RE: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor

[Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>]

I was beginning to get a bit pernickety about the distinction between metaphors  (X is Y) and similes (X is like Y) - a consequence of a particular kind of education - but then, reading this from David, I realised that there may be interesting overlaps between the function and nature of metaphors and the concept of perezhivanie.  Metaphors, more than similes, tend to summon forth associations and connections from the reader/listener's own experience. This form of prolepsis (deliberately creating a space which the reader must fill) can have the effect of making an idea feel more 'owned' by the reader. As Vygotsky pointed out, words always have an element of metaphor about them because the 'X' of the meaning in the speaker's understanding has to call forth the 'Y' of meaning for the listener. While these Xs and Ys may be similar they can never be identical because we all have our own unique perezhivanie, coloured and inflected by our own past experiences (both direct and mediated). So it isn't only foreign languages which represent other people's everyday concepts.

All the best,

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of David Kellogg
Sent: 08 October 2010 01:08
To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
Subject: RE: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor

Vygotsky's metaphors are many and varied: peas in a sack (child concepts), guerrilla warfare vs. prolonged seige (theoretical vs. empirical research), and my all-time favorite, "science concepts do not drop into the child's mouth like a flock of already roasted-pigeons". 
 
But it seems to me that any discussion of his use of analogy should include his discussion of the LIMITS of metaphor. This is in the context of his analogy between the learning of scientific concepts and the learing of foreign language words, which can be found, in the Minick translation, in Volume One, p. 223, of the Collected Works. Here's OUR translation:
 
"In substance, our analogy always treats the development of two aspects of a single and same process by their psychological nature: verbal thinking. In the one case, that of the foreign language, what comes into the forefront is the external, sonorous, phasal* properties of verbal thinking; in the other, the development of scientific concepts, it is the semantic process of the same process. For this reason the assimilation of a foreign language doubtless requires, even though in a minimal measure, the mastery of the semantic aspect of the foreign language, just as the development of scientific concept requires, even to a minimal extent, some effort to master scientific language, the symbols of science, which intervene in an evident fashion during the assimilation of terminology and symbolic systems, such as that of arithmetic. For this reason, one might expect from the very beginning that we might find the analogy that we are developing here. Yet we know
 that the development of the phasal and semantic aspects of language do not repeat themselves but follow specific ways, and so we must expect that our analogy will prove to be incomplete like any other analogy and that the assimilation of a foreign language with respect to the maternal tongue shall present resemblances to the development of scientific concepts with respect to that of everyday concepts in some determined relations, while in others there will be profound differences."

And it seems to me that there's a very SIMPLE explanation for the failure of the analogy, too. Every foreign language represents, in the final analysis, somebody ELSE'S everyday concepts.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Thu, 10/7/10, Achilles Delari Junior <achilles_delari@hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Achilles Delari Junior <achilles_delari@hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Date: Thursday, October 7, 2010, 4:37 PM



Well...

I also remember that in 1929 Vygotsky compared old psychological views with the "Comedia del'Arte", because the fixed roles of the psychic functions compared to the fixed roles of the characters in that kind of drama... This is at the paper "Concrete human psychology" in English it was published at Soviet Psychology, 1989, v. 17, n. 2 - but I don't have my copy of the English version here anymore.... only a Portuguese version. In the same text is present also the metaphor about consciousness as telephonist in contrast and complementation to Pavlovian metaphor about brain as telephonic central, if I remember well... This same subject was repeatead at the book "The history of development of higher mental functions" from 1931 (In Spanish edition of the Works, as in Russian, it is the Volume III)... A metaphor with trains and rails was used as well, in reflexological discussion, for a comparison with Sherrignton's contributions about much more afferent ways
 (rails) than efferent ones... but by memory I don't know more if this is at that reflexological text from 1924 or from 1925... (Consciousness as problem of behavior psychology). In the Psychology of Art, certainly he also repeat the Sherington formulation, but I am not so sure about where was the "train metaphor"... If you have interest in this "train" metaphor, I can localize the actual sources, for this too...

Best.

Achilles.


> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 15:05:08 -0700
> Subject: Re: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor
> From: lchcmike@gmail.com
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> 
> Woa, not so sure about the train track metaphor. The train moves freely up
> and down a pre-scribed
> track and the only thing that can vary "independently" is speed! Brrrr.
> mike
> 
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Colette Murphy <c.a.murphy@qub.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > One that I like a lot:
> >
> > According to Vygotsky the teacher should be the track upon which the train
> > coaches move freely and independently. The track only gives the coaches the
> > direction of their own movement.
> > (Vygotsky, A Reawakened Star:
> > http://www.marxist.com/science-old/vygotsky_501.html)
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Colette
> >
> > Dr Colette Murphy
> > Senior Lecturer
> > School of Education
> > 69 University St
> > Queen's University
> > Belfast BT7 1HL
> >
> > tel: 02890975953
> > ________________________________________
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf
> > Of Robert Lake [boblake@georgiasouthern.edu]
> > Sent: 07 October 2010 21:15
> > To: Culture Activity eXtended Mind
> > Subject: [xmca] LSV's use of metaphor
> >
> > Hi Everyone,
> > I am gathering the use of metaphors in Vygotsky's work for a publication
> > and want to be sure to include as many as possible.
> > without any knowledge of Russian along with the fact that I have
> > only recently begun a serious investigation of his work.
> >
> > In her essay on Vygotsky on Thinking and Speaking in the Cambridge
> > companion to Vygotsky,(2007) Vera John-Steiner cites some of Vygotsky's most
> > famous examples, i.e. inner speech as "speech turning inward"; thought as a
> > "cloud shedding a shower of words"; "consciousness is reflected in a word in
> > a word as the sun in a drop of water". (p.151).
> >
> > Yes I know "tool" is a controversial example to some people :-).
> >
> > Can you folks think of any others ?
> >
> > Thank-you in advance for any help with this.
> > Robert Lake
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Robert Lake  Ed.D.
> > Assistant Professor
> > Social Foundations of Education
> > Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> > Georgia Southern University
> > P. O. Box 8144
> > Phone: (912) 478-5125
> > Fax: (912) 478-5382
> > Statesboro, GA  30460
> >
> >
> >  Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
> > midwife.
> > -John Dewey.
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
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