The problem of multiple communicators

Tarasov E.F.

Moscow City Pedagogical University
Russia, Moscow
e-mail: eft35@mail.ru

The purpose of our article is to substantiate the thesis that the widespread concept of a communicant as a single subject is reductionist, impoverishing the object area of speech communication, since the majority of texts in the social and industrial spheres, as we will try to show, are the products of not a single, but multiple communicants.

A multiple communicator exists in the form of a multiple speech producer and a multiple speech recipient. A multiple producer is two or more producers communicating with each other during and about the production of a speech message. A multiple recipient is two or more recipients communicating with each other during and about the perceived speech message.

Activity-based approach to speech analysis

We will discuss the problem of multiple communicants from the perspective of A.A. Leontiev's theory of speech activity (TSA), i.e. from the perspective of Russian psycholinguistics.

Let us recall the methodological context of speech communication theory (SCT), within which we discuss the problem of multiple communicators. The methodological context of SCT is a set of principles for constructing theoretical knowledge in the field of SCT, which could be called the metaphysics of speech communication (SC). Currently, this metaphysics of SC can be represented as the following set of approaches, principles, and postulates: activity-based and communicative approaches to the analysis of the RO; the involvement of communication processes in the social relations of members of society and the infrastructure of joint activities (SD); the existence of speech in the form speech acts, deployed in the structure of the RO and SD; obligatory condition community of consciousnesses communicants as a prerequisite for symbolic communication, in which only bodies of linguistic signs, perceived by the recipient only as a program construction of the content of a speech message.

In accordance with the activity approach introduced into linguistics by W. Humboldt [4], speech is considered as a verbal influence, the result of which should be the regulation of the speech and non-speech behavior of the partner.

The inclusion of speech acts in social relations suggests that the speech chain is organized in accordance not only with speech rules, but also with social Regulators developed by a specific society. Any utterance is polyphonic in its content, since its comprehension depends not only on the producer's knowledge, reflected in the speech chain, but also on the recipient's knowledge, which they bring to the process of understanding the message. With their message, the speaker only sets a certain program for understanding the speech utterance, while the formation of the content of this utterance, in all its variations, is the result of the recipient's efforts. Moreover, the recipient, in addition to all their other qualities, is first and foremost a bearer of knowledge about their ethnic culture in a specific historical period, in specific joint activities with other members of society. All these qualities of the recipient are relevant for understanding the speech utterance, but only in their transformed form—in the form of their consciousness, equipped with knowledge of their previous acts of SD and RO, which (knowledge) they use to construct the content of a specific speech utterance.

The activity-based approach in TRD is realized in the formation of the idea that the subject and speech activity of members of society can be described and analyzed according to the activity-based scheme.

We will try to demonstrate the activity-based approach in describing the interaction of communicants in the process of SD as its initial, primary form.

An image of the interaction situation between the first communicant (K1) and the second communicant (K2) from the position of an outside observer

K1 acts as the subject of speech influence and RO in relation to K2, as well as the subject of subject-related activity in relation to the subject-object; in addition, K1 is the object of speech influence and RO on the part of K2. K2 acts as the subject of speech influence and RO in relation to K1, as well as the subject of subject-related activity in relation to the subject-object; also, K2 is the object of speech influence and RO on the part of K1.

Image of the situation of interaction between K1 and K2 from the position of K1

K1 considers itself the subject of speech influence and RO in relation to K2, as well as the subject of subject activity in relation to the subject-object, and K2’s response speech remarks and subject actions on the part of K2 have the status of feedback for K1.

Image of the situation of interaction between K1 and K2 from the position of K2

K2 considers itself the subject of speech influence and RO in relation to K1, as well as the subject of subject activity in relation to the subject-object; K1’s response speech remarks and subject actions on the part of K1 have the status of feedback for K2.

It should be noted that an adequate description and analysis of any RO and SD is possible only from at least these three positions, and it is advisable to consider such descriptions as additional images (models) in accordance with N. Bohr’s principle of complementarity.

For a complete understanding of the speech and subject activity described using the scientific apparatus of the TRO, it should be noted that speech and subject activity is described using the concept actions speech and concepts goals actions and motive all activities consisting of speech and object actions.

