Chapter X

The notion of discourse: beyond thought and language

Andrs Haye & Antonia Larran
Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile, Chile.
Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile.

SUMMARY
This paper addresses the concept of discourse in an attempt to explore theoretical implications of
a dialogical approach, as sketched by Volosinov and Bakhtin. In psychology, it is Vygotsky who
initially stressed the discursive-dialogic nature of mind, as well as of culture, specifically in terms of
the dynamic relations between thought and language. In line with these sources, the paper argues that
a dialogical conceptual framework in psychology not only involves a theory of thought as an activity
mediated by language, as an activity comparable with speaking (thus, inner speech), but also
a re-conceptualization of language as an act of thought. It is proposed that both thought and language
are concepts that have to be explained in terms of a third conceptthat of discourse. The conceptual
distinctions between discourse and language, on the one hand, and between discourse and thought, on
the other, are discussed.

THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE

Let us employ a quote by Vygotsky as a guide for our reflections, with the aim not of
analyzing and evaluating Vygotskys theory but with the purpose of discussing some
conceptual insights from a dialogical approach. This brief communication can be
regarded as a commentary on the Russian psychologist's approach to thought and
language, on the assumption that his notions, although in need of interpretation and
further development, may help discussing a dialogical concept of discourse
(Rommetveit, 1992; Shotter & Billig, 1998).
With the following words Vygotsky closes, in 1934, the famous chapter seven of
Thinking and Speech (the quote is translated and amended by us from the Spanish
critical edition; Vygotsky, 1991):
The word represents in consciousness that which is absolutely impossible for one
and possible for two. It is the most direct expression of the historical nature of
human consciousness, which reflects itself in the word the same as the sun in a
drop of water.
What is it that is impossible for one and possible for two? It is common to call social
everything that is only possible between two or more actors, since sociality is the idea of
a multiplicity in interaction. No matter whether there is only one person or several, the
social nature of a process relies on the relationship among multiple perspectives. In this
connection, we follow Mead's notion of sociality (1932), which refers to any articulation
of multiplicity, both human and non human. In addition, we focus on the particular kind
of social interaction that is involved in the articulation of perspectives (Markov, 1997)
that we usually observe in human life.
 We conceive of perspectives in a broad sense as alternative subjective positionings
within a thematic field. Other terms such as point of view, angle of observation, attitude,
and evaluative stand, may well be used to account for the notion of perspective, as soon
as we keep the dynamic idea of position taking toward other relevant positions.
Returning to Vygotskys first claim, then, the word makes consciousness the encounter
between diverse subjective positions.
The word, as a meeting place of perspectives, is not a simple unit but a polyphonic
field. Moreover, the social nature of consciousness implies that the multiple perspectives
are not just a multiplicity put together by some sort of causal, logical or syntactic
relations; rather, this multiplicity is bound up by social relations of strategic alliance,
battle-like opposition, dominance versus resistance, double-bonding interdependence,
negotiating or even flirting among perspectives. Following Bakhtin (1981, 1986), we
call dialogic this kind of social relations between perspectives. Thus, the word makes
consciousness dialogic.
According to Vygotsky (1934/1962), discourse is originally dialogue mediated by
signs. Along with the ontogenetic development of consciousness, thought acquires a
dialogic nature because it is transformed by the social practice of sign-mediated
dialogue. However, we use the concept of dialogicality not only to state that words
generate each other as the replies in a dialogue, but more fundamentally to emphasize
that in human consciousness the word, the logos, is always already a response to other
logos, that consciousness is rooted in a relation of alterity. Following Bakhtin, we stress
that there is never a one single word; that there is no first or last word; that the word is
the social contact with the other. Indeed, dialogicality in this sense is not to be found
only in the dialogal forms of discourse, because also within monologues one may count
more than one subjective position, even if the alternative perspectives are tacit, as in a
figureground distinction. Thus, even monologal forms of discourse, such as certain
classes of inner speech, are dialogic. We claim that human consciousness is
characteristically dialogical, because every subjective position-taking is partial and it is
thus directed toward other partial positions, actual or virtual, past or future. Every
utterance, as long as it expresses a perspective, is supported by other voices through
interlocution and intertextuality. The very notion of perspective, if it is taken to involve a
selection within a field, implies a multiplicity of possible perspectives, or at least an
overarching frame within which a perspective is to be taken or defined. This is the
reason why a perspective never stands alone.
To sum up, we propose that a dialogical conception of the relationship between word
and consciousness, as suggested by Vygotsky (1934/1962), has the theoretical
consequence that thought and language need to be conceived of in terms of discourse.
This third concept refers to the particular way of being that characterizes subjectivity
simultaneously as thinking and speech, thinking as the taking of a position and speech
as the response to other interdependent positions. In short, consciousness-as-discourse is
an essentially dialogic way of being that is based upon the mutual mediation between
thinking and speech. This notion of mutual mediation implies, on the one hand, that
thinking mediates speech, so that the latter is not just communicative but becomes an act
of knowing. Communication is thus realised through the articulation of sign exchange
and cognitive processes. On the other, that speech mediates thinking, transforming
cognition in a process realised by means of sings, in other words, accounting for the
semiotic nature of knowing. According to Vygotsky's theory of the constitution of verbal
thought, this way of being that, we are calling consciousness-as-discourse, is the novelty
emerged from the coming together of thinking and speech, as two originally distinct
functions. This idea implies that consciousness-as-discourse is not contained in thinking
as such or in speech as such.

