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BAKHTIN AND VYGOTSKY INTERNALIZATION AS ABOUNDARY PHENOMENONJOHN SHOTTERDepartment of Communication, University of New Hampshire, Durham,NH 038243586, U.S.A.

Abstract In an earlier article [Shotter, New Ideas in Psychology, 11, 61-75(1993)], Vygotskys account of internalization was reinterpreted from withinboth an ethical and a rhetorical perspective. It was argued that rather thanhaving a mechanical and systematic character, our inner lives function inessentially the same communicative terms as our ordinary, everyday transactionswith other people out in the world. Here, this account is further extended.Making use of Bakhtins writings, it is claimed that instead of functioning interms of already well-formed mental representations at the centre of our being,awaiting codification in words, our mental activities are only given form at thetime of their expression, in a moment by moment process of ethically sensitivenegotiation 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 asour ideas, rather than being real origins, or extralinguistic points of referenceoutside of our discourses, are created as a part of them. In other words,presented here is a cognitive psychology without mental representations.

INTRODUCTIONIn a previous article (Shotter, 1993), I explored the gap Vygotsky opened upbetween words and world, and the ethico-rhetorical nature of the semioticmediation we use in bridging it. Here, I want to take that analysis further, and interms of Bakhtins (1981, 1984, 1986; Volosinov, 1986) responsive account oflinguistic communication, to articulate further what might be called anonrepresentational theory of mind. For Bakhtin, a gap exists also, not onlybetween 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 ofone person into that of another; but, it is a process in which people, who occupydifferent positions in a discourse, attempt to influence each others behavior insome way. And because people can never wholly occupy anothers place (withoutlosing their own), two speakers can never completely understand each other; theyremain only partially satisfied with each others replies; each utterance occasions afurther response. Thus the creative bridging of each gap occasions the need for afurther response, and the speech chain remains unbroken. Extended into the headof the individual, this means that even the idea is interindividual andintersubjective. . . . The idea is a l i v in g event which is played out in the point wheretwo or more consciousnesses meet dialogically (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 72). It is what thismeans for our nature as beings, positioned as we are within a whole multiplicity ofdifferent discourse, that I want to explore.

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380 .J. Shatter

WHAT IT MEANS TO SAY THAT INNER LIFE IS A BOUNDARY PHENOMENONThere 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 ourthoughts and then express the result in actions or words. Indeed, we take it that ourthinking 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 disquietwith this claim in many ways. Here is, perhaps, one of his most dramatic expressionsof it:

No supposition seems to me more natural than that there is no process in rhcbrain correlated with . thinking I mean this: if I talk or write there is, Iassume, a system of impulses going out from my brain and correlated with myspoken or written thoughts. But why should the system continue further in thedirection of the centre? Why should this order not proceed, so to speak, out ofchaos? (Wittgenstein, 1981, p. 608)

But if the relation between thought and words is a living process and not anautomatic one-in the sense that there are no preformed, orderly, and constantrelations between thoughts and words, but only ones which are developed orformed as we attempt to express them to others in some way-where should welocate our mental activities if not at the centre of ourselves? Where should our self-awareness be placed? Bakhtin (1984) answers this question as follows:

I am conscious of myself and become myself only while revealing myself foranother, through another, and with the help of another* The very bt-ing ofman (both internal and external) is a projbund communicntion. To hr means tocommunicntu. To he 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 Wittgensteins view, rather than us possessing alreadysystematic 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 talkor write. Beginning as vague (chaotic), diffusely distributed, but not whollyunspecified feelings or tendencies? which are open to, or permit, a degree offurther specification, their ordering must be negotiated in a step-by-step process inways which the others around us find intelligible and legitimatr. If we do notnegotiate our ordering of our utterances with them, if we do not address them in a

*It is interesting to compare this with Vygotskys 1966) formulation: Thus. WCmay sa) that w Orcornrourtrh~~r throug/z olh~~ and that this I-L applies not only to the personality as a whole, hut also to thrhistq ofevery individual function The personality becomes for itselfwhat it is in itself through whatit is for others pp. 4X-44).

tUilliam .James 1890) talks of the movrment of our thought as working in terms of /wlingc of~mdmcy, often so vague that we are wable to name them at all p. 254). See also what hc says aboutlarge tracts of human speech [being] nothing hut s@u o/dirrclio~ in thought, of which we have anacutely discriminativr sense, though no definite srnsorial image play? any part in it whatcoevrl- pp2.52-2.53). In no sense should thr word feeling hrrr lx equated with anything ernotiomrl. It is to dowith how WC feel a state of.affail-s outside ONI-selves, not ow- experience of any irrwr- states.

