from the embodied mind to the social brain: the negotiation of the self and translation

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From the Embodied Mind to the Social Brain: the Negotiation of the Self and Translation

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  • From the Embodied Mind to the Social Brain: the Negotiation of the Self and Translation

  • Over the last half century various scholars (Erving Goffman, Mary Douglas, George Lakoff, et. al.) have made the case that a rich network of cognitive frames make up what could be called a matrix of experience for human beings everywhere.

  • Furthermore, some of these scholars agree that these frames are not static entities, but rather are in constant flux, being evoked, discarded, transformed, broken, subverted, adapted and re-situated within the network in a never-ending dynamic process of negotiation on the part of participants through various kinds of social interactions.

  • Erving Goffman and Mary Douglas make the case that the most fundamental and far-reaching of these negotiations has to do with the presentation of the self.

  • Douglas grid-group heuristic taxonomy of these frames (which she refers to as thought styles) is supported by other more recent insights from scholars like Richard Shweder, Jonathan Haidt, and Allan Fiske, working in the areas of domains of moral judgment and the negotiation of human relations.

  • Other recent studies (Lakoff, Antonio Damasio, Jonathan Haidt, et. al.) do not reserve cognition for reflective reasoning, but see it as beginning in the affective sphere and representing the whole of conscious (and at times even unconscious) thought.

  • We do not usually think through our ideologies from which we construct our values which subsequently activate our emotions which finally guide our actions, but rather the reverse.

  • Cognition often (perhaps usually) happens in this order: embodied ritualistic activity gives rise to emotions, which are in turn crystallized into values and finallygiven some kind of narrative.

  • People who grow up touching their heads to other (more prestigious) people's feet when greeting them learnin their bodies both about hierarchy and sacred space. They eventually do notfeel rightabout acting any other way, and reflect this attitude as well in other ways (their systems of honorifics, for example).

  • These values may eventually find some narrative justification, but for most people their basic physical reactions are enough to keep them acting in accordance with established rituals which are then simply explained as "this is how well-behaved people shouldact. (Haidt, 2001:20)

  • (Richard Shweder, 2003:46ff.)Children who are taught to sleep apart from their parents are probably being taught an embodied sense of independence (while virtually no one would use this as a justification of the practice). Meanwhile other culturally patterned co-sleeping arrangements clearly foster relationships of familial dependency and unity while once again any number of other justifications are likely to be invoked to explain the practices.

  • Even though people in all cultures have more or less the same bodies, they have different embodiments, and therefore they end up with different minds.

    (Jonathan Haidt, 2001:21)

  • And those different minds are social:He [Durkheim] thought the reaction of outrage when entrenched judgments are challenged is a gut response directly due to commitment to a social group. (Douglas, 1986:10).

  • Yearning for Zion Ranch - Eldorado, Texas

  • When these women were asked to explain their hair styles and dress, they came up with all sorts of plausible explanations, mostly about modestly and humility (not showing off with fancy styles and jewelry).

    They never mentioned the two reasons so obvious to everyone on the outside:They want to all look alike within the group.They want to look different from everyone else outside the group.

  • Goffman, Interaction Ritual (pp. 84-85, speaking of face):...the individual must rely on others to complete the picture of him of which he himself is allowed to paint only certain parts. Each individual is responsible for the demeanor image of himself and the deference image of others...

  • Examples:ComedianPresenter

    3 levels: (joke, comedian, sane human)

    With an identity twist: thought styles

  • Simulation / Theory of MindThe mechanism for the evocation (including creation, transformation, subversion, and destruction) of frames has been postulated as simulation or (more specifically) theory of mind.

  • This mechanism would appear to allow the extension of Lakoffs embodied mind to include Goffmans ideas of the negotiation of the self by means of what might be called the social brain.

  • In particular it is by means of the theory of mind that what is usually thought of as social and emotional can be seen as personal and cognitive as well.

  • Thus, according to Jerome Feldman, language primarily operates at the level of frame parameters and understanding involves imaginative simulation invoked by these frames. (2006:147)

  • : cultural learning [is] made possible by a very special form of social cognition, namely, the ability of individual organisms to understand conspecifics as beings like themselves who have intentional and mental lives like their own. (Michael Tomasello, 200)

  • How does this negotiation of frames differ from the way frames are usually understood?

  • Restaurant frame: (Lakoff, Philosophy, p. 116)waitersmenusfoodchecks(chronology is important)

    Fast-food example

  • Social scientists have been less interested in static frame taxonomies as in the dynamic process of framing. But they too have their own categories for this process.

