Personally, David, I think Vygotsky was mistaken in making this
dichotomous division between tools and signs. If instead, we take
tool and sign to be archetypes of artefact, and understand that all
artefacts are directed both towards mastery of the self and mastery
of the culture, just two properties of any artefact, manifested when
an artefact is mediated between a person and the existant culture,
then I think it makes more sense.
Andy
David Kellogg wrote:
In "Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child" that sign
development is not at all the same as tool development because in
the latter instance the object of mastery is the environment and in
the former it is the self. I think that ontogenesis is only a
special case of a much larger regularity: In tool development, the
form of the tool follows the function of the tool quite closely.
This is to a MUCH lesser extent true in the development of signs.
In some ways, it's just the opposite: for example, functional words
(articles, prepositions, modal verbs) change much more slowly than
those associated with style (e.g. slang expressions, politeness
forms)
There's a very interesting article on the evolution of Polynesian
by Deborah S. Rogers and Paul R. Ehrlich (yes, the Population Bomb
fellow) in an old PNAS which uses a comparison of rates of change
in functional modifications and stylistic modifications in
Polynesian canoes. Rogers and Ehrlich argue that words that are
related to to the "environment" change very slowly, while functors
change much more quickly.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+html
Doesn't this ENTIRELY depend on whether we are talking about a
material or a social environment?
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
In "Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child" that sign
development is not at all the same as tool development because in
the latter instance the object of mastery is the environment and in
the former it is the self. I think that ontogenesis is only a
special case of a much larger regularity: In tool development, the
form of the tool follows the function of the tool quite closely.
This is to a MUCH lesser extent true in the development of signs.
In some ways, it's just the opposite: for example, functional words
(articles, prepositions, modal verbs) change much more slowly than
those associated with style (e.g. slang expressions, politeness
forms)
There's a very interesting article on the evolution of Polynesian
by Deborah S. Rogers and Paul R. Ehrlich (yes, the Population Bomb
fellow) in an old PNAS which uses a comparison of rates of change
in functional modifications and stylistic modifications in
Polynesian canoes. Rogers and Ehrlich argue that words that are
related to to the "environment" change very slowly, while functors
change much more quickly.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+html
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.full.pdf+html
Doesn't this ENTIRELY depend on whether we are talking about a
material or a social environment?
David Kellogg Seoul National University of Education
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--
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*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/
title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org
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