TOWARDS THE CONSTRUCTION OF A THEORY OF ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

The article contains an attempt to examine the methodological foundations for constructing a theory of organizational psycholinguistics (TOPL), which can be built based on A.N. Leontiev's general psychological theory of activity and A.A. Leontiev's theory of speech activity. TOPL is conceived as a theory that explains verbal communication in professional teams, where communicants have a similar level of professional competence, intensively use hypertexts consisting of an actually perceived text and a pretext that exists only in the recipient's memory and records production instructions, rules, orders, etc. A.N. Leontiev's theory of activity defines the ontological status of professional joint activity. The ontology of interaction between professionals is joint professional joint activity (JPJA), i.e. the spatio-temporal structure of reality has the form of JPJA. When constructing TOPL, it is advisable to rely on A.N. Leontiev's work helps develop a concept of a professional worldview that describes the obligatory knowledge of employees collaborating in a specific professional field. The PWD has specific characteristics: the goals and motives of the PWD are relatively stable, professional technologies are stable, verbal communication is typically based on specific precedent texts (rules, regulations, instructions), and the speech actions of PWD participants include professional speech terminology systems. It can be assumed that the described methodology allows for the formation of a TOPL.

Key words: organizational psycholinguistics, joint activities, professional teams, professional image of the world.

E. Tarasov

TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF A THEORY
OF ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

The article presents an attempt to clarify the methodological grounds for the formation of a theory of organizational psycholinguistics (TOPL), based on AN Leontiev's general psychological activity theory and AA Leontiev's theory of speech activity. TOPL explains verbal communication in professional collectives, where interlocutors possess a similar level of professional competence and intensively use hypertexts containing actual texts and pretexts, which are kept only in a recipient's mind, fixing working instructions, directions, orders etc. The ontology of interaction of professionals (determined by AN Leontiev's activity theory) is a professional cooperative activity per se, ie the temporal and spatial structure of reality takes the form of PCA.

TOPL forms the professional worldview, describing the obligatory knowledge of employees cooperating in a certain professional sphere. PCA has specific features: the objectives and motivations of the PSA are relatively stable, as well as professional technologies, speech communication is usually based on special precedent texts (rules, regulations, instructions), and speech actions of PCA participants include professional terminology systems. It can be assumed that the described methodology makes it possible to form a TOPL.

Keywords: psycho-organizationallinguistics, cooperative activity, professional collectives, professional worldview.

 

 

The emergence of the theory of organizational psycholinguistics (TOPL) was stimulated by the need to study joint activities in industrial professional teams, which necessarily includes communication between cooperating communicants, supported by linguistic and non-linguistic signs.

In this regard, the question may arise about the need to create a special theory of organizational psycholinguistics in the presence of A.A. Leontiev's theory of speech activity (TSA), which satisfactorily explains methodologically and theoretically the production and perception of speech, the ontogenesis of language and speech communication.

As an explanatory theory, the TRD reveals the general patterns of speech processes, which allows us to solve applied problems, such as the problems of teaching native and foreign speech, bilingualism, influential speech (propaganda, advertising, etc.), the diagnosis of a person's emotional state based on their speech, etc. It seems that, with the availability of the TRD, the TOPL can be constructed as a theory explaining the specifics of sign communication in professional groups, which can be seen in the fact that a certain professional language is used in communication, communicators have a similar level of professional competence, and the intensive use of hypertexts, through which texts are transmitted, based on a multitude of pretexts recording various production instructions, regulations, rules, orders, etc.

As a methodological basis, TOPL can rely on the general psychological theory of activity of A.N. Leontiev and the theory of activity-based behavior of A.A. Leontiev, which form the basis of the subject area and determine its ontological status. The activity-based ontological status of the theory consists in the fact that the world is presented as an object of human activity, influencing this object with the help of an object-tool to satisfy his needs and guided in his actions by the image of the product into which the object is transformed under human influence [1; 3; 4; 5].

The subject area of TOPL consists of a theoretical model of joint activity (JA) among professional employees who interact with a common object and with each other when organizing communication. Their interaction consists of a series of actions, some of which the communicants direct at each other, while others are coordinated actions directed at the common object. The JA of professional employees is driven by a common motive (goal).

Although TOPL aims to analyze the speech activity of members of a professional speech organization, it introduces into its subject area the entire infrastructure of the speech organization, including communicants, since it defines its task as establishing the dependence of the speech activity of employees of a certain professional field on the system of non-speech actions that physically divide speech actions, and on the motive of the speech organization, which determines meaning speech and non-speech actions.

The TOPL object domain is an idealized theoretical model that reflects the essential connections between units of real acts of the employees' professional activities.

According to modern views on theory construction, this theoretical model should be a research program leading to the construction of a theory.

