Help me understand this sentence, please!

[Kat Stanblazer]

The organization ... of social responses makes it possible for the individual to call out in himself not simply a single response of the other but the response, so to speak, of the community as a whole....

 

[Rover_KE]

It might help if you quoted the whole sentence, Kat, and tell us where you found it.

 

[Kat Stanblazer]

This is the whole para:

The organization ... of social responses makes it possible for the individual to call out in himself not simply a single response of the other but the response, so to speak, of the community as a whole.... As scientists, we will say, one's community consists of all his colleagues, but this community includes anyone who can understand what is said. The same is true of literature. The size of its audience is a functional one; if the achievement of organization is obtained, it may be of any size. Bigness may in this sense be an indication of qualitative achievement (pp. 267-68).


I found this on the scholarly article of Lenox Grey on Arts as a media of communication... I cannot understand what is he trying to say by this

 

[Rover_KE]

Thank you.

I fear it's too 'scholarly' for me.

I must be thick.:-(

Rover

 

[5jj]

I am afraid it doesn't mean much to me, either.

 

[emsr2d2]

Too clever for me by half! I can't imagine why a scholarly article would include "The organisation ... of social responses" - I want to know what the words replaced by the ellipsis are.

This part, in particular, is either over my head or a load of old tosh: "... makes it possible for the individual to call out in himself not simply a single response of the other but the response, so to speak, of the community as a whole".

 

[5jj]

This part, in particular, is either over my head or a load of old tosh: "... makes it possible for the individual to call out in himself not simply a single response of the other but the response, so to speak, of the community as a whole".

The latter, I think.

Scrub that - The latter, I am sure.

 

[emsr2d2]

I'm glad to find another graduate of toshology in the ranks.

 

[5jj]

So, Kat, you have had three native speakers, all of them experienced teachers, who cannot understand this tosh, so don't worry about your inability to understand it.

Until I left England, I was a regular reader of Private Eye. Its Pseuds Corner regularly mocked such tosh.

 

[Kat Stanblazer]

It's ok.. Thanks for sparing time for me :up: