To Mead, "the gesture" and "significant symbol" are received as "the same" by
every one in a given community. According to
Mead (1934), a symbol "tend[s] to call out in the individual a group of
reactions such as it calls out in the other" (p.71). To Mead, language is a
"stimulus" rather than a medium of existence, and words and gestures, since
they are radically social, call out the same response in others as they do
the speaker.
By contrast, Bakhtin (1981, 1986) emphasized that all communication is a
dialogic encounter, that what was stable or "centripetal" about words is
always counterbalanced by what is "centrifugal", tending toward polyphony,
carnival, the unique. Bakhtin would be in almost direct opposition to
Mead's view that the "same" word would affect all members of a community the
same way. Indeed, for Bakhtin, the "same" word is never the "same" across
contexts, persons, genres, and activities.
In this connection, it is not the _individual speaker_ that is unique for
Bakhtin or for Wertsch et al., but the _utterance_. Every action has a
unique moment, in their view. The issue of individuals being unique is not
addressed directly through their work; rather each action is thought to
involve a "unique use" of cultural tools, a unique use that changes or alters
the history and therefore meaning of those cultural tools in the process.
Bill Penuel
_________________________
PreventionInventions
139 Holly Forest
Nashville, TN 37221
(615) 646-9682
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). _The dialogic imagination_. Austin: U of
Texas P.
---. (1986). _Speech genres and other late essays_. Austin:
U of Texas P.
Mead, G.H. (1934). _Mind, self, society_. Chicago: U of Chicago
Press.