Semiotics of productive conflict in educational and scientific communication

Lukin V.A.

Professor, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor
Oryol State University
named after I.S. Turgenev
E-mail: lucerby@yandex.ru

 

Productive conflict [24], developmental hardening [1], and developmental discomfort [27] are teaching principles that emphasize the intentional creation of cognitive difficulties for learners. The most effective cognitive difficulty is the problem-based task.

At the heart of the problematic task is a contradiction, perhaps a paradox, a seeming insolubility or, conversely, a triviality that turns into an almost insoluble dead end.

A task presupposes a problematic situation that already has a solution. However, the recipient (solver) doesn't know it, and therefore must activate (if willing and able) their thought processes. "Putting a problem before someone is one of the few known ways to do this" [22, p. 45].

On the other hand, "problems are one of the most effective ways to test how deeply a student understands a subject, and whether his knowledge is merely the accumulation of memorized material. Furthermore, when teaching young people, problem solving can also help cultivate and develop creative scientific thinking" [7, p. 232].

In this aspect, our goal is to clarify the semiotic properties of the problem task that allow it to be an effective means in the formation and constructive resolution of a productive educational conflict.

Teaching and educational communication are secondary to scientific research and scientific communication: teaching and the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation are possible and necessary when this knowledge itself has been obtained and its truth has been proven.

At the same time, both scientific research and scientific communication are aimed at finding and solving problems - «there is no knowledge without problems, but also no problems without knowledge» [19, p. 299]. Scientific knowledge, K. Popper argues, «does not begin with perceptions, or observations, or with the collection of data or facts; it begins with problems» [19, p. 299]; the history of science is the history of the continuity and evolution of problems (S. Toulmin). And, since a problem is an epistemological conflict, the universal form of which is contradiction («the main engine of development <…> »the essence of any science is the search for these contradictions« [7, p. 16]), since »conflicts are the lifeblood of the intellectual world« and »intellectual creativity is a conflict process” [9, pp. 143–144].

Problems unite people of science, connected by a «friendly-enemy division of labor», «cooperation and rivalry» [19, p. 305]. Conflict in science is functionally expedient and productive, for this reason it is institutionalized (as in a number of other social institutions [13, p. 85]). Accordingly, «conflict can be dysfunctional for those social structures that are insufficiently or completely intolerant of conflict, and in which the conflict itself is not institutionalized» [8, p. 184]. This should be so, but in reality, especially in the humanities, cognitive conflicts, and the communication optimal for their resolution, can be suppressed, take on an exclusively ritual character, or transform into scandals, acquiring dysfunction [23]. What are the signs of the disintegration of cognitive conflicts; What exactly is their dysfunctionality or, conversely, what are the manifestations of the productivity of conflicts, their constructiveness and effectiveness in solving problems - this can be indirectly evidenced by the semiotics of educational communication, since it depends on scientific ones.

Hence, another of our goals: using the example of semiotics as a course taught in most Russian universities, to try to draw a conclusion about the state of Russian semiotics as a theoretical discipline.

 

The inevitability, benefits and dangers of conflicts

A problematic situation in learning is a special case of an extremely broad spectrum of communicative-semiotic situations: «After all, life, by the way, is a set of processes for solving an infinite number of large and small problems (of which, of course, only a small part is solved consciously). Character, since it is formed in life and through life, is something like a type of problem solving» [3, p. 107].

The problem becomes more complex and acquires an activity-based and personal character when the parties to the contradiction are specific participants in communication – the author (the teacher, the creator of the problem situation and the underlying contradiction) vs. the recipient (the student, the problem solver, who does not possess routine patterns or algorithmic solution procedures). Here the problem becomes a conflict: «the educational situation is structured as a conflict, as a clash of activities, which, through interaction, leads to the emergence of new content corresponding to the target settings of the participants» [24, p. 82]. There is no alternative to conflict in educational, scientific, or any other social communication. Any problem is a cognitive conflict to a greater (science, technology, politics) or lesser extent (gambling, bargaining, job search). In science, this is a discussion, debate, everything that leads to the death of contradictory and false ideas. Any problem puts us in a situation of choice – a conflict between «yes - no». And if a decision is made during communication, then it is divided into YES participants and NO participants, who are always united by the problem.

