«If you think about it, reading is a
necessarily individual act,
far more than writing» 1.
In the previous units we dealt with the subject of
perception, of word perception in particular. An object, like a word,
evokes something in our mind. But while what is evoked in our mind by an
object is completely arbitrary and subjective - for example one could run
away in awe at the sight of an innocuous comb - words have a meaning, at
least in part, that is codified and valid for a limited number of people.
The Soviet researcher Vygotsky (of whom we have already seen
something in the first part)
has studied concept formation in man and its relation to the learning of
words. In Vygotsky's opinion, the role played by words is fundamental:
first we learn the relation between an object, a situation or a single
action and a word. Up to this point we haven't learnt a concept, just a
relation between a circumscribed situation and a circumscribed
sound/graphic sign. In an experiment by Saharov, a partner of Vygotsky,
subjects are presented with elements of different shapes, sizes and
colors, the so-called "experimental blocks", behind which some meaningless
strings of characters are traced. The task consists of establishing
conceptual links between shapes, sizes, colors and "new words". Here are
Vygotsky's conclusions:
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The formation of the concept is followed by its transfer
to other objects: the subject is induced to use the new
terms in talking about objects other than the experimental
blocks, and to define their meaning in a generalized fashion 2.
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Generalization occurs by way of a sort of
perception -> word -> perception -> word -> perception and so on chain (i.e.
analysis -> synthesis -> analysis -> synthesis and so on) through which new
perceptions induce the formulation of new words to describe them, which
induces the systematization of perception so that it will be possible,
given a finite number of words, to express infinite perceptions, since
two identical perceptions do not exist. Word becomes a means for the
formation of concepts 3.
Vygotsky has studied such processes in teenagers, but, in
fact, this chain of analysis and synthesis and adjustment of the sense
attributed to words, followed and preceded by new visions of reality is
endless. When we read, we feed such a spiral. We therefore can easily
understand why two readings, even if accomplished in different times by
the same person on the same text, are never identical, as we will see
better in the units dedicated to the relation between reading and
interpretation.
As far as concept formation is concerned, a reiteration of
the distinction made in the first part of the course about linguistic
awareness is in order. To be able to elaborate a concept, it is
necessary for an individual to be consciously aware of the knowledge she
has gained.
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[...] consciousness and control appear only at a late stage
in the development of a function, after it has been used
and practiced unconsciously and spontaneously [...] We use
the term nonconscious to distinguish what is not yet
conscious from the Freudian "unconscious" resulting from
repression, which is a late development, an effect of a
relatively high differentiation of consciousness 4.
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A child learning the connection between the word
"apple" and the set of the fruits identifiable by that word, or a single
fruit belonging in that set, knows "what an apple is", but does not know
she knows what an apple is: she has no self-reflective awareness and,
consequently, she is not able to conceptualize. In other words, we pass
from the "spontaneous concepts" described by Piaget 5 to conscious concepts.
The difference between the learning of spontaneous concepts,
like "apple" for example, and the learning of "scientific" concepts, like
"exploitation", for example, lies in the fact that
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[...] the development of the child's spontaneous concepts
proceed upward, and the development of his scientific
concepts downward [...]. The inception of a spontaneous
concept can usually be traced to a face-to-face meeting
with a concrete situation, while a scientific concept
involves from the first a "mediated" attitude 6
toward its object 7.
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A further demonstration of the affinity between such
"conceptual" awareness, and the linguistic awareness we have dealt with in
the first part of this course, is Vygotsky's statement that
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The influence of scientific concepts on the mental
development of the child is analogous to the effect of
learning a foreign language, a process which is conscious
and deliberate from the start. In one's native language,
the primitive aspects of speech are acquired before the
more complex ones. The latter presuppose some awareness of
phonetic, grammatical, and syntactic forms. With a foreign language,
the higher forms develop before spontaneous, fluent speech 8.
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In terms of reading, this means that an individual can
face texts with concrete concepts until a given age, which is approximately
placed in the preadolescent period. Then he acquires the awareness of this
knowledge, and learns texts that even contain abstract meanings. As
intellectual development goes on, abstraction capabilities become finer
and finer. And meanings, both abstract and concrete, evolve.
In the next unit we will continue our path among words,
thoughts, and reading, in order to see the consequences of such evolution
on reading and translation.
Bibliographical references
CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.
VYGOTSKIJ L.S. Thought and Language. Edited by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar.
Cambridge (Massachusetts), MIT Press, 1965. First edition: Myshlenie I
rech´. Psihologicheskie issledovanija. Moskvà-Leningrad, Gosudarstvennoe social´no-èkonomicheskoe izdatel´stvo, 1934.
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