One more important quality of communicators needs to be added to this scheme – they must have community of consciousnesses, that is, a shared knowledge of the world (of nature and society). Without this shared knowledge, mutual understanding and interaction mediated by signs are impossible, since the bodies of linguistic signs, which constitute speech utterances, merely point to common places in the communicants' consciousnesses. And only this shared knowledge allows them to understand each other, not the notorious "transmission of information," which simply does not exist in symbolic form.

The infrastructure of activities also includes physical and social conditions and the method (operation) of implementing speech and non-speech actions [7].

Here we must also include the principle of the activity-based determination of speech: speech acts unfold within the structure of speech communication (SC), which is the interaction of social members, supported by speech acts and unfolding for the sake of organizing communication and joint activity. The organization of SC is the inevitable cause of the emergence of SC, i.e., SC is a social structure that determines SC itself as a process of solving communicative problems and, through SC, determines the emergence of speech, which, within the framework of psychological norms, always has the status of a purposeful activity of a person as a member of society.

It should be noted that the activity-based approach to speech and speech activity, leading to the creation of an idea of the infrastructure of speech activity and speech development that determines all speech actions of a social person, was formed only in A.A. Leontiev’s TRD and does not yet know any alternatives.

A cultural approach to speech analysis

The rules of RO and SD are verbal and non-verbal technologies for human life in a specific natural landscape. The entire history of humanity has been a process of influencing nature with the goal of creating cultural objects that satisfy human needs. To this end, humans continually create tools and methods (operations) for their use, accumulating the experience of previous generations.

A. Ya. Flier, constructing the concept of culture, points out: «Culture is, first of all, a set of “rules of the game” of collective existence, a system of normative technologies and evaluation criteria developed by people for the implementation of certain socially significant practices and intellectual actions (with varying degrees of strictness of their normative regulation)» [12, p. 204].

Speech practices in general and individual texts are the result of the efforts of many people, both producers and recipients of speech messages.

The reductionist approach to the analysis of speech, practiced in descriptive linguistics, models the act of speech communication with a single producer and a single recipient, which significantly distorts the understanding of speech practice.

The definition of culture given by A. Ya. Flier encourages the formation of the idea that communicators, as bearers of a certain ethnic culture, rely on the total commonality of their knowledge about the real reality within which their lives are carried out.

The thesis of a total commonality of knowledge among communicants, created through the process of mastering an ethnic culture, is well-founded in sociology and psychology. The most substantiated concept of a commonality of consciousness among the bearers of a particular ethnic culture was developed in A.N. Leontiev's theory of the image of the world [6, pp. 251-261].

A.N. Leontiev demonstrated that the community of consciousness of communicants includes knowledge about reality, revealed by social practice (non-linguistic consciousness) and recorded in speech utterances with the help of verbal models and the form of tools.

The life of a social individual is a life lived in cooperation with others (no one can survive alone) according to certain rules, the formation, recording, and observance of which receives special attention, as adherence to these rules guarantees the existence of society. Particular importance is attached to the process of creating texts that establish regulatory frameworks, particularly for texts describing the rules of cooperation in the professional and social spheres.

Dialogism is the principle of functioning of knowledge in society

The idea that any utterance produced and received in a specific ethnic culture is in a dialogic relationship with other utterances has long been known, but it was finally formulated in M.M. Bakhtin's work "Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics," whose method of artistic thinking he called polyphonic, believing that the verbal and non-verbal substance of the novel is imbued with dialogism.

This dialogism exists in various forms: as a dialogue of statements, as a dialogue of the activities of communicating and collaborating members of society, as a dialogue of images of consciousness in the psyches of specific people, as a dialogue of images of social consciousness, recorded, externalized and presented in speech statements.

Let us turn to M.M. Bakhtin, who, it seems, deliberately transparently displayed the principle of dialogism, since he was, naturally, interested in the scientific reception of the concept of polyphony, which he discovered while analyzing the work of F.M. Dostoevsky.

In his "Working Notes: 1960s - Early 1970s," he writes: "There can be no isolated statement. It always presupposes statements that precede and follow it. No statement can be either the first or the last. It is only a link in a chain and cannot be studied outside of this chain" [2, p. 394].

Although, as can easily be seen, for M.M. Bakhtin, dialogic relations exist not only between speech utterances: «After all, dialogic relations are a much broader phenomenon than the relations between the lines of a compositionally expressed dialogue; it is an almost universal phenomenon that permeates all human speech and all relationships and manifestations of human life, in general, everything that has meaning and significance» [ibid., p. 51].

Let's make a brief summary. As an ontological premise for the theoretical concept of single and multiple communicators, we demonstrated an activity-based approach to analyzing the RO as the only adequate one for our purposes.

We also attempted to substantiate the proposition that social communication, mediated by signs, is only possible with a certain (optimal) commonality of consciousness among communicants, which is formed as a result of the adoption of a single ethnic culture. This commonality of consciousness among communicants is reflected in A.N. Leontiev's general psychological theory of activity, reflected in the theory of the image of the world, which, as a collective knowledge of the world, allows bearers of a specific ethnic culture to navigate reality with unity.

Drawing on the principle of dialogue, which, according to M.M. Bakhtin, permeates everything that "has meaning and significance," we proceed from the notion that all speech utterances are united by hypertextual connections. From the perspective of communicants as the actual creators and bearers of these connections, global hypertextuality signifies the global community of all communicants in a particular ethnic group: they are producers and recipients in a specific communicative act here and now, or they perform the same roles while dispersed in space and time, or they are co-producers and corecipients, collaborating with others in these roles.

It is natural to note that the «global community of communicants» exists not because it is determined by the need to communicate, but because it is conditioned by the need to cooperate within the framework of SD, as an existential form of life activity that alone ensures human existence.

We will now set ourselves the goal of showing that the overwhelming majority of acts of communication are carried out by multiple producers and multiple recipients.

The starting point of our analysis of collective normatively regulated forms of speech and non-speech interaction of people is the assertion that the community of people is regulated by a set socially developed norms and regulations [10; 5; 11].

In modern cultural studies, the idea that human life is determined by regulations embodied «in systems of social goals, values, rules, customs, social standards, technologies of socialization of the individual and reproduction of communities as stable functional values...» is considered justified [12, p. 204].

The modern practice of producing regulatory prescriptive and impact texts shows that they are the result of the activity of an exclusively multiple producer.

As an example, we cite an article from the Versiya newspaper (June 13–19, 2022, No. 22 (844)) titled "Tightening the Screws Even Tighter." "The State Duma adopted in its first reading a bill designed to streamline sanctions against foreign agents [...]. The government somewhat restrained the bill's authors. While generally approving of the idea, the Cabinet ordered that the second reading limit the scope of information that could lead to being labeled a foreign agent." The article shows that the bill's co-authors include the relevant State Duma Committee on Legislative Initiatives, all State Duma members who passed the bill in its first reading, a group of Cabinet experts, and the Versiya newspaper editorial staff who discussed the bill and commented on it.

To our knowledge, there are no precise data allowing us to make a judgment about the ratio of statements constructed by multiple producers versus single producers. However, as early as the mid-20th century, in the post-war period, it was believed that the bulk of printed texts consisted of advertising texts, which, as is well known, were constructed by a collective of authors. It is safe to assume that the number of collectively constructed and perceived texts has increased, given the internet.

In conclusion, we will try to answer the question of what cognitive benefits a researcher of RO receives by including in his conceptual apparatus both a single producer and recipient, and multiple producers and recipients.

The problem of multiple communicants goes back to the tradition of studying the course of mental processes in the consciousness of communicating subjects [3; 13; 14; 15; 16].

In the last quarter of the 20th century, B.F. Lomov returned to the problem of the influence of communication on the course of mental processes, formulating it in the form of the problem of communication as a determinant of cognitive processes and showed that communication, along with activity, can be a determinant of cognitive processes [8; 9]. B.F. Lomov managed to experimentally prove that communication in cognitive and mnemonic processes plays the same role as activity, i.e. human consciousness and the psyche as a whole arise and develop both in activity and in communication, and this allowed V.A. Banshchikov and V.N. Nosulenko to make the following conclusion: «what we perceive, think or experience is determined by how and with whom we communicate» [1, p. 242].

Pilot experiments on the semantic perception of speech by single and multiple communicators, conducted under our supervision, provide grounds for constructing a hypothesis about the influence of communication on the production and perception of speech messages. Experiments have shown that the reproduction of a speech message by multiple recipients communicating with each other differs in the volume and completeness of representation compared to a single recipient. 

Conclusion

The analysis shows that the model of a communication act with a single producer and a single recipient of speech must be supplemented by a model with multiple producers and multiple recipients in order to be adequate in reflecting the real state of affairs.

Literature

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References

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