How Ideas Come Into Being: Tracing Intertextual Moments in Grades of Objectification and Publicness

Abstract

How do ideas come into being? Our contribution takes its starting point in an observation we made in empirical data from a prior study. The data center around an instant of an academic writer’s thinking during the revision of a scientific paper. Through a detailed discourse-oriented micro-analysis, we zoom in on the writer’s thinking activity and uncover the genesis of a complex idea through a sequence of interrelated moments. These moments feature different degrees of “crystallization” of the idea; from gestures, a sketch, a short written note, oral explanations to a final spelled-out written argument. For this contribution, we re-analyze the material, asking how the idea gets formed during the thinking process and how it reaches a tangible form, which is understandable both for the thinker and for other persons. We root our analysis in a notion of language as social, embodied, and dialogical activity, drawing on concepts from Humboldt, Jakubinskij, and Vygotsky. We focus our analysis on three conceptual nodes. The first node is the ebbing and advancing of language in idea formation – observable as a trajectory through linguistically more condensed or more expanded utterance forms. The second node is the degree of objectification that the idea reaches when it is performed differently in a variety of addressivity constellations, i.e., whether and how it becomes understandable to the thinker and to others in the social sphere. Finally, the third node is the saturation of the idea through what we call intrapersonal intertextuality, i.e., its complex and dialogically related re-articulations in a sequence of formative moments. With these considerations, we articulate a clear consequence for theorizing thinking. We hold that thinking is social, embodied, and dialogically organized because it is entangled with language. Ideas come into being and become understandable and communicable to other persons only by and within their different, yet, intertextually related formations.

Voices in Dialogue: Taking Polyphony in Academic Writing Seriously

“…In this vein, it is true that voice is not “somehow in the language of the text” (Nelson & Castelló, 2012, p. 34). Voice is the language of the text in the sense that “language itself is understood as these wide-reaching dialogical relationships, echoing, questioning, re-taking, and altering each other in each specific moment of being uttered” (Karsten & Bertau, 2019, p. 13).…”

“…In the case of my analysis below, voices from the feedback interaction between the writer and her two colleagues from other fields not only influenced the writer’s textual voice but also her sense of self as a writer and disciplinary scholar. The concept of interiorization—conceived as a re-enactment of others’ personal and collective voices with a potential for development and formation of the self—ultimately lays the conceptual foundation for the claim that writing is multivoiced, both “within” a text and across all stages of “text production.” In other words, written texts have a complex socially grounded history of coming-into-being (Karsten & Bertau, 2019). This history is central for a writer’s self not in terms of a momentary act of identity construction, but as a process of ongoing social formation.…”

The Impact of Intertextuality in Movies on Language Learning

“…However, if the fire alarm rings frequently, then people may become desensitized to it. The initial ring is salient because it is unexpected, but with repeated exposure, it loses its salience (Karsten & Bertau, 2019).…”

Die Dynamik von Sinnlichem und Symbolischem in der Sprache

“…Die Arbeiten von Karsten (2014aKarsten ( , 2014b erforschen den Schreibprozess in dialogischer Perspektive über die Methode der Video-Konfrontation, bei der eine gefilmte Schreibtätigkeit in einem zweiten Moment mit dem Subjekt der Tätigkeit besprochen wird, sodass es im (ebenfalls aufgenommenen) Dialog zu einer spezifischen Refraktion der ersten Tätigkeit kommt. In Karsten und Bertau (2019) haben wir dieses Material im Hinblick auf verschiedene Objektivierungsgrade beim Schreiben untersucht, die sich in unterschiedlichen Materialitäten mit jeweiliger Adressierungsqualität und sprachlicher Form zeigen: Von Momenten des einhaltenden Nicht-Schreibens, die verbunden sind mit spezifischen Körperhaltungen, zu Notizen auf kleinen Zetteln, einer skizzierten Grafik auf einem Schreibblock und schließlich Schreibversuchen am Computer zeigen sich sprachliche Formen, die über Zeig-und Symbolfeld wandern und dabei Verkürztes entfalten und es dem monologischen elaborierten Genre des wissenschaftlichen Aufsatzes anpassen. Die Adressierungsqualität wird dabei ebenso genrespezifisch gestaltet, unter Annahme einer bestimmten Bewusstseinsgerichtetheit der adressierten Community.…”