Formes Symboliques Institut Marcel Mauss (EHESS) Paris, 4...

Formes Symboliques

Institut Marcel Mauss (EHESS)

Paris, 4 décembre 2014

Psycholinguistique de l'altérité:

architecture théorique, éléments « voix » et « formes »

Psycholinguistics of alterity:

Theoretical Architecture, “Voice” and “Form” as Two of Its Elements

Marie-Cécile Bertau

München

[email protected]

0 Abstracts

1 Starting point

1.1 A non-cognitivistic approach to language psychological processes

1.2 Epiphany of heard voices

2 Synthesizing the Theory

2.1 The necessity to formulate a dialogic basis to language and the subject

2.2 Architecture

3 Two Elements: Voice and Form

3.1 Voice

3.2 Form

4 Conclusion

5 Appendix

References

Notes

Marie-Cécile Bertau Paris, Formes Symboliques 04-12-2014 1/22

0 Abstracts

Psycholinguistique de l'altérité: architecture théorique, éléments « voix » et « formes »

Nous présenterons tout d'abord une synthèse de la psycholinguistique de l'altérité (Bertau 2011), introduisant

ses conceptions centrales concernant le langage et le sujet et articulant son architecture théorique en terme

d'axiomes et d'élements. Dans un second temps, nous proposerons de discuter plus particulièrement notre

conception de éléments « voix » et « forme ». La voix est comprise comme phénomène psycho-

physiologique, socio-culturel et individuel, elle joue un rôle central pour les processus langagier dans le

social (avec au moins un autre concrètement présent) et dans l'individuel (sans autre présent, néanmoins

social en raison de sa genèse), elle forme l'incessant mouvement d'intériorisation et d'extériorisation

permettant aux sujets de se socialiser dans chaque acte langagier (chaque performance). La forme langagière

est conçue dans une perspective dynamique en temps qu'événement, de qualité dialogique. Nous suivons

plusieurs axes de réflexion nous rattachant à différentes traditions qui soulignent le dynamisme de la forme:

l'hylémorphisme (Aristote), la morphologie (Goethe, Humboldt), ainsi que le dialogisme dans la tradition de

Jakubinskij, Vološinov et Bakhtine (Union Soviétique, années 1930), apportant entre autres la notion de

« valeur propre » développée par Vološinov et Medvedev.

Mots clé: psycholinguistique, altérité, performativité du langage, voix, forme, Vygotskij, Vološinov

Psycholinguistics of Alterity: Theoretical Architecture, “Voice” and “Form” as Two of Its Elements

In a first step, we present a synthesis of the psycholinguistics of alterity (Bertau, 2011). We introduce its core

concepts concerning language and the subject, leading to its specific theoretical architecture in terms of

axioms and elements. In a second step, we propose to look more closely at two of these elements: “voice”

and “form”. Voice is understood as psycho-physical, socio-cultural and individual phenomenon playing a key

role in social language activity (with actual others) as well as in individual language activities (without actual

others, nevertheless keeping its social character). Voice forms the incessant movement leading to

interiorization and to exteriorization that enables the individuals to socialize themselves with each and every

act of speaking-listening. The language form is conceived from a dynamic perspective as an event with

dialogic quality. Here, we follow several lines of reflections thereby linking our ideas to different traditions

highlighting form as dynamic: Aristotle's hylemorphism, Goethe's and Humboldt's morphology, and dialogic

thinking in the tradition of Jakubinskij, Vološinov and Bakhtin (Soviet Union, 1920s-30s), that offers inter

alia the notion of the form's “own value” as developed by Vološinov and Medvedev.

Keywords: psycholinguistics, alterity, language performance, voice, form, Vygotskij, Vološinov


1 Starting point

1. 1 A non-cognitivistic approach to language psychological processes

The framework of mainstream psycholinguistics is a cognitive one, the discipline sees itself as part

of the (neuro-)cognitive sciences.i The locus of language is hence the individual head, from where

language is uttered into a social world. In contrast, the cultural-historical framework developed by

Vygotskij and colleagues in the 1920s-30s looks at the language phenomenon starting with its

sociality: language is a type of activity. It relates its social to its individual aspect, communication to

cognition by a genetic logic. There is a movement here: of passing and transforming, as seen for

instance in the notion of “interiorization”. It is a movement embracing several individuals, relating

them, individuating them as social, as mutually oriented ones.

So, the picture is put upside down: Individuals pertain form the start to a certain life form, they are

socio-culturally and historically situated, and their activity is principally mediated – by semiotic

means, particularly language. This reversal of perspective is, I think, echoed by a change from an

ontology of substances to an ontology of processes (Prozessontologie): in process ontology, the

founding perspective is not on substances (entities) which undertake a process, but rather on

processes, from which substances develop (emerge, hervorgehen). Then, social and psychological

phenomena are investigated in terms of their relatedness as a becoming. I see in Vygotskij's genetic

view precisely that stance: in order to understand any complex human phenomenon one needs to

follow its development. This highlights the ideas of history and of movement – it is the movement

of social activity mediated by tools and language. Vygotskij quotes Engels: “‘it is only in movement

that a body shows what it is’“.ii So, this the first step leading to “cultural-historical

psycholinguistics”.

In order to further develop this alternative, I complement the cultural-historical framework with two

lines of thinking. First, with Humboldt's philosophy of language: it understands language as

energeia, or activity, an idea which is exactly took up by the Soviets (deiatel'nost).iii Taking also

Humboldt's insistence on the dialogicality of that energeia-activity, which leads to a dialogic notion

of the thinking process itself: forming a clear concept is effected in address and reply (On the

Dualiv). Second, with Karl Bühler's (1934) language theory, a contemporary thinker of the Soviets,

well known, read and translated by them. Here I only point to the term Zweiersystem, the “system

of two” which is for Bühler (1927) the irreducible basis for conceiving language.


Besides these two traditions historically and conceptually related to the cultural-historical

framework, there is a thread running through, which is devoted to the acroamatic dimension of

language: listening to language is the epistemological mode. Again, one finds some of the thinkers

already mentioned closely linked to that approach: Herder and Humboldt (Romanticism) belong to

it as well as Jakubinskij (dialogism), and – importantly – also the Sophists (Gorgias) of pre-Socratic

and Socratic times.

This results in a shift leading farther into dialogicality and pragmatics, and also – as grounding

movement – to alterity. This second step amounts hence to a pragmatic and dialogic language

psychology, or to cultural-historical psycholinguistics with an explicit accent on the Other:

“psycholinguistics of alterity” (Bertau 2011).

1.2 Epiphany of the heard voices

Listening one day to a doctoral student's audio recording of an adult performing a thinking-aloud

task, I actually experienced, I heard the different voices of a single individual, and heard the intense

dialogues taking place. This recording was discarded because the experimental subject didn't fulfill

the job adequately, the sample was categorized as useless. The point was that the person couldn't

solve the task and got desperate, calling the investigator for help (she was not in the same room), as

well as different other instances, speaking like a little helpless girl, whining and moaning, then

again with a more firm voice as adult women trying to rationally solve the task, addressing the

computer, herself, the investigator, the task, the task's authors with different stances. To that time, I

had Vygotskij's interiorization theory in mind, complemented by Rubinstein's idea that “any man's

word expressed in thinking has its audience in whose atmosphere his consideration takes place”.v

I joined these ideas to my voice experience and started to analyze some thinking-aloud protocols

recorded by a colleague. My the aim was to look for a dialogical structure of this form of speaking

to oneself for a specific other. I was successful, the results were quite impressive for myself, and

they enabled me to fill Vygotskij's thinking with “dialogic flesh”, furthermore, to see better his own

slight dialogic traces, and later on to complement these traces by contextualizing Vygotskij's

thinking with contemporary work (Vološinov, Jakubinskij, Paulhan, Vossler, Bakthin).vi In the

beginning, I didn't work with the notion of voice, but of turns belonging to certain conversational

positions (mother-child: because of the genetic, developmental perspective), so I analyzed speech

acts.


Here is an example of such a dialogue, it is a thinking-aloud protocol of a subject solving one of the

Raven matrices.vii Note that the first and the last utterance are addressed to the investigator, whereas

the other utterances represent the subject's thinking-aloud, a kind of refraction or trace of this

subject's inner speech. The turns in this speech are assigned to the two basic positions and kind of

activities which are observable in development: M (mother) and C (child).

(1) C8/ [task number]

(2) aha/

(3) .../

(4) this must be hatched obliquely/

(5) aha/

(6) obliquely to the left or obliquely to the right? [M turn]

(7) therefore/ [C tries to answer]

(8) completely hatched/ [C answers]

(9) where is this?/ [M turn]

(10) ../ [C is looking for the answer]

(11) that is/ [C begins to answer with an objection]

(12) that's not like/ [like (11)]

(13) not so logical/ [C finishing objection]

(14) nevertheless/ [M counters objection]

(15) now I see the figure/ [C understands and answers (9)]

(16) this is number one C8.viii

2 Synthesizing the Theory

2.1 The necessity to formulate a dialogic basis to language and the subject

Trying to understand, to observe and investigate the dialogicality of thinking, it became rapidly

clear to me that this cannot be done by simply adding a dialogical surface to a monologically

conceived language, an abstraction bare of others, of its context of utterance, the same became true

for the individual: it was no more possible to assume the view of methodological individualism: a

self-contained, autonomous entity that chooses to entertain a dialogue with others, or, generally, a

society with others, and that can be investigated basically without any other. So, it became obvious

that a double blindness needed (needs) to be addressed, a complementary deficit: Dialogicality is to

be assumed not only for the individual (the self), leaving language all in all as that abstract system


which is put to use and through which one can look to see essentials like “the Self”, or “Thinking”.

The same is true vice versa: dialogicality is not only to be assumed for language, leaving the

individual within the confines of methodological individualism. Hence, language and the subject,

language and the self: this is what is to be simultaneously articulated in a dialogical perspective. I

started with a theory of “languageing-and-thinking” (Sprechdenktheorie).ix

2.2 Architecture

Following the historical foundation of concepts and lines of ideas the theoretical architecture is built

by seven axioms and four elements. These are:

Seven axioms: 1) notion of language, 2) mediality, 3) plurality, 4) spacetime of language, 5) two

types of performance, 6) sign, 7) navigation and mutuality.

Four elements: addressivity& positioning, form, repetition & temporality, voice.x

3 Two Elements: Voice and Form

3.1 Voice

Voice is a core term in dialogic approaches in linguistics and psychology, which link themselves to

Bakhtin's (1984) terms of “polyphony” and ensuing “voice”. Voice is here a metaphor, it applies to

the quality of language as dialogic: a polyphonic texture of utterancesxi which are dialogically

related, answering and anticipating each other within actual dialogic performance, be it by the same

speaker or by the other speakers present, but also answering previous performances by others within

a community of speakers-listeners. Explaining “voice” by starting with “polyphony” makes clear

that there are always different and autonomous voices resounding simultaneously – so dialogicality

is extracted from a sequential logic and at the same time separated from the speaking bodies: now,

utterances have voices as evaluative stances, or perspectives on the world.xii

Leaving sequentiality and speaking bodies permits Bakhtin (1984) to link voice to consciousness:

this is the second domain of application for his metaphor: Consciousness as social, voiced internal

dialogues. Voice carries the speaking subject out of him/herself, decentering and orienting him/her

towards the other(s) (particular and general others), it supports and leads the contact. A voice

manifests and performs the individual expression of contact with the other, and this is always

mingled with some alien components. Bakhtin points to the “individual manyfoldness of voices”xiii,

and in this multiplicity there is movement and life.


On these grounds, the voice metaphor is widely used in Dialogical Self Theoryxiv, it pertains here to

the so-called I-positions building up the dialogical self: every position can be endowed with a voice

as its perspective on reality. Contrary to this reading, one can see several scholars within the same

framework addressing voice in its materiality and audible concreteness, particularly in therapeutic

investigations.xv

From the genetic point of view (lacking in the investigations just mentioned), it is necessary to

acknowledge the becoming of the voice as psychological phenomenon and to link it back to the

vivid experience of a voice as situated, embodied and addressed event belonging to a systems of

two. We can listen to these voices, hear them, investigate them in their dialogical, evaluative,

psycho-social quality, far beyond a mere technical carrier of an intention put to articulated words.xvi

So, this is how I arrive to hold a dual view on voice: a genuine sensory and psychological

experience and performance, a dense qualitative socio-cultural texture of living materiality that is of

utmost importance for human beings.

Voice plays a major role

(1) in the formation and developments of a dialogical self,

(2) of consciousness,

(3) in symbol formation with regard to language acquisition

(4) and in terms of polyphony, voice is a resource for the construction and reconstruction of

social reality.xvii

In view of this, I underscore the fact that voice is not a manifestation of the self's positional

multiplicity. In much the same vein I insist on the fact that language is not a manifestation of the

self's dialogicality, it is not a transparent medium to look first at, and then through, but a formative

one. So I understand voice as genuine dimension of the language per-formance, of the genetic as

well as of the in situ formation of a certain affective attitude towards the other, self, and reality.

The proposed “simultaneous reading” of the voice as an event with a physical and a psychological

dimension enables to clearly see a link between physiological and psychological experiences in the

human voice. In this way, a kind of “integrated and integrating dynamics” relating body and

symbolic activities can be conceived. Through voice experience and performance, the acculturated,

culturally and socially situated, and yet unique body is inherently related to the symbolic activities

of a psychological, dialogical self. For this reason one can see voice as an excellent point of entry


for the investigation and understanding of the psycho-physical reality of human beings. Language

as experienced performance is pervasive to this reality, hence I advocate to not completely detach

language as symbolic activity from the body-based, mutual sensorial experience.

The genetic, dialogic approach to language, its understanding as always addressed activity

(energeia) leads to see voice as core moment of that activity. A form moment, a body moment, an

affective-cognitive moment, transgressing and crossing the linguistics forms, giving them resonance

in terms of psycho-social perspectives, but also in terms of a presence experienced here-and-now as

perception and proprioception. Hence, I have a stance in speaking these words to you and to myself

about that subject, a stance to Bakhtin, to the EHESS, to myself as a researcher, as a lover of

language performance and of voices, to these words I partly used in other occasions, I find myself

back in them with another audience, in another context, and I sense these words in my body, in my

mouth and ears, I feel their quality when leaving me in a spacetime we brought to existence in co-

creating this specific Now. So, voice is always also a quality of auditive experience, a certain

physical-psychological touch, a way of being-affected by speaking.

The notion of voice I build by bringing together five features displays these ideas: indexicality,

body, intonation, imitation, and articulation. These features are not neatly separated, they are as if

entanglements of similar ideas echoing each others, so the labels propose discernment but not

separation. I will briefly address each of these features.

Indexicality. The voice indicates the speaker's personal characteristics in terms of sex, age, health,

mood etc., in sociolinguistic respects in terms of regional origins, social status etc.

If we assume a multi-voiced speaker, we will be sensitive to voice changes giving other indications,

be they rhetorically performed as in reported speech (constructed dialoguesxviii), or less intended but

nevertheless audible, due for instance to a change in addressee, or in subject of talk

(Redegegenstand). Bühler's organum model involving self – other – subject of talk (originally “state

of affairs”), to which I add a listening public, is useful here. This must be complemented by a

dialogical notion of the subject: who as whom is talking about what as what to whom as who?

I as invited speaker talk to you as my hosts about the subject of voice as one of my central subjects

and yours, too, in another way.


Body. A voice belongs to a unique body which is encultured, it has a history of movements, actions,

exchanges and contacts, so voice is an expression of such a body pertaining to a socio-culturally

constructed and experienced expression. I see voice as belonging to Mauss' techniques of the body,

specifically, it plays an important role in raising children. Accompanying, structuring, and

qualifying the handlings and touchings of the baby. It is first one of the felt contacts: the voice

displays and forms a certain quality in caregivers' action: slow, smooth, rapid, impatient etc. I think

it is iconic and symbolic at the same time.xix

Intonation. The pace and melodic curves, the intonation of a voice, its intensity and loudness belong

to the contact of a speaking voice to a specific reality, it is for Vološinov a particular form moment

in the utterance. Intonation plays for him the first role in the construction of an utterance, the second

one being choice of words and the third disposition of words. An utterance without words would

still have “the sound of voice” which is intonation, and if this were absent, the gesture would

remain: these two instances manifest the vivid materiality of communication.xx Specific words and

their ordering are thus consequences of the intonation which is itself determined by the situation

and the audience. (We could, again, think of Bühler's organum)

Imitation. We can easily see the importance of imitation in infancy, supporting intersubjective

development as well as language acquisition. Imitation is a means to slip into the other's words, the

other's perspective, the other's voice, it is a means to exchange voices, to build up voices, to perform

duets and fugues. It is an extremely rich means for us all, manifesting the wandering of the

language forms, the very dialogicality of words and utterances through multiple performances by

the same as well as by different speakers (see also alignementsxxi). Acquiring an own voice is a topic

here, how to reach beyond ventriloquation, how to be “a self” (also in written texts) and hence to

obey one's culture developmental task.

Articulation. Humboldt conceives articulation with respect to the work of language in the spirit, it is

first of all a process of becoming clear. This process takes place through the addressed other and by

means of the embodied quality of the speaking voice. Briefly: Articulating is an act enabling

conception because the spirit is forced to stand still for a moment, to interrupt its incessant activity,

and this is fulfilled by sensorial unities: sounds, and these sounds are language signs

(Sprachzeichen) – or: language signs are necessarily sounds.xxii These sounds are specific, they exist

for Humboldt only in humans, their specificity relying in the fact that they invite the other to

understand through “co-thinking” (Verstehen durch Mitdenken), rather then to acting through co-


feeling (Handeln durch Mitfühlen). This invitation takes the path of the voice effecting in the

listener a similar standing still, hence articulation is “acroamatic” – highlighting again the sensorial

materiality of language as energeia.

A closing example: The three voices of Ernest Becker

Becker (1924-1974) was a Jewish-American cultural anthropologist and humanist. His book, The

Denial of Death, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Becker’s last years revealed his professional,

existential struggle. Martin (2014) presents a biographical essay on Becker's final years based on

diverse documents, among others Becker's diary. The following entry is from December 10, 1968, it

presents what I would like to call a polyphonic structurexxiii:

“It is clearer to me lately that I am masking my fear of finitude, of death, of being stupidly killed

and ended, and my life having no real weight or meaning. I am masking this by devotion to the

family, what would happen to them if I were to die, etc. Who would educate Sam and Gaby into the

kind of historical-personal perspectives that alone can help them become persons, etc. Now there is

some justification for these misgivings and anxieties. But goodness, man, you have got to live on

the world’s terms, like all flesh: you have got to travel on its roads and in its skies, you have got to

take your insignificant place with all men; you have got to die; you have got to have only the tiniest

weight in the destiny of man, if you have any weight at all. You have got to accept this and live it,

and trust God. If he created you into this kind of situation, then that’s the kind you have to live in.

To try to stretch this into something greater is not going to be done; you are defying God in effect, if

you try to secure your life and fashion your own weight. The trouble with the creative person is that

by throwing off the yoke of the people around him, he also throws off the unquestioned acceptance

that daily action is right. Then he sticks out and starts to question and fear. The task, then is clear;

that after he wins his freedom, he has to contrive to slip back into the daily dumb acceptance that

sustains all other men. There is no alternative. ” (Martin 2014, p. 73-74, all highlighting by mcb)

This is what I read and hear in this passage, beginning with the central part, where the most obvious

change in voice appears.

Italics: the voice of someone scolding Becker for not obeying the transcendent; note language forms

as repetitions in syntax and address; the style (as far as I can judge): weight, flesh, all man,

metaphor of traveling.


The voice before that one is speaking from the first perspective, the voice after the scolding, middle

one is speaking from still another point of view. Strikingly, a specific use of pronouns, i.e. position

of address, becomes visible (see underscored words): I – you (addressed Self by scolding voice –

he (talking about the Self by a third voice), this goes together with I (particular Self) – all man

(generality, species) – all other men (multitude), of which the he/the creative person is only one.

Bold “etc”: possibly abbreviations due to a form of inner speech, here in written form: between

explicitness and abbreviation.

So, I see three voices in dialogue, three perspectives from where Becker tries to come about his

mortality:

1) the voice of Becker's self as lamenting and fearful,

2) the voice of someone scolding Becker for not obeying the transcendent,

3) speaking about the self, the voice of a third who explains the conflict, who explains why the

self is not obeying but should and finally will, articulating the clear task for the person

(helping in that way) – caregiver-like voice.

This is not to say that Ernerst Becker “had” these three voices, it is only to say that this kind of

voices with these specific differences in address and position are visible in this passage, i.e. they

can be analyzed through the specifically performed language means. The voices' interaction (are

they in contact to each other, what kind of contact? Etc.) is a highly interesting question that could

also be addressed and followed up through other entries.

3.2 Form

I think it is already obvious that a dialogic notion of language necessitates a view of form that goes

beyond a ready-made envelope for meaning.xxiv Saying “dialogic notion of language” means that

language is principally informed by address and reply, it is within these complementary movements

that language exists as mediational and dialogical activity.xxv So, language is a process taking place

between at least two individuals and performativity is foregrounded. Two assumptions result form

this notion. First, language activities are fundamentally entangled with non-verbal and paraverbal

activities. This leads to a broad notion of language that follows principally an approach “from the

outside”to the “linguistic facts”xxvi (contrary to the other path looking at the linguistic facts and

possibly adding “the outside”: context, others, emotions, usages): Jakubinskij and Vološinov

[entangled form] – and it leads to insist (with Vološinov and Vygotsky) on the fact that language

activity is societally anchored [form in contact to societal reality]. Second, this approach highlights

the dynamics of forms and formations taking place in time and through time [temporal form]


Different traditions highlight form as dynamic: I will briefly follow each of them.

Path 1 Aristotle's hylemorphism:

a specific relating between form (morphè) and matter (hylè): it gives form the first place. Hence

form is not simply the realization of something antecedent to it (Figur der Vorgängigkeit). Aristotle

advocates for the immanence of being (Sein), the character of actuality, of effectivity (Wirksamkeit),

and of real existence is brought to bear exactly for this reason, herein lie the main significance of

being.xxvii Hence, form antecedes matter as energeia antecedes dynamis. In hylemorphisms – the

coupling of the pair – matter and form are not conceived as opposites but as forming a whole, with

an organization of the form to a matter: oikéia hylè: a form cannot realize any matter, there seem to

be a specific reception of a matter for a form. The term underscores also the mutual dependency of

form and matter, they cannot exist separately from each other, although they are distinct.xxviii Form is

not outer form but a formative principle. It acts upon matter, and this is each and every time an

accomplishment (Vollzug) done in terms of Alter: this is my reading of Aristotle's notion.

Path 2 morphology (Romanticism):

Form: a living organism or body is in movement, is developing, transforming. Its form is dynamic

to several levels (micro-meso-macro; maybe fractal structure). Anatomy (static form) versus living

organism, in motion and development (incessant transformation): a whole (Ganzheit) with

functional parts. Goethe: organic concept of form (gestalt) formulated against anatomy, which

dismembers the whole into parts and explicates the locus of the parts to each other and within the

system: this description asks for no change, the visual form is privileged.

Humboldt: thinks of language not in natural, but in spiritual terms (geistig, nicht natürlich).

1 On the Dual: form happens due to the other, due to the speaker's address to him or her.

2 The whole striving of language is formalxxix: form of language is the way in which a language

realizes the striving for form; a language is at the same time the principle of formation and the result

of this principle: “language has a form and is a form”xxx; nothing is static in language, everything is

dynamicxxxi: form is no exception to this. This corresponds to Humboldt's energetic view on

language: Language as activity, as such it is not separable form the activity which generates it:

language is accomplishment (Vollzug): energeia. This implies priority of reality with respect to

potentiality and the rejection of a principle which is implemented in a second step.xxxii


Path 3 The Russians, Dialogic Thinking:

Jakubinskij: Forms are functional forms of speech, hence oral forms = audible and visible: oral

forms display the role of the other and the role of the speaking-listening bodies. Four principle

functional forms as combination of direct-indirect and of alternating-lasting form of mutual activity.

Remarkably: a movement between more and less language: the forms are abbreviated or

unfolded.xxxiii

Vygotskij: conceives of a dynamic form-meaning relationxxxiv: it is the thought that is “completed”

by the word – gaining a linguistic form departing from the “pure meanings” that belong to the zone

of sense.

Vološinov: notion of language form as ‘vivid materiality’ which he conceived as a critique of an

abstract structural notionxxxv.

*) Three fundamental elements organizing the utterance: 1) intonation, 2) choice of words, 3) order

of words. As said, the first element provides the contact to reality.

*) Form also in inner realm: as addressed turns: inner dialogic forms.

*) Form has its “own value” vis-à-vis the meaning: a value, which links the utterance to its social-

situational, non-verbal reality.xxxvi

Briefly: The form receives the societal reality of the said-and-heard, because it is in the form that

positionings and voices of speakers and of their community meet and interfere. Form produces that

relation to reality, its effect is hence to relate verbal meaning and the situation of its generatingxxxvii –

the situation of the meaning's completion involves listening Other(s) and an audience:

“I give myself verbal shape from another's point of view, ultimately, from the point of view of the

community to which I belong” (Vološinov 1929, p.86)

“Im Wort gestalte ich mich vom Standpunkt des anderen, letzten Endes vom Standpunkt der ganzen

Gemeinschaft.” (Vološinov 1929, S. 146)

“Das le Mot je me donne forme à moi-même du point de vue de l'autre, en fin de compte du point

de vue de ma communauté” (Vološinov 1930, p. 299)


Proposalxxxviii:

Characteristics of Dynamic Form

1 Language forms are of ‘vivid materiality’, forms are dynamic formations in terms of their

temporal and qualitative development across an actual language performance as well as across

several such performances. The forms are sensorially and bodily experienced in the actual language

activity by both speaker and listener in terms of rhythms, tempo, tone of voice, ways of wording,

pause and turn structures, kinds and qualities of address.xxxix Further, these formations are

recognizable by their embodied temporal features: their course show a beginning and an end, a

certain succession and rhythmicity.xl So, language forms are basically utterances, these can, in turn,

assemble to specific functional forms and to genres .xli

2 Language forms have an “own value” vis-à-vis the meaning: it is a value, which links the

utterance to its social, situational, non-verbal reality: that particular common, social reality. So,

language forms do not passively receive a meaning, as if an indifferent respectacle, rather, there

happens a dynamics between form and meaning.

3 Language forms are dialogical, because language activity is an addressive act, i.e. always

directed to and performed for someone, and for some kind of social audience. Language forms are

performed in coordination within exchange structures, for instance the generation of narrative forms

in early ontogeny building up “holoforms”.xlii This means that forms exist as specific forms within

addressive coordination, they are commonly formed and transformed. Most importantly, the

dialogical performance leads to a mutual, time-bound transformation: both partners and their

relationship are transformed in time.xliii This straightforwardly indicates the historicity of forms:

4 Language forms are historical, because they emerge within commonly undertaken language

activity entailing reprises and variations, cycles of repetitions and imitations, that link the

performers to their previous performances, thus making possible abbreviations and variations,

quotes and stylizations. In this, the history of the relationship of a particular dyad, a particular

group, comes to the foreground.

That leads to look beyond the individual history: language forms are not idiosyncratically invented,

rather, they belong to a tradition of language practices that are dialogically linked to actual language

performances.xliv Nevertheless, precisely because of performance and addressivity, any “per-form”

is actually a slight invention: always different, differently addressed, to a different moment in time


and life course, in different wordings, voicings and positionings.xlv The historical aspects taken

together lead to acknowledge individually specific biographies of language practices due to unique

biographical exposure to and practice of specific language performances.xlvi

5 Language forms are symbolic. I view this characteristic as distinctive for language forms, and

define symbolic activity as entailing conventionality, displacement and sign-object

differentiationxlvii: these features indicate, again, that language forms are not idiosyncratic, but

objective (public). “Objective” is taken in Humboldt's sense: language is not pure objectivity, it

rather involves subjectivity in order to function for the subjects' communication and

understanding.xlviii

6 Language forms are transferable, they can be passed from speaker to speaker, across positions,

situations and contexts in actual as well as across temporally more or less distant performances –

they are thus also trans-temporal. The movement is, among other factors, conditioned by

similarityxlix, e.g. of positionings within specific addressivity structures, and – certainly for early

development – by temporal and affective contingency (self does “the same” as other just did).

This characteristic supplements characteristics 2 and 4: because of their being transferable,

language forms are highly dialogical within an actual Now, as well as with regard to past and

projected (imaginatively performed) performances; by their very trans-situational, trans-positional

and trans-temporal movement they generate dialogical links – in sustained, ritualized ways, or in

new and creative ways.l

4 Conclusion

In terms of closing, I would like to highlight an aspect which is for me of utmost importance. This

aspect is in fact a movement in thinking, a reversal that leads to quite deep changes in conceiving

language and the subject. The starting point lies in taking processes as founding category, and to

consequently follow that lead. I think this results in wide-ranging shifts that affect some of our basic

notions. I hinted to the basis of this movement with the term “process ontology”, meaning that

processes are what to start with in conceiving and investigating for instance language and the

individual.


Language as energeia privileges performance, it highlights the here-and-now of each “spacetime of

language”, its phenomenality as an experience of forms in time. The inbetween of the “system of

two” with its phenomenality is conferred epistemological dignity. It is in this respect that voice and

form are for me eminently important. I think they articulate the embodied symbolic beingness of

humans.

5 Appendix

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i See Cutler (2005).ii Vygotsky, 1978, p. 65; which corresponds to: History of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions, 1931,

in paragraph 3; German in Vygotskij, 1931/1992, p. 112. Vygotsky refers to Engels (1983, p. 513): „von einem Körper, der sich nicht bewegt, ist nichts zu sagen. Aus den Formen der Bewegung ergibt sich die Beschaffenheit der sich bewegenden Körper“ [there is nothing to say about a body that is not moving. From the forms of the movement ensue the constitution of the moving bodies] (emphasis mcb): note 36 by Métraux in Vygotskij, 1931/1992, p. 112. Note that, in contrast to the German translation, the phrase is given by the editors in Vygotsky (1978) as quote, though without reference.The complete Vygotsky quote is: „To study something historically means to study it in the process of change, that is the dialectical method's basic demand. To encompass in research the process of a given thing's development in all its phases and changes […] fundamentally means to discover its nature, its essence, for ‘it is only in movement that a body shows what it is’“ ( Vygotsky, 1978, p. 64-65).

iii The Russian term “deiatel'nost” is Aleksandr Potebnia's translation of Humboldt's term “Tätigkeit”, energeia; strinkingly, it is this Russian term that comes to be at the core of subsequent activity theory, see Bertau (2014a), Seifrid (2005).

iv See Humboldt (1827/1994).v Own translation of Rubinstein 1977, p. 521.vi Core aspects of this context are presented in Bertau (2014b).vii The Raven test is conceived as a non verbal intelligence test, see Raven (1938). The Raven matrices comprise five

sets (A-E) of twelfe tasks (1-12) each, the difficulty of the problem increases across the sets and the tasks, which is to complete a series with the right figure out of eight proposed figures.

viii Example in Bertau 2004, p. 36-37, translated form the original investigation Bertau 1999, p. 9-10.ix Linell (2009) does similar work in a linguistic perspective and offers an impressively comprehensive view.x See Bertau (2011a). Bertau (2011b) presents the axioms with their corrolaries in an English version. A schema of

the overall architecture is given in Bertau (2010), where three axioms (1, 4, 7) are discussed in detail.xi This echoes in my opinion Humboldt's notion of language as the “totality of speaking”, “die Totalität des

Sprechens”, in § 8 (Humbolt 1999; 1907, vol. VII,1).xii I pointed to that important step fulfilled by Vološinov and Bakhtin vis-à-vis Jakubinskij in several articles.xiiiBakhtin 1979, 157-159. Diese Passage in Leuven-Buch, S. 45.xiv See e.g. Hermans & Gieser (2012).xv Ee e.g. Stiles et al (2004), Georgaca (2001).xvi See the investigations by Karsten (2014) and Tures (2014).xviiBertau (2013), Bertau et al (2012), Bertau (2008a), Gratier & Bertau (2012). xviii See Tannen (1989).xix See Fernald (1992): different speech acts which have, in my opinion and at least in the investigated languages, an

iconic relation to their voicings (staccato: prohibition, smooth voicing: comfort). Gestalt-qualities. In terms of the first “felt contact” see Anzieu's concept of the “sonoric envelope of the self” (1976) and of the “Moi-peau” (1995); voice is to be seen as type of touching: a proprioceptively and perceptively experienced body contact.

xx See Vološinov 1981, p. 304, the materiality of communication is developed in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (see the three translations of the 1929 and the 1930 edition).

xxi See the alignement theory by Pickering & Garrod (2004).xxii “Die Sprachzeichen sind daher nothwendig Töne” und die artikulierten Töne sind den Begriffen (Denkabschnitten)

gemäß. Humboldt 1908, vol. VII,2, p. 582 (Über Denken und Sprechen, 1795/96).xxiii At a symposium organised by Jack Martin at the 8th International Conference on the Dialogical Self I had the

privilege to discuss this “voice reading” of Becker's entry with Martin himself and other scholars (Den Haag, August 21, 2014).

