A. a. Leontiev - The Social and the Natural in Semiotics

6 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

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English translation 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian textSotsialnoe i estestvennoe v semiotike, in Iazyk i rechevaia deiatelnost vobshchei i pedagogicheskoi psikhologii (Moscow and Voronezh: IPO MODEK,2001), pp. 919. Published with the permission of Dmitry A. Leontiev.

Translated by Nora Favorov.

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 44, no. 3,MayJune 2006, pp. 616. 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 10610405/2006 $9.50 + 0.00.DOI 10.2753RPO10610405440301

A.A. LEONTIEV

The Social and the Naturalin Semiotics

It is not the mission of this work1 to communicate any new, pre-viously unknown facts. The present work will be devoted to areview and rethinking of certain concepts and theoretical prin-ciples that are based on facts that are already well known. We willendeavor to demonstrate that, given a different methodologicalapproach, the same causes can give rise to different effects.

We will start with the concept of semiotics, referred to in thetitle of this article. In recent years, use of the term semiotics hascome to serve as a sort of signal that an author in principle drawsno qualitative distinction between the sign systems of animals andhuman language. In our opinion, it is useful to return to the origi-nal sense of this term and recall the words of Ferdinand de Saussure,who believed that semiotics or semiology are part of social psy-chology and consequently of general psychology. . . . Defining theexact place of semiology is a task for psychology.2 In keepingwith Saussures view, semiotics, as we see it, is a discipline thatstudies the role of signs in the formation and functioning of the

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human psyche. In other words, semiotics is the branch of psy-chology that deals with behavior that is sign oriented in natureand guided by signs.

The main distinction between the sign behavior of man and thecommunication-conditioned behavior of animals lies in the spe-cifically psychological nature of the human sign, something thatis completely alien to contemporary semiotics. We will permitourselves to explain this distinction using the words of L.S.Vygotsky:

[U]ntil quite recently . . . it was presumed that . . . a sound in and ofitself could be associated with any experience, with any content ofmental life, and for this reason can convey or communicate this con-tent or this experience to another person. At the same time . . . in orderto convey a particular experience or content of consciousness to an-other person, there is no alternative to relating the content being con-veyed to a specific class, and this . . . makes generalization absolutelyessential. . . . Thus, the higher-order forms of psychological associa-tion that are characteristic of man are possible only as a result of thefact that man, through thought, reflects reality in generalized form.3

It would seem that the animal is also capable of generalization,inasmuch as it is capable of functional identification of things thatare materially different and of drawing functional distinctions be-tween similar signals. But does this mean that we can place anequal sign between the two? Can we conclude that a word has afixed meaning for man just because it replaces something, becauseit is standing for [English in original] another, nonverbal signal?Consider, for example, the frequently encountered ideas of CharlesOsgood. It is well known that the concept of meaning is usuallyimbued with this very understanding, while the social charac-ter of a word or the meaning of a word is understood by what iscommon in it for many people, as societys or the socialenvironments verbal usage adhering to an individual, as bound-aries placed around variations in the usage of a particular wordthrough association with other people. Hence, meaning ceases tobe a social fact; its social aspect turns out to be extremely superfi-cial, reduced to the commonality of principles according to whicha word substitutes for nonverbal signals in different individuals.



It appears that there is a serious misunderstanding here, stem-ming from the fact that humanity is understood as a totality ofindividuals, of biological beings who live on their own in thebiological world and only occasionally come together with otherindividuals for various purposes. This, however, does not corre-spond to reality: the social nature of a human being is part of whatdefines him as the biological species Homo sapiens.

All individual beings that we place into a single species be-long to it specifically because they are connected by a certainnumber of properties common to all, properties inherited from acommon ancestor.4 The biological nature of every newborn ani-mal reproduces changes that have accumulated throughout thehistory of the species. And, what is specific to the species and isrealized in the individual is primarily morphological features,characteristics of the structure of the body of animals. Progres-sive development, evolution in the world of animals results in theimprovement of biological adaptation of animals of a given spe-cies to the life conditions of that species.

The pace of human development is not at all comparable withthe pace of evolution in the world of animals. From the appear-ance of the first stone axe with a wooden handle, to mans firstflight into space, the horse, for example, barely had time to replaceits three toes with a hoof. But, while evolution was progressing atsuch an amazing rate, human morphology essentially did notchange; if you could dress a Cro-Magnon in European clothingand walk him through the streets of London, he would barely begiven a second glance. It was not in the biological sphere that theevolution of the human species took place, but [in] some othersphere; it was not in the form of morphological changes that theaccumulation of features and experiences belonging to the speciestook shape, but in some other form. The sphere was the social lifeof man, and the form was the preservation of the achievements ofhuman activity within the sociohistorical experience of humanity.Now, the experience of the species is reflected not in changes tothe structure of the human arm, for example, but in changes to thetool the arm uses, that is, the techniques and ways of using it that


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are generalized in it, that are encompassed in it. In the tools oflabor, man acquires something akin to new organs that changehis anatomical structure. Since the point in time where he at-tained the level at which he started using them, he has endowedthe history of his development with a completely new feature. Inthe past, this history, like the history of all other animals,amounted to modifications in his natural organs; now it has turnedinto something that is primarily the history of advances in hisartificial [functional] organs.5

Another reason that the pace of human evolution is incommen-surable with the pace of animal evolution is that man is never onhis own in dealing with nature, as animals are (even RobinsonCrusoe had centuries of human experience at his disposal on hisisland). Mans relationship with nature is mediated by his rela-tionship with society. He is always able to draw from the store-house of social experience, and, therefore, does not need toexperience everything firsthand; he is always one step ahead ofnature, not letting himself be taken by surprise, while the animalis always one step behind nature. Man learns from his mistakesand even more so from the achievementsof others. The animallearns from his own mistakes.

But if we accept the thesis that the evolution of man is prima-rily the evolution of his artificial [organic] organs,6 then it becomesapparent that the subject of this evolution, and also of interactionwith nature generally, is not the human individual, but the humanspecies as a whole, the socium.* It is not the individual personwho interacts with the biological environment, but human societyoverall; this is why within this society laws of evolution such asthe law of natural selection, become invalid. It is not by mere chancethat the principle of morality that rejects the legitimacy, the natu-ralness of natural selection[the word] humanismcomes fromthe word human.

This applies not only to the practical, labor-oriented activity ofman that is mediated by the tools of labor, but to the theoretical,

*Knowledge of the society by every individual.Ed.



predominantly cognitive activity that is mediated by whatVygotsky called psychological tools, that is, signs. As a partof the process of behavior, the psychological tool also alters theentire course and structure of mental functions, just as the techni-cal tool alters the process of natural adaptation determining theform of labor operations.7 And, in exactly the same way that thetooltogether with the work skills and abilities that lie hidden init and are objectified in itis introduced into the practical activityof the individual from the outside (a child is given a spoon andtaught how to use it), the sign, the wordtogether with the meansof using this sign that is objectified in it, its meaningis intro-duced into verbal-cognitive activity from the outside.

But this means that, in talking about man as a biological beingand ignoring the fact that it is not the individual who serves as thesubject in interactions with nature, with the reality that surroundshim, but the socium (or rather the individual as the representativeof the socium, as the carrier of not only biological but also socialcharacteristics), we create not only a philosophical, but a psycho-logical, inaccuracy. At the same time, within the problem of theinnateness of linguistic ability, we encounter just such abiologized understanding.

We will briefly mention the view held by Eric Lenneberg onthis question. Heredity, in his view, provides the individual withlanguage readiness, in which we find the latent language struc-ture; a persons language acquisition is the process of actualizing,of transforming this latent structure into a real one. Social condi-tions can be viewed as a type of trigger that sets off a reaction.Perhaps the best metaphor is the concept of resonance.8 Accordingto this understanding, where the individual is viewed as causa sui,the motive for his linguistic development is [an] internal need,with no role whatsoever for arbitrary external factors, such as,for example, the influence of mature adults on the child.

