Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 17:09:17 +0000
Subject: Re: art of gloss


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Hi Malcom, you wrote recently:

>> [mP]: when I began, a few posts ago, to play with the notion of
>> glossing as a way of talking about how being can not be talked about
>> (directly) ... I meant it in all its common and not-so-common
>> resonances.

> ... yes, gloss can also mean the
> shiny surface of things, a mere appearance that covers up what lies
> underneath.

It may not be a "mere appearance": it might be an essential structure of
language itself, especially when it comes to attempting ontological speech
(speech about being, speech of being); see below.

>This has resonances in Heidegger's discussion of the
> manifest phenomenon as opposed to semblance in BT.
 
>> [mP]: In accepting all the above resonances of glossing (in their
>> differences and hanging-together) it seems to me that glossing is one
>> of the essential structures of language itself, whether
>> common-colloquial or philosophic; Heraclitus' 'being is cryptic'
>> (itself a gloss, in my quippy translation :-)) is something of a guide
>> in this...

> Yeh, I'll buy that. To paraphrase myself, if language is textual
> interpretation then in a sense it's always a gloss for something...
> that 'something' which the talk is about. Again this is something of
> the relation between logos and phenomena that constitutes
> 'phenomenology' in BT.

Ummh, the linguistic gloss might be not so much a glossing of the
topicalised "something" but the wherewithal, the wherefrom, in short, the
resource of such speech. Talking about some thing can accomplish and
establish a smoothing lustral more or less opaque surface, a substitutable
abbreviation, a temporary cure for momentary embarrassment (through not
understanding something in the interlocutor's speech, say), an appeal to the
oft repeated etcetera clause or ellipses whereupon something assumed is
taken-for-granted and glossed with such as "etc", "and so on", "you know
what I mean...", "'nuf said", and others... [michael's gloss], etc [!]; even
formally such glossing occurs in mathematical speeches whenever the feted
proof by 'mathematical induction' is invoked. I suppose I am saying that
glossing along with metaphoricity is an unavoidable and essential structure
of language itself, itself the 'house of being'. Linguistic revealing and
pointing-to have their counterpoints in glossing and reflexivity, and, this
is a gloss on the gloss of being... I leave this with a quote from the
astonishingly dry Garfinkel:

"Glossing practices exist in empirical multitude. In endless, but
particular, analyzable ways glossing practices are methods for producing
observable and reportable understanding, with, in and of natural language.
As a multitude of ways for exhibiting-in-speaking and
exhibiting-for-the-telling that and how speaking is understood, glossing
practices are "members", are "mastery of natural language", are "speaking
English" (or French, or whatever), are "clear consistent, cogent speech,
i.e., rational speech."" [Garfinkel, 'On Formal Structures of Practical
Actions']

{In the above passage, the material Garfinkel quotes are those from his own
pen}

Garfinkel goes on:

"...mastery of natural language [consists] in this: In the particulars of
his speech a speaker, in concert with others [speakers/listeners,
writers/readers, etc], is able to gloss those particulars and is thereby
meaning differently than he can say in so many words..."

Language reveals being as glossed: there is no "particular of speech" more
'present' more 'known' more glossed thereby than being; it (being) is
invoked in every speech as what is utterly and inescapably glossed...

regards

michaelP


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HTML VERSION:

>> [mP]: when I began, a few posts ago, to play with the notion of
>> glossing as a way of talking about how being can not be talked about
>> (directly) ... I meant it in all its common and not-so-common
>> resonances.

> ... yes, gloss can also mean the
> shiny surface of things, a mere appearance that covers up what lies
> underneath.

>This has resonances in Heidegger's discussion of the
> manifest phenomenon as opposed to semblance in BT.

>> [mP]: In accepting all the above resonances of glossing (in their
>> differences and hanging-together) it seems to me that glossing is one
>> of the essential structures of language itself, whether
>> common-colloquial or philosophic; Heraclitus' 'being is cryptic'
>> (itself a gloss, in my quippy translation :-)) is something of a guide
>> in this...

> Yeh, I'll buy that. To paraphrase myself, if language is textual
> interpretation then in a sense it's always a gloss for something...
> that 'something' which the talk is about. Again this is something of
> the relation between logos and phenomena that constitutes
> 'phenomenology' in BT.

"Glossing practices exist in empirical multitude. In endless, but particular, analyzable ways glossing practices are methods for producing observable and reportable understanding, with, in and of natural language. As a multitude of ways for exhibiting-in-speaking and exhibiting-for-the-telling that and how speaking is understood, glossing practices are "members", are "mastery of natural language", are "speaking English" (or French, or whatever), are "clear consistent, cogent speech, i.e., rational speech."" [Garfinkel, 'On Formal Structures of Practical Actions']

"...mastery of natural language [consists] in this: In the particulars of his speech a speaker, in concert with others [speakers/listeners, writers/readers, etc], is able to gloss those particulars and is thereby meaning differently than he can say in so many words..."