Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically

517 Pages·2009·3.95 MB·

by  Per Linell

Rethinking Language,
Mind, and World
Dialogically
Interactional and Contextual Theories
of Human Sense-Making
A volume in
Advances in Cultural Psychology: Constructing Human Development
Jaan Valsiner, Series Editor

Rethinking Language,
Mind, and World
Dialogically
Interactional and Contextual Theories
of Human Sense-Making
Per Linell
Linköping University, Sweden
~IAP
INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC.
Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Linell, Per, 1944-
Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically : interactional and
contextual theories of human sense-making / Per Linell.
p. cm. -- (Advances in cultural psychology)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-59311-995-9 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-59311-996-6 (hardcover)
1. Dialogue analysis. 2. Discourse analysis. 3. Communication. I.
Title.
P95.455.L57 2009
401’.41--dc22
2008046563
The cover illustration is a drawing by the Swedish artist Per Åhlin, and shows the two
Swedish writers and actors Tage Danielsson and Hans Alfredson. Each of them always
appeared in the inner as well as outer dialogues of the other. The copyright of the
drawing belongs to Per Åhlin. It is reproduced here with due permission.
Copyright © 2009 Information Age Publishing Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission
from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
ConTenTS
Abstract ...............................................................................................xvii
Acknowledgments ................................................................................xix
Series Editor’s Introduction: Rethinking Dialogicality .......................xxi
Jaan Valsiner
Preface and Overview .......................................................................xxvii
PArt I
Into the World of dIalogIcal concepts
1 Conceptual and Terminological Preliminaries...................................3
1.1 Dialogos ....................................................................................3
1.2 Three Senses of ‘Dialogue’ .....................................................4
1.3 ‘Dialogue Theory’ versus ‘Dialogical Theory (Dialogism)’ .6
1.4 Dialogism and Dialogicality ....................................................7
1.5 the Diversities of Dialogism ....................................................8
Notes ..................................................................................................9
2 Dialogism and its Axiomatic Assumptions ........................................11
2.1 Introduction: Dialogicality and Sense-Making ...................11
2.2 The Mind As a Sense-Making System .................................12
2.3 The Role of the Other: Responsivity and Anticipation
in Action and Interaction .....................................................13
2.4 Interactionism ........................................................................14
2.5 Contextualism ........................................................................16
v
vi CONtENtS
2.6 A Moderate Holism ...............................................................18
2.7 Communicative Constructionism ........................................19
2.8 Semiotic and Other Types of Mediation ..............................19
2.8.1 Forms of Mediation ..................................................20
2.8.2 Semiotic Mediation ...................................................21
2.9 Morality in Sense-making .....................................................21
2.10 Relationism and Realism ......................................................23
2.10.1 Relationism in Dialogism .........................................24
2.10.2 The Environment; The World “Out There” ............25
2.10.3 Against Relativism.....................................................27
2.11 Talk-in-Interaction as Metaphor and Metonymy .................27
2.12 Dialogism—a Framework for Explicating Human
Sense-Making .........................................................................28
2.12.1 Is Dialogism an Epistemology or an Ontology?......30
2.13 Summary: Other-Orientation, Interaction, Contexts,
Semiotic Mediation ...............................................................31
Notes ................................................................................................31
3 Monologism .........................................................................................35
3.1 Dialogism as a Counter-theory to Monologism ...................35
3.2 The Constituent Theories of Monologism ..........................36
3.2.1 Theories of Context ..................................................36
3.2.2 Theories of Perception and Cognition ...................37
3.2.3 Theories of Language and Communication ..........38
3.2.4 Cognition and Communication ..............................40
3.3 “The Problem of Other Minds” ............................................42
3.4 The Ontology of Monologism ..............................................44
Notes ................................................................................................47
4 Situations and Situation-Transcending Practices .............................49
4.1 Situations and Traditions ......................................................49
4.2 Double Dialogicality ..............................................................51
4.3 Intertextual Aspects of Dialogicality ....................................53
4.4 Sociocultural Practices ..........................................................54
4.5 Sociocultural Resources for Sense-making .........................56
4.6 Socially Constructed Materialities .......................................59
4.7 Dynamics and Sharedness at Two Levels .............................61
4.8 The Balance Between Situated Interaction and
Situation-Transcending Practices .........................................62
4.9 Toward a Contextual Social Constructionism .....................63
4.9.1 A Note on ‘Rampant Situationalism’ .......................64
Notes ................................................................................................64
Contents vii
PArt II
socIal MInds: selves, others and the InterWorld
5 Dialogue and the Other ......................................................................69
5.1 Interdependencies in Talk-in-interaction ............................70
5.2 The Role of the Other in Creating a Social Person ............76
5.3 Individual and Social Construction .....................................77
5.3.1 Intrapersonal (Individual) vs. Social Construction
of Meaning ................................................................78
5.3.2 Past vs. Ongoing Construction of Meaning ............79
5.3.3 An Integrational Account ........................................80
5.4 Other-Orientedness: Commonality and Difference ...........80
5.4.1 Intersubjectivity .........................................................81
