[xmca] "Inner Form" of Word, Symmetry, Ivanov Bateson?

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

David, Tony, Martin..........

I am still pondering this note, even though the discussion has moved along.
The issue that is pestering me is change in word meaning over ontogeny and
cultural history.

In the 1980's I got to know VV Ivanov. He was preoccupied at the time with
the importance of A-symmetry and talking a lot of right brain/left brain
stuff that did not
particularly excite me at the time.

Your discussion of inner/outer form of word got me thinking about him and
Bateson.
I have been unable to find this essay in English

*The Asymmetry of the Brain and of the Sign Systems*). Moscow,Sovetskoe
radio, 1978.
Ivanov was/is a fan of Tartu semiological theories.

If the symmetry position is associated with timelessness/religion, might
there be help here for further thought about inner/outer forms of words in
the process of thought?

Then I remembered Bateson's focus (in Mind and Nature) on assymetry as
foundational to development. I do not have my copy of the book to hand, but
I believe that it is assymetry that underlies the shape of a snail's shell
and the symbol on the lchc home page.

Any help out there in xmcaland?
mike


On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 8:08 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> Martin and I have been puzzling over Vygotsky's occasional references to
> the "inner form" of a word: where did Vygotsky GET the idea? What did he DO
> with it? And above all why does it MATTER?
>
> Well, I recently read two books that I think solve these questions, but
> introduce a whole slew of new ones. The two books are:
>
> Tihanov, G. (2009) Gustav Shpet's Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural
> Theory. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.
>
> Seifrid, T. (2005) The Word Made Self. Ithaca and London: Cornell
> University Press.
>
> >From the Tihanov volume (an edited text) we learn two important things
> about inner form. First of all, the idea of inner form of LANGUAGE does
> indeed go back to Humboldt and even further (the Port Royal Grammarians
> apparently used it!). But it's Potebnia who says that a WORD has inner form.
>
> This Potebnian formulation obviously begs to be qualified: a word like "of"
> or "the" or even "to be" wears its inner form on its sleeve, and may have
> less of it than a word like "hedgehog" or "God" or  even "to run".
>
> Well, Seifrid argues that this Potebnian interpretation of Humboldt came
> with a LOT of religious baggage. Potebnia believed that the "inner form" of
> a word was its "nearest psychological meaning", i.e. its sense. But he ALSO
> believed that this essence (or maybe "es-sense") was innate and stable, as
> opposed to the historically changing outer form.
>
> That idea, of a God-made word whose inner "self" is unchanging but which
> can manifest itself in "you" (Christ) and even in "he" (the Holy Spirit),
> was very attractive to Russian Orthodox philologists, including the
> Symbolists, later the Acmeists, Florensky, Bulgakov, and possibly Bakhtin.
>
> Bakhtin, who Seifrid does not discuss much, is a VERY curious case. I used
> to think, along with Emerson and Morson, that there is no serious evidence
> that he was a deeply religious man, not even his early writings. But Seifrid
> points out that one of the conceits that Florensky and Bulgakov had was that
> the human body was basically SYMMETRICAL: not only along the head to crotch
> axis but even along a left hip right hip axis: the kidneys correspond to
> lungs, the asshole to the mouth and so on. Florensky and Bulgakov (and
> I think Bakhtin too) played with the idea that semen and language were
> equivalent effluvia, one from the upper and one from the lower bodily
> stratum.
>
> There are three reasons why I think Bakhtin might have been in on the joke:
> First, and worst, although Bakhtin claims to be interested in novels, he
> never expresses any sustained interest in the work of any woman novelist of
> any nationality whatsoever, and the novel is, at least in English and
> French, an overwhelming feminine mode of expression.  Secondly, in his
> Rabelais book he writes almost obsessively about the "lower bodily stratum"
> and its effusions and is particularly amused by the correspondance of
> flatulence to laughter, and other forms of inverting high and low. Thirdly,
> the Rabelais book was, as we know, rejected, when Bakhtin submitted it as a
> Ph.D. although to all appearances it is a very sound, even miraculous, work
> of medieval scholarship. If it was recognized as a work associated with
> Florensky and Bulgakov, that would explain it.
>
> Shpet also signs up to this idea of an unchanging "inner form", and rejects
> "psychologism" on precisely these grounds. But it's EXACTLY the opposite of
> Vygotsky's view. Yesterday I pointed out that the Donizetti aria presents
> two DIFFERENT views of causation, both of which may be said to be
> "mechanical": Adina says her infidelity is caused by her inner essence, and
> Nemorino says her unchanging love is caused by an outer force.
>
> This is, I think, Vygotsky's view! Inner form is actually what CHANGES from
> moment to moment, flitting and fluttering, pattering and puttering. Outer
> form changes too, but more slowly, the way that the river, grieving and
> grooving the mountains, drags them down grain by grain to the sea.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca