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BAKHTIN AND VYGOTSKY: INTERNALIZATION AS A

BOUNDARY PHENOMENON
JOHN SHOTTER
Department of Communication, University of New Hampshire, Durham,
NH 03824-3586, U.S.A.

Abstract- In an earlier article [Shotter, New Ideas in Psychology, 11, 61-75

(1993)], Vygotsky's account of internalization was reinterpreted from within
both an ethical and a rhetorical perspective. It was argued that rather than
having a mechanical and systematic character, our 'inner lives' function in
essentially the same communicative terms as our ordinary, everyday transactions
with other people out in the world. Here, this account is further extended.
Making use of Bakhtin's writings, it is claimed that instead of functioning in
terms of already well-formed mental representations at the centre of our being,
awaiting codification in words, our mental activities are only 'given form' at the
time of their expression, in a moment by moment process of 'ethically sensitive
negotiation' at the boundaries of our being. This gives rise to a nonreferential,
responsive view of speech, and suggests that what we speak of as our selves or as
our ideas, rather than being real origins, or extralinguistic points of reference
'outside' of our discourses, are created as a part of them. In other words,
presented here is a cognitive psychology without mental representations.

INTRODUCTION

In a previous article (Shotter, 1993), I explored the 'gap' Vygotsky opened up

between words and world, and the ethico-rhetorical nature of the semiotic
mediation we use in bridging it. Here, I want to take that analysis further, and in
terms of Bakhtin's (1981, 1984, 1986; Volosinov, 1986) responsive account of
linguistic communication, to articulate further what might be called a
nonrepresentational theory of mind. For Bakhtin, a 'gap' exists also, not only
between our words and the world, but between two speakers. Thus for him,
communication is never a matter of simply transferring an idea from the head of
one person into that of another; but, it is a process in which people, who occupy
different 'positions' in a discourse, attempt to influence each other's behavior in
some way. And because people can never wholly occupy another's place (without
losing their own), two speakers can never completely understand each other; they
remain only partially satisfied with each other's replies; each utterance occasions a
further response. Thus the creative bridging of each 'gap' occasions the need for a
further response, and the speech chain remains unbroken. Extended into the head
of the individual, this means that even "the idea is interindividual and
intersubjective .... The idea is a living event which is played out in the point where
two or more consciousnesses meet dialogically" (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 72). It is what this
means for our nature as beings, 'positioned' as we are within a whole multiplicity of
different discourse, that I want to explore.
379

J. Shotter

380

WHAT IT MEANS TO SAY THAT 'INNER' LIFE IS A 'BOUNDARY' PHENOMENON

There is no doubt that, currently, nothing seems more natural to us as individual

adults than that our thoughts go on inside our heads, and that we first think our
thoughts and then express the result in actions or words. Indeed, we take it that our
thinking goes on within the neurological networks in the cortex of our brains.
Where else could it be located if not there? Well, Wittgenstein voiced his disquiet
with this claim in many ways. Here is, perhaps, one of his most dramatic expressions
of it:
No supposition seems to me more natural than that there is no process in the
brain correlated with ... thinking ... I mean this: if I talk or write there is, I
assume, a system of impulses going out from my brain and correlated with my
spoken or written thoughts. But why should the system continue further in the
direction of the centre? Why should this order not proceed, so to speak, out of
chaos? (Wittgenstein, 1981, p. 608)

But if the relation between thought and words is a living process and not an
automatic one-in the sense that there are no preformed, orderly, and constant
relations between thoughts and words, but only ones which are 'developed' or
'formed' as we attempt to express them to others in some way-where should we
'locate' our mental activities if not at the centre of ourselves? Where should our selfawareness be placed? Bakhtin (1984) answers this question as follows:
I am conscious of myself and become myself only while revealing myself for
another, through another, and with the help of another* ... The very being of
man (both internal and external) is a profound rommunimtion. To bP means to
communimte . .. To be means to be for the other; and through him, for oneself.
Man has no internal sovereign territory; he is all and always on the boundary. (p.