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Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization 381way which is responsive to their concerns, there is no point for them in what we sayand we cannot hope to have them respond to it in any way (see Shotter, 1993). Atleast, this is Bakhtins claim in his theory of the utterunce, the central, dialogicalconcept in his approach, to which I shall now turn.

UTTERANCES NOT SENTENCESBakhtin contrasts his views with those of de Saussure (1974/1960). Because he is

concerned with how different embodied beings interact and not just with therelations between words and concepts, Bakhtin takes actual spoken utterancesrather than grammatically well-formed sentences as his basic linguistic unit. Theutterance is a real responsive-interactive unit for at least two major reasons: (1) Itmarks out the boundaries (or the gaps) in the speech flow between differentspeakers: The first and foremost criterion for the finalization of an utterance is thepossibi l i ty of respondin g to t or, more precisely and broadly, of assuming a responsiveattitude 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 (alreadylinguistically shaped) context into which it must be directed. Thus any actualutterance is a link in the chain of speech communication within a particular sphere,a particular social group, possible or actual. And where the boundaries ofutterances are determined by a change of speech subjects. Thus:

Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; theyare aware of and mutually reflect one another . Every utterance must beregarded as primarily a response o preceding utterances of the given sphere (weunderstand the word response here in the broadest sense). Each utterancerefutes, affirms, supplements, and relies upon the others, presupposes themto be known, and somehow takes them into account . Therefore, eachkind of utterance is filled with various kinds of responsive reactions to otherutterances of the given sphere of speech communication. (Bakhtin, 1986,p. 91)

And this, along with Vygotsky (see Shotter, 1993) and Bakhtin, is what I shallargue 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 botharound us, and the audiences we have internalized within ourselves fromoperating within different spheres of communication, or speech genres.

Indeed, as we speak, as we formulate our utterances, we must take account oftheir 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 betweenthe positions of all those who might respond to what we say, and the struggles

*The concept of voice lies at the heart of Bdkhtins nonreferential-that is, r+~nrivetheoly oflanguage. It plays the same part in his philosophical anthropology of embodied thought as the conceptof mind plays in more disembodied Enlightenment philosophies. As Emerson (1984) puts it: Bakhtinvisualizes voices, he senses their proximity and interaction as bodies. A voice, Bakhtin everywhere tellsus, is notjust words or ideas strung together: it is a semantic position, a point of view on the world, itis one personality orienting itself among other personalities within a limited field. How a voice soundsis a function of where it is and what it can see, and, one might add, how the person feels.

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382 J. Shottt3to which they give rise, which constitute the semantic landscape, so to speak,into which our attempted formulations must be directed. And these are theconsiderations to which, even when thinking all alone, we must addressourselves, if, that is, we want what we write to be acceptable and to have point.Thus, as Bakhtin continually reminds LB, our mental life is neither wholly underour own control, nor filled with our own materials. Me live in a way that isresponsive both to our own position as well as to the positions of those who areother than ourselves, in the semiotically created world in which we areplaced.

Bakhtins claim above, then, that we have no internal sovereign territory ofour own, arises out of his re.@onsivr, nonreferential approach to language.* Folhim, peoples linguistic task is not in any wzay ike that depicted in de Saussures(1974/1960, pp. 11-12) classic, paradigmatic account of the communicativesituation, 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 asvibrations in the air or ink-marks on paper (see Reddy, 1979). For him, theprocess is much more like Vygotskys process of instruction, in which anembodied person of one kind makes something known to another of a(usually very) different kind (e.g., an adult to a child). Thus everything ofimportance goes on in the gaps or the zones of uncertainty, so to speak, betweenutterances, at the boundaries between the different, unique positions inexistence everyone and everything has and is answerable for (see Chap. 3 inClark & Holquist, 1984). Nothing in Bakhtins world is tightly coupled, a degreeof loose-jointedness prevails everywhere.