Therefore, a productive solution to a wide variety of problems is possible only with an organization of communicative-semiotic interactions that are themselves organized according to the principle of contradiction and conflict – debates, discussions, disputes, arguments… [13, pp. 83–84]. We are talking about optimal communicative conditions for the successful resolution of a problem, and these consist of the need to have a sufficiently large variety of opinions, including contradictory and opposing ones, and the choice of the best one based on rational criticism.

The willingness to search for, formulate, and solve practical problems can develop spontaneously, through the accumulation of experience in overcoming artificial and natural difficulties in the relevant field of activity. In science and education, problem-solving experience is as theoretical as the problem itself. The best model of a scientific problem is, as already mentioned, a problematic task. At the core of both is a contradiction, a cognitive conflict, so the task is always explicitly or implicitly formulated as a tense contradiction, that is, a contradiction requiring resolution.

These kinds of communicative-semiotic interactions are both constructively necessary and potentially dangerous, as they can serve as catalysts for not only subsequent productive but also destructive conflicts. To illustrate this point, it's useful to consider a specific situation: the development, use, and resolution of problem-solving tasks in a semiotics course.

 

Maintaining constructive conflicts and preventing destructive ones.

The development of a contradiction not in a cognitive, but primarily in a communicative-pragmatic direction, often leads to a destructive "teacher-learner" conflict, which, one way or another, always takes on a communicative form. An effective means of blocking destructive conflict is the activation of the cognitive contradiction, which can only be realized semiotically—by the semantic and syntactic properties of the problem statement (formulation), which facilitate the solver's personal involvement in the process of resolving the cognitive contradiction. It is necessary to ensure that the focus is not on the communicative, but on the cognitive conflict.

In other words, in a conflict between conflicts—productive versus destructive—it's necessary to create the conditions for blocking the latter. One effective means here is a problem-solving task. Its conditions (formulation) are constructed under the sign of uncertainty, contradiction, complexity, and novelty—the primary stimuli of exploratory behavior [17, pp. 196–199], which, if successful, evoke a non-utilitarian curiosity that has a purpose in itself.

Interestingly, the "puzzler" finds himself in a situation also characterized by a significant degree of uncertainty, novelty, and contradiction. By posing a task to the audience, he, in turn, faces a problem similar in general terms to the task: he chooses a method of resolving conflict (and therefore stress and risk) that is a conflict (causing or potentially causing, with an uncertain probability, a risk of stress or distress). This is a conscious choice of both a cognitive strategy and a structurally isomorphic communicative situation—one that is optimal for the productive development and completion of the cognitive strategy, that is, for resolving the problematic task. And if the task is successfully solved, then cognitive success, with a high probability, entails the successful completion of the communication.

Semiotic tasks, as well as their practical application in teaching, are characterized primarily by uncertainty. This uncertainty stems from the state of theory, which to date has not acquired the degree of rigor inherent, for example, in grammatical or comparative-historical studies of language. However, even when theory exemplifies rigor, as in physics or mathematics, uncertainty is deliberately imparted to the problem statement [7, pp. 233–234], because it is universal in nature: «Uncertainty is a fact with which all forms of life must be prepared to contend» [6, p. 582].

In a general sense, the essence of uncertainty lies in the solver's lack of a basis for establishing boundaries within a set of alternatives and choosing between them, the adoption of only one of which leads to a solution to the contradiction. Eliminating uncertainty—reducing the formulation of the problem statement to standard terms (concepts) of the theory—corresponds to complexity.

Task complexity is logically and semantically related and correlates with simplicity. In terms of pragmatics, complexity corresponds to difficulty, while simplicity corresponds to the ease with which the recipient understands and solves the task. Pragmatics can only be controlled and predicted using logical and semantic methods: the fewer intermediary links between a standard concept (sign, sign types, encoding, etc.) and the more precisely it is expressed in the problem statement, the simpler the task, and vice versa.

Solving simple problems boils down to a reformulation of the condition that leads to known concepts (ideas), predetermining the choice of a single alternative from a multitude of possible ones. For example, a simple and easy problem:

«I once heard a famous artist (I don’t remember who exactly) put it this way: “When you paint, for every one look at the canvas, there should be half a look at the palette and ten looks at nature.” It was beautifully put, but it soon became clear to me that for me this proportion should be different: «ten looks at the canvas, one at the palette, half a look at nature.’

[5, p. 43].

• We're talking about semiotically opposing principles of coding in painting. Having established these, it's easy to cite examples of artists similar to the one described in the quote, and similar to the author of the quote himself.

SOLUTION To write is to encode. The first principle of encoding presupposes a primary consideration of the object of the signs—nature. Since we are talking about painting, we are referring to the iconic sign and, accordingly, iconic encoding. This is characteristic primarily of realism (V. Surikov, I. Repin, V. Serov, etc.), and more broadly, of all figurative painting. The second principle of encoding, shared by Kandinsky, conversely, presupposes freedom from nature—the sign's representamen (form) is not constructed based on similarity to any external, observable object in reality. This is a conventional sign, or symbol (according to C.S. Peirce). This is characteristic of abstractionism, whose founder and prominent representative in painting was Wassily Kandinsky (see also the works of K. Malevich, A. Rodchenko, and others).

 

The given problem, like the vast majority of others, presupposes the ability of solvers, during classes or exams, to freely consult any sources in search of a solution (indeed, it would be rash to count on philology students' knowledge of the theory and history of painting). If the problem is characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and difficulty, then it is advisable to be able to "use not only literature but also consultation" [5, p. 234]. Such problems are appropriate for homework:

 

«In the famous American film "The Terminator," events are often shown from the perspective of the Terminator itself—a completely autonomous humanoid robot. In a difficult situation, when a quick and correct decision must be made, a table containing a list of such decisions in English lights up over the Terminator's current view; after making a choice, the robot accepts one of them and acts accordingly.

• »What is the reason why the presented robot behavior program will never actually be realized, even if it is technically quite achievable to create both such a robot and such a program?” [12, p. 27]

 

The degree of uncertainty in the latter case is such that typically more than half of the problem-solvers' audience can't figure out, "What does semiotics have to do with this?" They fail to provide a semiotic interpretation of the problem's conditions and establish the semiotic concepts (terms) needed to solve it (typically, they engage in discourses about a bleak future for humanity enslaved by artificial intelligence that have nothing to do with semiotics...).

As the course progresses, the challenges should increase in difficulty, but it's also advisable to offer a mix of challenging and easy challenges at any stage. This ensures the audience is diverse, with few losers and everyone who wants to achieve a better result should have the opportunity to excel.

It's easy to see that these socially significant incentives can lead to division and discord within the problem-solving team. To neutralize the preconditions for "inequality," it's necessary to activate and prioritize innate exploratory and orienting responses (I.P. Pavlov). Personal involvement in the problem-solving process is highly desirable.

A problem must be interesting in itself, regardless of external utilitarian goals. Such is a puzzle—a problem whose solution requires little or no specialized knowledge, but always requires wit. The semantic self-sufficiency of a puzzle is most clearly manifested in its property of self-reference. Self-referential puzzles are similar to riddles. For example, "When I am unknown, I am something, but as soon as I am recognized, I cease to be what I was (Answer: "Riddle")" is a curious and witty riddle and at the same time a clear example of the semantic phenomenon of self-reference on which it is built.

An example of a simple and easy non-self-referential puzzle with a self-referential answer:

«In his famous article, "Some Grammatical Universals, Particularly Concerning the Order of Significant Elements," American linguist J. Greenberg discusses properties, units, and phenomena of natural language that are common to all the world's ethnic languages. These are called linguistic universals, and here's an example: "In conditional constructions, the conditional part precedes the conclusion; this order is normal for all languages.".

• Change Greenberg's formulation so that it becomes one of the proper objects of designation.

SOLUTION Greenberg's formulation – In conditional constructions, the conditional part precedes the conclusion; this order is normal for all languages – has conditional constructions as the object of description, but is not itself a conditional construction. By changing the formulation accordingly – If in a conditional construction, the conditional part precedes the conclusion, then this order is normal for all languages – we will include it in the list of objects designated by it» [12, p. 23].

 

An example of a self-referential puzzle, the apparent simplicity and ease of which are deceptive (Figure 1):

Figure 1.
Figure 1.

The self-referentiality of a puzzle facilitates the pragmatic effect of perceiving it as autotelic, but does not guarantee such a perception. There are no guarantees here, but it is possible to verify the desired effect: if solvers refuse to be told the solution to the problem after a series of unsuccessful attempts, they perceive it as an autotelic message, that is, as a puzzle (although in fact they may be faced with a problem): they "enjoy the very process of finding a solution as such. A good puzzle, like virtue, is its own reward. A person is attracted by the very contact with a mystery, and he does not find peace until he has uncovered it. Moreover, we do not want to lag behind others, and this is natural—even a child is prone to this feeling" [4, p. 11].

This is similar to the work of the recipient of a literary text, as described by the authors of this type of text: «Try to do any more or less complex task for a child – he will cry. He wants to do it himself. Communion with art, when we completely believe in what we see, brings us to a rare and joyful state of childishness. The child probably knows that his father will do it better, but he wants to do it himself. The viewer also wants to do it himself» [25, p. 376].

However, unlike the reader of a literary text, the problem solver not only has the right to doubt but must doubt, not believe. This is the key to freedom and the inner conviction that the solution obtained belongs to the subject, even though the problem has already been solved by others. Puzzles are not entirely suitable here. Generally, there shouldn't be many puzzles. What is needed, above all, are semantically and conceptually non-autonomous problems, which have the status not of a goal, but of a means for assimilating the concepts and patterns of semiotics. In this respect, a problem-solving task is a necessary means for achieving at least two goals.

First, since there is a reciprocal relationship between theory and the practice of its acquisition, it is necessary to ensure that this relationship is established successfully. To achieve this, the formulation of the problem must require an understanding based on knowledge of the fundamental concepts and principles of the theory.

Henri Poincaré gives the following example for a similar problematic situation: "The teacher dictates: 'A circle is the locus of points on a plane that are equidistant from a common interior point called the center.' A good student writes this phrase in his notebook; a bad student draws "little men" in it, but neither of them understands. Then the teacher takes a piece of chalk and draws a circle on the board. 'Aha,' the students think, 'why didn't he just say: a circle is a circle, and we would have understood it right away.'". <…> But it would be necessary to prove to them that they do not understand what seems clear to them; it would be necessary to force them to realize the crudeness of their initial idea, to make them themselves want to purify and improve this idea» [20, p. 356].

This means that in many cases it is advisable to formulate problem statements that cannot be understood or solved without a clear understanding of the terms denoting ideas and concepts: "The first rule of good style is to use words that will not be misinterpreted. And if the reader is not familiar with the meanings of the words used, it is better to make sure that he is absolutely sure that he does not know them" [16, p. 43]. For example:

«"What class of non-verbal messages can be characterized as follows:

These messages possess the property of reproducibility. Each of them is autotelic. In general, it can be regarded as an index referring to its own symbolic sequence, which, therefore, forms the referential domain of the message. Moreover, this referential domain (= symbolic sequence) is twofold: one part of it is observable from the recipient's perspective, while the other part is observable from the author's perspective.

»The sender and the informed observer should regard it as imaginary; the other is unobservable from the position of the recipient, but from the position of the sender and the observer it is genuine” [12, p. 31].

Secondly, when the fundamental concepts and ideas of the theory have been assimilated by the audience, it is possible and even necessary to strive to «construct the majority of tasks in such a way that they are the formulation of small problems» [7, p. 232].

«The philosopher I. Lakatos in his book Proofs and Refutations says that his older colleague Karl Popper distinguished three levels of understanding: “The lowest is the pleasant feeling of having understood an argument. The middle level is when you can repeat it. The highest level is when you can refute it” [10, p. 50].

• "What kinds of texts are there for which a low level of understanding is sufficient for successful circulation in society, and which require a middle level? As for the highest level of understanding, no type of text corresponds to it. Why?" [5, p. 232].

