Wertsch - Beyond Vygostky

 46
"Vygotsky’s analysis of higher mental functioning provides a foundation for a sociocultural approach to mediated action.
In this connection, his investigation of the social origins of individual
mental functioning and his claims about semiotic mediation are particularly
important."

says he did not succeed in the genuinely sociocultural approach.  - historical, cultural, institutional settings tied to forms of mediated actions

interindividual - Marxist
but -- is not speaking of:k
class struggle, alienation & 
right there - "rise of commodity fetishism."

47
"Norris Minick. In his analysis of Vygotsky’s approach Minick (1985)
argues that “the links between dyadic or small group interactions and
the broader socio-cultural system must be recognized and explored . . .
[A]ctions are at one and the same time components of the life of the
individual and the social system. This point is as crucial for the analysis
_ _ _ of the development of intermental actions as it is for the analysis of
the development of intramental actions."

Vygostky's shift
concept
development is treated primarily in terms of individual psychology,
that is children’s conceptual development as they move from “unorga- 7
I
nized heaps” to “complexes” to “concepts.” In Chapter 6, written in
I934, there is an essential change in the way Vygotsky approached
these issues. He clearly continued to be interested in intramental func-
I _ tioning, but he now approached concept development from the perit
- spective of how it emerges in institutionally situated activity.

48
It suggests, in short, that in order to formulate a more
comprehensive sociocultural approach to mental functioning one
should identify historically, culturally, and institutionally situated
forms of mediated action and specify how their mastery leads to particular
forms of mediated action on the intramental plane. This amounts
to extending Vygotsky’s ideas to bring the sociocultural situatedness
of mediated action on the intermental plane to the fore.

Bakhtin

Nature of collaborations with a varied group of intellectuals through time - Medvedev/ Voloshinov
(aside, notes on Voloshinov via Wikipedia :
It is a mistake, argues Voloshinov, to attempt to study language abstractly and synchronically (i.e. in an unhistorical manner), as Saussure does. Words, for Voloshinov, are dynamic social signs, which take different meanings for different social classes in different historical contexts. The meaning of words is not subject to passive understanding, but includes the active participation of both the speaker (or writer) and hearer (or reader). While every word is a sign taken from an inventory of available signs, the manipulation of the word contained in each speech act or individual utterance is regulated by social relations. In Voloshinov's view, the meaning of verbal signs is the arena of continuous class struggle: a ruling class will try to narrow the meaning of social signs, making them "uni-accentual", but the clash of various class-interests in times of social unrest will make clear the "multi-accentuality" of words.

Bakhtin - more about utterance than signs

Marx

50
Utterance - situated - "in use"
 "Unlike many scholars of language, especially contemporary linguists
who concern themselves primarily with linguistic form and meaning
abstracted from the actual conditions of use, Bakhtin focused his analytic
efforts on the utterance, “the real unit of speech communication.”
Bakhtin’s insistence on examining the utterance is strikingly consistent
with the focus on mediated action outlined in Chapter I in that it
focuses on situated action rather than on objects that can be derived
from analytic abstractions.

Clark and Holquist on Bakhtin and constancy/ systematic form of language:
" that there is constancy and
systematicity in speech. Instead, he viewed the utterance as the site at
which this constancy and systematicity enter into contact and struggle
with unique, situated performance. It was the unit of analysis that
allowed him to ask, “Can the requirement of language for xed meanings
be yoked together with the no less urgent need of language users
for meanings that can be various in the countless different contexts
created by the ux of everyday life?”

move from the word (abstracted from actual use) to utterances

51
"translinguistics" - pragmatics/ discourse?

Voice:
" In Bakhtin’s account the notion of utterance is inherently linked with
that ofvoice, or CCthe speaking personality, the speaking consciousness3’"


 "An utterance,
spoken or written, is always expressed from a point of view [a
voice], which for Bakhtin is a process rather than a location. Utterance
is an activity that enacts differences in values. On an elementary level,
for instance, the same words can mean different things depending on
the particular intonation with which they are uttered in a specic
context: intonation is the sound that value makes” (Clark and Holquist,
1984, p. 10)."
Way beyond "physical voice quality":

"It applies to written as well
as spoken communication, and it is concerned with the broader issues
of a speaking subject’s perspective, conceptual horizon, intention, and
world view."
52

 No such thing as isolation: who are you addressing - speaking to?
"For example, in addition to the voice
producing an utterance, the point of view or speaking consciousness
being addressed was also fundamental. His concern with the processes
by which voices engage one another highlights another point of correspondence
with the action orientation outlined in Chapter 1. From
Bakhtin’s treatment of meaning, it is evident that he viewed it as an
active process rather than as a static entity. He insisted at many points
that meaning can come into existence only when two or more voices
come into contact: when the voice of a listener responds to the voice
ofa speaker."

