THEORY OF SPEECH ACTIVITY: DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS

Tarasov E.F.

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

Methodological introduction

Speech activity theory is, as is well known, a Russian psycholinguistic school founded by A.A. Leontiev and developed by numerous followers and supporters. Currently, it is the only psycholinguistic approach with its own theory and well-founded solutions to so-called standard problems: speech production, semantic perception of speech, the ontogenesis of language, and verbal communication [4, p. 402; 6; 9; 18; 22].

Now, as always, there is a problem of developing the conceptual apparatus of TRD itself, as well as the problem of expanding its objective and subject areas.

Our article focuses on analyzing the object and subject areas of RDT with the goal of identifying resources for the further development of this theory. It is reasonable to assume that the refinement and development of any theory's conceptual framework occurs through the process of explaining and predicting the phenomena introduced into the theory's object domain.

As is well known, the object domain of TDT as a psycholinguistic discipline consists of psychological and linguistic components. The linguistic component of the TDT object domain consists of speech messages produced by speakers and perceived by recipients—that is, what linguists observe and describe. The psychological component consists of the communicants' mental images formed during the perception of objects that determine speech processes: communicants with different cognitive abilities and need-motivational domains; the structure of speech communication (SC), which exists as social interaction between communicants; and the joint activity (JA) of communicants, who are also collaborators in the JA, for the sake of which members of society communicate using linguistic and non-linguistic signs.

Psycholinguistics as a cross-cutting discipline was created in order to replace the reductionist object area of linguistics with a more adequate object area of psycholinguistics, which allows not only to describe people's speech messages, but also to explain the functioning of language in the speech actions of communicants.

The object domain of modern linguistics, which includes only speech, typically isolated from its producers and recipients, is the speech productions of members of 21st-century society, studied according to the norms of 19th-century linguistics. Clearly, the object domain of psycholinguistics is a form of existence for the object domain of 21st-century linguistics. This is not a new idea—it was often expressed by the distinguished scholar Viktor Alekseevich Vinogradov, former director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The greatest resource for developing the TRD is the SD, together with the RO included in its structure and the speech acts of the communicants-employees. It should be taken into account that the researcher's consciousness includes both the image of consciousness, the "subject SD" (communicants-employees, common goal, tool, subject and speech acts, motives), and the tool for analyzing this activity.

The multiple communicant as a tool of scientific analysis has long been present in the TRT in the form of associative fields formed in mass experiments and representing a construct reflecting the verbal consciousness of the multiple speakers of a specific ethnic language.

The possibility and necessity of distinguishing between activity as a phenomenon in the object area of psycholinguistics and activity (activity scheme) as a tool for analyzing human activity, aimed at its transformation, suggests a search path for the development of TRD - this is, as already mentioned, an expansion and clarification of the object area of psycholinguistics and a natural modification of the conceptual toolkit with the aim of increasing its explanatory capabilities not only of the clarified object area, but also of the ontological picture of the real functioning of language in society.

Study

The first part of the object area of TDT, with which it is appropriate to begin our analysis, is the ontogenesis of language, which so far has been mainly limited to early ontogenesis. The works of V.E. Goldin, A.P. Sdobnova, L.O. Butakova, E.N. Gutz and other authors, reviewed in the collective monograph «Russian Psycholinguistics: Results and Prospects (1966–2021)« [14], demonstrate the possibilities of analyzing the process of language acquisition by a small child and beyond early ontogenesis in middle childhood, especially since the psychological justification for carrying out psycholinguistic research itself was created by B.D. Elkonin in his »Developmental Psychology” [21].

L.S. Vygotsky's idea of the development of word meaning in humans, formulated by him based on children's speech, has not yet received sufficient attention, although this idea is easily extrapolated to the entire human life, since it describes well the development of word meaning in humans, which is especially intense during periods of mastering new activities, for example, during vocational training.

The object domain of early language development consists of an interacting adult and child, and this interaction is primarily the adult's activity of caring for the child using cultural objects, the functional significance of which is revealed to the child in this process. In addition to the adult and child, this object domain includes a cultural object that mediates their interaction, and later, with the emergence of speech, symbolic mediation in the form of a linguistic sign is added.

L.S. Vygotsky viewed this interaction between adult and child as a process of introducing the child to adult culture, during which the child's psyche is formed: social relationships between adult and child, through the stage of internalization, become the latter's mental functions. This proposition of L.S. Vygotsky's is considered an ontological premise in TDT, i.e., a methodological proposition accepted without proof, since it has been verified outside of TDT.

However, L.S. Vygotsky's main idea, which has been explored in psychology (in the works of B.D. Elkonin) but has not yet been fully utilized by psycholinguists, is the concept of the sign, i.e., the semiotic mediation of interaction between communicants. Naturally, the idea of the sign as a means of communication is not new to either linguists or psycholinguists. What is new about the sign, as L.S. Vygotsky pointed out, is its ability to generalize. A sign, as opposed to a tool, is aimed at changing the behavior of another person and the speaker themselves, and, therefore, a sign is an external means of influencing a person's inner world.

According to L.S. Vygotsky, influence consists in the fact that the meaning of a sign presented to a recipient forces them to see the world in a certain way. In other words, the meaning of a sign denoting a specific object allows one to comprehend this object differently, contrary to its external observable properties [5, pp. 264-265].

Uncovering the unique content (structure) of a sign in a specific ethnic language is also a method of analyzing the ethnocultural specificity of the linguistic consciousness of speakers of different ethnic languages that has not yet been mastered by psycholinguists. However, bilingual dictionaries of associative norms are already beginning to appear, containing material for analyzing the specificity of the linguistic consciousness of speakers of different ethnic languages (see, for example, [19]).

Thus, the resource for the development of TRD consists in the utilization of the idea of the sign mediation of the interaction of communicants, which is an impact on the inner world of the recipient, not through the transmission of information, since with sign mediation, information is not transmitted, but is carried out through the transmission of bodies of linguistic and non-linguistic signs as a program for the recipient to construct content that reflects the thoughts of the speech producer, modeled by his speech message.

The second objective domain of the RDT, which can be considered a resource for further development, is the appropriation of ethnic culture by members of an ethnic group, which occurs through the production or consumption of cultural objects according to the rules of the ethnic group. The process of producing and consuming cultural objects is usually conceptualized as the transmission of the generic qualities of a person of a specific ethnic group across space and time. In philosophy, it is described by the concepts of the objectification of human actions in the form of the production of an object and the de-objectification of the qualities of an object in the actions of producing another object based on the first.

Although the appropriation of the culture of an ethnic group is carried out in the process of objective activity, for the consciousness of a specific member of an ethnic group it results in the form of an ethnic image of the world, the content of which forms, according to A.N. Leontiev, the fifth quasi-dimension of reality, which explains the ethnocultural specificity of the consciousness of the bearers of a specific ethnic culture [10].

The image of the world assimilated by a person represents the orienting basis for his objective activity both for the individual and for the entire society. A.N. Leontiev called this phenomenon the double life of meaning [12, p. 109]. Of greatest interest for our purposes in developing the theory of consciousness is A.N. Leontiev's idea of the relationship between consciousness and language in society: "that in which and by means of which the consciousness of society exists is language" [11, p. 8].

This property of language to describe images of consciousness through verbal texts is widely used in the teaching of secondary languages, where the ethnic image of the world of native speakers of the target language is formed not through the appropriation of cultural objects from the native speakers' culture, but through verbal descriptions of these images, which, naturally, is a makeshift. If the goal is to create an image of the ethnic world of native speakers of a secondary language when teaching it, then it is advisable to develop a system of additional learning activities that compensate for the lack of student engagement in mastering the secondary subject culture, since without a secondary image of the world, mutual understanding between those communicating in the secondary language will be difficult.

A fairly powerful resource for the development of the TRD arises from the utilization of the ideas of the theory of cultural determinacy of subjective experience, developed in Russian psychology by V.I. Alexandrov [1]. The principle of cultural determinacy of perceptual activity and thinking acquires particular significance in the intercultural analysis of the cognitive activity of bearers of a specific ethnic culture, which goes back not only to objective actions and, therefore, being culturally determined, are «simultaneously genetically determined (through the individual characteristics of neurons specializing in the process of systemogenesis)» [2, p. 188].

Unpredictable opportunities for expanding the empirical base of TDT are promised by psycholinguistic research of professional activity in connection with the analysis of the problem of professional image of the world and professional language. The attractiveness of this problem is due to several reasons. Firstly, the social value of the problem of socially necessary professional activity of members of society. Secondly, the presence of traditional interest of psychologists conducting research into the influence of professional activity on personality formation [3; 7; 8; 13; 15; 16; 17]. Thirdly, and this is the most significant, the presence of psychological theories: the theory of image of the world by A.N. Leontiev, the three-layer model of image of the world by E.Yu. Artemyeva, Yu.N. Strelkov, V.P. Serkin and the organizational resource in the form of "Organizational Psychology" (Magadan) and "Organizational Psycholinguistics" (Moscow).

