Steve:
One of the things we did when we translated T&S into Korean was to
carefully compare every single paragraph with the Minick translation
into English. We found quite a few differences. Here's the original
Vygotsky:
Отношение мышления и речи в этом
случае можно было бы схематически
обозначить двумя пересекающимися
окружностями, которые показали бы,
что известная часть процессов речи и
мышления совпадает. Это . так
называемая сфера ≪речевого
мышления≫. Но это речевое мышление не
исчерпывает ни всех форм мысли, ни
всех форм речи. Есть большая область
мышления, которая не будет иметь
непосредственного отношения к
речевому мышлению. Сюда следует
отнести раньше всего, как уже
указывал Бюлер, инструментальное и
техническое мышление и
вообще всю область так называемого
практического интеллекта, который
только в последнее время становится
предметом усиленных исследований.
Here's an English translation, with some of the differences with
Minick in parentheses:
"(It would be possible to) schematically designate the relation of
thinking and speech (in this case) by two intersecting circles,
(which would show that a certain part) of the processes of speech
and thinking do coincide. (Here is the so-called sphere of “verbal
thinking”. But) this verbal thinking exhausts neither all the forms
of thought nor all the forms of speech. There is the large area of
thinking, which will not have direct relation to the vocal thinking.
(Here one should relate first of all as already indicated Bühler,
instrumental and technical thinking and generally the entire region
of so-called the practical intellect, which only recently becomes
the object of those intensified studies.)"
Now, Minick dislikes Vygotsky's tendency to say the same thing three
times, and like Hanfmann and Vakar he often prunes in the hope of
producing a stronger and clearer image. Martin doesn't like
Vygotsky's love of striking, and often spatial, images (and I
certainly agree with Martin that they ARE dangerous sometimes, as in
the idea of four "planes" that so struck you, Professor Mack, and
Colin, which I think is a complete misunderstanding).
I like both, and I think they are related. I think that we are
supposed to take both with a block of salt, the way a cow does. I
think that we take Vygotsky's slightly different redundancies and
his not quite overlapping images not as Galton photographs (where
similarities reinforce each other and differences obscure) but as
frames in a moving picture, verbal approximations of something that
is changing as we speak.
So here we have the image of two intersecting circles. Vygotsky says
it's only one of several ways to imagine this (and in fact he has
already described it as the intersection of two lines, as a tangled
skein, as two "currents" that flow into each other, etc. So it is
right and proper to begin with "It might be possible" or "it may be
possible" or "it would be possible" which is what Vygotsky really
does.
He's talking about speech functions in ADULTS, which is why he says
"in this case". Think of an adult driving a car. This is an almost
perfect example of practical, mechanical intellect. Vygotsky is
surely right to suggest that it has no DIRECT relationship to verbal
thinking; if you describe what you are doing while you are driving,
you are probably going to have an accident.
But it's not at all like PRE-verbal nonverbal thinking, is it? We
can see this in a number of ways. First of all, we find conversation
a little burdensome when we are driving unless it is actually
connected with the driving task (e.g. a GPS). This suggests positive
and negative interference, doesn't it? Secondly, we do LEARN to
drive in a verbal way, from instructions, instructors, and
ultimately verbal tests. So perhaps we should say that structurally,
genetically, yea, even functionally, driving is POST-verbal or DE-
verbal rather than PRE-verbal. And this DOES suggest an INDIRECT
relationship to verbal thinking.
Here's some other stuff, earlier in the chapter, worth looking at in
this context:
Так, Бюлер со всей справедливостью
говорит: ≪Действия шимпанзе
совершенно независимы от речи, и в
позднейшей жизни человека
техническое, инструментальное
мышление (Werkzeugdenken) гораздо менее
связано с речью и понятиями, чем
другие формы мышления≫ (13, с. 100).
Дальше мы должны будем еще
возвратиться к этому указанию Бюлера.
Мы увидим, что действительно все, чем
мы располагаем по этому вопросу из
области экспериментальных
исследований и клинических
наблюдений, говорит за то, что в
мышлении взрослого человека
отношение интеллекта
и речи не является постоянным и
одинаковым для всех функций, для всех
форм интеллектуальной и речевой
деятельности.