 

Students' independent solution of such problems and joint discussion of both correct and incorrect solutions is the best way to ensure that problems and cognitive contradictions do not divide, but rather unite, participants in educational communication. And it seems obvious that the successful formulation and fruitful discussion of problems based on solved and even unsolved theoretical problems is only possible when the instructor is an active researcher, that is, someone who has discovered or solved at least one scientific problem (no matter how modest).

 

Semiotics of text in the mirror of educational texts

It's well known that the state of science is adequately reflected in textbooks, general monographs, and literature reviews. In our case, it can be clarified: the more strictly organized the theory, the more space problems occupy in teaching. Therefore, it is logical that problems are used "most extensively and widely in the fields of exact and natural sciences: mathematics, physics, and chemistry. It is here that the number of diverse problem books is greatest, and it is in these fields that there are more methodological and methodological works devoted to the construction of problems" [18 p. 43].

Consequently, if the practice of teaching a theory doesn't involve the use of problems, or if there are few problems, or if there are no problem-oriented learning problems at all, then the theory is likely either characterized by a low degree of systematicity, rigor, and constructiveness, or it is not based on the ideal of rigorous scientificity. The latter is far from always a sign of deficiency, as evidenced by philosophy, art history, literary criticism, and various types of crafts. Not all knowledge must be scientific. But semiotics is not a craft or literary criticism; it must be a science.

The state of semiotics in the mirror of educational literature is such that one can confidently state a high degree of theoretical uncertainty amid a plethora of diverse viewpoints, whose authors, adding yet another shade to the rainbow, do not strive for critical rationality or debate. But it is precisely uncertainty, contradiction, and novelty that are inherent in a problematic situation: the state of semiotics and its very existence are a problem. Either we must eliminate uncertainty, formulate problems as clearly as possible, and then solve them, or, demonstrating "tolerance for uncertainty," we must expand our amorphous collection of opinions without risk or effort.

The fact that the scientific community chooses the second solution, and, moreover, tries to pass it off as a theoretically legitimate doctrine, is evident in works whose subject is text.

In the literature on semiotics, from dictionaries and scientific works to textbooks and curricula, the thesis is constantly expressed and never disputed that a text «from a semiotic point of view» is either any sign phenomenon, or anything at all:

«...from the point of view of semiotics, all types of messages are texts...» (Yu. M. Lotman. Historical patterns and structure of the text [11, p. 307]).

«In semiotics, text is understood as a meaningful sequence of any signs, any form of communication, including a rite, dance, ritual, etc.» (T.M. Nikolaeva. Text // Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary [15, p. 507]).

Text is «something understood by the subject as a meaningful, coherent sequence of signs, … something that can potentially be understood as a sequence of signs, which has become – for one reason or another – an object of semiosis. And in the human world, anything can become (and does become) such – the starry sky, one’s hometown, one’s own past, etc.» (T.B. Radbil. Norm and Anomaly in the «Reality – Text» Paradigm [21, p. 54]).

«The term texts should be understood in a linguo-semiotic sense, i.e. as any products of a given generative system (semiotics)…» (N.B. Mechkovskaya. Semiotics: Language. Nature. Culture. Textbook [14, p. 233]).

«A text is any work of spiritual culture or an object created in the process of material production» (E.V. Shelestyuk. Semiotics. Textbook [25, pp. 85-86]).

«Moreover, any object, even if only for a moment, fixed by an observer in space and time, can be considered as a text» (E.E. Brazgovskaya. Languages and Codes. Introduction to the Semiotics of Culture. Textbook [2]).

This thesis is usually presented as a postulate—briefly, categorically, categorically, and almost always in passing, as if by default. No one anywhere substantiates why, precisely "from a semiotic point of view," any message, any work, any object, and even "anything" can be a text [12, p. 7].

By declaratively abolishing the problem of text in this way—an old but unresolved, and therefore doubly deserved, problem for semiotics, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology—textbook authors, instead of linguistics and textual semiotics, are projecting a "general theory of everything" into the future. That is, not a theory at all, because no problems—no theory; no theory—no need for textbooks, their authors, or the teaching itself.