TOWARD A NOTION OF DISCOURSE

Despite the fact that it is possible to conceive modes of consciousness as determined by

a simple relation of representation between a single subject and a single object, we
argue, following Vygotsky that the so called internalization of language radically
changes consciousness into a dialogic articulation of perspectives. As long as
consciousness is the movement of taking a perspective, consciousness is more than
representation: is both awareness and social response. To put it shortly, consciousness is
discourse. We employ the term discourse precisely to tap this two-fold nature of human
consciousness, that of being at the same time awareness and social response, knowledge
and social interaction, thinking and speech.
In these lines, both human cognition and communication are essentially discursive
processes, because each of these types of processes requires the articulation of a
perspective toward something, and the articulation with other relevant perspectives.
There is no cognition without social position-taking, and no communication without
understanding. In Vygotsky's theory (1934/1962), cognition and communication
becomes dialogic in humans along with the philogenetic, sociogenetic, and ontogenetic
relationship between thinking and speech. The consequence of such an approach is that
thought and language, even if they can be conceived of independently in abstraction, are
found interlaced in human consciousness, either in the mode of cognition or in that of
communication.
Thinking and speech are the two aspects of discursive life, whose emergent
properties cannot be broken down into the properties of thought in itself plus those of
language in itself. On the contrary, as far as consciousness is concerned, thought and
language become what they are, namely, understanding and social contact, only within
discursive life.
To support this view, in the remaining of this short, introductory communication, we
need to conceptually differentiate discourse from speech, on the one hand, and from
thinking, on the other.

Discourse and language

What is the difference between a discursive act and the linguistic signs out of which the
former is performed? Signs are repeatable forms of suggesting the way in which the
ongoing articulation of perspectives may proceed. We conceive language as any semiotic
process orienting the articulation of perspectives in cognition or communication.
Languages must be relatively stable in order to do their job, and acquire this stability
from social practices. In this sense, a language would be a form of life, to quote
Wittgenstein. Thus, repeatability is an essential component of signs, whereas discursive
acts are said to be unrepeatable.
An example will help us to clarify this point. It is a piece from Diary of a Writer, by
Dostoevsky, a passage that has been used both by Vygotsky (1934/1962) and by
Volosinov (1929/1986) to illustrate the nature of discourse, a fragment here edited and
shortened for presentation purposes.
 I chanced to find myself walking alongside a band of six gipsy artisans
Man 1 voiced #, expressing his utterly disdainful denial of some point that has
been in general contention just prior.
Man 2, in response to man 1, repeats #, but now in an altogether different tone
and senseto wit, in the sense that he fully doubted the veracity of the first
fellow denial.
Man 3 waxes indignant at man 1, sharply and heatedly salling into the
conversation and shouting him # but now in a pejorative, abusive sense.
Man 2, indignant at man 3 for being offensive, himself sallies back in and cuts the
latter short to the effect What the hell do you think you are doing, butting in like
that?!conveyed buy emitting just # and nothing more, save only that he
grabbed 2 by the shoulder.
Thereupon man 4, apparently having just struk upon the solution to the problem
that has originally occasioned the dispute, in a tone of rapture, with one arm
half-rised, shouts #...
To distinguish discourse from language, Bakhtin (1986) and Volosinov (1929/1986)
oppose the concepts of utterance and of sentence. A sentence is a syntactic organization
of signs. Each occurrence of the sign #, plus the assortment of other concurrent
non-verbal signs, is an utterance, an act of discourse. However, the sign and its
occurrence are very different things.
In the dialogue of the example there is, apart from signs, a composition of turns.
Each turn breaks the continuity of the semiotic arrangement #, jumping to another
sentence # put forward by the next fellow. In order to make sense of the
communication, there must be an interruption, so to say, of one sentence, which must
arrive to an end for another sentence to take place. These interruptions define and
articulate the sentences as a conversation, as a discourse, but these same interruptions
are not semiotic structures, they are not signs or linguistic elements in themselves. So we
have more than signs in the conversation; we also have the occurrence of position-taking
on the part of the interlocutors. The notion of utterance is meant to capture also these
non-linguistic aspects of discourse, without which no collection of sentences would ever
be a conversation. This is the reason why Volosinov and Bakhtin assert that sentences
are linguistic abstractions from the flow of discourse (they do not exist except in the
concept elaborated by linguists), whereas utterances are the concrete units of discourse.
Discourse is the sign-mediated articulation of perspectives. Hence, its basic unity, the
utterance, includes as an essential component the cuts that delimit the particular
perspective endorsed and articulates it with the previous and the next. Therefore, the
notion of utterance designates the articulation between perspectives, not only the
formulation of each of the perspectives discursively articulated. Sentences are semiotic
resources for utterances. Sentences are determined by the repeatable arrangements
among signs, whereas utterances are determined by their answerability, which involves
the interruption of the other as well as the invitation to an interruption by the part of the
other. In Vygotskys quote, we interpret the notion of word as corresponding to Bakhtins
utterance.