The activity-theoretical model of SD in the professional sphere defines the initial system of concepts and determines the content of the initial premises and assumptions.

What are these initial premises and assumptions?.

The ontology of professional interaction is a joint professional activity (JPA), i.e., the spatiotemporal structure of reality has the form of JPA. The need to implement JPA inevitably requires updating the function of monitoring the results (products) of JPA.

Possession of knowledge of the characteristics of the SPD products, which (characteristics) are controlled by role-based professional prescriptions, requires a certain level of professional competence, which, in turn, presupposes the existence of mandatory precedent texts describing the qualities of both the products and the level of professional competence.

Looking ahead a little, and relying on preliminary observations, it can be stated that probably the most characteristic feature of SD in professional groups is the obligatory use of precedent texts - service instructions and regulations that preliminarily form a community of professional knowledge necessary for cooperation.

It is advisable to distinguish between ethnic consciousness, for which A.N. Leontiev proposed the concept of the image of the world – amodal knowledge about cultural objects and the methods of their production (or use), acquired in the process of living among the bearers of a certain ethnic culture – and professional knowledge, abilities and skills formed during the mastery of a certain profession.

The commonality of non-professional knowledge creates the preconditions for symbolic communication, including with the help of linguistic signs with all speakers of the ethnic language, and professional knowledge, skills and abilities ensure communication and SD in professional social structures.

If we apply the thesis about the commonality of knowledge to the SPD, then the conclusion suggests itself that without such a commonality, neither symbolic communication in the SPD, nor the use of tools, which presupposes knowledge of their functions, nor the possession of production technologies (operations) that require joint actions, nor the use of a product in the course of joint actions are possible.

Let us return to A.N. Leontiev’s concept of the image of the world and try to discuss the cognitive benefits that are acquired when using this concept.

With the concept of "world image," A.N. Leontiev postulated the existence of a commonality of consciousness among people who have adopted an identical ethnic culture simply by living in the same society. Any member of an ethnic group can survive in a specific natural landscape only by using cultural objects that satisfy the needs of its members, only by processing natural objects to transform them into products using methods (operations) developed within that ethnic group. In other words, members of a particular society form a commonality of knowledge simply by existing within that society.

The professional image of the world can be understood as a fragment (aspect) of the ethnic image of the world, formed in professional training, when a member of society acquires professional competence.

Before we turn to a more in-depth analysis of the concept of «image of the world,» which is necessary for us in connection with the thesis about the community of consciousness as an indispensable prerequisite for symbolic communication, we should reflect on the knowledge that this thesis is, at least, two-faceted.

On the one hand, the community of consciousness is thought of as an obligatory and necessary condition of SD, and on the other hand, the question inevitably arises about the emergence of a community of knowledge, understood as a consequence of the activity-based appropriation of the objective and activity-based forms of culture, conceived as an external form of consciousness, the mental form of which is constructed a) during perception (serving the objective activity); b) during production cultural items according to the rules of their culture. SD can be viewed as a tool for shaping consciousness, beginning in early childhood, when the child becomes capable of collaborating with adults and begins to internalize the fruits of this collaboration.

Thus, we can proceed from the notion that, although communicants, driven by the need to organize social interaction, create a community of consciousness for the implementation of this specific social interaction, they rely on an already existing community of consciousness formed during enculturation, when the native ethnic culture was appropriated. Leaving aside the mechanism of "cultural appropriation," to describe which L.S. Vygotsky famously proposed the concept of internalization, let us turn to an analysis of the thesis of ethnic culture as an objective form of ethnic consciousness, ensuring a community of consciousness among all those members of an ethnic group who have appropriated this specific form of ethnic culture.

Human consciousness is formed in the course of activity carried out by a person who has a body equipped with sensory organs; in other words, to form consciousness, a person must develop an objective (aimed at objects) activity, for the implementation of which he, with the help of the sensory organs of his body, must form images of the objects being processed to control this activity.

Moreover, the objectivity of consciousness and thinking, according to A.N. Leontiev, is understood as a person’s mental activity directed at objects of the external world that lie beyond consciousness, in reality [3, pp. 91-104]. Reality in its objective and activity form, being the substance of consciousness, can serve as a means of analyzing the images of consciousness that reflect this reality. This idea about the possibility of analyzing people’s consciousness through the analysis of their ethnic culture reflected in their consciousness was well expressed by V.P. Zinchenko and M.K. Mamardashvili in their article «The Problem of the Objective Method in Psychology.» They write: «The idea that subjectivity is a reality independent of its cognition, of where, when, and by whom it is cognized, is also led by the experience of cultural history and observations of major eras in the history of human consciousness. For example, Freud's psychoanalytic forays into ancient cultural mythological systems demonstrated that the millennia-old picture of objects and beings of imaginary reality, ritually staged on human material and behavior, can be translated by analysis into terms of metapsychology. More precisely, it can be translated into terms of knowledge of the mechanisms of reproduction and regulation of conscious life, mediated in this case by the compulsive action of special, sensory-supersensible, as Marx would have called them, objects on humans. And hence the possibility of viewing the latter, conversely, as an objectified projection of the former, as reincarnations of their practical functioning brought into reality. This is, so to speak, a psychology without unity in the unity of the "I," in the personified agent of actions and states" [2, p. 115].