287)
In other words, in line with Wittgenstein's view, rather than us possessing already
systematic and orderly thoughts at the center of our being, which, in our utterances,
we merely codifY in words, what we call 'our thoughts' are only given form as we talk
or write. Beginning as vague (chaotic), diffusely distributed, but not wholly
unspecified 'feelings' or 'tendencies't which are open to, or permit, a degree of
further specification, their ordering must be negotiated in a step-by-step process in
ways which the others around us find intelligible and legitimate. If we do not
negotiate our ordering of our utterances with them, if we do not address them in a
*It is interesting to compare this with Vygot,ky's ( 1966) formulation: 'Thus, we may say that we brromr
oursdvrs through others and that this rule applies not only to the personality as a whole, but also to the
history of every individual function ... The personality becomes for itself what it is in itself through what
it is for others" (pp. 43-44).
tWilliam James (I H90) talks of the movement of our thought as workin~~; in terms of ")rrling< of
tendency, often so vague that we are unable to name them at all" (p. 254). See also what he says about
"large tracts of human speech [being] nothing but signs of dirertion in thought, of which we have an
acutely discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever" (pp.
252-253). In no sense should the word 'feeling' here be equated with anythin~~; emotional. It is to do
with how we 'let> I' a state of affairs outside ourselves, not our experience of any 'inner' states.

Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization

381

way which is responsive to their concerns, there is no point for them in what we say
and we cannot hope to have them respond to it in any way (see Shotter, 1993). At
least, this is Bakhtin's claim in his theory of the utterance, the central, 'dialogical'
concept in his approach, to which I shall now turn.
UTTERANCES NOT SENTENCES

Bakhtin contrasts his views with those of de Saussure (1974/1960). Because he is

concerned with how different embodied beings interact and not just with the
relations between words and concepts, Bakhtin takes actual spoken utterances
rather than grammatically well-formed sentences as his basic linguistic unit. The
utterance is a real responsive-interactive unit for at least two maJor reasons: ( 1) It
marks out the boundaries (or the gaps) in the speech flow between different
speakers: "The first and foremost criterion for the finalization of an utterance is the
possibility of responding to it or, more precisely and broadly, of assuming a responsive
attitude to it (for example, executing an order)" (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 76). But also (2)
because in its performance an utterance must take into account the (already
linguistically shaped) context into which it must be directed. Thus any actual
utterance is a link in the chain of speech communication within a particular sphere,
a particular social group, possible or actual. And where the boundaries of
utterances are determined by a change of speech subjects. Thus:
Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; they
are aware of and mutually reflect one another ... Every utterance must be
regarded as primarily a response to preceding utterances of the given sphere (we
understand the word 'response' here in the broadest sense). Each utterance
refutes, affirms, supplements, and relies upon the others, presupposes them
to be known, and somehow takes them into account ... Therefore, each
kind of utterance is filled with various kinds of responsive reactions to other
utterances of the given sphere of speech communication. (Bakhtin, 1986,
p. 91)

And this, along with Vygotsky (see Shotter, 1993) and Bakhtin, is what I shall
argue too: that our 'inner' lives are structured by us living 'into' and 'through,'
so to speak, the opportunities or enablements offered us by the 'others' both
around us, and the 'audiences' we have internalized within ourselves from
operating within different "spheres of communication," or "speech genres."
Indeed, as we speak, as we formulate our utterances, we must take account of
their 'voices,'* that is, the gap between what we feel we want to say, and can say
(what is in our control), and how we feel they (the 'others') will respond to it
(what is not in our control). It is these different gaps, the 'distances' between
the 'positions' of all those who might respond to what we say, and the struggles
*The concept of 'voice' lies at the heart of Bakhtin's nonreferential-that is, resf)()nsiv,._theorv of
language. It plays the same part in his philosophical anthropology of embodied thought as the concept
of 'mind' plays in more disembodied Enlightenment philosophies. As Emerson ( 1984) puts it: "Bakhtin
visualizes voices, he senses their proximity and interaction as bodies. A voice, Bakhtin everywhere tells
us, is not just words or ideas strung together: it is a 'semantic position,' a point of view on the world, it
is one personality orienting itself among other personalities within a limited field. How a voice sounds
is a function of where it is and what it can 'see'," and, one might add, how the person feels.