SPEEC:H GENRES, TEXTS, AND CONTEXTSThe existence of gaps, the lack of necessary, mechanistic connections does

not, however, mean that everything is totally unconnected either. As eachutterance 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 besaid.t Elsewhere (Shotter, 1984). I have discussed this phenomenon in terms ofthe concept of joint action: In many of our ordinary, everyday life activities,where we must interlace our actions in with those of others arid their actionsdetermine our conduct -just as much as anything within ourselves, the finaloutcomes of such exchanges cannot strictly be traced back to the intentions ofanv of the individuals concerned. Hence, they cannot he accounted as plannedorintended; they must be accounted asjust happening events, m /ra part of thenatural, external world. However, although unintended (by any individuals)and experienced as belonging to their sllrroundiIigs, the products of_jointaction still have irrtrntionnlit~ in the sense of pointing to, implying, or

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Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization 383indicating something beyond themselves. They posit a realm of other, nextpossible actions, and can thus function as a context (a world) into whichfurther 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 in tra l inguist ical ly created context that everyoneinvolved 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 thecharacter of this time-space network of intralinguistic references,* a networkthat carries in it the traces of ones socio-cultural history, that is the key to thefurther understanding of the nature of our mental processes. This, as we shallsee, is where Bakhtins concept of speeck genr es becomes relevant.

What is constituted in the use of a particular speech genre is, among manyother aspects of a ongoing social world, a particular set of interdependentlyrelated but continually changing speech positions. On the one hand, these arepositions for which we are answerable,t and on the other, which permit us asspeakers certain forms of addressivity, that is, to aim our speech at the positionsof others. Hence, responsivity equals answerability plus addressivity. It is in theirpermitting of some speech forms but disallowing others, that the socialinstitutions constituted by particular speech genres are maintained, repaired,and transformed. Any utterances occurring within a given sphere ofcommunication, in taking into account the (already linguisticallyshaped)context into which they must be directed, become filled with responsivereactions to what has already occurred within that sphere. Where, by thedifferent spheres in which we communicate, Bakhtin means nothing morethan, 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 onthe scene, are maintained in existence by an ongoing communicative processof a particular kind-that is what gives them their particular character as thespheres they are.

For example, in choosing to write of tjoint action above (instead of, perhaps,joint bPhavioJ) the choice of term is influenced by a knowledge of the wholehistory of the usage of these words in psychology, of the groups who have usedthem in the past, of the battles they have fought (and are still fighting) overthem, and of the groups who use them now. Positioning oneself in relation tothese groups, however, is not just a matter of using single words, one must (tryto) use a whole appropriate speech genr e, if one wishes the significance of whatone says or writes to move them, to be seen by them as having point.

In the never-ending flow of communication in which different particularforms of life are sustained, every utterance, then, is a rejoinder in some way to

*Bakhtin 1981, pp. 84-258) gives the name hronoloper literally time-spaces) to the differentstructuring structures which are developed within different forms of literature and discourse at difTerrntpoints in history.

tAs a sentence is merely a formal unity, and is concerned neither with answerabiliq: nor addressivityin its formulations, it has neither direct contact with reality with an extraverbal situatmn) nor a diwctrelation to others utterances Bakhtin, 1986, p. 74). See Clark and Holquist 1984, Chap. 3) on thearchitectonics of answerabilitv.

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384 .J. Shatterprevious utterances. But utterances, besides satisfying criteria to do with theissues of answerability and addressivity mentioned above, must also be relatedto each other as rrsponws: 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 bepreparing themselves to respond to what they are hearing. Indeed, the speakerdoes not expect passive understanding that, so to speak, only duplicates his orher own idea in someone elses mind (as in de Saussures model of linguisticcommunication mentioned above). Rather, the speaker talks with anexpectation of the listener preparing a response, agreement, sympathy,objection, execution, and so forth (with various speech genres presupposingvarious integral orientations and speech plans on the part of speakers orwriters).

