Action and meaning

Let us imagine three groups of children. The first group of children, infants, are playing with their food: some of it goes in their mouths, but much of it does not. If one child makes a random gesture, for example throwing his or her hands in the air, no other child will notice. The second group of children, somewhat older but still pre-schoolers, are playing ‘House’, and one child pretends to serve the meal while the other, assuming the role of Daddy, pretends to eat it. In this situation, if one child makes a random gesture, the others will reproach that child with ‘not playing the game’. A third group of children, older still, is planning a school picnic. Instead of imaginary food, they are writing out a list of real food items followed by those who shall provide them. If a child in this group throws her or his hands up, it might be interpreted as a symbolic gesture of helplessness or perhaps unwillingness to bring anything but an empty stomach. We can see that for the first group of children action and meaning are not really differentiated, and actions are only what they seem to be. One may call this ‘play’ but one is hard put to call it a game. Nor is it easy to define concrete roles or abstract rules beyond the level of rote repetition or random variation. In the second group of children, meaning does appear as a separable component of action, but it is largely an imaginative extension of the actions that the children are making. Roles are now quite explicit, and there are even implicit rules that govern the kinds of motions that may be made and how they may be interpreted. The third group of children has decisively subordinated their actions to their meanings; they are now demonstrably engaged in a school activity, even though they probably think of it as preparation for play. This time, however, it is the rules about who shall bring what which are explicit, and the ‘roles’ of provider and consumer are only implicit. Contra Piaget, Vygotsky contends that it is neither the random gesture nor the subjective level of cognitive development that creates meaning in each social situation; on the contrary, it is the differing forms of social activity that imbue random gestures with meaning and eventually lead to cognitive development.

Kim and Kellog, 2007

Hidden build-up in second language acquisition

Because the transmitter is so focused on what he expects from acquirers (textual production in the target language) and disregards what is forbidden or undesirable (the muttering of a word in the acquirer's native tongue) and what actually takes place in the classroom, he or she seems not to pay attention to the actual inter-mental build-up taking place in collaborative activities.