382

Shotter

to which they give rise, which constitute the 'semantic landscape,' so to speak,
into which our attempted formulations must be directed. And these are the
considerations to which, even when 'thinking' all alone, we must address
ourselves, if, that is, we want what we write to be acceptable and to have point.
Thus, as Bakhtin continually reminds us, our mental life is neither wholly under
our own control, nor filled with our own materials. vVe live in a way that is
responsive both to our own position as well as to the positions of those who are
'other than' ourselves, in the semiotically created 'world' in which we arc
'placed.'
Bakhtin's claim above, then, that we have no internal sovereign territory of
our own, arises out of his responsive, nonreferential approach to language.* For
him, people's linguistic task is not in any way like that depicted in de Saussure's
(1974/1960, pp. 11-12) classic, paradigmatic account of the communicative
situation, in which an immaterial idea or concept in the 'mind' of one person
(a speaker or writer) is sent into the mind of another, essentially similar person
(but now in the role of a listener or reader), by the use of material signs such as
vibrations in the air or ink-marks on paper (see Reddy, 1979). For him, the
process is much more like Vygotsky's process of 'instruction,' in which an
embodied person of one kind 'makes' something known to another of a
(usually very) different kind (e.g., an adult to a child). Thus everything of
importance goes on in the gaps or the zones of uncertainty, so to speak, between
utterances, at the boundaries between the different, unique positions in
existence everyone and everything has and is answerable for (see Chap. 3 in
Clark & Holquist, 1984). Nothing in Bakhtin's world is tightly coupled, a degree
of loosejointedness prevails everywhere.
SPEECH GENRES, TEXTS, AND CONTEXTS

The existence of gaps, the lack of necessary, mechanistic connections does

not, however, mean that everything is totally unconnected either. As each
utterance is responded to, what has already said remains 'on hand,' so to speak,
as a 'text' to form a context (of enabling-constraints) as to what may next be
said.t Elsewhere (Shotter, 1984), I have discussed this phenomenon in terms of
the concept of 'joint action": In many of our ordinary, everyday life activities,
where we must interlace our actions in with those of others and their actions
determine our conduct just as much as anything within ourselves, the final
outcomes of such exchanges cannot strictly he traced back to the intentions of
any of the individuals concerned. Hence, they cannot he accounted as planned
or intended; they must he accounted as just happening events, as ifa part of the
'natural,' external world. However, although unintended (by any individuals)
and experienced as belonging to their 'surroundings,' the products ofjoint
action still have intentionali('! in the sense of 'pointing to,' implying, or
*Although it may Sl't'lll undeniable that words art' used rderentially, a Bakhtinian would say tht'v
do so only from within a hJrm of social life alrmdy constitutrd by the speech genres within which such
words are used-sec bdow for an account of speech genres.
tSee Giddens's ( 19HO) account of his theory of structuration f(>r a discussion of the luwdwow/nlgnl
ronditions of (social) action. and its unintrndnl ron\l'qut->ntn.

Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization

383

indicating something beyond themselves. They posit a realm of other, next

possible actions, and can thus function as a context (a world) 'into' which
further action must be directed if it is to 'belong' and to 'fit.'
Within a conversation, then, it is into this temporally (and spatially)
developed and developing intralinguistically created context that everyone
involved must direct their expressions when it is their turn to speak or act-if,
that is, their actions are to be judged as appropriate by those involved. It is the
character of this 'time-space' network ofintralinguistic references,* a network
that carries in it the traces of one's socio-cultural history, that is the key to the
further understanding of the nature of our mental processes. This, as we shall
see, is where Bakhtin's concept of speech genres becomes relevant.
What is constituted in the use of a particular speech genre is, among many
other aspects of a ongoing social 'world,' a particular set of interdependently
related but continually changing speech 'positions.' On the one hand, these are
positions for which we are answerable,t and on the other, which permit us as
speakers certain forms of addressivity, that is, to aim our speech at the positions
of others. Hence, responsivity equals answerability plus addressivity. It is in their
permitting of some speech forms but disallowing others, that the social
institutions constituted by particular speech genres are maintained, repaired,
and transformed. Any utterances occurring within a given sphere of
communication, in taking into account the (already linguistically
shaped)context into which they must be directed, become filled with responsive
reactions to what has already occurred within that sphere. Where, by the
different spheres in which we communicate, Bakhtin means nothing more
than, say, our family, our work, in banks and post offices, in official documents,
our intimate relations, and so on. All the spheres that, even before we come on
the scene, are maintained in existence by an ongoing communicative process
of a particular kind-that is what gives them their particular character as the
spheres they are.
For example, in choosing to write of joint action' above (instead of, perhaps,
joint behavior') the choice of term is influenced by a knowledge of the whole
history of the usage of these words in psychology, of the groups who have used
them in the past, of the battles they have fought (and are still fighting) over
them, and of the groups who use them now. 'Positioning' oneself in relation to
these groups, however, is not just a matter of using single words, one must (try
to) use a whole appropriate speech genre, if one wishes the significance of what
one says or writes to 'move' them, to be seen by them as having point.
In the never-ending flow of communication in which different particular
forms of life are sustained, every utterance, then, is a rejoinder in some way to
*Bakhtin (1981. pp. 84-258) gives the name Chronotopes (literally 'time-spaces') to the different
structuring structures which are developed within different forms ofliterature and discourse at different
points in history.
tAs a sentence is merely a formal unity, and is concerned neither with answerability nor addressivitv
in its formulations, "it has neither direct contact with reality (with an extraverbal situation) nor a direct
relation to others' utterances" (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 74). See Clark and Holquist (1984, Chap. 3) on 'the
architectonics of answerability.'