xxiv Form as vocal form (sound-meaning correlations), an enveloppe for meaning to come into that ready-made, see also Love's (2004) critique of the linguistic code notion of language; worth noting, the vocality of the form does not mattter in this view.

xxv Vygotsky (1987), Jakubinskij (1979).xxvi See Bertau (2008b)xxvii Berti, 1996, p. 302.xxviii More details in Bertau (2008b).xxix GS IV, 17; Di Cesare 1996, 284.xxx Di Cesare 1996, 284.xxxi Humboldt GS VI, 146.xxxii More details in Bertau (2015).xxxiii On abbreviation and the movement of “more and less language” see Bertau (2008a), Lyra & Bertau (2008) .xxxiv Vygotsky (1987, ch. 7). See also the notion of meaning potentials in Linell (2009). Similarly to Vygotskij, Linells

speaks of a “completion” movement: meaning is “completed” (p. 58).I relate here also to Vološinov's (1986) notion of language form as ‘vivid materiality’ which he conceived as a critique of an abstract structural notion (cf. first characteristic).

xxxv see Vološinov 1986, pp. 95-96 as well as the complete chapter 3 in Part II. xxxvi „Own value“ = Eigenwert der Sprachform following Friedrich (1993) with reference to Vološinov (1986). More

details in Bertau (2014b).xxxvii This „generating“ is also to be understood in terms of Vygotsky's „completion“ of thought in the word (see 1987,

p. 250).xxxviii This proposal was presented at the 8th International Conference on the Dialogical Self, symposium Lyra, Moro,

Demuth, Bertau “A Micro-Genetic Focus on Dialogical Self in Early Ontogeny: On Objects, Bodies and Forms”, in Den Haag, August 21, 2014.

xxxix Note that Vološinov (1981) as well as Bühler (2011) includes the sensorial dimension of the spoken word into their notion of language: for Vološinov the intonational quality of the uttered word is precisely not a peripheral phenomenon, not simply personally expressive, but always an index of social relationships, and what Bühler calls “acoustic sound images” (Klangbilder) permit the distinctions necessary for language activity. Furher details see Friedrich (2005), Bertau (2011a).

xl In language acquisition, one can observe performed sequences of activities, intertwining uttered words, vocalizations, movements, and gestures.

xli Functional forms: dialogical, monological, written, and oral (Jakubinskij, 1979); genres: primary, and secondary (Bakhtin, 1986).

xlii A holoform is defined as a dynamic gestalt that develops over time, comprising the role of the actors, the structure in time and the meanings given to each element with respect to the narration enacted (Gratier & Bertau, 2012, p. 112).Exchange structures are principally informed by address and reply, their realization can take the form of a turn-taking (protoconversation, see Bateson, 1975) or simultaneous forms such as unisono or choral performances (Stern et al, 1975); both alternations and overlappings are seen in a commonly performed narrative structure in Gratier & Bertau (2012).

xliiiSee Lyra & Bertau (2008).xlivLinell (2009), Bertau (2014c).xlv Speaker-listeners can perform differences to several degrees which will be more or less accepted, or rejected –

depending on several conditions. So, speaker-listeners can invent new forms, but these need to be taken up and ratified by other speakers of their community. Otherwise, these form will not develop into “objective” language forms (see fourth characteristic). Further, how new forms can be invented and by whom is subjected to specific linguistic and social restrictions.

xlvi Hence, every individual has an own history of language performances, which supplies the basis for her/his actual language activities (oral, written, dialogical, monological). This language experience is not private, for it is formed and transformed, expanded and altered in co-performances with others; neither is this experience generally shared by others, precisely because it is experience: bound to a specific and unique person, taking part in specific life forms with specific consociates (see Bertau, 2011a, pp. 301-302). Johnstone (1996) makes a similar point, although from a decisively individualistic, non-dialogical stance: she speaks of a “lingual biography”.

xlvii In this I follow Sinha (2004, 2007), for more details see also Gratier & Bertau, 2012, pp. 106-107.xlviii Language is in that sense flexibel with regard to the subjects' unique and particular expression. But it is neither

sheer expression of the subject, rather, objectivity as communal, public dimension is equally involved in language. Hence, language displays a specific kind of objectivity that remains flexible to the subjects.

xlix The complementary side of similarity is contrast (see the three laws of association: similarity, contrast, contiguity), I thus treat contrast as variation of similarity.

l Basically, I would take Bühler's organon model (also privileged by Vološinov) as orientation for this “form traveling”: speaker-listener-topic in question within a certain social situation. Hence, one can for instance imagine same forms coupled with same positonings for the same topic across a certain stretch of time as in repetitions and reprises; or same form for different/same positonings for different/same topics.

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