In other words, the utterance is a real social psychological unit in that itmarks out the boundaries (or the gaps) in the speech flow between differentvoices, between different semantic positions, whether between people orwithin them. This is not the case with sentences: the boundaries of the sentenceas 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 nocapacity to determine directly the rrspon.rivrposition 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 AUTONOMYAs we become more and more adept, then, at the use of various speech

genres, at participating in already constructed networks of in tval inguist icreferences to function as a context into which to direct our own furtherutterances-as well as adept at constructing our own-then we becomeincreasingly capable of acting independently of our immediate context. In sucha development, there is a transformation from being answerable for our ownimmediate context, to being answerable for our position in anintralinguistically constructed context, a reliance upon a network of links withinwhat has already been, or with what might be said. In essence, it is a decrease ofreference to what is with a consequent increase of reference to what mightbe-an increase of reference to an hermeneutically constructed imag inaryworld (see the account in Shatter, 1993, of the from-to imaginary nature ofhermeneutical constructions). As a result, what is said requires less and lessgrounding in an extralinguistic context-for it can find its roots almost whollywithin the new, linguistically constructed context. Thus one can tell peopleabout (represent to them or give them an account of) situations not actually atthe moment present.

Such a consequence requires, however, especially in the light of the expectedresponsiveness of listeners, the development of methods for rowrant ing in the

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Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization 385course of ones talk (i.e., giving good T~USO~Sor) ones claims about what mightbe as what being what is-one must learn to say, for instance, when making aclaim about a state of affairs, that others saw it that way too, that it was based ondirect observation, in the nature of things, independent of ones wish, and soon. But primarily, one must try to avoid the need for such warranting bylearning to speak with routine in te l l ig ib i l i ty , i.e., within the accepted idiom orgenre of the social order within which one is acting (Garfinkel, 1967). By theuse of such methods and procedures, adults can construct their statements asavowals, as factual statements that others will take seriously, without question,and adults can learn to speak with a large degree of independence from theirimmediate context.*

This is not to say, however, that when one talks in this way, ones speech hasbecome wholly ones own. For it is in the very nature of speech genres that theypreexist the individual; furthermore, not all are equally conducive to reflectingthe individuality of the speaker. As Bakhtin points out, there are no neutralwords and forms; they have all at one time or another belonged to, and beenused 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 belongonly to him [or her]. The word cannot be assigned to a single speaker. Theauthor (speaker) has his own inalienable right to the word, but the listenerhas his rights, and those whose voices are heard in the word before theauthor comes upon it also have their rights (after all, there are no words thatbelong to no one). (Bakhtin, 1986, pp. 121-122)

Indeed, as he adds later, a word only becomes ones own when one puts it toones own use, to express ones own position, then:

the speaker populates it with his own intentions, his own accent, when heappropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressiveintention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist ina neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary thatthe speaker gets his words ), but rather it exists in other peoples mouths, inother peoples contexts, serving other peoples intentions: it is from therethat one must take the word, and make it ones own. (pp. 293-294)

And if, as Vygotsky (1966) says, the relations between the higher mentalfunctions were at one time real relations among people (p. 41), then at thatmoment of appropriation, what precisely these relations were, or still are, isimportant. In particular, we can ask, what were or are the ethical proprietiesthat must be negotiated? moment by moment in sustaining them; and how it ispossible for words to have, so to speak, ethical currency?

*Wertch (1985~1, 1985b) gives a quite different account of how adults forms of thought and talk canbecome decontextualized, based upon taking grammatically correct sentences, formed according tosyntactic rules, as the basic units in terms ofwhich 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 nonobsewance, reproduce (or not) the relations of power in theform of life in question.

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J. ShatterTHE ETHICS OF SPEAKING AND THINKING

In their biography of Bakhtin, Clark and Holquist (1984) discuss a numberof early, incomplete texts of Bakhtins-written between 1918 and 1924-towhich they assign the title TheArchitectonics ofAnswerabil i ty As they see it, in theseearly texts, Bakhtin outlined a concern with the ethics of everyday life activitiesthat he never ceased to pursue throughout his whole career: His concern wasnot with the end product of an action, with what it results in, but with theethical deed in its making, they say (p. 63), with how in the process ofauthoring, that is, in crafting the complex, time-space relations between selfand others, the self is also crafted. Where, what it is that makes a person as ame unique, is the unique place or position the person occupies, and thedegree to which, as already mentioned above, the person is answerable for thatposition 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 anauthoring one cannot possibly do on ones own. This is the meaning, they say,of Bakhtins 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 tohow we are addressed (Shotter, 1989), how I address the others around me inmy authoring of myself also raises ethical questions. For it is a part of the ethicsof authoring that I must not, in making my own being, violate the being ofothers, for I owe my being to them. How, if the others around me are uniquebeings whose nature cannot be predicted, can this be managed?

