"When studying man, we search for and find signs everywhere and we try to grasp their meaning."
Mikhail Bakhtin (1986, p. 114)

Introduction

Kenneth Gergen has summarised the constructionist epistemological stance, extending it to the entire post modern movement, by the following statement: "If one were to select from the substantial corpus of post modern writings a single line of argument that a) generates broad agreement within these ranks and b) serves as a critical divide between what we roughly distinguish as the modern versus the post modern, it would be the abandonment of the traditional commitment to representationalism." (Gergen, 1994, p. 412)

By representationalism Gergen seems to indicate a simplistic understanding of the direct relationship between linguistic signs and their referents. Such an approach typifies much of the current mainstream psychology, which tends to ignore human practice, or practical activity, as a salient mediator of language use. It also leads into a decontextualised and over-generalised theory construction in empiricist psychology that does not recognise the role of the methodological practices by which the conceptual models are generated.

Gergen's critique on mainstream psychology is quite acceptable. His epistemological maxim of abandoning representationalism seems more problematic. Without having enough time for detailed arguments, I only present my assumption that post modern and constructionist views of language are mainly derived from de Saussure's sign concept as modified by the French poststructuralist writers. Briefly summarised, the main points are a) that sign meanings (the signified) do not portray 'objects in the world' but are defined by the sign's position in the system of signifiers, and b) that there are no direct, unmediated relationships between signifiers and the signified.

Echoing such views, the constructionist stance argues that our linguistic signs are always constructed in social practices that involve power relations. Moreover, we cannot step out of the realm of signifiers in order to find their direct relationships to a 'pure reality'. Our experiences are inevitably confined to our linguistic constructions of events and the events receive their meaning only through these constructions. Psychotherapy then means a discursive practice during which a set of constructions is transformed by relating them with another set of constructions. It is a specific mode of communication based on a constant negotiation and re-negotiation of meanings within the socially formed system of signs.

In what follows, I will try to illustrate, again very briefly, the Cartesian roots of de Saussure's sign concept, upon which the constructionist derivations are based. I hope it will help understand why the mediating role of language has been equated with 'the abandonment of representationalism'. I will then present the Bakhtinian concept of sign as an alternative that fully acknowledges the mediating functions of signs while preserving their referential aspect.

De Saussure's concept of sign Sciences are always constructions in the sense that they define their object from a distinct perspective and derive their basic abstractions and units of analysis on the basis of this perspective. De Saussure (1915/1959) was careful in delineating the object of general linguistics. He noted numerous polar oppositions or dilemmas that are involved in approaching human speech as an object of research, such as sound and meaning, speech as an individual and social act, continuity and evolution of speech patterns, etc. As his solution of these dilemmas he asserted the following premise:

".from the very outset we must put both feet on the ground of language and use language as the norm of all other manifestations of speech. Language. is a self-contained whole and a principle of classification. As soon as we give language first place among the facts of speech, we introduce a natural order into a mass that lends itself to no other classification." (p. 9).

De Saussure's initial efforts at defining the proper object of linguistics show that, inevitably, some basic choices must be made. He argued quite convincingly for his delineations, although we can now anticipate the dangers of severing language from social practice by establishing it as a self-contained object of science. The next step is to define the basic conceptual unit of analysis that reflects the nature of the constructed object. It does not immediately follow from the ways by which the object was initially derived. In fact, it involves as many methodological dilemmas as the object definitions. De Saussure was, however, quite naïve in deriving the unit of analysis that, in his belief, would be appropriate for the newly defined object of linguistics. He seems to have adopted the classical Cartesian distinction between res extenza and res cogitans without any reservations. This happened in his 'speech circuit' model that he used in order to derive the structure of linguistic signs.

"Suppose that the opening of the circuit is in A's brain, where mental facts (concepts) are associated with representation of the linguistic sounds (sound-image) that are used for their expression. A given concept unlocks a corresponding sound-image in the brain; this purely psychological phenomenon is followed in turn by a physiological process: the brain transmits an impulse corresponding to an image to the organs used in producing sounds. Then the sound waves travel from the mouth of A to the ear of B; a purely physical process. Next, the circuit continues in B, but the order is reversed. Indeed, we should not fail to note that the word-image stands apart from the sound itself and that it is just as psychological as the concept which is associated with it." (de Saussure, 1915/1959, pp. 11-12).

Based on the speech circuit model, language becomes indeed a purely ideal, self-contained phenomenon. Defining the word as a unit of concept and acoustic image erases the referential aspects of sign meanings as well. We can only define the meaning of any concept by relating it to other concepts. There is an endless play of associations between meanings and acoustic representations, going on in the 'limited part of the brain'. The relation of the concept, or the meaning, to the acoustic image is purely arbitrary, generated by social convention. This "mentalisation" of the sign happened by deriving it from the primitive, dualistic model of the speech circuit. De Saussure concluded:

"The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. I propose to retain the word sign to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified and signifier. (pp. 66.-67).

Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others." (p. 89)

Post structuralist thinkers have elaborated this simple dyadic notion and argued that the relationships between the signifiers to the signified are complex and mediated. For Lacan, the important mediator was the repression that severed the chain of signifiers from any direct relationships, or association, between the signified (Veivo & Huttunen,

1999). Derrida shreds our hopes of ever getting in touch with "the transcendental signified". Whereas de Saussure placed the signified in the limited part of the brain where it is connected to its acoustic image, Derrida brings it within the text that implies an infinite regress of interpretations of signs by other signs (Rorty, 1995).

Social constructionism has recognised the importance of social practice and power relations in our everyday life, including our use of language. However, the idealist sign concept that has found its way through right from de Saussure's speech circuit generates a paradox: social practice is seen as a speaking practice of a local speaking community. Instead of mediating social practices, language has become the underlying principle by which those practices are explained.

The Bakhtinian notion of signs I shall now summarise an alternative sign concept, introduced by Valentin Voloshinov in his book 'Marxism and the Philosophy of Language'
(1929/1986) and developed by Mikhail Bakhtin in his subsequent work. In my view, this conception of the sign escapes the problems caused by de Saussure's dyadic definition (Nöth, 1995) while fully preserving the complex mediatory relationships to referential objects, other signs and to those who use them.

When Marx embarked on the analysis of the developmental processes of capitalism he introduced the concept of commodity as his fundamental unit of analysis. He emphasised the dialectical tension between the commodity's material form and its societal function as "the depository of exchange value".

Voloshinov's manner of deriving the basic attributes of the sign resembles Marx's dialectic method by establishing its inherent duality. The sign is a part, a material element, of reality. At the same time it presents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself. The sign is a unity of form and meaning, the referential function being the primary aspect of the meaning.

In addition to its obvious Marxist links, Voloshinov's basic definition seems to come confusingly close to de Saussure's idea of sign as the unity of the signifier and the signified. The differences become, however, clear when we begin to examine how and where the signs are generated. Voloshinov claims that signs do not have any independent existence outside the joint social practice of human beings. Signs emerge only as a part of human activity within which they indeed are used to stand for something. Voloshinov thus repudiates de Saussure's initial abstraction of language as a self-contained system of signs. In his view, it represents an ill-conceived philological fallacy.

Voloshinov considers the sign's referential functions in the broad context of social practice. This context calls forth a variety of mediatory roles in addition to the ostensive function, which was the main mode of reference that occupied philosophers right up to the later Wittgenstein who revealed its simplicity (Wittgenstein, 1953/1997, p. 2). All the complexities of signification begin with the issue of how something, i. e. the sign is made to stand for something else.

Signs are created, used and re-used in two related spheres of activity, joint and individual. Voloshinov emphasised the role of signs in joint activity, such as communication. Vygotsky studied sign-mediation both in the context of joint and individual activity. This calls for a distinction between joint, or public, and individual, or private, signs as Ikonen has emphasised (Ikonen, 1994). In communication we have to use the common stock of socially created signs. In our dreams, fantasies and wishes we employ signs that make sense only to ourselves. Often they do not reveal their meaning to our conscious attempts at understanding them. Then we need another person, somebody whose response to our signs may disclose new aspects in their meaning content. When we want to talk about our private signs we are faced with a complex task of elucidation. We try to recreate the highly idiosyncratic meaning of our signs by relating them into a sample of public signs, such as words. This is the task that every client faces in psychotherapy. It is a thoroughly dialogic act in which the therapist's responsive understanding (Bakhtin, 1986,) plays an integral part (Leiman, 1998).

To consider joint and individual activity in the formation and mediatory functions of signs is just the first aspect of their role in human life. In order to gain a broader understanding of sign-mediation, human activity should be studied in a developmental context. I have discussed this topic in more detail elsewhere (Leiman, in press;

1992). Here I only want to touch upon the idea that we can recognise forms of joint and individual activity right from the birth. The neonate's first movements and cries that are met by the caretakers and interpreted as meaningful utterances represent the earliest forms of joint sign-mediated activity. An interesting mode of early individual sign-producing activity is the baby's use of transitional objects as described by Winnicott (1974). A piece of wool from the blanket, a patterned coo, or a movement of the arm can receive a powerful semiotic content for the baby, indicating a particular activity context or the presence of the caretaker.

The Bakhtinian notion of sign has a peculiar emphasis, which makes it very fruitful when studying psychological phenomena and, especially, the specific features of psychotherapeutic discourse. Because there is no established terminology to address this specific aspect, I have chosen to call it the epiphanic quality of signs (Schmemann, 1997).

