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Re: [xmca] Lev Vygotsky and Charlie Chaplin

Ha ha ha! This is a great joke and a fantastic way to organize what Vygotsky did in this chapter!! 
Thanks, David!

Ana

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Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane
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On Jul 6, 2009, at 4:27 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
Thanks, eric. I still don't quite see why he doesn't compare like with like: compare the DISTANCE between self-directed speech and other directed speech at THREE (almost zero) with the DISTANCE between self-directed speech and other directed speech at SEVEN (almost 100%). Instead he talks about the distance between the seven and the three year old. Of course, they are different. But nobody expects them to be the same. Whereas with the DISTANCES, if we take Piaget's theory seriously, we will expect the difference at three to be greater than the difference at seven. 
Part of the problem is that Vygotsky writes with both great  
redundancy and great abbreviation. Sometimes he simply says "speech"  
when he means "egocentric speech", as in this particular pargraph.  
Other times he will go over a particular story over and over again  
(getting the details slightly wrong each time he tells it). For  
example on p. 262 (of Minick) he tells the story about the white  
liquid and the red liquid that he told on p. 175, except this time  
it's the white liquid forcing out the red instead of the other way  
around.

But I have learned to love both kinds of absent mindedness. For one  
thing, Vygotsky uses BOTH abbreviation and redundancy to create a  
delightful intellectual suspense. The way he lays out the  
"experimentum crucis" in Chapter Seven is a case in point. But again  
and again and again, we find Vygotsky telling the same joke as  
Charlie Chaplin.

It's a good one. Chaplin once tried to explain to his actors the key  
difference between a good joke and a bad one. A man walks down the  
street. He steps on a banana peel. He breaks his can. That's a bad  
joke.

Now, here's a good one. On Monday, a man get up, springs out of bed  
with a lilt in his step, struts down the left hand sidewalk of the  
street, slips on a banana peel and sprains his left ankle.

On Tuesday, the man gets up, leaps out of bed with a wince, crosses  
the street, walks down the RIGHT hand sidewalk of the street. He  
slips on a banana peel and sprains his RIGHT ankle.

On Wednesday, the man gets up late. He sticks his head out the door.  
He looks right. He looks left. Nobody is there. The street is empty.  
He struggles to the centre of the street. He limps RIGHT down the  
centre line. It's a hot day. The line is yellow. The street is  
black. Down the street there is...right on the yellow line...a  
fresh, yellow banana peel.

Will he see it?  The banana peel is bright yellow, and so is the  
line. He examines each line carefully before he takes a step.The  
camera pans back and forth. The man's face, dripping with sweat. The  
banana peel, barely perceptible in the hot sun. Suddenly...

The man sees it. He steps CAUTIOUSLY over it. Safe on the other  
side, he turns around and looks at it with a look of supreme triumph.

Then he whips majestically around and falls into a manhole.


Vygotsky writes this chapter around the joke. Ribot and Meumann say  
that inner speech is verbal memory. But this puts inner speech  
entirely in the past. Miller, Watson and Bekhterev say inner speech  
is speech without sound. But once again there are plenty of things  
that are speech without sound that are not inner speech (e.g. when I  
am talking to someone who cannot hear me). Goldstein then decides  
that inner speech is all the bits of speech that are neither sensory  
nor motor in any way--and he falls in the manhole of  
overinclusiveness and overgeneralization.

In a way, the whole book is written around Chaplin's joke. The  
reflexologists think that thinking and speech are one and the same  
thing. He can't study either. Piaget says they are totally  
different: he cannot say how they develop each other in any way. The  
Gestalists carefully step over the banana peel by saying they are  
both totally different and one and the same thing, and because they  
cannot explain what is specific to each, they fall into a manhole,  
still grinning in triumph.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education



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