J. Shotter
previous utterances. But utterances, besides satisfYing criteria to do with the
issues of answerability and addressivity mentioned above, must also be related
to each other as responses: as answers to questions; as agreements (or objections)
to assertions; as acceptances (or rejections) to invitations; execution to order,
and so on.* Listening too must be responsive, in that listeners must be
preparing themselves to respond to what they are hearing. Indeed, the speaker
does not expect passive understanding that, so to speak, only duplicates his or
her own idea in someone else's mind (as in de Saussure's model of linguistic
communication mentioned above). Rather, the speaker talks with an
expectation of the listener preparing a response, agreement, sympathy,
objection, execution, and so forth (with various speech genres presupposing
various integral orientations and speech plans on the part of speakers or
writers).
In other words, the utterance is a real social psychological unit in that it
marks out the boundaries (or the gaps) in the speech flow between different
'voices,' between different 'semantic positions,' whether between people or
within them. This is not the case with sentences: "the boundaries of the sentence
as a unit of language are never determined by a change of speaking subjects,"
says Bakhtin (1986, p. 72). The trouble with the sentence is that "it has no
capacity to determine directly the responsive position of the other speaker; that is,
it cannot evoke a response. The sentence as a language unit is only grammatical,
not ethical in nature" (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 74).
ACHIEVING LINGUISTIC AUTONOMY

As we become more and more adept, then, at the use of various speech
genres, at participating in already constructed networks of intmlinguistic
references to function as a context into which to direct our own further
utterances-as well as adept at constructing our own-then we become
increasingly capable of acting independently of our immediate context. In such
a development, there is a transformation from being 'answerable' for our own
immediate context, to being answerable for our 'position' in an
intralinguistically constructed context, a reliance upon a network oflinks within
what has already been, m with what might be said. In essence, it is a decrease of
reference to what 'is' with a consequent increase of reference to what 'might
be'-an increase of reference to an hermeneutically constructed imaginary
world (see the account in Shutter, 1993, of the 'from-to' imaginary nature of
hermeneutical constructions). A<> a result, what is said requires less and less
grounding in an extralinguistic context-for it can find its 'roots' almost wholly
within the new, linguistically constructed context. Thus one can tell people
about (reptesent to them or give them an account of) situations not actually at
the moment present.
Such a consequence requires, however, especially in the light of the expected
responsiveness of listeners, the development of methods for warranting in the
*Indt't'd. cornTrsational analysts have made use of this phenomenon: tlw sequential dependcncv of
"adjact'ncv pairs.

Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization

385

course of one's talk (i.e., giving good reasons for) one's claims about what 'might
be' as what being what 'is'-one must learn to say, for instance, when making a
claim about a state of affairs, that others saw it that way too, that it was based on
direct observation, in the 'nature' of things, independent of one's wish, and so
on. But primarily, one must try to avoid the need for such warranting by
learning to speak with routine intelligibility, i.e., within the accepted idiom or
genre of the social order within which one is acting (Garfinkel, 1967). By the
use of such methods and procedures, adults can construct their statements as
avowals, as factual statements that others will take seriously, without question,
and adults can learn to speak with a large degree of independence from their
immediate context.*
This is not to say, however, that when one talks in this way, one's speech has
become wholly one's own. For it is in the very nature of speech genres that they
preexist the individual; furthermore, not all are equally conducive to reflecting
the individuality of the speaker. As Bakhtin points out, there are no 'neutral'
words and forms; they have all at one time or another belonged to, and been
used by others, and carry with them the traces of those uses:
A word (or in general any sign) is interindividual. Everything that is said,
expressed, is located outside the 'soul' of the speaker and does not belong
only to him [or her]. The word cannot be assigned to a single speaker. The
author (speaker) has his own inalienable right to the word, but the listener
has his rights, and those whose voices are heard in the word before the
author comes upon it also have their rights (after all, there are no words that
belong to no one). (Bakhtin, 1986, pp. 121-122)