The three-layer model of the worldview by E.I. Artemyeva and her co-authors is a model of the functioning of human consciousness, where a complex of amodal images of consciousness reflects the subject culture and axiological framework of the ethnic group, i.e., what is called consciousness itself, while the semantic layer contains linguistic knowledge, in other words, "what and through what the consciousness of society exists" [11, p. 38]. The perceptual world is the world of objects of real reality, perceived with the help of images of consciousness, which serve as perceptual standards. According to the authors of the model, all three layers interact with each other: the core layer (systems of amodal images) determines the subject meanings of perceived objects, subject meanings are interpreted with the help of generalizing knowledge associated with the bodies of linguistic signs, knowledge new to the perceptual world can be consolidated in the core layer, developing the consciousness of the entire ethnic group. Even a cursory analysis of the three-layer model of the worldview shows that the model has significant heuristic potential, which is evident, for example, when interpreting associative fields as a tool for analyzing consciousness.

The fourth objective domain of the TRD is formed by social relations with other members of society, with whom the individual cooperates and, consequently, communicates within the framework of social relations and develops into a personality, becoming the subject of these social relations. A.N. Leontiev, in his theory of personality, writes on this matter: "The study of the process of generation and transformation of a person's personality in his activity, taking place in specific social conditions, is the key to its truly scientific psychological understanding" [12, p. 129].

The implementation of activities in the structure of social relations of a specific society at a certain historical time is associated with the assimilation of a system of norms, regulations, attitudes and values that ensure «the maintenance of a certain level of social consolidation of the community» [20, p. 370].

The existence of socio-cultural regulation of any individual and group activity in society finds its expression not only in the technologies of constructing verbal texts, but also in the technologies of producing cultural objects, and in these cultural objects themselves [20, p. 370].

Psycholinguistic studies traditionally focus primarily on the linguistic rules of speech production, although speech activity is regulated not only by linguistic technology but also by ethical and aesthetic constraints. Refusing to analyze the dependence of speech production and perception processes on the social rules of non-verbal interaction between communicants in psycholinguistics can be considered an unjustified and harmful reduction of the object of study.

The fifth objective area of TDT is the development of a secondary personality during the acquisition of a secondary (foreign) language. Foreign language acquisition is an objective area not only of psycholinguistics but also of linguistics as a whole, including its individual fields such as translation studies, comparative linguistics, contrastive linguistics, and so on.

Linguistic issues in the field of foreign languages are usually considered in relation to borrowings from other languages, which are classified as direct or indirect through an intermediary language, such as calques, translations, and transliterations. The functioning of borrowed words gives rise to problems of the formation of pidgins, international vocabulary, international languages, and so on.

Psycholinguistic issues typically arise when discussing foreign language teaching methods (types of speech activity, according to L.V. Shcherba: speaking, listening, reading, and writing) or when describing the borrowing of words simultaneously with an object or concept, when the new word is used as a regular word in the recipient language. If a word is borrowed as a synonym for an existing word, then, as a new synonym, it initiates a process of knowledge redistribution between the two synonyms.

The situation in teaching foreign languages as secondary languages is resolved by borrowing synonyms for existing words in the native language, i.e., without revealing the borrowed word's objective meaning in the target language. This demonstrates only one thing: a foreign language learner, without assimilating the ethnic culture of the target language's native speakers, is not developing a fully-fledged language whose word meanings are derived from the objective and linguistic knowledge of the target language's native speakers' worldview, but rather a secondary quasi-language, whose linguistic sign bodies are associated with the objective and linguistic meanings of native language equivalents.

The only alternative to this quasi-language is a secondary language, in which subject and linguistic meanings are formed through the appropriation of the culture of native speakers of the target language. Russian, for example, is studied in a similar manner as the language of a particular profession. Medical students studying at RUDN University, in addition to their classroom instruction, study Russian at medical institutions where they undertake medical internships. Military interpreters, in addition to learning the secondary language itself and developing translation skills, master the structure of the armed forces of the target language country, become familiar with the highest governing bodies, their purpose and tasks, organizational structure, military ranks, insignia, and so on. Outside of teaching a secondary language for non-professional purposes, there are no developed criteria for selecting knowledge about the culture of native speakers of the target language.

Conclusions

A brief analysis of the prospects for the development of TRD allows us to draw the following rather cautious conclusions.

There is significant potential for the development of DDT, which can be seen in the following areas: extending the analysis of language ontogenesis to at least middle childhood; the possibility of analyzing the patterns of word meaning formation at all stages of human life, linking this analysis to the areas of the formation and acquisition of socially significant new knowledge; expanding the practice of compiling bilingual associative dictionaries as a tool for analyzing foreign ethnic cultures and foreign worldviews; and utilizing the potential of V.I. Alexandrov's theory of the cultural determinacy of subjective experience.

Literature

 

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