Gerontology and the Construction of Old Age by Bryan Green

Author:Bryan Green [Green, Bryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medical, Geriatrics, Social Science, Gerontology, Social Work, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780202362557
Google: JC_LnQEACAAJ
Publisher: Aldine Transaction
Published: 2009-01-15T04:36:44+00:00

Specification of the Subject-Matter

The work of specification is to grasp and pin down the subject matter of a field in stable grids of utterance. It is thus continuous (as pointed out in Chapter 1) with one meaning of articulation: to give utterance. Specification, however, plays a distinctive role in the organization of a field that warrants separate consideration. The role is to give objective reference to the legisigns of a field, the master categories through which an entire subject matter is collected and relayed. In gerontology, these categories being aging and the aged.

To appreciate the work we need to recall that in everyday usage the terms aging and the aged have open, shifting applications whose definiteness depends on who is using them, how, when and where. In other words, their meaning is indexical to circumstantial actions. To make them the governing categories of a field demands, then, special care. Used ordinarily they might import into gerontology the “intellectual chaos” discerned by Homans (1961:1) in everyday generalizations about social behavior, a chaos arising from their merely ad hoc grasp of reality and the fact that “nobody tries to put them together” (p. 2). Sacks (1989:366) remarks that Homans’ complaint, a standard way of opening a social science text, is not against chaos but against ad hoc rationality and what might be called the “atopical” organization of knowledge (p. 372). This is knowledge lodged in maxims, proverbs, and the like, whose validity is immediately recognized in local acts and contexts of application. It is different, therefore, from knowledge lodged in propositional statements, the validity of which depends on empirical and logical assessment. Assessment, that is, through methodically traversing topics stated and implied in statements about reality. The work of specification can be described then as one of abstracting atopical formations of knowledge from ordinary language and turning them into topical formations of a discipline.

Another way to describe the work of specification is through Ricoeur’s account of the difference between the subjective and objective meaning of discourse (Ricoeur, 1976:19-20). Objective meaning alludes to propositional content and the meaning encoded in sentence structure, while the subjective side is what the utterer does and intends. Specification works to standardize subjective meaning in a collective discipline lexicon and make referential meaning the entire meaning of utterances: “The reference expresses the full exteriorization of discourse to the extent that the meaning is not only the ideal object intended by the utterer, but the actual reality aimed at by the utterance” (Ricoeur, 1976:80).

Specification, in summary, fastens a subject matter to standard terminological grids, thus ensuring its repeated, shared availability to a knowledge community; and it fastens interpretation to the exterior side of language and referential interpretants of signs, thus making of language a plain channel of objective meaning. To further specify specification, it is helpful to introduce the distinction between conceptual and operational grids made in Chapter 1. Whereas the former break down master categories through theoretical models, classifications, and formal schemas, the latter take the measure of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.