Inestability of thought and word

The general line of reasoning Vygotsky employed in this respect grew out of his critique of theorists who assumed that the relationship between word and thought remains constant. In contrast to this, he began with the assumption that signs first emerge in social and individual action without their users' full understanding of their meaning or functional role. What then follows is a process of coming to understand the meaning and functional significance of the sign forms that one has been using all along. In an important sense human use signs before understaning what they are doing, or demonstrate' performance before competence,' as Courtney Cazden (1981) succinctly and elegantly put it.

Wertsch, 2007, p. 186.

Why it takes longer to produce discourse under an elaborated code

An elaborated code will arise wherever the culture or subculture emphasizes the 'I' over the 'we'...Meanings which are discrete and local to the speaker must be cut so that they are intelligible to the listener, and this pressure forces upon the speaker to select both among syntactic alternatives and encourages differentiation of vocabulary.

Bernstein, 1971, p. 170.

Códigos elaborado y restringido y su relación con lo abstracto y lo concreto

...acerca de un par de cuestiones que mencioné en la charla en el CSIC: (a) sobre la diferencia del lexical probing entre conceptos cotidianos y conceptos científicos, referido a la charla de T. B. y en el simposio sobre (b) la cuestión de las emociones y el reconocimiento léxico, en la charla de G., en un estudio de Bernstein de 1962, llamado 'Linguistic codes, hesitation phenomena and intelligence', Bernstein prueba que en un sistema elaborado (por ejemplo el de cierto campo semántico de una disciplina en particular, supongamos teología, historia o física cuántica) "the speech system requires more complex planning than in the case of a restricted code" (por ejemplo, el que está relacionado con los conceptos cotidianos: casa, cuchara, tenedor, juguetes, ángel de la guarda). En otras palabras, si uno debe producir actos de habla en un código elaborado y no se está citando a sí mismo, tiende a dudar (hesitate) más que si uno está produciendo actos de habla en un código restringido. Mi conjetura es que no sólo habrá más duda al hablar sino al reconocer el léxico también, especialmente si el léxico va empotrado en un enunciado concreto.

Ahora bien, la distinción abstracto-concreto sigue pareciéndome poco apropiada por cuanto lo importante no es cuán abstracto o concreto un término es sino si éste ha sido aprendido en un código restringido o en uno elaborado o si el léxico es producido o no según tal o cual código. Yo puedo decir (a) "ayer le recé a mi ángel de la guarda en el dormitorio porque me dio miedo la oscuridad", lo cual es muy de código restringido, y puedo decir (b) "El primer Concilio Vaticano confirmó que los ángeles son mensajeros de Dios, sin referirse específica ni necesariamente a su origen", ejemplo de código elaborado. Bernstein probó que los hablantes tardan más tiempo en producir un enunciado tipo (b) que uno tipo (a). Es el ángel de (a) tan abstracto como los ángeles de (b), pues sí. Pero ese no es el punto. De partida, un enunciado del tipo (b) puede requerir una estructura sintáctica más compleja, más alejada del habla coloquial, que quizá sea más difícil de reconocer.

En el código restringido, el contexto es ampliamente compartido por los hablantes. En el código elaborado, el contexto no es tan claro. De hecho, un enunciado es mucho más impredecible sintácticamente, según lo prueba Bernstein. Por último está el factor de confounding. Si hago un probing con "ángel", me puedo ir al ángel de la guarda, al ángel caído o a Ángel, que es el nombre de mi padre. En cambio si pongo "iridio", que es un término concreto, pero que no se usa en el lenguaje coloquial sino que suele ser parte de un código elaborado, no tengo muchas opciones. Puedo decir que mi cama está hecha de iridio, pero no tiene mucho sentido. Iridio es un término concreto, pero que no va a ser parte de un enunciado regido por un código restringido. A grandes rasgos y con algunas excepciones, unas palabras remiten a la infancia, otras a la juventud, sobre todo escolar, otras a la edad madura, universitaria y profesional, por ejemplo. Todas etapas en que aprendimos a hablar, escribir, escuchar y escribir de manera distinta.

Contradiction in L2 instruction

As far as language development is concerned, second or foreign language development is viewed as a metalinguistic process, not unlike the development of scientific concepts—which is sustained on the development of everyday concepts—, since the semantic system of the native language mediates the acquisition of concepts in the second language. What needs to be internalised is the psychological structure of the target language, that is, as Gal’perin (1992d) asserts, the ‘circumstances of speech’ (pp. 82-83). Thus, second or foreign language instruction presents a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, it relies on the acquirer’s native language (and presumably on highly coded methods of instruction) but, on the other hand, in order to bring the psychological structure of the utterance in the foreign language as close as possible to that which operates in the native language, acquirers are required to create links between linguistic functions in the mother and target language within recognisable communicative contexts. Those contexts, for the most part, are socio-communicative and rely, for their transmission, upon naturalistic instructional methods. Instruction in those context demands the communication readiness observed in operationalised functions. In consequence, instruction has to provide for pedagogical moves that go from meaning to sense within a contextual naturalistic platform set from sense to meaning. The weak and strong versions in communicative language teaching (CLT) reflect this dialectical contradiction.

Faith and reason again, hermeneutics and faith

The hermeneutic of the Holy Scriptures, because of its polysemous nature, constitutes a labyrinth, an ocean or flow of divine discourse. The only way out, the only north in this ocean is faith. Faith is ultimately what gives final sense to any interpretation. But faith is a sense, an spontaneous feeling that does not emerge from the act of knowing something empirically opposed to the theoretical. Faith is experience, but an experience that emerges spontaneously, not subject to the taming of abstract concepts that can only be understood as part of a network of theoretical concepts. In fact, a sure way to eventually kill a feeling is by rationalising it through words (psychoanalysis is used to kill a phobia).

As Eco points out:

"...the moral sense can be understood only through the mediation of the allegorical one, and is attainable only by the faithful ones...which can be summarized through the line of Nicholas of Lyra: Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralia quid agas, quo tendas anagogia". (Eco, 1984, p. 149)

In a similar way, in the Zen tradition, it is only the experience through practical means what gives the correct interpretation of the scriptures. The understanding of the scriptures is done through practical action. The scriptures serve to inform the formal aspects of the practice but they are not "principles" from which practice can be deduced, as it is the case with western law and western ethics. In other words, it is not possible to understand the koan from a pure rational stance. As master Dogen said, "awakening awakens awakening" or, akawening is only awakened by the force of awakening" or "Buddha alone knows Buddha".

'Gaze' and specialised knowledge

I believe 'gaze' was first introduced by Foucault in 'The Birth of the Clinic' (1973) where it referred to the 'medical gaze' which transformed the body into a positivists object. That specialised knowledge selected and constructed a particular object, on the basis of recognition and realisation procedures internal to the specialisation of that knowledge.

Bernstein, 2000, p. 172.

Abstraction and speech

Whilst the existence of inner, non-linguistic categories that enable concept formation is not denied, according to Gal’perin (1969), ‘abstractions are achieved only as a result of speech and are retained only in speech’ (p. 262)