Page 31 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

EDWARD C. STEWART

With their hands, early human beings constructed pitchers for storing water,
looms for weaving cloth, and bows and arrows for killing game. The pro-
duction and use of these three artifacts, as well as an in finite number of
other artifacts endowed with hard material surfaces, left indelible marks on
daily life.
But Vygotsky considered language to be by far the supreme artifact operat-
ing in human interaction. The material side of language – the sounds of speech
– is software compared with, for instance, the hardware structure of a pitcher
for storing water. But the ideal, conceptual side of language is incomparable to
the ideal aspect of any other cultural artifact. Vygotsky believed that word
meaning is the unit of verbal thought, and that the primary function of the
sounds of words in speech is to construct culture and to communicate with
others in social interaction (Vygotsky 1962: vi–vii, 4–6).

Mediated action
When language is the specific tool that transforms internalities into speech, the
process can be labeled ‘language-mediated action’. Such actions aimed at
others induce reactions, leading Vygotsky to believe that all communications
tools are ultimately based on assumptions and procedures of interpersonal
exchange, and are heavily contextualized. The individual’s repertoire of socially
enacted, tool-mediated actions constitutes his or her culture.
The action mediated by the tool of language is implied in the Hannerz
quotation, ‘the external forms that internalities take as they are made public’
(Hannerz 1992: 3). In Vygotsky’s view, language is an integral part of cultural
mediation. As an artifact, language mediates behavior in two courses of
action: direct and instrumental. The consequence of the duality of application
for the basic structure of behavior is that ‘instead of applying directly its
natural function to the solution of a particular task’, an instrumental means
intervenes between the function and the task, by the medium of which an
individual is led to perform the task (Cole 1996: 108).
We are talking about the cultural turn in psychology. Jerome Bruner calls
the new psychology ‘culturalism’ (Bruner 1996: 3). Bruner’s culturalism
emphasizes language-mediated actions. Its development is linked to a way
of life where ‘reality’ exists in the form of symbolism – primarily language –
shared by members of a cultural community who organize and construe a
technical-social way of life according to their symbolic expressions:

This symbolic mode is not only shared by a community, but conserved,
elaborated, and passed on to succeeding generations who, by virtue
of this transmission, continue to maintain the culture’s identity and
way of life. Culture in this sense is superorganic. But it shapes the minds
of individuals as well. Its individual expression inheres in meaning
making, assigning meanings to things in different settings on particular

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