It is illustrative that in Lennebergs book, which certainly holdsa prominent place in the psychological literature on speech, ev-erything associated with the acoustic-articulatory aspect of lan-guage is well argued [by] using biological, physioanatomical,


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and psychopathologic data. But as, soon as Lenneberg reachesthe structure of higher levels, for example, syntactic levels, he isforced to rely on disconnected observations and theoretical specu-lations. Between the authors factual bases and methodologicalconclusions there is empty territory permitting rather diverse pathsfor discussion and interpretation of the original data. In any event,it is not valid to apply results from study of the expressive planeto the content plane of language, as Lenneberg does.

So, according to Lenneberg, the individual contains within him-self all the prerequisites for his subsequent linguistic development,and society serves only as his social environment, providing theconditions for this development, but not serving as its cause. Thisdevelopment has two levels. There are two different levels rel-evant for language: in the formation of the latent structure and inthe process of actualization from the latent structure to the real-ized structure.9

Are these levels really so different for Lenneberg, Chomsky, Katz,McNeill, and other proponents of the theory of innate ideas? Forthem, human behavior is made up of two components: biologicaland another, which can be called biosocial. The biosocial compo-nent is viewed as a superstructure above the biological componentsimilar to behaviorism. True, behaviorism is sharply criticized, butprimarily for the fact that its proponents apply simple models thathave been developed for animals to more complex forms of humanbehavior; and, because behaviorists try to explain too much throughconditioning, that is, through a factor that is externalif not so-cial.10 The specific nature of human social behavior, includinglinguistic behavior, is based primarily on the principle of rules,again rooted in a biological predisposition. Any question aboutthere also being fundamental distinctions in the psychophysi-ological organization of processes in man that are specifically so-cial, as well as in processes that are not strictly social, and,correspondingly, in animals (such as cognition; consider Lennebergscharacteristic claim: it is clear that there is no formal distinctionbetween the formation of concepts in man and the ability of ani-mals to react to categories of stimuli),11 as well as the question of



whether behavior that is certainly biological, in particular in ani-mals, can also be based on a principle of rulesthese questions arenot raised by theoreticians of innate ideas. In general, it appearsthat within this theory, an actual psychological and physiologicalanalysis has largely been replaced by a logical-philosophical analy-sis. Whatever the case may be, for its proponents, biological andbiosocial components of behavior are fundamentally united; theydo not envision physiological mechanisms that are specific to hu-man behavior.

At the same time, mechanisms that sustain uniquely humanabilities exist, and, as they pertain to sense of pitch and certainother cases, have recently been investigated by A.N. Leontiev, who,following the physiologist A.A. Ukhtomskii, has advanced theconcept of a functional organ formed during life as a result of aspecific activity of uniting different physiological mechanismsinto a single functional system. We will mention that this broaderconcept, advanced by P.K. Anokhin, presumes a broad functionalunity of variously localized structures and processes on the basisof attainment of a final (adaptive) effect.12 One of the most im-portant features of functional organs is their plasticity: in ful-filling one and the same objective, they can have differingstructures,13 which provides for diverse possibilities in compen-sating for breakdowns in functions. These ideas of A.N. Leontievstem back to Vygotskys well-known proposition that in com-parison with animals, the human brain possesses a new localiza-tion principle, as a result of which it became the human brain, theorgan of human consciousness.14

According to VygotskyLeontievLuria,15 uniquely humanmental abilities are supported by just such mechanisms. Thesemechanisms take shape over the course of a persons life in soci-ety (we will examine how that formation takes place below), andcan certainly not be reduced to a mechanical actualization of ready-made principles of development already situated within individu-als. But, consequently, the alternative on which Lenneberg and hiscolleagues base their thinking (compare: The individual does notserve as a passive means or channel through which information


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is conveyed)16 is no more correct than the opposition of rational-istic and empirical viewpoints initiated by Chomsky. The alter-native to empiricism is not necessarily rationalism: otherapproaches are possible, and there is one to which we subscribe.

