The following is from Newman, Griffin & Cole (1989)
"For Leont'ev, the objects in the learner's world have a social
history and functions that are not discovered through the
learner's unaided explorations. The usual functions of a hammer,
for example, is not understood by exploring the hammer itself
(although the learner may discover some facts about weight and
balance). The learner's appropriation of culturally devised
"tools" comes about through involvement in culturally organized
activities in which the tool plays a role....He emphasizes the
fact that they [children] cannot and need not reinvent the
artifacts that have taken millennia to evolve in order to
appropriate such object into their own system of activity. The
learner has only to come to an understanding that is adequate for
using the culturally elaborated object in the novel life
circumstances he encounters. The appropriation process is always
a two-way one. The tool may also be transformed, as it is used
by a new member of the culture; some of these changes may be
encoded in the culturally elaborated tool (pp. 62-63).
I interpret the idea that a tool may be transformed as it come to
be used by a new member of a community as internalization.
Appropriation may be an interpretation of what someone takes
another in the community to mean. Appropriation may also result
from one's oberservation of another's practice with a tool for
his own use.
I also take it that in joint activity when language is used with
another tool and meaning is negotiated this is appropriation.
The alloy produced wit(Waproduced by the combination of language
and tool becomes part of tahe transformation of the inner plane.
Newman, D., Griffin, P. & Cole, M. (1989). The construction
zone: Working for cognitive change in school. New York:
Cambridge University Press
Watson, E. (1995). What a Vygotskian perspective can contribute
to comtemporary philosophy of language. In D. Bakhurst & C.
Sypnowich (Eds,) The social self (pp. 47-66). London: Sage
Publications
Bill Blanton