A Behavioristic Account of the Significant Symbol

A Neo-Meadian Approach to Human Agency: Relating the Social and the Psychological in the Ontogenesis of Perspective-Coordinating Persons

“…As described above, Mead (1922) theorized language in terms of the association and coordination of otherwise disparate perspectives within a social act, As such, language (or significant symbols) enables the movement at a psychological level between different perspectives within the given social act. In beginning to respond to herself as both an object and a subject, the child not only furthers the differentiation of himself from others, but also enables a growing separation of action possibilities and orientations from actual positions within sequences of interactivity.…”

“…In the same way that we might ask another a question, give a command, or issue praise, so by taking the perspective of the other, we can act in this way toward ourselves. Significant symbols are, for Mead (1922), the entwining of both the perspective of self and other into a single meaning (Gillespie, 2009; see also Vygotsky's concept of the sign, as discussed in Zittoun, Gillespie, Cornish, & Psaltis, 2007). The word 'give,' for example, is a significant symbol that combines the perspective of giving and getting.…”

Sensitizing Questions: A Method to Facilitate Analyzing the Meaning of an Utterance

“…Dialogism draws upon a broad range of scholars, most notably Bakhtin (1981Bakhtin ( , 1984Bakhtin ( , 1986), but also Mead (1922), Wittgenstein (1953) and Rommetveit (1974). Dialogism has a range of distinctive assumptions (see Linell, 2009), most notably: an emphasis on the constitutive power of social interaction that also acknowledges the importance of situation-transcending phenomena (such as discourses, institutions, relationships and identities), and also an emphasis on the historicity of human action that also acknowledges human agency.…”

“…Second, meaning is temporal in the sense that each utterance is crafted out of preexisting elements (Bakhtin, 1986) as both a response to something and something that can be responded to in the future (Mead, 1922). Interlocutors struggle to bend the significance of second-hand words to their will (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 293 Third, meaning is addressive in the sense that it always implies an audience (Bakhtin, 1986).…”

“…Mead (1922) similarly argued that the meaning of a gesture is, in part, determined by the subsequent responses it elicits. Conversation analysis leverages this insight to provide a proof criterion for interpretations.…”