We just mentioned the formation of functional organs, contrast-ing it to the actualization of innate structures. At this point, it isimportant to underscore that the process of development of mentalfunctions and abilities supported by functional organs differs atits very core both from the process of the unfolding of biologicallyinherited behavior, and from the process of acquiring individualexperience. This process is carried out specifically in the form ofthe assimilation by each individual of a social and historical expe-rience, of the collective knowledge of the socium.

Before the individual entering into life . . . is a world of objects em-bodying human abilities that came into existence through the processof the development of sociohistorical practice. . . . For the individualto discover the human aspect of the objects that surround him, he mustcarry out energetic activity in relation to them, activity that is consis-tent (although, of course, not identical) to the activity that is crystal-lized within them. Of course, this also applies to language. Anothercondition is that the relationships between the individual and the worldof human objects must be mediated by his relationships with people;they must be included in the process of communication. . . . The indi-vidual, the child, is not simply thrown into the human world, but isintroduced into this world by the people around him, and they guidehim in this world.17

Therefore, society participates in the formation of human abilitiesmore as an active force within this formation than merely as alanguage environment.

The aforementioned mediated nature of uniquely human types ofactivity is the other side of the process of the active socializationof natural/inborn processes, as a result of the incorporation ofobjects and phenomena of the external world into these processesthat objectify human abilities. If in the natural interrelations withthe surrounding world that is characteristic of the animal the onlyregulator of these interrelations is its individual experience (the



experience of the species is already provided in ready-made form),in the social interrelations that are characteristic of man, his re-lationship with reality is regulated primarily by societal experi-ence that has taken shape in the tool of labor or the psychologicaltool (sign) in the form of its functionin the form of those abili-ties and skills that can take shape and be realized through this tool.The natural processes that are mediated, socialized throughthe introduction of tools and signs are in and of themselves innateor at least can be actualized through a signal, but not through theformative influence of the external world; the introduction of so-cial elements into these processes forces man to switch to a newway of enabling them physiologically.

It appears that human activity, even at the early stages of itsontogenesis, has a psychophysiological character that does not lenditself in the least to interpretation popular to the theory of innateideas. In the words of Vygotsky, The childs system of activity isdetermined at every given stage both by the extent of its organicdevelopment and the extent of its mastery of tools. Two distinctsystems develop in tandem, forming, in essence, a third system, anew system of a special kind.18

Turning again to Lennebergs book, we are told that there is asubstantial difference between the formation of concepts in manand the generalization of stimuli in animals. According toLenneberg, there is a display of word tagging in cognitive pro-cesses; therefore, concepts are essentially superstructures abovephysical data, they are a means of ordering . . . sensory data.19

But what has been said above about the role of tools and signsin the formation of uniquely human behavior to a great extent re-lates to the processes of perception and to other components of hu-man cognition. This is expressed in that the experiential momentappears in cognitive processes not only in the external, sensorylink of the perceiving system, as is also commonly presumed bypsycholinguists;20 also, its main role is in the organization of thissystems effector link.21 The most important thing here is that lan-guage serves as a mediating link in the activity of cognition andimmediately conditions this activity.


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The process of verbal denotation in recognition . . . is not understoodas a special processseparate from cognitionwhich then processesits product through thought, but as a process that is incorporated intothe very activity of cognition. . . . After all, recognition, or the actualcognition of an object, demands the correlation of pre-informationreceived with a reference, which in man is stored in generalizing sys-tems that have a linguistic basis. Such references are not only the re-cipients of incoming pre-information, but they carry out the functionof guiding recognition processes.22

All of this makes it evident that language does more than makethe individuals understanding of the external world easier, moreprecise, and faster. It serves as a force that indeed shapes this cat-egorization, introducing a fundamentally new principle: The childis compelled to reorganize his way of seeing and conceiving thingsso as to have the possibility of using language to signify what heknows;23 but this reorganization itself is performed with the help oflanguage. One hundred years ago, Steinthal said, In order to think,one must be able to speak.24 In order to perceive, it is also necessaryto be able to speak, at least if we are talking about the human way ofseeing things. After all, man sees things specifically as social ele-ments, projecting onto them knowledge of their objective proper-ties. For it to be possible to separate an object from the world aroundit, as a carrier of such objective traits, it has to be recognized; and, inorder for it to be recognized, it has to be signified.

