Re: [xmca] ??????????, or, Vygotsky's Jabberwocky

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Thanks, everybody (especially Rod). I hope that Professor Kotik-Friedgut is not too annoyed with the question; it seems like a reasonable one to me.
 
"Interiorization" has been proposed before (by James Lantolf), and Guk and Kellogg (2007) rejected it because it suggested interior decoration, architecture, and ultimately constructivism. Upon reflection, it seems inadequate to me for three additional, linguistic, reasons:
 
a) First of all, "interiorization" is a real word. When we translate a poem like "Jabberwocky" into French or German, we need to use made-up words. For example, the French translater of "slithy" is the word "lubricilleux", which is not a real French word. My copy of Derrida's "Ecriture et difference" is in English, and the title is mistranslated as "Writing and Difference". The problem is that "difference" is a made up word in French. For example "Intravolution" for example, is not a word in English, but "interiorization" is. 
 
b) In English, "interiorization" is "to make a concept part of your inner nature". This does not imply any restructuring, on either side. But for Vygotsky, the key point here is transformation, restructuring, both the concept and the interior must be entirely rebuilt in order for "вращивания" to occur. That is why Mr. Bae emphasizes the connotation of "revolution" and it seems to me that he is correct, so long as we remember the roots of the English word "revolution", namely "turning around", "a turning point", a churning, turning, not necessarily burning within. 
 
c) Not only does the word "interiorization" exist in English, but there is also the word "exteriorization", which means the same thing as "reification" or even "fetishism". Now, it seems to me that we DO need some kind of counterpart to вращивания, because of course, as Vygotsky points out, there are many mental functions which remain extramental throughout all our lives. For example, when Mr. Yu borrows a book from me and does not read it but only looks up information when I ask questions, we cannot say he has "interiorized" the concepts of the book, but we cannot say he has "exteriorized" them either. In any case, "reification", or fetishism, is not the opposite of вращивания.
 
So it seems to me that Rod's solution is the correct one, because it contains the root "-volution" rather than "-terior" or "-culturation". The metaphor we want is not the mind as a room, or as a plant, but as a polis, a kind of city-state. In fact, it seems to me that the mind-as-community is a not so much a metaphor as a microcosm.  

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Wed, 9/29/10, Katarina Rodina <katja@student.uv.uio.no> wrote:


From: Katarina Rodina <katja@student.uv.uio.no>
Subject: Re: [xmca] ??????????, or, Vygotsky's Jabberwocky
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Wednesday, September 29, 2010, 9:07 AM


"Vraschivanie v kulturu" would indeed be well translated as "growing into
culture" or "Enculturation"


On Wed, September 29, 2010 16:50, Bella Kotik-Friedgut wrote:
> INTERIORIZATION!!!
>
> On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Rod Parker-Rees <
> R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> How about 'intravolution'?
>>
>> Rod
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
>> On
>> Behalf Of David Kellogg
>> Sent: 29 September 2010 00:53
>> To: xmca
>> Subject: [xmca] ??????????, or, Vygotsky's Jabberwocky
>>
>> We are wondering a little bit about how to translate made-up words, like
>> Vygotsky's "??????????" (in section 3 of Chapter 4 of Thinking and
>> Speech.
>>
>> ?? ???? ??????? ????????? ????????? ??????, ??????? ?? ??????? ????????
>> ??????? ????????????, ?????? ??? ??? ??????????????? ?????? ????? ???,
>> ???
>> ??????? ???????? ?????? ??????, ?????????? ?????????? ????????? ? ?
>> ????? ?
>> ???? ???????????? ???????? ?????????. ??? - ???? ? ??? ??? ?????
>> ??????????
>> ? ???????? ???????, ??? - ??? ?????????? ??????????? ???????
>> ????????????
>> ??????????? ????????????? ? ???? ?????????? ??????.
>>
>>
>> The English translations, as usual, seem way off: "ingrowing" sounds
>> more
>> like something unpleasant that happens with toenails, and "rooting" is
>> too
>> placid and botanical--and besides, "rooting" is NOT the THIRD stage of
>> plant
>> growth.
>>
>> Besides, they are real English words, and "??????????" is a portmanteau
>> word, like "brillig" and "slithy" and "mimsy" in Carroll's poem of
>> made-up
>> words, "Jabberwocky".
>>
>> Last Sunday, Mr. Bae (who is a lurker and occasional contributor here)
>> pointed out that "smysl" and "znachenie" are really related to the
>> "money"
>> metaphor for word meanings: "smysl" is something like "use value" and
>> and
>> "znachenie" is something like "exchange value".
>>
>> Yes, it is PARTLY a matter of "microgenetic" value versus "sociogenetic"
>> value, except that of course microgenetic meaning is really much older.
>> All
>> meaning making is, in the final analysis, concrete, and that means that
>> it
>> is in the final analysis LOCAL.
>>
>>
>> I think there's a similar problem here.  "??????????" has the idea of
>> "revolution", of "seizure of power" ("prise de conscience") but it also
>> has
>> the idea of turning a relation between people into a relation between
>> mental
>> functions, of transforming an external, imperialist war into an
>> internal, civil, one; as the Weathermen used to say during the Vietnam
>> era,
>> "bringing the war home".
>>
>> The problem is that "??????????" is not an accepted Russian word. It's
>> some
>> kind of portmanteau word, right? It's a microgenetic "sense" rather than
>> some kind of sociocultural "meaning". How to get the USE value that
>> Vygotsky
>> intends?
>>
>> Perhaps "??????????" is "interiorevolution"?
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of Education
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Sincerely yours Bella Kotik-Friedgut
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-- 
Katarina A. Rodina
Research Fellow (PhD)/Logoped,MNLL
Department of Special Needs Education,
University of Oslo, P.O.Box 1140 Blindern,
NO-0318 Oslo, Norway
Phone: +47 41 108 408/Fax:  +47 22 85 80 21
E-mail: katarina.rodina@isp.uio.no
http://staffdirectory.uv.uio.no/singleview/v1/index.php?user=katja
http://katarinarodina.blogspot.com/

Head of Russo-Norwegian Academic Relations,
The Vygotsky Institute of Psychology/RSUH



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