part,
as signs of realistic objects and realizable objectives.
| s = Standard Diction
| /
| /
| COI /
| o---------@
| / \
| / \
| / \
| Reality = o---------@ i = Individual Usage
| \
| \
| \
| i = Individual Practice
It is very likely, of course, that these two phases represent
a purely logical division, in actual point of practice taking
place in iterative interaction or in parallel with each other.
So my objective is to conform to the collective usage
in a certain "community of interpretation" (COI), and
I seek the guidance of my posh dictionary in doing so.
I am thus involved in 3-adic sign relation, using the
dictionary as a sign of the way that I have chosen to
use a particular class of cultural or technical signs.
At the same time, I interpret this community usage as
being indicative of some objective reality, knowledge
of which, to some degree, is embodied in this culture.
Slogan 1. In order to formalize a complex process
one must create models that respect its complexity.
Jon Awbrey
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