This was well understood by the great Russian linguist and phi-losopher A.A. Potebnialittle known, unfortunately, outside hisnative landwhen he was still a follower of Humboldt. We willconclude with his words. Language is more than an external tool,and its function for cognition and action is closer to that of an organin terms of its significance for man, like an eye or an ear. . . . Thesum of acquired abilities and traditions always stands as an inter-mediary between a thing and the ability to perceive it.25

Notes

1. This work is taken from the Russian text of a paper that was intended forpresentation at the nineteenth International Congress of Psychology (London,



1969) as a part of the symposium, Biological, Social and Linguistic Fac-tors in Psycholinguistics.

2. F. de Saussure, Kurs obshchei lingvistiki (translated from the French)(Moscow, 1933), p. 40.

3. L.S. Vygotskii [Vygotsky], Izbrannye psikhologicheskie issledovaniia(Moscow, 1956), pp. 5051.

4. V.D. Komarov, Uchenie o vide u rastenii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1944),p. 207.

5. G.V. Plekhanov, K voprosu o razvitii monosticheskogo vzgliada naistoriiu. Izbrannye filosofskie proizvedeniia, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1956), p. 610.

6. This thesis appears to be generally accepted in anthropology and geneticpsychology at present. See H. Pieron, Le dveloppement de la penseconceptuelle et hominisation, in Les processus de hominisation (Paris, 1958).

7. L.S. Vygotskii [Vygotsky], Razvitie vysshikh psikhologicheskikh funktsii(Moscow, 1960), p. 255.

8. E.H. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (New York [: Wiley],1967), p. 378.

9. Ibid., p. 379.10. N. Chomsky, A Review of B.F. Skinners Verbal Behavior, Language,

1959, vol. 35, no. 1.11. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations, p. 332.12. P.K. Anokhin, Biologiia i neirofiziologiia uslovnogo refleksa (Moscow

1968), p. 79.13. A.N. Leontev [Leontiev], Problemy razvitiia psikhiki (Moscow, 1965),

p. 206.14. Vygotskii, Razvitie vysshikh psikhicheskikh funktsii, p. 393.15. In addition to the works already mentioned, see in this regard the book

by A.R. Luria, Mozg cheloveka i psikhicheskie protsessy (Moscow, 1963).16. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations, p. 378.17. Leontev, Problemy razvitiia psikhiki, pp. 18586.18. Vygotskii, Razvitie vysshikh psikhologicheskikh funktsii, p. 50.19. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations, p. 333.20. Charles Osgood is a typical example. Concerning his views on this

question, see A.A. Leontev [Leontiev], Psikholingvistika i problemafunktsionalnykh edinits rechi, p. 6, and Voprosy teorii iazyka v sovremennoizarubezhnoi lingvistike (Moscow, 1961).

21. See A.N. Leontev, O mekhanizme chuvstvennogo otrazheniia, Voprosypsikhologii, 1959, no. 2, as well as numerous works by V.P. Zinchenko et al.

22. A.N. Leontev and Iu.B. Gippenreiter, O deiatelnosti zritelnoi sistemycheloveka, in Psikhologicheskie issledovaniia (Moscow, 1968), p. 19.

23. J. Bruner, An Overview, in Studies in Cognitive Growth, ed. J.S.Braner et al. (New York, 1966), p. 323.

24. H. Steinthal, Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1871).25. A.A. Potebnia, Iz zapisok po teorii slovesnosti (Kharkov, 1905), pp.

643, 646.

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A. a. Leontiev - The Social and the Natural in Semiotics

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