Abstract
This chapter emphasizes the intimate interdependence of perspectives on linguistic communication and perspectives on mental powers within psychological theory and gives a critical overview of conceptions of language and communication which are either proclaimed or assumed in cultural-historical and critical psychological traditions. Focussing in detail on Vygotskian psychology as an illustration, the chapter argues that key psychological principles within the cultural-historical tradition (mediation, internalization, conceptual development, meaning and sense) betray the influence of mechanistic and decontextualizing perspectives on semiotic and linguistic activity. The chapter argues for an ‘actional-integrative’ approach to sign-making and examines the implications of adopting such a standpoint for a re-evaluation and reorientation of cultural and critical psychology.
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Notes
- 1.
From Vygotsky’s 1926 paper, ‘The methods of reflexological and psychological demonstration’.
- 2.
My own theoretical allegiance is principally to the ‘integrationist’ school developed by Roy Harris and colleagues. For an overview of the integrationist perspective (and its relationship to ‘segregationism’), see the Preface and Chapter 1 of Harris (1996). I have attempted to explore the implications of integrationism for Vygotskian theory, and for the internalization conception in particular, in Jones. (2007, 2009, 2011, in press)
- 3.
- 4.
My practice here will be to include [in square brackets] the original Russian terms (from Vygotsky, 2005) when they are particularly important to the discussion. In this particular case, a better translation of the passage in question might run something like this: ‘All higher mental functions are interiorized relations of a social type, the foundation of the social structure of the individual personality’ (2005: 356).
- 5.
For more discussion of these two conceptions of the verbal sign – the ‘causal-mechanical sign’ and the ‘abstract scholastic sign’ – see Jones (in press).
- 6.
Indeed, Vygotsky here pushes even further at the very limits of his own semiological-psychological assumptions by addressing the fundamental inadequacy of the associationistic psychology intrinsic to reflexology with respect to the guiding role of communicational processes in purposeful activity (see Jones, in preparation). Similarly, the brilliant and pioneering work that Vygotsky undertook in relation to the communicational organization of practical activity and the planning function of speech involved a novel conception of linguistic and communicational processes which deserves critical attention as well as admiration for its boldness (Jones, 2002, 2017, in preparation).
- 7.
Aside from the distinctively Russian traditions of linguistic philosophy and theory discussed by Seifrid (2005), one of the most direct and important influences on Vygotsky’s views on language, thinking, conceptual thought, inner speech and the non-localization of psychological functions was Edward Sapir, as can be seen from the remarkable Introduction to Sapir (1921).
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Jones, P.E. (2020). Psychology and Psychologies ‘from the Language End’: Critical Reflections. In: Fleer, M., González Rey, F., Jones, P. (eds) Cultural-Historical and Critical Psychology. Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research, vol 8. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2209-3_8
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