Shona's Response to "Thinking At the Edge"

[Anonymous]

#714

This article seems to bring a theoretical framework for understanding the cognitive innovation in meaning making which emanates from felt sense. I really enjoy Gendlin’s non-formal compositional style. Is this because of the translation from German to English? It feels warm and welcoming to read his ideas of a profound magnitude, by their sheer organismal simplicity, in a pattern and sentence structure that feels organic or “human”.

Gendlin’s mention of the foundation of language being corporeally based incites my imagination in thinking about how the living biological system generates knowledge and awareness, “Language is deeply rooted in the way we physically exist in our situations” (4). Rather than inert flesh, the human body, as the receptacle and producer of thinking molecules enacts language in each of us. This is an important concept in correlating the relationship between bodily felt sense and the production and employment of innovative language expression.

Gendlin’s Thinking At the Edge as a mechanism for understanding that which needs or wants to be said but for which there seem to be no words, “something that cannot yet be said” seems a powerful channel through which one could access their intellectual and cognitive stance. Still, I wonder, as I mentioned in one of our earlier class meetings, how does facility for language influence, whether “positively” or “negatively”, the potential offered by felt sense or TAE? If an individual who has limited experience with expressing their cognitive process through language, in whatever modality or format, how much further can felt sense or TAE take that person? After one travels to the edge of what seems wordless in their thought process and is able to discover greater meaning or clarity of ideas, through what channel would one then be able to express this realm, if language capacity is limited?

I wonder if Sarah (pardon if I recalled improperly), who has experience teaching ESL in the U.S. might be able to share her experience with this particular quandary, since I am imagining English as Second Language students might represent this type of relationship to language in their journey to accessing meaningful expression?

I particularly enjoy Gendlin’s articulation of interrelatedness as a vehicle not only for understanding how the living human experiences as an existent in, with, through and around all other things, but in the way intellectual logic is formed. Concepts and theories may be formulated through the intermingling of terms, words, and ideas. This seems an effective way for tying the human body to the production of knowledge and ideas, by including theory construction within a comparable organic model, “new terms and their patterning can be given logical relations in a series of theoretical propositions…Expanding this can constitute a theory, and logically interlocked cluster of terms” (5). This sounds like a model for any number of organic systems which could be found in a living being. Here, theory becomes a living, moving, unfixed entity.

[Website Services Admin]

#715

Yes that was me! And how interesting to consider second-language acquisition in regards to TAE. My initial thoughts follow.

My first reaction to this question is that I think it would be difficult to get ESL students “thinking on the edge” if they were writing in English, unless their English was very polished. It seems like there would be a disconnect when translating thoughts from their original language right onto the page in English. Many of my students (many Cantonese and Mandarin speakers) would go through sentences slowly with me, taking their time making sure the grammar was correct while thinking about writing in much more technical terms than I do as a native speaker. If you didn’t have the language to express what your “body” was telling you (in English), I imagine it would be frustrating. Maybe it would be somewhat similar to writing a creative piece in a language that wasn’t native?

This struck me as particularly relevant:

“We find that when people forgo the usual big vague words and common phrases, then — from their bodily sense — quite fresh colorful new phrases come.”

The big vague words and common phrases are what you’re limited to when you’re learning. Would new phrases be able to come with the added difficulty of translation? If they come in your first language, writing or translating them to English would at least be time-consuming (with your level of English in consideration). I think it might be helpful to think about this in terms of second languages that we speak (fluently or not) as English speakers. Because I am by no means a fluent French speaker, using Sondra’s felt sense writing process to write something in French would be difficult for me because I end up with such a quick flow of ideas (that come faster than my ability would be to write them down in French). Even though my students were much better with English than I am with French, I imagine there is a similar baseline there that would make it tricky.

So to your question:

“If an individual who has limited experience with expressing their cognitive process through language, in whatever modality or format, how much further can felt sense or TAE take that person?”

I don’t know, but my guess is that it wouldn’t take them too much farther. I’m not teaching right now, but it would be very interesting to experiment with this.

This would be an interesting question for someone like Karyna- who is a fluent speaker now, obviously, but I wonder what she thinks it would have been like learning about felt sense/TAE when she was younger and was still learning English?

[Robert Greco]

#723

This is an extremely interesting question both of you Shona and Sarah are raising.
As an ESL student myself, and thank you for bringing me into your discussion, I have mixed feelings about it.

In my own theoretical thinking about language, I believe that speaking multiple languages creates a multi-layered conscious experience. Same concepts have different emotional and bodily senses in each language. For instance, with my multi-lingual friends I speak only in English when we discuss an emotionally sensitive topic. Having learned English mostly from textbooks and science, it is a language of logic for me, free of emotional turmoils. So speaking in English allows me to step back from my feelings when I need to and experience it in a more neutral way. This sense of English is primarily due to my being socialized into English through detached writings of mainstream psychology.

What does it mean for TAE? it can have dual implications: 1) it might, and it did for me as I was learning english, make an emerging learner feel handicapped, and thus be discouraging. You have a sense of what you would like to say, but no words are coming, and consequently you feel incapable and stupid. I would say that you are being trapped at the edge with no possibility of release. Not the most pleasant situation, and I was there my first few years in college, when i felt the answer but was unable to articulate it. 2) On the other hand, it can enhance the felt sense experience. Not having a word for an idea both figuratively and literally does allow one to prolong and deeper feel that felt sense moment. An ESL student would not be rushed to slam an already known word on it just to alleviate the discomfort.

The success of teaching TAE to ESL students, I feel, would depend on the patience of both teacher and students. But it can be a very rewarding experience. Consistent with Gendlin’s rejection of language as the master of us all, introducing TAE in ESL courses might give students a greater freedom of using language and creating the new meanings beyond those formally acquired through translation manuals or situational use. This might in fact give them more control over what type of English they learn and how they sense it.

In addition to this thinking into which you so generously invited me, I can’t help but add that I agree with Gendlin that teaching and learning TAE is a very political endeavor. He states that “People, especially intellectuals, believe that they cannot think! They are trained to say what fits into a pre-existing public discourse. They remain numb about what could arise from themselves in response to the literature and the world. People live through a great deal which cannot be said.” WE too often believe that we can’t break through, regardless of what language we speak. Language becomes the means of control. Genglin’s framework allows for some agency, while not denying social constructionism, it gives us an opportunity to stand out against its determinism. And at some level, learning a language is a great opportunity to experiment with this type of break through because a new language is like a blank page on which you can write new meanings.

[Sondra Perl]

#732

This has become a wonderful and thoughtful dialogue. Thanks to the three of you for such an interesting perspective on second language learning and what it would mean to wait for words to come if one doesn’t have a rich and full sense of the language (vocabulary). It brings to mind the notion of ‘mother tongue.’ What an evocative phrase to link language to the body. I would think that our deepest thinking comes from the language that surrounded us and inhabited us and our situations from birth — until, perhaps, we become fluent in a second or third language — but also, as you say, a classroom with ELL students would offer a fascinating way to study these ideas in action (perhaps both more anxiety and more willingness to wait….). But, basically, if I were to offer the Guidelines to ELL/ESL students, I think I’d encourage them to compose in their native language.

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