Thus, the world external to the subject of activity represents an extracerebral form of consciousness, which, when perceived, determines the internal, figurative form of consciousness and, consequently, the external objective, actively assimilated world, which has become the cause of the generation of images of consciousness, is an instrument for the analysis of consciousness.

Considering the concept of "image of the world" by A.N. Leontiev, we note that this concept in A.N. Leontiev's general psychological theory of activity plays the same role as the concept of "picture of the world" in philosophy, which, according to V.S. Stepin, is a theoretical model of the reality being studied.

Moreover, it should not be overlooked that in A.N. Leontiev's theory of activity, the concept of "image of the world" defines a special type of reality. The ontological status of activity, defined by the activity-based approach, is determined by the fact that activity, as an explanatory principle of activity, substantiates the possibility of interpreting human consciousness as entirely conditioned by the nature of human SD.

Thus, A.N. Leontiev’s image of the world is a model of a known and knowable reality.

According to A.N. Leontiev, the image of the world is a set of amodal images of objects and phenomena of a specific ethnic culture, stored in the consciousness of the members of an ethnic group. Amodal images are images of objects and phenomena that are certain contaminations of a multitude of modal images of these objects and phenomena. In amodal images, the characteristics of individual modalities are eliminated in favor of generalized knowledge about the substance, production technology (or consumption), and the symbolic properties of cultural objects, if these objects are involved, as they always are, in the social relations of society's members.

While this generalized knowledge is constructed by an individual solely due to their residence in a specific ethnic group, professional knowledge, skills, and abilities are most often formed through instructive professional training. By analogy with A.N. Leontiev's worldview, one can call professional way peace a set of amodal images of cultural objects produced in a specific professional SD.

A preliminary analysis of the design documentation allows us to discern the following specific features:

• the goals and motives of the PSD are relatively stable and are conveyed within the framework of a specific PSD;
• production conditions and the professional technologies that depend on them in the design documentation are stable, and in hazardous industries they are sometimes super stable;
• speech acts in the organization of communication and PSD are performed based on various, sometimes obligatory precedent texts (rules, regulations, orders, charters, etc.);
• The activity of employees in the PSD is the SD, consisting of speech and non-speech actions aimed at their goals;
• the motivator of employees in the design and estimate documentation is the motive (goal) of the design and estimate documentation, leading to the satisfaction of a certain need;
• The PSD employees use tool-objects and sign-objects, therefore, they possess a common cultural knowledge formed during professional training;
• ethical restrictions on the implementation of PDD are socially sanctioned;
• the speech actions of employees in the design documentation are developed based on a stable conceptual apparatus, which presupposes the presence of a certain terminological system in speech actions;
• The relationships between employees in the design and estimate documentation are enshrined in professional role regulations.

A brief analysis of the methodological foundations of TOPL, carried out in our article, allows us to hope for the possibility of successfully constructing a theory of organizational psycholinguistics.

 

Literature

 

1. BatishchevГ.С. The active essence of man as a philosophical principle // The problem of man in modern philosophy. Moscow: Nauka, 1969. 432 p.
2. ZinchenkoВ.П., Mamardashvili М.К. The problem of the objective method in psychology // Questions of Philosophy. 1977. No. pp. 109–125.
3. LeontievА.Activity. Consciousness. Personality. Moscow: Kniga, 2012. 176 p.
4. ShvyrevВ.S. Scientific knowledge as an activity. Moscow: Politizdat, 1984. 232 p.
5. YudinЭ.G. Systems approach and principle of activity. Moscow: Nauka, 1978. 392 p.

 

 

References

 

1. Batishchev G.S. The active essence of the person as a philosophical principle // Problema cheloveka v sovremennoj filosofii [Problem of the person in modern philosophy]. Moscow: Nauka, 1969. 432 p.
2. Zinchenko VP, Mamardashvili MK Problema obektivnogo metoda v psikhologii [Problem of an objective method in psychology] // Voprosy filosofii [Philosophy questions]. 1977. No. pp. 109–125.
3. Leontiev A. N. Activity. Consciousness. Personality. M.: Kniga, 2012. 176 p.
4. Shvyrev VS Scientific knowledge as activity [Science cognition as activity]. Moscow: Politizdat, 1984. 232 p.
5. Yudin E. G. System approach and principle of activity. Moscow: Nauka, 1978. 392 p.