It can only be managed at the point of action, so to speak, during the actualexecution of the communicative act, the fashioning of an utterance. Hence, thecentrality of the theory of the utterance in Bakhtins work. As commentatorsremark (e.g., Todorov, 1984), Bakhtin formulated his theory of the utterancetwice, 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 late1950s (mainly those in Bakhtin, 1986)-though the differences between themare not major. Central to them both, as we have already seen above, is therqjection of formal, linguistic analyses in terms of sentences, the rejection ofthe idea that there must be a stage of passive, formal, nonresponsiveunderstanding in the life of utterances (in terms of their sentence-syntax) beforethey are perceived as having a significance in a context. What matters for actualspeakers, Bakhtin feels, is not that normatively identical forms exist in the tool-box of language-just as normatively identical tools exist in the actual tool-boxes of carpenters, say-but that in different particular contexts (like thecarpenters tools), such forms can be put to use in novel and creative ways. Thuswhat a speaker values about a word, is not so much its form, which remainsidentical in all instances of its usage, but what in a given context it can be usedfor.

Me can express it this way: rohnt is impor tant i r - hr spakcr about thr linguisticform is not that it i.5n stab and nhuays self-equivalent ignal, but that it is nn ctlz~a~~.~changmbG nnd ndaptablr .tiLn. Volosinov, 1986/1973, p. 68)

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Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization 387But if this is the case, how is a listener to understand what the speaker means?Doesnt the listener first have to recognize the form used in order to understandits meaning?

No, not at all, as we saw previously @hotter, 1993), in Vygotskys discussionof childrens use of language before learning to write. The actual learning ofgrammatical forms need play no part in the child learning to speak and tounderstand its mother tongue. For although in learning to write the child must,says Vygotsky, disengage himself from the sensory aspect of speech and replacewords by images of words (1988, p. 181), in talking it is merely the sensoryaspect of words which is important. * This is Vygotskys (1986) point in takingword m eani ngas the unit of analysis: it is still a dynamic unity of intellectual andaffectiue factors. Where clearly, from a practical-moral point of view, what isinvolved in making sense of words used in particular concrete communicativecontexts, amounts, says Volosinov (1986/1973), to understanding [a words]novelty and not to recognizing its identity (p. 68)) that is, to sensing its affectivenovelty, the way in which we (or others) are moved by it, the way its utterancecan make a difference in our lives.

CONTACT WITH REALITYIndeed, if we go along with Bakhtin and regard every utterance as primarily

a r espon se to preceding utterances, then the task listeners face (inunderstanding) is that of formulating what their response to a speakersutterance should be: they must decide whether they agree with it or want toreject it; whether they must comply with it; act upon it; or are insulted by it; andso on. In short, a listeners two-part task is: (1) To grasp how the speakers(tool-like) use of words has functioned, so to speak, to have moved orrepositioned him or her in the changing, intralinguistically specified situationbetween them; in order next (2) to answer for their new position within it. Inthis view then, the social psychological movement of dialogic speech consistsin a sequence of boundary crossings. Where each utterance is responsive to thenext, as each speaker (voice) tries to develop (Vygotsky) suitable expressionsfor moving between their sense of what they want to say in their utterance, andwhat 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 wordin a more or less routine way, and checked in the course of its construction forits appropriateness? Well, as already argued, neutral dictionary definitions ofthe words of a language ensure their common features and guarantee that allspeakers of a given language will understand one another, but the use of wordsin 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 froma textbook, he asked the already fluently bilingual St/, year old daughter of an English colleague, whatcertain three and four word sentences m the textbook meant, was told: I cant read yet Then howcan she know what shes saying?, I thought to myself.

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388 J. Shotterone can say that any word exists for the speaker in three aspects: as a ileutralword of a language, belonging to nobody; as a11 ot/wr7 Jord, which belongsto another person and is filled with echoes of the others utterance; andfinally, 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. Inboth the latter aspects, the word is expressive, but, we repeat, this expressiondoes not inhere in the word itself. It originntrs at thr point r f r ontnct betrctwn thrruord and nctunl r eal i t y, w r thP condi t ions of that rm l si t ua t i on m- t i cu l dn l / g hri nd i v i dua l u t t umnw. In this case the word appears as an expression of someevaluative position of an individual person. (1986, p. 88, emphasis added)

