[Xmca-l] Re: sense, meaning and inner aspect of word

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Respectfully Andy, I disagree with this.This being:

"I do not agree that 'the distinction between private "sense" and social sense. ... is really the key to the problem'."

 I think there is a distinct line between the private and the social in terms of thought and reflection, if I am understanding you properly. There are commonalities and aspects that are shared or copied.

An artist's or writer's interaction with one's medium is a private affair and pursed in isolation, so it is social in the sense that one is social with oneself, using the medium to reflect that relationship with self, as well as it generates from the experience of sharing in a social context with caregivers and teachers. 

Still this private "sense" is entirely different from the "sense" when working in a wider circle of others: the manner that concepts manifest and take form have a different process and flow because one isn't required to turn the thoughts into speech when one is alone and this is a requirement when one is with another person, since we are not yet beings who are reliably telepathic! :)

I sometimes believe that I suffer from not being able to articulate myself as well because my experience is one that has involved great stretches of isolation, so my way of thinking is not so dependent upon social conventions but it is more affective or complex-based as David has pointed out. I don't think that that is a lessor form of thinking pattern, just different. It would be like privileging my liver over my heart. I need both organs but for different reasons. Of course, I do not see these processes like organs at all, because they are developed through social experience (even if that is a social experience of self alone) and not through genetic instruction (as in DNA).

Furthermore, from my experience in a university setting and in an art school I can say fairly emphatically that there are different processes that come to different places from different places, or different places that end up in the same place. This experience may explain the wide array of diversity in thinking, because working in shape and color and symbols and tools as a means to communicate possesses a different quality than when employing speech and the written word. 

I am not saying that private speech is has no social component, but they operate differently because one doesn't have to make sense in the same way that one does when speaking to another or speaking to many others. One can look to the telegraphic writing of Virginia Woolf to see this in action. I believe that this is present in Vygotsky's notes to himself as well. 

What I appreciate so much about David's posts is that he recognizes this reality quite clearly and does not take t for granted. Likely because of all the different language playgrounds that he plays in. :)

Kind regards,

Annalisa