52
"If an individual word
or sentence is directed at someone, addressed to someone, then we
have a completed utterance that consists of one word or one sentence,
and addressivity is inherent not in the unit of language, but in the
utterance” (p. 99). Bakhtin’s concern with addressivity is grounded in
his more general observation that “any utterance is a link in the chain
of speech communication” (p. 84), an observation that, in turn, leads
to his claim that “utterances are not indifferent to one another, and
are not self-sufficient; they are aware of and mutually reect one another”
(p. 91)."
PROCESS - word/ counter word - anticipation of what another might say?

53
"In this connection,
Bakhtin noted that “every utterance must be regarded primarily as a
response to preceding utterances of the given sphere (we understand
the word ‘response’ here in the broadest sense)” (I986, p. 91).

Addressee may be temporally, spatially and socially distant -- many different types of addressees!

utterance - word, counter word
who is doing the speaking/ who is addressed

Dialogicality and Multivoicedness
"Prom Bakhtin’s perspective,
however, the explication should begin with dialogicality. Ba_khtin’s
concern with dialogicality surfaces everywhere in his writings. As he
says, “the utterance is lled with dialogit overtones” (1986, p. 102). It
recurs in particular throughout his translinguistic analyses; indeed, as
he also notes, “dialogic relationships . . . are the subject of metalinguistics”
(1981, p. 182). His claims about the role of the counter word
in understanding reect this assumption: “To understand another person’s
utterance means to orient oneself with respect to it, to nd the
proper place for it in the corresponding context. For each word of the
utterance that we are in process of understanding, we, as it were, lay
down a set of our own answering words."

"The category of dialogicality is very general. In Bakhtin’s view the
“primordial dialogism of discourse” (1981, p. 275) is to be found in
the ways in which one speaker’s concrete utterances come into contact
with, or “interanimate,” the utterances of another. One form of such
“dialogic interanimation” is “direct, face-to-face, vocalized verbal communication
between persons” (Voloshinov, 1973, p. 95). This is the
form of communicative activity that typically comes to mind when one
thinks of dialogue, and it played a fundamental role in much of Baklatin’s
thinking. As I have noted, it underlies his account of understanding,
and it surfaced in his examination of inner speech (which, as for
Vygotsky, derives from social processes)."
Speech as a ping pong game in motion

55
 inner dialogue

parody - way to recreate situation for speech

Ziegler, Watergate
"Inoperative is an otherwise normal English word that can be used
in a variety of contexts. But once Ziegler had used it in the highly
visible, tense debate over an American president’s conduct, it took on 1.
\ a different meaning. It became a term that people familiar with that
context could no longer use in a neutral way."

56
"From a Bakhtinian perspective, parodies on Ziegler’s use of“inoperative”
provide a clear illustration of the usefulness of the constructs of
utterance, voice, and dialogicality. In this view, utterances always belong
to someone (that is, a voice). "

Social Languages

In general, the primordial dialogism of discourse involves a “dialogic
orientation” of the utterances of one person to the utterances of others
“inside a single language.” This contrasts with two other fundamental
forms of dialogic orientation Bakhtin envisioned: the dialogic orientation
among ‘social languages’ within a single national language” and
the dialogic orientation among “different national languages within
the same culture” (I981, p. 275). In order to understand what Bakhtin
had in mind in dealing with these two types of dialogue, we must look
at his notion of language.

"By switching from dealing with utterances to dealing with languages,
Bakhtin was moving from unique speech events (individual
utterances produced by unique voices) to categories or types of speech
events (types of utterances produced by types of voices).

57
"Bakhtins account of languages retains the
notion of voice as well as dialogicality. Furthermore, he was also concerned
with the struggle between system and performance that is
played out in the utterance. Because utterances and voices (now considered
as types) are still viewed as two sides of the same coin and
dialogicality is still at the center of attention, the analysis of “languages”
does indeed fall within the realm of translinguistics.

Beyond superficial look at national language:
"What Bakhtin had in mind in talking about dialogic
orientation among national languages are the ways in which various
languages in a cultural setting are employed: one national language
may be used at home, another in formal instructional settings, and yet
a third in religious ceremonies.