Indeed, as he adds later, a word only becomes 'one's own' when one puts it to
one's own use, to express one's own position, then:
the speaker populates it with his own intentions, his own accent, when he
appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive
intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in
a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that
the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in
other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions: it is from there
that one must take the word, and make it one's own. (pp. 293-294)

And if, as Vygotsky (1966) says, "the relations between the higher mental
functions were at one time real relations among people" (p. 41), then at that
moment of appropriation, what precisely these relations were, or still are, is
important. In particular, we can ask, what were or are the ethical proprieties
that must be negotiatedt moment by moment in sustaining them; and how it is
possible for words to have, so to speak, ethical currency?
*Wertch (19R5a, 1985b) gives a quite different account of how adults' forms of thought and talk can
become decontextualized, based upon taking grammatically correct sentences, formed according to
syntactic rules, as the basic units in terms of which semiotic mediation works. Suffice it to say here that,
clearly, I disagree with this approach; syntactic rules are insufficient to organize speech thematically.
tWhich, in their observance or nonobservance, reproduce (or not) the relations of power in the
form of life in question.

~86

Shutter

THE ETHICS OF SPEAKING AND THINKING

In their biography of Bakhtin, Clark and Holquist (1984) discuss a number

of early, incomplete texts of Bakhtin's-written between 1918 and 1924-to
which they assign the title The Architectonics ofAnswerability. As they see it, in these
early texts, Bakhtin outlined a concern with the ethics of everyday life activities
that he never ceased to pursue throughout his whole career: His concern was
not with the end product of an action, with what it results in, but with the
"ethical deed in its making," they say (p. 63), with how in the process of
authoring, that is, in crafting the complex, time-space relations between self
and others, the self is also crafted. Where, what it is that makes a person as a
'me' unique, is the unique place or position the person occupies, and the
degree to which, as already mentioned above, the person is answerable for that
position to the others around him or her. It is this authoring, as Bakhtin sees it,
that is the difference between humans and other forms of life; but it is an
authoring one cannot possibly do on one's own. This is the meaning, they say,
ofBakhtin's dictum that "the self is an act of grace, a gift of the other" (p. 68).
But, it must be added that (as we have seen above), if we owe our being to
how we are addressed (Shatter, 1989), how I address the others around me in
my 'authoring' of myself also raises ethical questions. For it is a part of the ethics
of authoring that I must not, in making my own being, violate the being of
others, for I owe my being to them. How, if the others around me are unique
beings whose nature cannot be predicted, can this be managed?
It can only be managed at the point of action, so to speak, during the actual
execution of the communicative act, the fashioning of an utterance. Hence, the
centrality of the theory of the utterance in Bakhtin's work. As commentators
remark (e.g., Todorov, 1984), Bakhtin formulated his theory of the utterance
twice, both in the texts of the late 1920s signed almost exclusively by Volosinov
(here only the 1973 writings are referred to), and in some writing from the late
1950s (mainly those in Bakhtin, 1986)-though the differences between them
are not major. Central to them both, as we have already seen above, is the
rejection of formal, linguistic analyses in terms of sentences, the rejection of
the idea that there must be a stage of passive, formal, nonresponsive
understanding in the life of utterances (in terms of their sentence-syntax) brfort'
they are perceived as having a significance in a context. What matters for actual
speakers, Bakhtin feels, is not that normatively identical forms exist in the 'toolbox' of language-just as normatively identical tools exist in the actual toolboxes of carpenters, say-but that in different particular contexts (like the
carpenter's tools), such forms can be put to use in novel and creative ways. Thus
what a speaker values about a word, is not so much its form, which remains
identical in all instances of its usage, but what in a given context it can be used
for.
vVe can express it this way: what is important for thr sjJmkrr about thr linguistic
form is not that it is a stablr and always srlfequivalent signal, but that it is an always
rhangrablr and adaptablr sign. (Volosinov, 1986/ 197~, p. 68)

Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization

387

But if this is the case, how is a listener to understand what the speaker means?
Doesn't the listener first have to recognize the form used in order to understand
its meaning?
No, not at all, as we saw previously (Shatter, 1993), in Vygotsky's discussion
of children's use of language before learning to write. The actual learning of
grammatical forms need play no part in the child learning to speak and to
understand its mother tongue. For although in learning to write the child must,
says Vygotsky, "disengage himselffrom the sensory aspect of speech and replace
words by images of words" ( 1988, p. 181), in talking it is merely the 'sensory'
aspect of words which is important.* This is Vygotsky's (1986) point in taking
word meaning as the 'unit' of analysis: it is still a dynamic unity of intellectual and
affective factors. Where clearly, from a practical-moral point of view, what is
involved in 'making sense' of words used in particular concrete communicative
contexts, amounts, says Volosinov (1986/1973), "to understanding [a word's]
novelty and not to recognizing its identity" (p. 68), that is, to 'sensing' its affective
novelty, the way in which we (or others) are moved by it, the way its utterance
can make a difference in our lives.
CONTACT WITH REALI'IY

Indeed, if we go along with Bakhtin and regard every utterance as primarily

a response to preceding utterances, then the task listeners face (in
understanding) is that of formulating what their response to a speaker's
utterance should be: they must decide whether they agree with it or want to
reject it; whether they must comply with it; act upon it; or are insulted by it; and
so on. In short, a listener's two-part task is: (1) To grasp how the speaker's
('tool'-like) use of words has functioned, so to speak, to have 'moved' or
'repositioned' him or her in the changing, intralinguistically specified situation
between them; in order next (2) to 'answer' for their new position within it. In
this view then, the social psychological 'movement' of dialogic speech consists
in a sequence of boundary crossings. Where each utterance is responsive to the
next, as each speaker (voice) tries to 'develop' (Vygotsky) suitable expressions
for 'moving' between their sense of what they want to say in their utterance, and
what the words of the others will permit or afford him or her to say.
But how is this possible? How can an expression be 'developed' word by word
in a more or less routine way, and checked in the course of its 'construction' for
its appropriateness? Well, as already argued, neutral dictionary definitions of
the words of a language ensure their common features and guarantee that all
speakers of a given language will understand one another, but the use ofwords
in live speech communication is always individual and contextual in nature.
Therefore, says Bakhtin,

*The author was brought up against this fact dramatically when, in struggling to learn Dutch from
a textbook, he asked the already fluently bilingual 3 1; 2 year old daughter of an English colleague, what
certain three and four word sentences in the textbook meant, was told: "I can't read yet'" "Then how
can she know what she's saying?," I thought to myself.

388

J.

Shutter

one can say that any word exists for the speaker in th1ee aspects: as a neutral
word of a language, belonging to nobody; as an other's word, which belongs
to another person and is filled with echoes of the other's uttei<mce; and
finally, as my word, for, since I am dealing with it in a particular situation,
with a particular speech plan, it is already imbued with my expression. In
both the latter aspects, the word is expressive, but, we repeat, this expression
does not inhere in the word itself. It originates at the j}()int ofmnlarl between the
word and actual reality, under the conditions of that real situation artirulated by the
individual uttrrana. In this case the word appears as an expression of some
evaluative position of an individual person. ( 1986, p. 88, emphasis added)

It is in a speaker's particular use of a particular word at a particular point in

time-like, say, the carpenter's particular use of a chisel stroke to slice off a
wood sliver at a particular point in a piece ofjoinery-that the speaker can sense
what its use achieves in the construction desired. To repeat Bakhtin's comments
above, a word's meaning does not inhere in the word itself, but originates at the
point of contact between the words used, and the 'movements' they achieve in
the conditions of their use.
Thus also, it is precisely here, in this zone of uncertainty as to who can do
what in the construction of a word's significance, at the point of contact
between my creative use of it in an attempt to reshape the social reality in the
gap between myself and another, that I can exert a (formative) influence, and
others can exert an influence too. It is in what Holquist ( 1983, p. 307) very aptly
calls "the combat zone of the word," that the struggle between the speaker's
degrees of freedom compared with those of the listener takes place. And the
importance of these freedoms and limitations, the rights and duties associated
with one's speech position, what they permit or afford and what prevent or
deny, should not be underestimated. For even apparently simple situations,
objects, events, states of affairs, remain in principle enigmatic and
undetermined as social realities until they are talked about-where what is
essentially at issue is the question: who should live in whose reality?
CONCLUSIONS: 'INNER LIFE' ON THE BOUNDARIES