So Bühler, (with entire validity), says “The (performances) of the
chimpanzee are completely independent from speech, and (in the later
life of man) technical, instrument thinking (Werkzeugdenken) is much
less connected with speech and with concepts, than other forms of
thnking” (13, p. 100). Further on we must again return to this
indication of Bühler’s. (We will see), that actually everything
that we now have available on this question from the areas of
experimental studies and clinical observations (will confirm as a
point of fact) that in the thinking of the adult person the relation
of intellect and speech is neither constant nor identical (for all
functions) and all forms of intellectual and verbal activity."
Again, we can easily imagine that the practical, instantaneous
problem solving behavior we see in an adult human repairing a car
was originally learnt from a repair manual, or from another more
expert repairman; in other words, at one point the adult human’s
thinking was virtually identical with written or oral speech and
proceeded step by step alongside it.
Finally, take a look at "Tool and Sign in Child Development", Steve
(Volume Six). In the first chapter, first section, paragraph 11-12,
Vygotsky and Luria go over this same ground. But this time they make
an invidious comparison between Kohler, who really tries to show how
human the chimp is, and Buhler, who is trying to show how chimplike
the human is. And they draw attention PRECISELY to the MISTAKE of
assuming that practical intelligence in later life is language free.
Here's what they've got.
Эта тенденция остается неизменной и у
всех дальнейших исследователей, за
небольшими исключениями. В ней
наиболее ярко выражена та упомянутая
опасность зоологизирования детской
психологии, которая, как уже сказано,
является господствующей чертой всех
исследований в этой области. Однако в
исследовании Бюлера эта опасность
представлена в наименее серьезном
виде. Бюлер имеет дело с ребенком до
развития речи, и в этом отношении
основные условия, необходимые для
оправдания психологической
параллели между шимпанзе и
ребенком, могут быть соблюдены.
Правда, Бюлер сам недооценивает
значение сходства основных условий,
говоря, что действия шимпанзе
совершенно независимы от речи и в
позднейшей жизни человека
техническое, инструментальное
мышление в гораздо меньшей степени
связано с речью и понятиями, чем
другие формы мышления.
"This tendency, with a few exceptions, remains unchanged in the work
of all following investigators. It is here that the danger of what
might be called the ‘animalization’ of child psychology,
mentioned earlier, finds its clearest expression as the prevalent
feature of investigation in this field (see earlier reference).
However, this danger is at its smallest in Bühler’s experiments.
Bühler deals with the pre-speech period of the child, which makes it
possible to fulfill the basic conditions necessary to justify the
psychological parallel between chimpanzee and child. It is true that
Bühler underestimates the importance of the similarities of these
basic conditions when he states : ‘The chimpanzee’s activities
are totally independent of speech, and in man’s later period of
life technical, instrumental thinking is much less connected to
speech and concepts than other forms of thought’,”
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Mon, 5/9/11, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com> wrote:
From: Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] last on concepts
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, May 9, 2011, 3:10 PM
David,
Thanks for your always intriguing comments, such as the ones from a
couple days ago, copied below.
I've been needing some help understanding the last statement in the
following paragraph from Vol 1, p 115, the Minick translation. It
relates directly to your comments (and also a question Jay asked a
couple weeks ago, if I remember), about practical activity and
verbal thinking.
The meaning of the final sentence puzzles me:
"Moving now from the issue of the genesis of inner speech to the
issue of how it functions in the adult, the first question we
encounter is one that we have addressed earlier in connection with
issues of phylogenesis and ontogenesis: Are thinking and speech
necessarily connected in the adult's behavior" That is, can the two
processes be identified with one another? All that we know that is
relevant to this issue forces us to answer this question in the
negative. The relationship of thinking and speech in this context
can be schematically represented by two intersecting circles. Only
a limited portion of the process of speech and thinking coincide in
what is commonly called verbal thinking. Verbal thinking does not
exhaust all the forms of thought nor does it exhaust all the forms
of speech. There is a large range of thinking that has no direct
relationship to verbal thinking. In this category, we could include
the instrumental and
technical thinking that has been described by Buhler and what is
commonly called practical intellect."
According to the last sentence, Vygotsky appears to have included
"the instrumental and technical thinking that has been described by
Buhler and what is commonly called practical intellect" into the
category of non-verbal thinking.