"Bakhtin’s concern goes beyond this, however, because for him it
was not simply a matter of distribution in the use of various national
languages; it was also a matter of how these languages and their uses
are interrelated or enter into dialogic interanimation (how one language,
for example, may be used to provide counter words to another).
This is the kind of phenomenon often studied under the heading of
(‘ii g1 cc as code switching in contemporary sociolinguistics (Gumperz, I983)."

58
From Wikipedia:
"Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speech") are linguistic terms distinguished by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics. Langue encompasses the abstract, systematic rules and conventions of a signifying system - it is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users. Langue involves the principles of language, without which no meaningful utterance, "parole", would be possible. Parole refers to the concrete instances of the use of langue."

Very important - language is created by situations that provide a platform for it - very difficult to have an "individual language"

" Rather than view voices and utterances in such chaotic terms, Bakhtin
was able to nd patterns of organization that derive from the
notion of social languages. He “begins by assuming that individual
speakers do not have the kind of freedom parole assumes they have”
(Holquist, 1986, p. xvi). As Balchtin wrote, “the single utterance, with
all its individuality and creativity, can in no way be regarded as a
completely ee combination of forms of language, as is supposed, for
example, by Saussure (and by many other linguists after him), who
juxtaposed the utterance (la parole), as a purely individual act, to the
system of language as a phenomenon that is purely social and mandatory
for the individuum” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 81)."

59
"In Bakhtins view, a speaker always invokes a social language in
producing an utterance, and this social language shapes what the
* > speakers individual voice can say. This process of producing unique
utterances by speaking in social languages involves a specic kind of
dialogicality or multivoicedness that Bakhtin termed “ventriloquation”
(Bakhtin, 1981; Holquist, 1981), the process whereby one voice
speaks through another voice or voice type in a social language: “The
Word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only
when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent,
when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and
expressive intention."

Hybrid construction
Little Dorrit
60
 "Two distinct social languages have thus been appropriated in
the creation of this passage. The lack of any obvious surface marking
of the boundary between the two social languages invoked makes
this a hybrid construction, in which, in Bakhtin’s description, “the
subordinate clause is in direct authorial speech and the main clause in
someone else’s speech."

Speech Genres
61
words become "typical" - communicate typical themes for those using them

"In Bakhtin’s view, the production of any utterance entails the invo-
‘Fl . . . cation of a speech genre: “We speak only in denite speech genres,
at
l*‘i1~\ that is, all our utterances have denite and relatively stable typicalmns
ofconstruction of the whole. Our repertoire of oral (and written) speech
genres is rich. We use them condently and skillfully in practice, and
it is quite possible for us not even to suspect their existence in theory.
Like Moliere’s Monsieur Iourdain who, when speaking in prose, had no idea what he was doing, we speak in diverse genres without suspecting that they exist."
out suspecting that they exist (1986, p. 78)."

genre as a resource for performance (Bauman) - specific social ends
"Bakhtin used in dening speech genres. In particular, the fact that
i genre is a “ready-made way of packaging speech” that at the same time
allows for creative, emergent, and even unique individual performances
means that both the voice type ofa speech genre and a concrete individual voice are simultaneously involved. In Bakhtin’s terminology,
the latter “populates” or “appropriates” the former."

Similar to reading:
"Philips’s second set of criteria (routinization, predictability, contiguity,
and the presence of framing devices) is generally consistent with
Bakhtin’s notion of speech genre. In his view, “when hearing others’
speech, we guess its genre from the very rst words; we predict a
certain length (that is, the approximate length of the speech whole)
and a certain compositional structure; we foresee the end” (I986,
p. 79).

64
"At the same time, there are several points of dialogicality specic to
Bush’s speech. Let us consider rst an aspect of the speech that relies
on a dialogic encounter between unique voices. The unique voices
here were those of Bush and the presidential candidate of the Democratic
Party, Michael Dukakis. The specic kind of dialogic encounter
involved is parody, a process whose effect derives from a type of ventriloquation.
In the passage from Bush’s speech quoted above, the comment “tell
him we’ve been creating good jobs at good wages” involves this kind
of ventriloquation. In the 1988 campaign Michael Dukakis constantly
mentioned the need to create “good jobs at good wages.” This refrain
was motivated by the Democrats’ claim that even though new jobs
had been created during the Reagan administration, many (low paying)"

The strategy
Bush and his speech writers used to challenge this claim was to
appropriate Dukakis’s words rather than object to them overtly. The
parodic effect they sought derived from the simultaneous presence of
Bush’s and Dukakis’s voices.