Discourse and thought

In sketching the difference between discourse and language, we have characterized the
former in a way that approximates it to the notion of thinking. We highlighted that the
utterance is unrepeatable and that it articulates emergent perspectives. Have we arrived
at a confusion of discourse and thought? What would then be the specific value of the
concept of discourse? In fact, the utterance also differs from the proposition, which is an
abstract model of thought as articulation of perspectives that is more analogous to the
notion of sentence. One can conceive the relationship between thought and language in
terms of proposition versus sentence, as it has been done frequently, and forget about the
nature of the utterance. Then language would have the function of expressing or
linguistically formulating an articulation that is constituted beforehand in a logic
dimension independent from the social underpinnings of language. Yet, from a dialogical
perspective one is impelled to explain the role played by language in discursive life
without avoiding these theoretical difficulties. What is then the relationship between
discourse and thought?
We assume that discourse is to think, to articulate a perspective. However, thought is
more than understanding or comprehending, more than to grasp or to mentally represent
something, more even than articulating a perspective. A proposition is a representation
of a state of affairs, linking at least two ideas in a way that can be judged true or false,
thus articulating a special kind of perspective toward facts in the world. Another notion
of thought that we receive from the tradition of psychology is that to think is to go
beyond the information given, to transcend what is present, to offer an always new
perspective. Such is the view of thought championed by William James. According to
this view, thinking is a stream of multiple thoughts, each following the previous ones
and enabling and calling further thoughts, and mixing and overlapping among them in
different degrees in such a way that continuity is achieved by means of constant flux and
change. Thought is thus conceived of as an event and as an emergent. We add: Thought
has the unrepeatable nature of the utterance. Thinking is an act of discourse, is the
occurrence of a subjective positioning toward alternative positions.
The consequence of this point is that an act of thought is not to be regarded only as
the overt expression of a given subject, but also as an event that generates subjectivity,
changes the current subject of thought offering an unrepeatable, always new, subjective
position. The thinking and speaking person, a living being, is not a subject by definition,
but only if she inscribes herself in a discursive process, only if she thinks or speaks.
Consistently, we must consider that subjectivity is not grounded in the psychological
powers of mental representation, but based upon the dialogical work of thought within
discursive life.
Moreover, an event of thought is not only the act of articulating a perspective, but the
act of seizing hold of it, of advancing a position toward other positions, actual or virtual.
We claim that this is so in the sense that discursive thought always involves tension
between perspectives, because from the moment the stream of consciousness is mediated
by language, it internalizes the other.

THE HISTORICITY OF DISCOURSE

Bakhtin (1981) explains language forms as the results of a discursive process in society,
where utterances are mediated by multiple languages, each carrying the notes of a social
group, of a historical period, of a form of life. Languages develop in the context of a
social plurilinguism that is the very ideological milieu of discourse. With this concept,
Bakhtin describes a field of a multiplicity of languages that diverge from each other, that
generate each other, that influence each other, within the only meeting point that is the
word, the utterance. The historical nature of languages, then, depends upon the
unrepeatable occurrence of position-taking. However, because of this historical,
changing nature, languages capture in their structure, and transport, the ideological
peculiarities of social groups, of generations, professional types, thus contributing in this
way to the ongoing discursive processes by making ideological voices accessible.
Without the normalizing forces of semiosis that, rooted in social practices, account for
the relative stability of languages across time, the past, the previous utterances would
never come to the present to confront the speaker with others.
Regarding the last part of the quote, one may ask: How does the sun reflect in a drop
of water? In the manner of a refraction, the same as light does in a crystal. According to
this analogy, discourse does not represent an object but decomposes and diversifies the
signification made possible by semiotic forms, refracts the sign each time with a new
accent, as with a kaleidoscope. This notion of refraction comes from Volosinov and
Bakhtin, from whose view we may rephrase the last of Vygotskys claim as follows:
Language, which mediates both thinking and speech, refracts itself in discourse, the
same as the ideological formation of discourse leaves its mark in each sign.
To close these remarks, note that the difference between thought and language that
we are suggesting, however, is not like the difference between two entities that can be
conceived separately. On the one hand, discursive thinking is possible only because of
the semiotic mediation in the ontogenesis of thought. On the other hand, the ideological
sign is only possible because of the microgenetic articulation of a subjective position,
always accentuated and unrepeatable.

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