Revisiting Situational Focus

The Toronto Semiotic Circle Bulletin Volume 2, Number 1, 1994 (ISSN-1197-1231) "Commonplaces and Situation: The 'Subjective' Nature of Discourse Revisited" by Paul Perron, Jan Gordon and Marcel Danesi

How does SF [situational focusing] work? In a certain sense, SF is a deictic process, for the reason that it involves abstract thinking that refers to spatial location.

My gloss:

Why do they privilege visual mode? Perhaps they have opted for focus vs attention.

It may very well be that abstract thinking arises from attention to temporal factors (e.g. before and after) and thus is more relational than spatial.

More from the article:

The experientialist approach sees abstract meaning structures as end-products rather than points-of-departure. [...] The progression from sensory to conceptual thought that an experienntialist approach to meaning would posit makes it clear that there is a link between ego-states, perception and conception.

My marginal inscription:

Yes but not a depth method. [and at the bottom of the page] end products vs points of departure. abstraction is here pitted against physical embodiment of emotion & sensation. but emotion belongs with abstraction not sensation. because both emotion & abst. [flip to bottom of next page] depend upon memory and its testing in predicative situations. Emotion is a configuration.

And so for day 567
02.07.2008