  • Four cultural types/thought styles.If anyone protests that there are really fifteen, five hundred, or two thousand [cultural] types, or six or eight dimensions, they mistake the exercise. Eleven thousand or a million would not be enough to cover the variety that is out there. Douglas, Missing Persons, p. 101.

  • Hybridization can be seen at work within the scheme, as individuals and groups negotiate meaning in three or four categories at the same time, or within different situations (but still within the polarities of freedom/solidarity).

  • It is critical at this point to state that while Douglas herself at times seem to present her paradigm as if it is descriptive of essentially different ways cultures (or institutions, or groups) think, it is probably better to think of her thought styles as cognitive meta-frames available (in theory anyway) to just about everyone everywhere.

  • Cultures and sub-cultures will have certain tendencies, as will texts and even textual corpora (see biblical examples below), but the key point is that these styles offer differing and to a great degree mutually exclusive ways of framing what are usually thought of as specific and personal values in specific situations. And the availability of these cognitive styles to the individual is based on the underlying negotiation of the self as independent agent, alienated individual, dutiful hierarchist or committed communitarian.

  • Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarityCultural Clusters (Douglas)

    Isolate AlienationHierarchist Cooperation within structure

    Individualist Individual competition

    Enclavist (communitarian) Cooperation in dissent

  • Diagonal of Power

    Hierarchist Cooperation within structure

    Individualist Individual competition

  • Diagonal of Dissent

    Isolate Alienation

    Enclavist Cooperation in dissent

  • Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarityOrganizations

    Isolate DonkeysUsed by othersUnorganized laborHierarchist WolvesPack hunters Organized labor / management

    Individualist HawksLone operatorsEntrepreneurs

    Enclavist VulturesSolidarity/individualitySales reps, semi-skilled craftsmen

  • The negotiated self Missing Persons, p. 109

  • Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarityChristianity

    Isolate Some forms of asceticism Hierarchist Roman Catholicism

    Individualist Protestantism

    Enclavist New Testament Era Christianity

  • Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarity Bible Translation

    Isolate Marginalized persons Hierarchist HB and most receptor language cultures andsome national cultures Individualist Most translation consultants and some national cultures

    Enclavist NT and some receptor language cultures

  • Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarityShweder - ethical categories

    Ethics of community Ethics of autonomy Ethics of divinity

  • Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarityHaidt - domains of moral judgment

    hierarchy / ingroup

    harm/ reciprocity purity

  • Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarityFiske - negotiating human relations

    null set authority ranking

    market pricingcommunal sharing/ equality matching(?)

  • Prototypes affect/determine categories:

    Families for Douglas would fit more in the hierarchist category, though she would no doubt admit the family often shows enclavist tendencies as well.

    Fiske, on the other hand, uses the family as his prototypical example of the community sharing form of human relations (and would have to admit families display hierarchical elements).

  • George Lakoff also has referred to both family types described here. Lakoff labels them as strict father versus nurturant parent conceptual metaphors. Lakoff sees these conceptual metaphors as underlying conservative versus liberal politics in the U.S.

  • Faith/fulness (/, )Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarity

    Isolate Blind faith?Hierarchist Commitment/loyalty (faithfulness)

    Individualist Belief/confidence/conviction

    Enclavist Trust/hope

  • Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarityRighteousness (/ )

    Isolate Existential good faith (true to self)Hierarchist Mutual obligations

    Individualist Personal virtue / rights

    Enclavist Universal love

  • Salvation ( / )Increasing limits on personal freedom //Increasing solidarity

    Isolate Personal/apocalypticHierarchist Communal/physical

    Individualist Personal/spiritual

    Enclavist Communal/spiritual

  • A network of ideas of loyalty, obligation, and physical salvation of the community within the hierarchist culture of mutual obligation represented at points in the Hebrew Bible were first transformed in an enclavist culture represented in the NT into concepts of trust, love, and spiritual salvation of the community. And these both have finally been largely distilled out within modern individualist cultures as conviction, virtue and personal salvation.

  • Competing frames for sin in the Bible

    Elements Frames IndividualAuthority figureDeliberative actionDeterminationExpected ResultAction toward individualReturn to balance

    Moral-Legal(Romans 3)DefendantJudge-GodJudgmentGuiltPunishment (Hell)Payment of debt-salvationLegal-Moral system satisfied

    Medical (Mat 9.12)PatientDoctor-JesusDiagnosisSicknessDeathTreatment-salvationRestoration to wholeness/health

    Animal Husbandry (Mat 18.10-14)SheepShepherd-JesusCaretakingLostDeathSearch & RescueReturn to fold

    Journey(Mat 7.13-14)TravelerGuide-JesusGuidingLostDeath (destruction)Show wayFind home (life)

    Who is judged/treated in BibleInsidersOutsidersOutsidersEveryone

    Who is judged/treated nowOutsiders InsidersInsidersInsiders

  • There are at least two websites which have a mission statement which includes a reference to their belief in the eternal punishment of the lost. This blends the legal-moral and animal care/journey frame backgrounds. In the Bible, the schema or scenario of the lost sinner nearly always results in that sinner being found or finding the way (or remaining lost), while the idea of punishment (and substitutionary atonement) belongs to the moral-legal frame structure.

  • Depending on how one has negotiated ones self within ones own cultural setting, different metaphor structures above will be more or less salient.

  • The individualist will probably prefer the moral-legal frame, since it emphasizes personal responsibility. The enclavist might prefer the medical model, since it emphasizes care. The hierarchist will likely prefer the lost sheep schema, since it emphasizes dependency and hierarchy.

  • And possibly the isolate will be drawn to the metaphor of the lost traveler, since it seems to speak to the situation of the marginalized.

  • People in different cultures learn through embodied actions what sorts of selves they are expected to present to the world. These identities tend to fall into a fairly limited number of categories (particularly for specific communicative purposes), such as individualist, hierarchist, or communitarian. Individuals negotiate their relationships with others and the world based on these ideas about their own selfhood, in part by means of simulation and theory of mind.

  • Much of the time the negotiations can be taken for granted (if enough cultural background is shared). But cross-culturally negotiations often break down, and people end up considering one another impolite at best and morally questionable at worst. Understanding the dynamics of identity negotiation should go a long way in helping translators mediate cross-cultural communication based on the meta-frames created by such negotiation..

  • Extra slides:

  • HierarchistIndividualist / EnclavistU.S Politics

  • Isolates-Fatalists:Hierarchists-Balancers: Nature is Capricious Nature is Robust within Limits Individualists-Entrepreneurs:Enclavists-Protectors:Nature is Robust Nature is FragileEcology

  • lexicon/domains-values: term/phrase frames (evoking domains-values) illegal immigrants/aliens crime, foreigners/non-humans undocumented workers bureaucracy and labor economic refugees class distinction and human rights

    lexicon/register:term/phraseframe (evoking registers)trust in Godinformal have faithformal

    get alonginformalbe reconciledformal

    wrathfulbiblical or archaicangryformalmadinformalpissed offvulgar

  • phonology/semantics: phonological unit frame (evoking semantics) gl- (glint, glisten, glow) something about lightlexicon/domain: term/phrase frames (conceptual/physical/social) keyaccess llavehand-turning tool teclafinger-poking tool

    ruah/pneumaanimating power

    emet, hesed, mutual obligation/social hierarchy tzedeq, goel

  • Idiom chart: from cross to bear to ax to grind

    ExampleIdiomImageAttitudePattern(x to y)AgencyDurationCross to Bear (2)+BurdenResigned(sad)+Patient?Chip on his shoulder (3)+BurdenResentful(challenging)-PatientForeverStand on a soapbox (4)+PublicmessageAggressive(hopeful)-AgentForeverNail to hammer (5)-FrictionAggressive(persistent)+AgentHas end?Beat a dead horse (5)+FrictionAggressive(futile)-AgentForeverRide a hobby horse (5)+FrictionAggressive(persistent)-AgentForeverBone to pick (5)+FrictionAggressive(angry)+AgentHas endAxe to grind (6)+FrictionAggressive(relentless)+AgentForever

  • Douglasindividualisthierarchstenclavist /communitarianisolateShwederautonomycommunitydivinityHaidtharm/ reciprocityhierarchy/ ingrouppurityFiskemarket pricingauthority rankingcommunal sharing/ equality matching(?)null set

  • The negotiation of framesText/sound/ visual signsSourceReceptor

  • Community vs. SocietyPersonal freedom Social solidarity

  • Community vs. SocietyPersonal freedom Social solidarity

  • Reflection-the narrative for the restValues-permanent emotions connected to situations/ideas.Emotions- e.g. anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprize (P. Ekman)Emboded actions (sleeping arrangements, turn-taking in conversations, dress, self-presentation and interaction conventions, et. al.).Motivations-hunger, thirst, sleep, sexCognition is bottom-up, not top-down:

  • IdentityParaphrasing Irving Goffman (On the moral career of the individual-Asylums):The self is not so much revealed in all the diverse interactions it has with others as it is constituted by these interactions.

    ******************