It is in a speakers particular use of a particular word at a particular point intime-like, say, the carpenters particular use of a chisel stroke to slice off awood sliver at a particular point in a piece ofjoinery-that the speaker can .SB~.Wwhat its use achieves in the construction desired. To repeat Bakhtins commentsabove, a words meaning does not inhere in the word itself, but originates at thepoint of contact between the words used, and the movements they achieve inthe conditions of their use.Thus also, it is precisely here, in this zone of uncertainty as to who can dowhat in the construction of a words significance, at the point of contactbetween my creative use of it in an attempt to reshape the social reality in thegap between myself and another, that I can exert a (formative) inlluence, andothers can exert an influence too. It is in what Holquist (1983, p. 307) very aptlycalls the combat zone of the word, that the struggle between the speakersdegrees of freedom compared with those of the listener takes place. And theimportance of these freedoms and limitations, the rights and duties associatedwith ones speech position, what they permit or afford and what prevent ordeny, should not be underestimated. For even apparently simple situations,objects, events, states of affairs, remain in principle enigmatic andundetermined 0.5 socinl mzli t i s until they are talked about-where what isessentially at issue is the question: who should live in whose reality?

CONCLUSIONS: INNER LIFE ON THE BOUNDARIESIt is the meaning of Vygotskys claim that all higher mental*functions are

interiorized relations of a social order, that I have been trying to illuminateabove: to argue that peoples 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 internal izat ion, I argued thatVygotsky was talking about an ethical transformation: that what at first aschildren we did only spontaneously and unselfconsciously, under the control ofan 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, saysVygotsky (1966, pp. 39-41). Thinking is thus the transfer of dialogue orargumentation within. But, in Bakhtins view, living dialogues do not take placewithin a Saussurian, unified system of linguistic signs, allowing an unrestrictedcreation of sentences. They occur (mostly) within one or nother spee h genre,

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Bakhtin and Vygotsky: Internalization 389sustaining one or another social group, in which all the utterances within thegenre must in some way be responsive to each other.

This is where Bakhtins thought becomes a crucial supplement to Vygotskys.Vygotsky merely hints at the sensory or affective function of words, for Bakhtinit is central. For him, although we cannot actually see into the thoughts ofothers, from how their words move us, we can get a sense of them, feel theirshape, so to speak. We can come to an internalized grasp of the gaps to becrossed, between what is within our own agency to affect, and what from ourposition within this or that intralinguistic reality, is outside our control. In suchcircumstances, we can experiment in an inner dialogue (or argument) withinourselves as to what it is that we feel it is best for u in those circumstance to do.

Thought of this kind cannot take place in a logical mind at a centre of ourbeing. 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 thinkingmust consist in us exploring, and negotiating a path among (struggling with),all the possible formulations available to us as we range over the differentmomentary positions allowed us, within whatever speech genre (form of sociallife) we currently happen to be involved. This is an account of the mov m nt ofmindclose to that given by WilliamJames (1890) (see footnote on p. 380). Whatstructure it has for us is a responsive, temporal one, consisting in theexperience of crossing the boundaries (the gaps) between one mode ofembodied consciousness (within oneself) and another, between ones sense ofones own being and ones sense of anothers. Each mode encompasses a whole,possible version of us as a being of this or that kind. Thus what we are selfconscious of is not the shape of a single thought, but of a struggle:

In everything a person uses to express himself on the outside (andconsequently for nnothpr)-from the body to the word-an intenseinteraction takes place between land other: theu- struggle (honest struggle ormutual deception), balance, harmony (as an ideal), naive ignorance of oneanother, deliberate ignoring of one another, challenge, absence ofrecognition . and so forth.* We repeat, this struggle takes place ineverything a person uses to express (reveal) himself on the outside (forothers). (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 295)

This then is the conclusion that we arrive at in reformulating ourunderstanding of our inner lives in terms of semiotic processes, working interms of ethically responsive, socio-culturally developed signs: That forVygotsky, such signs play the role of psychological instruments and make aninner life possible; for Bakhtin, however, the socio-ethical nature of these signsmakes it impossible for me to know whose side I am on. The movement ofmy inner life is motivated and structured through and through by mycontinual crossing of boundaries; by what happens in those zones of uncertaintywhere I (speaking in one of my voices from one position in a discourse) amin communication with, and must respond to another self in another position.

*The syntax is a bit strange as Bakhtin wmte these comments in note form

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390 J. ShotterAll of this, however, is to introduce into modern psycholo