Hi,
I have always made a distinction between sense and meaning. Vygotsky's own
explanation was somewhat unclear, but I tried to interpret it (and to make
sense of it for me!!) as a distinction between a process and a product:
- "meaning" being a something somewhat static, socially stabilized
(literal), more conventional across different activities and groups.
- "sense" being something that gets built up (constructed) in any concrete
context, more as a process of "meaning it" (read it as a verb), something
that exists only as a concrete resolution of all components (whatever they
are) and therefore not completely verbally explicit because it is the sum
of all individual, historical and concrete contextual social processes at
that moment...
Does that make sense???
Ana
At 03:18 PM 04/02/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>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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