Coffee Hour: Tuesday, March 19th, 9a.m. Pacific Daylight Time
Bernard Schneuwly, University of Bern
Kyrill Potapov, University College, London
Greg Thompson, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Discussant
Following Alex Kozulin’s talk on leading activity and child development (January 23rd, 2024), a discussion about different forms of semiotic mediation took place, a discussion that has its roots in an earlier exchange on xlchc-redux about tools and signs. Bernard Schneuwly wrote that he and his Swiss colleagues interpret the meaning of these terms drawing upon de Saussure to interpret Vygotsky. Kyrill Potapov responded that he thought Peirce to be the more appropriate approach. Greg Thompson had uncertainties and questions. This session is devoted to engaging in a discussion where Bernard and Kyrill will lay out their respective lines of interpretation and Greg will get us started in a discussion.
Please send questions for discussion and requests for the Zoom link to Mike Cole at mcole@ucsd.edu by Friday, March 16th.
The readings stating the two interpretive pathways:
Potapov, K. (manuscript). “Emotions & Vygotsky’s materialist semiotics: reply to Oittinen.”
You can find Bernard Schneuwly’s presentation slides HERE.
You can find Kyrill Potapov”s presentation slides HERE.
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We have the PowerPoint slides for the two presentations listed under Readings.
Unfortunately, we do not have a video recording of this session.
Also during the session, there was a brief mention of whether speech is an activity.
Mike said that it is not considered an activity in Activity Theory. This seems worthy of further discussion.
Would Martin or someone explain the influence of Gustav Shpet on Vygotsky’s
psycholinguistics?
If this session was recorded, could anyone please upload the video ASAP please? I planned to join this session but the Zoom link didn’t work despite that I’ve written to Mike. The access problem was not resolved. Thank you.
There is nothing in the functionin of language that predetermines any relationship to the real: its all emptiness, negativity- The positivity, the values of lanugage are exclusively the result of historico-social verbal practicies which, in collectiv action, use the language system in order to know/catogorize reality and communicate about it. for the resulting conventions, based on the radical arbitrariness of language as a very specific “semiological” system (to use Saussure’s terms), the question of arbirariness is not really relevant any more: To say it in Saussure’s words: “In turn, the arbitrariness of the sign helps us to understand why the social fact alone can create a linguistic system. The community is necessary to establish values whose sole raison d’être lies in usage and general consent; the individual alone is incapable of fixing any of them (Cours de linguistique générale, p. 157).
I would be very interested to know where Vygotsky speaks about the signe as neutral and arbitrary and where not.
In describing double stimulation he says a “neutral stimulus” becomes a sign. Somewhere else he paraphrases Marx’s suggestion that the sign shares not one molecule with what it represents. He suggests it is not arbitrary when he’s talking about embodied Affordenscharacter (however it’s spelled) like how a postbox invites us to post a letter.
Thanks for your answer Bernard. That’s interesting
I wanted to type my question to Bernard which I did not make very clear. Bernard emphasised how crucially arbitrary signs are for Saussure. Certainly for Peirce they are not arbitrary because we always interpret objects as something. Vygotsky at times says that signs are neutral or arbitrary and at times that they are not. I see this as two moments of the process of meaning development. For Bernard’s Saussure, does the sign stop being arbitrary when it is conventionalised in practice? Does Saussure have any sense of developmental stages (phylogenetic or ontogenetic)?
Wasn’t Gustav Shpet the semiotician most likely to have influenced Vygotsky? His book ’The Inner Form of the Word’ was obviously important.