Searching For A Way To Identify the Artifacts of Culture

The meaning and definition of culture appears to be a very large, abstract and often fluid subject as I have discovered. I have been doing some reading to help me get very specific about talking about cultural artifacts because I want to be able to identify these components on the web when I find them. In an effort to make this search more quantifiable, first I present a useful article here that I then critiqued in the post that follows this one.

Abstract: "Mediating Role of Discoursing in Activity" by Gordon Wells

Over history, the cumulative development and products of culture have been built upon discourse. In an effort to understand what has contributed to the building of cultures, G. Wells considers the relationship between discourse, actions and the results of interactions. Defining discourse as “the use of language in interactions” the premise is to examine discourse in order to investigate how language contributes to interactions. First the author considers two essential concepts: Activity Theory and Vygotsky’s Principle of Mediation. Activity Theory argues that artifacts of various kinds have always mediated all human activity. The Principle of Mediation established the idea of mediation and defined it in two ways - by tools or signs. The author assimilates these concepts and proposes that the function of discourse is to mediate the goals of different kinds of social interactions. Wells’ theory of the "Mediating Role of Discoursing in Activity" is explained as “a transaction between two human participants with respect to the object of their action". He sees discourse as a method for mediating actions within a language framework. What Wells has labeled “Discursive Mediations” consist of transactions that use the artifact as an object of an exchange. To best illustrate this concept, the written word is the proper example of the “object of an action” that has served as a mediated artifact for as long as the text has been part of human history. Wells further distinguishes two kinds of discourse that mediate activity as well. Ancillary discourse “facilitates material action such as building a house, playing a team game or navigating a ship into harbor”(Wells, p.164). Constitutive discourse facilitates and co-constructs ideas about which participants share and compare their beliefs, evaluations, and intentions to better understand and possibly improve them or to consider courses of action..."(Wells, p.164). As a result, discourse is best described as a framework structured by genres – which are staged, goal-oriented social processes that constitute the nature of actions in the context of interactions. Overall, discoursing that mediates joint action of any kind is structured by these discourse “genres”. Finally Wells contends that it is these genres constitute “cultural artifacts” that form the building blocks to understanding the components of culture.

Wells,G., (2007). Mediating Role of Discoursing in Activity. Mind, Culture and Activity, 14(3), 160-177.

Please now review my critique in the following post.