RE: Corporate construing & language

Lindsay Oades ( (no email) )
23 May 1996 16:01:03 +1000

Hi Lois,
it seems you are pointing to the difficulties of private language or
"preverbal constructs". This I believe is a key aspect of PCP that social
constructionists dislike. This is where corporate construing becomes relevant.
For PCP private language is possible, for social constructionists it is not.
Our position on corporate construing is that while private language may be
possible as in personal construing, the use of corporate constructs is not
private- it requires a public sense. Unlike social constructionism however,
the claims surrounding corporate constructs do not preclude preverbal
construing or private language.

The origin of constructs; personal, corporate or social is most interesting.
Is Mike Mascolo out there? I can't answer for Peter, but I would also be
surprised if he believed constructs were innate. I am also not sure if I'm
making an unhealthy conflation of 'preverbal construing' and 'private
language'

In Devi's response recently he asserted
"certain stories exist independently of current human actors, and that
they strive for expression independently of the people who are telling
them: they create human agendas!"
This gives an entity status to the story which we are not prepared to give to
a corporation. The corporation has a perceived identity which is a production
of the action of using corporate constructs. Corporate constructs themselves
however are as real as personal constructs!

Articulating the notion of corporate constructs is difficult as you are
disagreed with by both ends of the personal-social dichotomy.

Where is Peter? Where is Mike?

Regards

Lindsay Oades
Wollongong

_______________________________________________________________________________
To: Peter Caputi
Cc: pcp@mailbase.ac.uk
From: pcp@mailbase.ac.uk on Thu, May 23, 1996 12:59 PM
Subject: RE: Corporate constructs
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Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 19:02:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lois Shawver <rathbone@crl.com>
To: Peter Caputi <p.caputi@uow.edu.au>
Cc: pcp@mailbase.ac.uk
Subject: RE: Corporate constructs
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Peter Caputi,

When you say, "The person makes more than finds knowledge", I presume
you are pointing to the way humans distort or shape the world with their
constructs. Right? I am certainly sympathetic with that way of
thinking, and this post in no way attempts to challenge it.

But you don't think of these constructs as something we inherit from
birth. Do you? I'm just surprised if you do. I had imagined you would
have thought that each person distilled a personal set of constructs from
the linguistic community that supplied a variety of possibilities.
Take a construct like "easy-going vs self-assertive" and an alternative
construct of "easy-going vs mean". Would a person be able to develop
either of these constructs in a society that didn't contain the terms
'easy-going", "self-assertive", or "mean"?

..Lois Shawver

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