[Xmca-l] Re: Thought and language as oscillating and pulsing [or not]

[Larry Purss]

I have imaginally been walking with Zinchenko who is telling me about his
chats with Schpet and Vygotsky.
Zinchenko is engaged in rehabilitating the centrality of the meaning
of "meaning" to processes of phenomenological historical understanding, and
interpretation.  His conversation is in the form  of a rejoinder [or
joining back] with Vygotsky and Schpet with who he wants to bring out their
mutually shared thesis on the relation of thought and word.
Zinchenko uses metaphors to poetically embody his attempt to have
"meanings" more modest place with Vygotsky take on a more prominent and
central quality.

Zinchenko wrote:
"A good image for the mutual relationships of meaning and sense is a Mobius
strip.  In the process of understanding or thinking, we encounter
oppositely encountered *acts of making sense of meanings and sense giving
meaningful signs to senses *[authors emphasis], which are transformed into
each other. In Russian, 'meaning' ['znachenie'] and 'sign' ['znak'] have a
common root and, hence, the untranslated italicized phrase sounds like a
Russian pun. On the outer side of the strip may be meaning, which is
transformed into sense as a result of the act of making sense, and this
*becomes* the internal side of the *same* strip. Assigning a meaningful
sign to sense  makes an *analogous *transformation. Anyway, it was  highly
productive for Vygotsky to change the *focus* from *'meaning*' to sense.  *Such
a change *brings his views closer to those of Shpet. [page 228]

I will pause here but want to point out how the metaphor of the Mobius
strip has a similar quality to the hermeneutical movement of "fusions of
horizons"

Larry

On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 7:51 AM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you, Martin!
> Henry
>
> > On Jan 24, 2015, at 1:49 PM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
> wrote:
> >
> > This is the information I have, Henry.
> >
> > Freiberger-Sheikholeslami, E. (1984). Gustav G. Shpet: Hermeneutical
> logic and philosophical semiotics. In J. Deely (Ed.), Semiotics 1984 (pp.
> 381-391). Bloomington: Semiotic Society of America.
> >
> >
> > Martin
> >
> > On Jan 24, 2015, at 2:37 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Martin,
> >> Thank you very muchfor the article on Sheet. I think the readings and
> dialog generated will help me understand much better Vygotsky and his
> context by getting a better grip on the long view, through the eyes of
> hermeneutics. Do you know when the Freiberger-Sheeikholes article was
> written?
> >> Henry
> >>
> >>> On Jan 24, 2015, at 10:26 AM, Martin John Packer <
> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I am sure that there are differences between LSV and Shpet, as Larry
> points out. But there are also striking similarities. Here is a little
> background:
> >>>
> >>> Martin
> >>>
> >>> <Freiberger-Sheikholeslami 1985 Gustav G. Shpet He.pdf>
> >>> On Jan 24, 2015, at 11:39 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Martin will be sending us an article on Shpet.
> >>>> I therefore did some background exploration and discovered that Shpet
> and
> >>>> Vygotsky differed on the notion of "oscillation".
> >>>> Vygotsky believed thought and language oscillated while Shpet
> disagreed.
> >>>>
> >>>> Zinchenko clarifies Vygotsky's understanding in this paragraph
> >>>> that Zinchenko wrote in his chapter "Thought and Word, the Approaches
> of L.
> >>>> S. Vygotsky and G. G. Shpet": It uses the metaphor of rain [which I
> >>>> associated with the other thread on rain]
> >>>>
> >>>> "Thought and word are no less polyphonic than mind.  Yet, there is a
> >>>> long way to go to arrive at this conclusion.  And it is hard to
> >>>> overestimate the input of Shpet and Vygotsky, along with Aleksandr
> Potebnya.
> >>>> Out of all the polyphony of mind and thought, out of all the various
> >>>> possibilities of origins, Shpet and Vygotsky   gave their preference
> to the
> >>>> word, although they understood it differently.  Let us start from
> >>>> Vygotsky's metaphorical description: *What is simultaneous in thought
> is
> >>>> successive in language.*  It would be possible to compare a thought
> with a
> >>>> cloud that showers a rain of words.  This is why the transition from
> >>>> thought to language is a very complicated process of *dismemberment*
> of a
> >>>> thought and its recreation in a word.  On the next page, Vygotsky
> wrote,
> >>>> 'continuing this picturesque comparison, we should liken the
> motivation of
> >>>> thought to the wind that sets the clouds in motion.'  If something
> can *pour
> >>>> itself, *it means that it already exists.  Therefore we can
> understand the
> >>>> given metaphor as saying that thought, already existing is *expressed
> *in a
> >>>> word"  [emphasis in the original]
> >>>>
> >>>> This quote draws attention to Vygotsky perceiving *oscillation
> *behind the
> >>>> movement of thought and language. Shpet did not see thought and
> language as
> >>>> oscillating.  Zinchenko's goal in his article is not to place the
> >>>> approaches of Shpet and Vygotsky in opposition but to present them as
> >>>> mutually complimentary approaches.
> >>>>
> >>>> I hope to learn from others on the complexity of the notions of
> >>>> oscillating movement of thought and language situated within words.
> >>>> Polyphonic notions
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
>