5.4.2 Alterity .......................................................................82
5.5 The Zone of Proximal Development ....................................85
5.6 Complementarity as a Bridging Concept ............................86
5.7 Equilibrium vs. Tension: Dialogue as Unfinalizable ...........87
5.8 Semiotic Triads ......................................................................89
5.8.1 Introduction: More than Two Parties
in Communication ....................................................89
5.8.2 The Pragmatic Triad: ‘I-You-It’ ................................90
5.8.3 The Situational Triad: ‘Now-Here-I’ .......................92
5.8.4 The ‘Abstract Semiotic’ Triad: Word-Concept-
Referent .....................................................................92
5.8.5 An Example of a Local Communicative Project ....93
5.8.6 Self and Others: ‘I‘, ‘You’, ‘It’, and the Complex
of ‘We’/‘One’/(‘They’)/Generic ‘You’ ....................95
5.8.7 Conclusion .................................................................96
5.9 Interaction Situations and Discourse Universes .................97
5.10 Third Parties ..........................................................................99
5.10.1 Copresent Others in Peripheral Activity Roles .....100
5.10.2 Remote Audiences ..................................................101
5.10.3 Virtual Participants; Figures Populating the
Discourse .................................................................102
5.10.4 Artifacts Treated as Participants ............................102
5.10.5 Generalized Voices and Perspectives .....................103
5.10.6 The Near Omnipresence of ‘The Third’ ..............103
Notes ..............................................................................................105
6 The Dialogical Self ............................................................................109
6.1 The Presence of the Other in the Individual Mind ..........109
viii CONtENtS
6.2 Perspectives in Self’s Discourse ...........................................111
6.3 Dialogical Embeddedness and Individual Agency ............111
6.4 Agency and Consciousness .................................................113
6.5 The Embodied Self and the Notion of Voice5 ...................114
6.5.1 Language and Discourse as Embodied ..................114
6.5.2 Voice as Personal Signature ...................................115
6.5.3 Voice as Perspective on Topics ................................116
6.5.4 Voices and Goffman’s Concept of the Speaker ......117
6.6 Shared Perspectives: Single-voiced Conversations .............117
6.7 The Subjectivity of the Self as Internal Dialogue ..............119
6.7.1 Hetero-Dialogue: Polyvocality in an Individual’s
Contributions to Outer Dialogue ..........................120
6.7.2 Auto-Dialogue: Internal Dialogue in Thinking ...121
6.7.3 Internal (Intrapersonal) Dialogue Accompanying
External Dialogue ...................................................122
6.7.4 The Interplay between External Dialogue and
Internal Dialogue: An Example ............................124
6.7.5 Authoritarian and Authoritative Voices in the
Dialogical Self .........................................................130
6.7.6 Super-Addressees ....................................................133
6.8 Thinking and Learning with the Help of Others .............134
6.8.1 Self as Individual Thinker ......................................134
6.8.2 Self as Learning with Others .................................135
6.9 The Self at the Crossroads of Discourses in Society
and Voices in the Mind .......................................................136
6.10 The Dialogicality of Feelings ..............................................137
6.11 The Senses Considered as Dialogical Systems ...................138
6.12 The Delicate Balance Between Self and Others................142
Notes ..............................................................................................142
7 A Relational Interworld Beyond Individual Minds .........................145
7.1 Beyond the Individual Mind ...............................................145
7.1.1 The Extended Mind and Distributed Cognition ..146
7.1.2 The Mind: Body and Culture .................................147
7.1.3 Methodological Individualism ...............................148
7.1.4 Notes on ‘Inner Images’ and ‘Internal
Grammars’ ...............................................................149
7.1.5 Against the Idea of ‘The Group Mind’ .................151
7.2 Relations in an ‘Interworld’ ................................................152
7.2.1 Human Existence as Relational .............................153
Contents ix
7.2.2 Sociohistorical Approaches ....................................153
7.2.3 Socioemotional Approaches ..................................154
7.2.4 Sociocognitive Approaches ....................................155
7.2.5 Sociointeractional Approaches ..............................158
7.2.6 The Interworld as a Concept ..................................159
Notes ..............................................................................................161
PArt III
sense-MakIng: InteractIons, coMMunIcatIve projects,
utterances and texts
8 Monological and Dialogical Practices..............................................165
8.1 Treating the World as Responsive or Non-responsive ......165
8.2 Monological Activities in a Dialogically Conceived World 165
8.3 Monological Vs. Dialogical Organization of Discourses ..166
8.4 Monologue as Partly Dialogical ..........................................166
8.4.1 Responsivity, Addressivity and Genre-
Belongingness .........................................................167
8.4.2 Perspectivity and Voicedness, and Imposition of
Response ..................................................................168
8.4.3 Mono/multi-perspectivity and Mono/Dialogical
Organization ...........................................................169
8.5 Monologizing Practices .......................................................170
8.5.1 ‘Model Monopoly’ ...................................................171
8.5.2 ‘Dialogue’ vs. ‘Dissemination’ ................................172
8.5.3 ‘Dialogical Contraction’ vs. ‘Dialogical
Expansion’ ...............................................................172
8.5.4 Monological Texts as Products of Monologizing
(Undialogizing) Practices ......................................173
8.5.5 Neurobiology and Monologisation .........................174
8.6 Dialogue as High-quality Mutual Interaction ....................174
Notes ...............................................................................................176
9 Social Interaction and Power ............................................................177
9.1 Inter-acts: Responses and Initiatives ..................................179
9.2 The Inadequacy of Speech Act Theory..............................181
9.3 The Minimal Communicative Interaction ........................183
9.4 The Limitations of Adjacency Pair Theory........................184