E.F. Tarasov
INTRODUCTION INTO LANGUAGE CONSCIOUSNESS THEORY
The most adequate special scientific methodology to analyze the functioning of language and non-language consciousness in the speech production and perception of is the theory of activity (AT) by A.N. Leontiev, developed within the framework of the cultural and historical approach of L.S. Vygotsky. Language and non-language consciousness develops in the joint activity – verbal communication – of an adult and a child, resulting in common consciousness, which is an indispensable prerequisite for sign communication. The speech production involves verbal modeling of images of perception, images of memory and images of imagination, or linguistic signs meaning only – the so-called imageless speech. Speech, i.e. verbal modeling of consciousness is not consciousness per se, but it is the external form of consciousness of a particular ethnos members. The image of the world, a concept introduced by A.N. Leontiev is the consciousness of a member of a society who has actively appropriated the ethnic culture of his/her society. The image of the world is a system of knowledge an ethnos provides its members with and which constitutes its ethnic identity. The transmission of a verbal message is not the transmission of information, but the the speech chain content construction, which consists only of linguistic signs bodies, by the recipient. When transmitting verbal messages, the speaker produces only a chain of bodies of linguistic signs and offers it to the recipient for perception, setting the program for generating the content of this chain, which the recipient constructs from his/her own knowledge.
Keywords: cultural-historical approach, activity theory, consciousness, verbal model of consciousness, common consciousness, image of the world, content construction.