RE: [xmca] Re: xmca Digest, Vol 45, Issue 47

["Monica Hansen" <monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu>]

Is anything in Vygotsky counter to discourse and pragmatics? My take is that
Vygotsky suggested word meaning as the unit of analysis in the concrete
sense(a specific example) of a more general concept for approaching the
study of development. I'm still studying...

Monica R. Hansen
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Curriculum and Instruction
College of Education
University of Idaho
1000 W. Hubbard
Suite 242
Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814
Phone: 208-667-2588, ext. 123
Email:  monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu
 
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Joe
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 1:02 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Cc: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: xmca Digest, Vol 45, Issue 47

I've always been bothered by word meaning as the basic unit. It is  
more "cognitive" than I think was intended. Broadening the concept to  
discourse a la wertsch/bakhtin opens the ideas to inter to intra and  
to dialogic space, adressivity, audience, external/internal speech and  
seems to link to many more Vygotskian concepts than does word meaning  
alone.

On Feb 18, 2009, at 2:47 AM, ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Is it possible to reach this article "Marxist and non-Marxist  
> aspects of the
> cultural historical psychology of L.S. Vygotsky" via email please?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Ulvi
>
>
>
>
> On 18/02/2009, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps I could risk throwing in my thoughts Mike, because David  
>> and I have
>> discussed this in the past too.
>>
>> My understanding has been that LSV brought forward the concept of  
>> word
>> meaning as a foundation for solving the problem of intelligent  
>> speech. I am
>> not sure how wide that territory was for Vygotsky; self-evidently I  
>> think it
>> is wider that simply "intelligent speech", but there are two  
>> reasons I would
>> not go so far as to say that it was meant as a "unit of analysis of  
>> human
>> consciousness".
>>
>> (1) Words are probably the most important of artefacts, but they  
>> are just
>> one kind of artefact. My work with "teaching spaces" when I first  
>> started to
>> use Vygotsky was to do with how building forms succeeded in  
>> transmitting
>> theories of learning to future generations, despite books and papers
>> claiming the opposite of what was set in concrete.
>>
>> (2) Apart from artefacts, is also activity. Doubtbless activity is  
>> implicit
>> in meaning in some way, but it is unclear to me. I think it is a  
>> mistake to
>> make the foundation of consciousness just words, rather than  
>> practice.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> Mike Cole wrote:
>>
>>> Without the time (or skill to switch to cyrrilic!) I have been  
>>> thinking
>>> about Kolya's questions, ,David.
>>>
>>> For those who forget in the stream of xcma chatting, Nikolai asks:
>>> where Vygotsky posits word meaning as
>>> unit of analysis of human consciousness?
>>> In which text and on what page? From what Vygotsky's work it is  
>>> taken?
>>> Could
>>>
>>> I ask you to make a quotation from Vygotsky?
>>> Thank you in advance
>>> Nikolai
>>>
>>> I was thinking how nice it would be to know how to search the  
>>> vygotsky
>>> corpus online in Russian, which I do not know how to do.
>>>
>>> And remembering fragments of why I thought David's comments  
>>> resonated
>>> strongly
>>> with my own intuitions, formed in part, by LSV.
>>>
>>> such as (no quotations or page numbers, just failing memory here):
>>>
>>> meaning is the most stable form of sense-- every totally stable?  
>>> really?
>>> word meaning changes in development
>>> the closing of *Speech and Thought *that David points to, the drop  
>>> of
>>> water,
>>> perhaps,
>>> being in my eye.
>>> The citation of the fragment from Doestoevsky where a bunch of  
>>> guys are
>>> standing
>>> around saying, it seems, the word "product of defecation" (oh  
>>> poo!) and
>>> every one
>>> is using the same word and every one is both saying the same thing  
>>> and
>>> saying something different.
>>>
>>> Don't all of these and many other examples (Paula, are the  
>>> Sakharov -LSV
>>> blocks of any help here?) point to the general conclusion that  
>>> David was
>>> asserting?
>>>
>>> Might our Russian friends join Nikolai and help us to understand  
>>> the core
>>> of
>>> the issue
>>> David raised? Is he incorrect? Can you search the corpus and help  
>>> us to
>>> understand
>>> if we are misleading each other?
>>> mike
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:26 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
>>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Professor Veresov:
>>>>
>>>> Let me begin by saying how much we enjoy your work here in Korea.  
>>>> Our
>>>> group
>>>> has been discussing your 2005 "Outlines" article "Marxist and non- 
>>>> Marxist
>>>> aspects of the cultural historical psychology of L.S. Vygotsky"  
>>>> since we
>>>> read it last year, and I found your 2006 article "Leading  
>>>> activity in
>>>> developmental psychology" very useful in figuring out why I don't  
>>>> accept
>>>> the
>>>> whole construct of "leading activity".
>>>>
>>>> I think that BOTH works are really quite central to the  
>>>> periodization
>>>> problem under discussion, but I also think that BOTH works refer  
>>>> mainly
>>>> and
>>>> centrally (and thus for me somewhat misleadingly) to a period of
>>>> Vygotsky's
>>>> oeuvre that is quite different from the one I have in mind.
>>>>
>>>> The 2005 article places a good deal of stress on early Vygotsky, a
>>>> Vygotsky
>>>> who is almost non-Vygotskyan, or at least non-psychological,  
>>>> Vygotsky in
>>>> his
>>>> early twenties, a student of the humanities with a very strong  
>>>> sense that
>>>> nothing human is alien to them.
>>>>
>>>> The 2006 article in contrast seems to me to place a great deal of  
>>>> stress
>>>> on
>>>> the post-Vygotsky period, and I was very surprised and pleased to  
>>>> read
>>>> that
>>>> the work on "leading activity" is really not as far as I had  
>>>> thought from
>>>> the fragments LSV left behind in his unfinished "Child  
>>>> Development".
>>>>
>>>> Elkonin, at any rate, seems to have been fully aware that the  
>>>> "leading
>>>> activity" is in no way typical or characteristic of a particular  
>>>> period
>>>> (though Leontiev and lately Karpov have said exactly the  
>>>> opposite). The
>>>> problem remains that I do not see any place for the crisis in  
>>>> this work,
>>>> and
>>>> there is no question but that MY Vygotsky, LATE Vygotsky, the  
>>>> Vygotsky of
>>>> Thinking and Speech gives the crisis an absolutely central (one  
>>>> might
>>>> even
>>>> say a critical) role.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, when I said that word meaning is a unit of analysis  
>>>> for human
>>>> consciousness I am not simply repeating what others have said (e.g.
>>>> Werstch
>>>> 1985). On the contrary, I mean what for me is the most mature and
>>>> therefore
>>>> in some ways least characteristic moment of Vygotsky's own work;  
>>>> I might
>>>> even call it the "leading activity" of his thinking.
>>>>
>>>> I meant, especially, the very last three paragraphs of Thinking and
>>>> Speech.
>>>> I have always found this to be a little like the last page of  
>>>> "Origin of
>>>> Species", rather more than a conclusion, but a whole revolutionary
>>>> program,
>>>> complete with a clarion call in the very last six words:
>>>>
>>>> Осмысленное слово есть микрокосм  
>>>> человеческого сознания.
>>>>
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> Seoul National University of Education.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>> --
>> --- 
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 Skype
>> andy.blunden
>> Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
>> http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
>>
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