Hi Nate and everybody--
I hate this translation game but for some reason, I'm not sure that English
words "meaning" and "sense" are the same as Russian "znachenie" and "smysl."
"Znachenie" like the word "znak" ("sign") refers to the process of
conventional signification. "Smysl" has the same root as "mysl'"
("thought"), it refers to intention and thinking combined in one. You can
find "znachenie" of words in dictionaries, why "smysl'" of words in people's
actions. For example, in the phrase "I love you... especially with bread"
taken from a Russian joke, makes the "smysl" of the word "love" opposite to
its "znachenie" by invoking comparison with eaters' loving their food (e.g.,
like a cannibal loves its victim-food). However, the more you understand my
use of the word of "love" the more it gets a new "znachenie."
I really like Leigh*'s map metaphor: "znachenie" (i.e., conventional sings)
is a boundary object that coordinates individuals' "smysl's" (i.e.,
individual's thought-intentions). It is important to mention that
individuals' "smysl's" also involve conventional signs (e.g., words in
private speech) but their use can be non-conventional, personal, particular,
unique, and contextual. Similarly, "znachenie" also involves
thought-intentions but these thought-intentions are impersonal,
decontextualized, general, and abstract. Vygotsky was very much concerned
about this decontextualization -- he believed that liberation from immediacy
of the context is a very progressive and developmental process. This is my
$0.20 about Vygotsky's use of these terms.
Does it make sense? What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nate [mailto:schmolze@students.wisc.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 5:41 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: RE: sense/meaning
>
>
> Peter,
>
> Kozulin from Vygotsky in Context in T&L states the following which seems
> pertinent.
>
> pp xxxvii
>
> "Vygotsky returned to the problem of inner speech in connection with the
> study of generalization vs contextualization of word meaning. He made a
> distiction between word meaning (znachenie), which reflects a generalized
> concept, and word sense (smysl), which depends on the context of
> speech. The
> sense of a word is the sum of all the psychological events arroused in a
> person's consciousness by the word. It is a dynamic, complex,
> fluid whole,
> which has several zones of unequal stability. Meaning is only one of the
> zones of sense, the most stable and presise zone. A word acquires
> its sense
> from the context in which it appears; in different contexts, it
> changes its
> sense"
>
> "According to Vygotsky, the predominance of sense over meaning,
> of sentence
> over word, and of context over sentence are rules of inner speech. While
> meaning stands for socialized discourse, sense represents an interface
> between one's individual (and thus incommunicable) thinking and verbal
> thought comprehesible to others. Inner speech is not an internal
> aspect of
> talking; it is a function in itself. It remains however, a form
> of speech,
> that is, thought connected with words. But, while in external
> speech thought
> is embodied in words, in inner speech words must sublinate in
> order to bring
> forth a thought."
>
> I guess I would see the designative and expressive as getting close to the
> differentiation of meaning and sense as used by Vygotsky. Kozulin later
> differentiates sense / meaning via Vygotsky as,
>
> "Inner speech becomes the psychological interface between, on the
> one hand,
> culturally sanctioned sybolic systems and, on the other hand, private
> "language" and imagery".
>
> I would see designative and expressive meaning as complementary,
> and that is
> my understanding of what Vygotsky was getting at when he argued
> "meaning" is
> the stable zone of sense. If we agree with Vygotsky formulations or not, I
> do not think he was moving from one plilosophy of meaning to another, but
> rather he saw them as complementary in a multilectical sort of way.
>
> I would take sense then as not the inarticulated but a dialectic
> between the
> inarticulated and the articulated (meaning).
>
> Nate
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nate Schmolze
> http://www.geocities.com/nate_schmolze/
> schmolze@students.wisc.edu
>
>
> ******************************************************************
> **********
> ****************
> "Overcoming the naturalistic concept of mental development calls for a
> radically new approach
> to the interrelation between child and society. We have been led to this
> conclusion by a
> special investigation of the historical emergence of role-playing. In
> contrast to the view
> that role playing is an eternal extra-historical phenomenon, we
> hypothesized
> that role playing emerged at a specific stage of social
> development, as the
> child's position in society changed
> in the course of history. role-playing is an activity that is social in
> origin and,
> consequently, social in content."
>
> D. B. El'konin
> ******************************************************************
> **********
> ****************
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Smagorinsky [mailto:smago@peachnet.campuscwix.net]
> Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 3:18 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: sense/meaning
>
>
> Mike, good questions that plague me still--I think the distinction is
> important, if not always clear to me.
>
> Briefly, as I understand Vygotsky, sense refers to that which is
> unarticulated (inner speech) and meaning refers to that which is
> articulated (represented). Any help out there on this?
>
> Peter
>
> At 10:59 AM 4/2/00 -0700, you wrote:
>
> >hi Peter --
> >
> >In reading your paper, I kept finding myself wondering about the role
> >of a sense/meaning distinction in your thinking. A lot of he time I felt
> >myself wanting to replace uses of the term meaning with the term sense.
> >Perhaps a way to get at my question is with the following question: Is
> >it useful to speak of "personal meaning" or "making meaning of the text"
> >and if so when (in contrast with spaking of "personal sense" and
> >"making sense of the text."
> >
> >I believe that my confusions are related to issue of designative and
> >expressive aspects of meaning and whether they are completmentary or
> >incommsurable, but am too confused to be sure.
> >mike
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