Could you or someone help me understand this statement?
- Steve
On May 7, 2011, at 11:17 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
Steve:
I think that thinking and speech have what we would call, in Korea,
"jeong", or in China "yuanfen". "Jeong" and "yuanfen" are both
indicate a fateful encounter that neither party can ever forget, no
matter what their previous or subsequent history. Unsurprisingly,
both "jeong" and "yuanfen" have romantic connotations, and both are
symbolized by a red thread, which is something that Vygotsky likes
to use too.
So Chapter Four, which is in some ways our most "schematic"and
general chapter (because it mixes up the phylogenetic, the
sociogenetic, and even the ontogenetic), describes how thinking
becomes verbal and speech becomes rational, somewhere around age two.
This is, it seems to me, the genesis of verbal thinking. And once
past that fateful point, neither thinking nor speech will ever
forget each other, and neither can ever be quite the same again.
Vygotsky explicitly REJECTS Buhler's idea that
"Werkezeudenken" (practical activity) in adults is somehow non-
verbal. Once thinking has been verbalized, you can never really go
back to the pre-cultural, natural state of thinking; everything you
think will be at least potentially and often really verbal.
The units in which verbal thinking takes place are verbal: they are
word meanings, even if they sometimes do not actually leave the
"palace of shadows". You may not have time to completely verbalize
these word meanings, but they are nevertheless completely verbal in
their psychological nature. After all, when you READ something, you
are thinking in a completely verbal manner, even though you are
going MUCH faster than you would ever be able to speak, and it is
even possible to take in blocks of text in a non-linear manner.
Concepts are another example of how thinking and speech can never
really forget their fateful meeting at age two. As ought to be
clear (not least from the work of Jay Lemke) concepts come in a
structure which is paradigmatic rather than syntagmatic; they grow
on tall trees with deep roots, and do not proliferate temporally
like crabgrass. Yet precisely in their thematic relations
(overconcepts, examples, specific cases) they are clearly examples
of verbal thinking.
In Chapter Five (Sections Seven and Eight) Vygotsky reminds us that
generalization is really only ONE of the two intellectual "roots"
of the concept and it is in some ways antithetic to the other,
namely abstraction. I always think of this as "adding on" versus
"taking away": generalization involves expanding the pile of shared
features and abstraction involves cutting away the merely important
to reveal the absolutely essential (and yes, I think that
Vygotsky's concept of concepts is essentially essentialist).
English speakers tend to use GENERALIZATION: we say, for example,
"I like apples" rather than "I like the apple". Koreans, in
contrast, use ABSTRACTION: they say "I like the apple". A really
rational thinker, say, a Korean three year old, might find an
expression like "I like apples" rather puzzling, expecting a rider
that excludes rotten, unripe, and sour apples.
Except in a metaphorical sense, we cannot say that a good saxophone
solo has lexicogrammar. The sax plays notes, not vowels or
consonants, and a musical line is neither a noun phrase nor a verb
phrase. But if you imagine that, say, Lester Young or Coleman
Hawkins have no intonation, no stress, no phrasing, then you are
mired in what we can only call a "natural" state of musicality (see
the end of Chapter Four, Section Three), the state in which dogs
howl at phonograph records. Good saxophone is "talky" music in much
the same way that Mozart is, and it is no accident that jazz has
selected a main instrument that sounds or can be made to sound very
like a human voice.
Classical music too eventually settled on string instruments to
carry the main melodic line rather than brass or woodwinds or
percussion). Last night I went to see Poulenc's opera "The Dialogue
of the Carmelites", which is surely one of the most undialogic
operas ever written. It's wordy but not talky, the music is woody
rather than stringy, with two harps that can never quite agree to
disagree. In the libretto, everybody says exactly the same thing,
and one is hardly surprised when the Carmelites go on singing after
their heads are cut off.
But today I am sitting in my office, listening to Dvorak's Cello
Concerto in B minor. Dvorak wrote it after the death of his sister-
in-law, with whom he was hopelessly in love. It's a threnody and a
love letter with everything removed except thought and motive. Is
there sense? Well, there is certainly something sensuous, and it is
not animal; it is scarcely even human.
(Rostropovich! How is it possible to be unhappy on a planet shared
with such a sensiblity?)
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
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