It is the meaning of Vygotsky's claim that all higher mental functions are
interiorized relations of a social order, that I have been trying to illuminate
above: to argue that people's 'inner' lives are neither so private, nor so inner,
nor so merely orderly or logical, as has been assumed. Earlier (Shotter, 1993),
in exploring a social psychological interpretation of internalization, I argued that
Vygotsky was talking about an ethical transformation: that what at first as
children we did only spontaneously and unselfconsciously, under the control of
an adult, we later were able to do under the control of our own personal agency.
"The child begins to practice with respect to himself the same forms of
[linguistic] behaviour that others formerly practiced with respect to him," says
Vygotsky (1966, pp. 39-41). Thinking is thus the transfer of dialogue or
argumentation within. But, in Bakhtin's view, living dialogues do not take place
within a Saussurian, unified system of linguistic signs, allowing an unrestricted
creation of sentences. They occur (mostly) within one or another speech genre,

Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization

389

sustaining one or another social group, in which all the utterances within the
genre must in some way be responsive to each other.
This is where Bakhtin's thought becomes a crucial supplement to Vygotsky's.
Vygotsky merely hints at the sensory or affective function of words, for Bakhtin
it is central. For him, although we cannot actually 'see' into the thoughts of
others, from how their words 'move' us, we can get a sense of them, 'feel' their
shape, so to speak. We can come to an 'internalized' grasp of the gaps to be
crossed, between what is within our own agency to affect, and what from our
'position' within this or that intralinguistic reality, is outside our control. In such
circumstances, we can 'experiment' in an inner dialogue (or argument) within
ourselves as to what it is that we feel it is best for us in those circumstance to do.
Thought of this kind cannot take place in a logical 'mind' at a 'centre' of our
being. Indeed, it makes no sense to talk of such a place (and not all languages,
even European ones, possess a word for such a place or entity). Such thinking
must consist in us exploring, and negotiating a path among (struggling with),
all the possible formulations available to use as we range over the different
momentary positions allowed us, within whatever speech genre (form of social
life) we currently happen to be involved. This is an account of the movement of
mind close to that given by William .James ( 1890) (see footnote on p. 380). What
'structure' it has for us is a responsive, temporal one, consisting in the
experience of crossing the boundaries (the gaps) between one mode of
embodied consciousness (within oneself) and another, between one's sense of
one's own being and one's sense of another's. Each mode encompasses a whole,
possible version of us as a being of this or that kind. Thus what we are self
conscious of is not the 'shape' of a single thought, but of a 'struggle':
In everything a person uses to express himself on the outside (and
consequently for anolhPr)-from the body to the word-an intense
interaction takes place between I and oth!'T. their struggle (honest struggle or
mutual deception), balance, harmony (as an ideal), naive ignorance of one
another, deliberate ignoring of one another, challenge, absence of
recognition . . . and so forth.* We repeat, this struggle takes place in
everything a person uses to express (reveal) himself on the outside (for
others). (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 295)

This then is the conclusion that we arrive at in reformulating our

understanding of our 'inner' lives in terms of semiotic processes, working in
terms of ethically responsive, socio-culturally developed signs: That for
Vygotsky, such signs play the role of "psychological instruments" and make an
'inner' life possible; for Bakhtin, however, the socio-ethical nature of these signs
makes it impossible for me to know whose side T am on. The 'movement' of
my 'inner' life is motivated and structured through and through by my
continual crossing of boundaries; by what happens in those zones of uncertainty
where T (speaking in one of my 'voices' from one 'position' in a discourse) am
in communication with, and must respond to another 'self' in another position.
*The syntax is a bit strange as Bakhtin wrote these comments in note form.

390

J. Shotter

All of this, however, is to introduce into modern psychology issues of quite a

revolutionary kind, ones that would completely undermine the currently
popular conceptualizations of cognitive psychology-as concerned as it is to
model all our supposedly 'inner mental processes' upon what might be called
'unquestioned routine processes of information communication.' If we were to
take it seriously, we would have to develop a wholly different approach to the
study of cognition. One must more concerned with the social and historical
conditions within a social group that make various routines possible and give
them their warrant.
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