A Finnish poet, Kai Nieminen has recently articulated this characteristic very aptly: "Translating literature is so fantastic because authors, long-ago dead, become almost physically familiar. The author's voice and living spirit are always born when reading a book." (Nieminen, 2000). It is in our constitution to experience and use signs in this manner. Signs seem to make present that which they signify (Leiman, 1992). This phenomenon is so mundane that we tend to disregard it. When we read books or newspapers, watch TV news or films, we know that we deal with semiotically mediated events. However, these mediators seem to put us in touch with the things they pass on, provided that we recognise and understand their meaning. We tend to believe in the signs and in what they convey. This is more than 'representation'. It is participation and involvement.

The epiphanic quality of signs has completely escaped all those epistemologists and psychologists who regard them as "sense data" or "information" that impinge our sense organs and are transformed into "a representation of reality". This one-way view of signification does indeed deserve to be given up, if this is what Gergen means with the abandonment of representationalism. Signs are always actively met by the person who tries to make sense of them. This highlights the idea that the epiphanic quality of the signs has to be supplemented by the notion of their dialogic quality.

The dialogic quality of signs embraces several aspects that set the Bakhtinian understanding of signs clearly apart from structuralist and lexical-semantic notions. For the structuralist, words are units of language whose meanings are defined by their relationships to other words. They have neither an author nor an addressee (Ricoeur, 1978, cited by Kusch, 1986). From a Bakhtinian point of view, such properties characterise words only as objects of a particular social practice and as a product of a particular societal attitude to language, which can be called lexicographic.

In other domains of social practice as well as a part of human psychology, words are always non-neutral. They are used to position the speakers with regard to their hearers. They also position the speaker in relation to the referential objects of speech. When the accused calls God to be his witness of his innocence in front of his accusers he obviously expresses the nature of the reciprocal relations in the situation, but he also addresses God as the referential object.

Finally, Bakhtin's view on sign-sign relationships is quite different from the Saussurean and post structuralist emphasis on distinction as the constitutive determinant of the sign. A poetic description of the sign's dialogic relationship to other signs can be found in his essay 'Discourse in the Novel' (Bakhtin, 1981):

"But no living word relates to its object in a singular way: between the word and its object, between the word and the speaking subject, there exists an elastic environment of other, alien words about the same object, the same theme, and this is an environment that it is often difficult to penetrate.

The word, directed toward its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgements and accents, weaves in and out of complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group.

The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio- ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue."
(Bakhtin, 1981, p. 276).

Out of communicative context, this characterization of sign-sign relationships may seem obscure and mystifying. In my view, Bakhtin does not examine these relationships from a linguistic stance but tries to give an account of the sign as it appears to its user in the tasks of expressing oneself or trying to make sense of the other's utterance.

References

Bakhtin, M. (1986). The Problem of text in linguistics, philology, and the human sciences: An experiment in philosophical analysis. In M. M. Bakhtin. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 103-131.

Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the Novel. In M. M. Bakhtin. The dialogic Imagination. Four essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 259-422.

Gergen, K. (1994). Exploring the postmodern. Perils or potentials? American Psychologist, 49, 412-416.

Ikonen, P (1994). Näkökohtia symboliprosessista. [On symbolic processes]. In P. Ikonen & E. Rechardt: Thanatos, Häpeä ja muita tutkielmia. Helsinki: Nuorisopsykoterapia-säätiö.

Kusch, M. (1986). Ymmärtämisen haaste. Oulu: Pohjoinen.

Kai Nieminen: Birthday interview in Helsingin Sanomat 11.5.2000.

Leiman, M. (in press) Ogden's matrix of transference and the concept of sign. British Journal of Medical Psychology.

Leiman, M. (1992). The concept of sign in the work of Vygotsky, Winnicott, and Bakhtin. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 65, 209-221.

Nöth, W. (1995). Handbook of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ricoeur, P. (1978). Der text als Modell: hermeneutisches Verstehen. In H-G. Gadamer & G Boehme (Eds.). Hermeneutik und die Wissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Rorty, R. (1995). Deconstructionist Theory. In The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism -- vol. 8 From Formalism to Poststructuralism. Cambridge University Press, 1995. http://prelectur. stanford. edu/lecturers/derrida/rorty. html

de Saussure, F. (1915). Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw Hill, 1959

Schmemann, A. (1997). For the Life of the World. Sacraments and Orthodoxy. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Veivo, H. & Huttunen, T. (1999). Semiotiikka. Merkeistä mieleen ja kulttuuriin. Helsinki: Edita.

Voloshinov, V. (1929/1986). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.

Winnicott, D. (1974). Playing and Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.

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