[Xmca-l] Re: The Ideal and Nicaraguan Sign Language

[Andy Blunden]

I think I need to rest and let Mike explain what the issue is with 
Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Does it prove Vygotsky was mistaken? If so how?
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


Carol Macdonald wrote:
> Andy
>
> I am also confused.  Sign language is a dinkum language.  It has all 
> the features of a human language, and can, because it is based in time 
> and space, express even more in the verb than spoken language does.
>
> If a child has no access to the local sign language, then their 
> gestural expression will still have  symbolic meaning for their caretaker.
>
> Of course I may have missed the point.
> Carol
>
> On 14 October 2014 05:18, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com 
> <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     It hardly seems that Vygotsky could have meant what Mike is taking
>     him to
>     mean or else we would have the logical impossibility (if we accept
>     evolution as I assume V did) that the ideal form has always
>     already been
>     "there" all the way back to the first instance of human existence.
>     "In the
>     beginning was the word (and it contained all later ideal forms)"? That
>     seems improbable that someone concerned with "development" like
>     Vygotsky
>     would have thought that way. For Vygotsky does development only
>     happen in
>     ontogeny but never in phylogeny?
>
>     Andy, I'm wondering why you would call this a "once-in-human-history
>     event"? Seems like this event captures perhaps the WHOLE of human
>     history,
>     no? From iconicity and indexicality to the symbolic function? But the
>     symbolic function only develops as a coordinated project between
>     people
>     large numbers of people who develop conventional but arbitrary
>     relations
>     between signs and things.
>
>     I assume I'm missing something glaring here.
>
>     Very confused.
>     -greg
>
>     On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 6:46 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>     <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
>     > Mike has drawn our attention to the Nicaraguan Sign Language
>     > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language
>     > as a counter-example to Vygostsky's claim:
>     >
>     >    "that if no appropriate ideal form can be found in the
>     environment,
>     >    and the development of the child, for whatever reasons, has
>     to take
>     >    place outside these specific conditions (described earlier), i.e.
>     >    without any interaction with the final form, then this proper
>     form
>     >    will fail to develop properly in the child."
>     >
>     > In my opinion, this once-in-human-history event does not
>     invalidate the
>     > principle Vygotsky was elaborating. Just like every attempt to
>     say what
>     > distinguishes the human being from the animal seems to be
>     faulted by the
>     > latest clip from YouTube, all such absolute claims are almost
>     bound to fail
>     > at some point. But the principle, illustrated by the fact that
>     children
>     > growing up in Russia speak Russian and understand the meaning of
>     > perezhivanie whereas we don't, etc., is hardly faulted by NSL.
>     >
>     > The other thing that Mike suggests is that the principle of the
>     ideal
>     > being present in the environment carries with it the negation of
>     the idea
>     > of the social formation itself being subject to continuous
>     change. Again, I
>     > think Vygotsky just takes this as outside the concerns of
>     Psychology. His
>     > essay on Socialist Man http://www.marxists.org/
>     > archive/vygotsky/works/1930/socialism.htm shows that in fact he
>     saw the
>     > psychology of people as primarily determined by the social
>     formation of
>     > which they were a part and he saw that social formation as
>     evolving. He was
>     > of course a modern, albeit I suspect a modern with a
>     considerable capacity
>     > for irony.
>     >
>     > Now, this raises the difficult question of what Vygotsky may
>     have meant by
>     > "ideal." Or, what he thought is a mystery, but what should *we*
>     understand
>     > by ideality? It is well known that Vygotsky was surrounded by a
>     number of
>     > fellows who were aficionados of Hegelianism, even if Vygotsky
>     himself had
>     > never studied Hegel, so it is fair to suggest that the Hegelian
>     concept of
>     > the Ideal is relevant in this context, of reconciling "ideal" as
>     the norm
>     > in a given social formation and "ideal" as the notion of infinite,
>     > historical perfectability. For Hegel, "ideality" expresses both
>     these
>     > principles; that is, that any relation contains within it a
>     "gap" which
>     > makes it open to perfectability, and that "gap" is ever present,
>     and its
>     > existence expresses what Hegel calls The Idea, that is to say, the
>     > ever-unfolding spirit of human freedom. Etc. It only requires
>     that the Idea
>     > is present for any relation to be mutable. This is deep and
>     challenging
>     > philosophical stuff which we don't really need, if we can just
>     accept that
>     > "the ideal" does not mean something fixed and final, just an
>     evolving norm:
>     > ever-shifting goal posts.
>     >
>     > Andy
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > --
>     >
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     > *Andy Blunden*
>     > http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
>     <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>     >
>     >
>
>
>     --
>     Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>     Assistant Professor
>     Department of Anthropology
>     882 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>     Brigham Young University
>     Provo, UT 84602
>     http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Carol A  Macdonald Ph D (Edin)
> Developmental psycholinguist
> Academic, Researcher,  and Editor 
> Honorary Research Fellow: Department of Linguistics, Unisa
>
>  
>
>