[Xmca-l] Re: meaning and sense

[Andy Blunden]

As you suggest, Greg, we know from elsewhere that Vygotsky is acutely 
aware of the cultural and historical variation of word meanings, as well 
as polysemy. But that is *not the topic of this paragraph* (in the last 
chapter of T&S). He is making a point about psychology, about thinking 
and speech. The statement "Isolated in the lexicon, the word has only 
one meaning," is of course only a relative truth. But actually I have 
never accept that the so-called meaning of a word found in a dictionary 
is what Vygotsky is concerned with when he makes "word meaning" a unit 
of analysis for the intellect. I have always taken "meaning"as a gerund.

The word "dog" has one meaning in the dictionary (OK, of course it has 
dozens, but let's restrict it to the four-legged canine for the purposes 
of making a completely different point). But when spoken, i.e., in the 
context of speech, saying it to another person for some reason, the word 
acquires in the mind of the speaker a whole plethora of "psychological 
facts," which have nothing to do with the definition of "dog." What they 
might be depends on the situation of course: danger, friend, help, 
teeth, loud, close ... It is around this same point in T&S that he talks 
about thinking being "predicative" and the psychological subject or 
object not being the same as the grammatical subject or object. He is 
talking about the transition back and forth between the linear flow of 
words in speech and the complex dynamics of thinking. Here I think 
"sense" has to be understood quite differently than it is taken in 
linguistics.

Andy

Greg Thompson wrote:
> Andy,
> I'm not convinced that this gets to the cultural-historical 
> transformation of meanings. Seems like he is saying that a word can 
> have different meanings in different contexts.
>
> He says "Isolated in the lexicon, the word has only one meaning." That 
> seems to suggest a culturally historically synchronic view.
>
> But that is not to say that Vygotsky doesn't have a strong 
> appreciation for the transformation of meanings across time (it would 
> be weird if he didn't). Just that I'm not seeing it here in this example.
> -greg
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 12:24 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net 
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>     I was just looking into this business about Vygotsky imputing
>     excessive stablility to word meaning. The following key passage
>     from Chapter 7 of "Thinking and Speech" does not, it appers to me,
>     to imply such stability:
>
>        "First, in inner speech, we find a predominance of the word’s sense
>        over its meaning. Paulhan significantly advanced the psychological
>        analysis of speech by introducing the distinction between a word’s
>        sense and meaning. A word’s sense is the aggregate of all the
>        psychological facts that arise in our consciousness as a result of
>        the word. Sense is a dynamic, fluid, and complex formation
>     which has
>        several zones that vary in their stability. Meaning is only one of
>        these zones of the sense that the word acquires in the context of
>        speech. It is the most stable, unified, and precise of these zones.
>        In different contexts, a word’s sense changes. In contrast, meaning
>        is a comparatively fixed and stable point, one that remains
>     constant
>        with all the changes of the word’s sense that are associated with
>        its use in various contexts. Change in the word’s sense is a basic
>        factor in the semantic analysis of speech. The actual meaning
>     of the
>        word is inconstant. In one operation, the word emerges with one
>        meaning; in another, another is acquired. The dynamic nature of
>        meaning leads us to Paulhan’s problem, to the problem of the
>        relationship between meaning and sense. Isolated in the
>     lexicon, the
>        word has only one meaning. However, this meaning is nothing more
>        than a potential that can only be realized in living speech, and in
>        living speech meaning is only a cornerstone in the edifice of
>     sense."
>
>     As I read this, the stability of meaning is merely relative to
>     that of sense, i.e., in the context of speech, rather than "teh
>     aggregate of all psychological facts." He is not at all denying
>     the fact of polysemy or the cultural and historical migration of
>     meaning.
>
>     Andy
>     mike cole wrote:
>
>         I agree, very clearly statements of the sense/meaning
>         relation, along with
>         the Mandelshtam line, " I forgot the thought I wanted to say,
>         and thought,
>         unembodied, returned to the hall of shadows."
>
>         In the quote here, I think LSV is somewhat overstating the
>         stability of
>         meaning across contexts; yes relative to the microgenetic
>         processes of
>         sense making capturable with
>         modern technologies, but not totally "context independent."
>         Even dictionary
>         meanings change, as LSV was well aware from his interest in
>         the history of
>         words in relation to their appearance in children's
>         vocabularies in
>         ontogeny.
>
>         Keeping the simultaneous relevance of several time scales in
>         mind in these
>         discussions seems really important, as hard as it is to do.
>         mike
>
>
>          
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Visiting Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden