mediated moralities: sociocultural approaches to moral...

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Mediated Moralities: SocioculturalApproaches to Moral Development

Mark B. TappanColby College

The purpose of this chapter is to present a sociocultural perspective on the study of moraldevelopment, and to review theoretical and empirical work on moral development thathas been conducted under the rubric of this perspective. This perspective has emergedover the course of the last decade or so, in response to a variety of challenges to prevail-ing theories of moral development—in particular, challenges to Kohlberg’s (1963, 1969,1976, 1981, 1984) stage theory of the development of justice reasoning. There is no doubtthat researchers and practitioners interested in understanding the vicissitudes of humanmoral experience owe a singular debt to Kohlberg for bringing the study of moral devel-opment into the mainstream of developmental and educational psychology, and his theoryis arguably still the best-known theory of moral development. Yet the past 25 years havewitnessed a growing awareness of the metatheoretical, theoretical, and methodologicallimitations of Kohlberg’s cognitive–developmental attempt to formally reconstruct theontogenesis of competence in moral judgment making, via a sequence of six structurallydefined, cross-culturally universal stages of justice reasoning.

Among the many and varied critiques of, and challenges to, Kohlberg’s project (see, forexample, Coles, 1986; Cortese, 1990; Flanagan, 1991; Packer, 1985, 1992; Shweder, 1982;Sullivan, 1977; Turiel, 1983, 2002), the most significant have come from those who haveargued that Kohlberg’s approach does not sufficiently acknowledge the multidimensionaland multivocal nature of the moral domain. In this regard Gilligan’s (1977, 1982) critiquethat classical theories of moral development—Freud’s (1923/1960), Piaget’s (1932/1965),and, most importantly, Kohlberg’s—are flawed because they systematically excluded girls’and women’s experience from foundational theory-building research studies is most widelyknown. Gilligan claimed that, for some people, an orientation other than the “justice

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voice” charted by Kohlberg, based on his all-male longitudinal research sample, providedthe primary focus for moral reasoning and moral action. Specifically, she identified whatshe and her colleagues called a “care voice,” articulated most often by girls and women,and most evident when researchers turned away from an interview protocol employinghypothetical moral dilemmas laden with Kohlbergian justice assumptions, to an open-ended format that emphasized careful tracking of persons on their own terms, in thecontext of exploring stories told about real-life situations of moral conflict and choice (seeGilligan & Attanucci, 1988; Gilligan, Ward, & Taylor, 1988; Gilligan & Wiggins, 1987).

Although Gilligan’s argument about gender differences in moral development has gen-erated the most discussion and debate, as well as conflicting empirical findings (see Baum-rind, 1986; Brabeck, 1983; Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988; Gilligan & Wiggins, 1987; Pratt,Golding, & Hunter, 1984; Walker, 1984, 1986), it is her central insight that everyday morallanguage (not “deep structures” of moral cognition) holds the key to understanding moralexperience and moral development that is, in the end, most provocative. For it is this insightthat opened the way to the sociocultural exploration of the centrality of words, language,and forms of discourse—particularly narrative (story telling)—in human moral life. Thisperspective assumes, therefore, that moral thoughts, feelings, and actions are semioticallymediated, and thus socioculturally situated. As such, it necessarily entails an explicitly di-alogical conception of the moral self—a conception of the moral self, that is, generated bya move away from a paradigm of cognitive representations and internally held principles,wherein the self is assumed to be a disembodied, transcendental, epistemic subject (seeKohlberg, 1984), toward a paradigm of social construction and intersubjectively possibleforms of discourse, wherein the self is assumed to be a shared and/or distributed productof social relations and communicative practices (see Day & Tappan, 1996).

This perspective, as it has been gradually articulated over the past decade, draws cen-trally from primary scholarship in the “sociocultural” tradition—particularly the workof Vygotsky (1934/1987, 1978, 1981a, 1981b).1 In recent years a number of scholars,inspired by Vygotsky’s insights, have focused sustained attention on the ways in which“mediational means” both physical tools and “psychological” or “semiotic” tools (pri-marily language), appropriated from the social world, necessarily shape human mentalfunctioning (see Wertsch, 1985, 1991, 1998; also see Bruner, 1986; Cole, 1996; Rogoff,1990). From this starting point, a sociocultural perspective has been applied to a numberof specific issues and problems in human development and education (see Berk & Winsler,1995; Diaz & Berk, 1992; Forman, Minick, & Stone, 1993; Martin, Nelson, & Tobach,1995; Moll, 1990; Rogoff & Wertsch, 1984; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Wertsch, 1986).Part of this effort has been to move beyond theories that assume the processes, dynamics,and endpoints of human development are universal—transcultural and ahistorical—towardan explicit consideration of the role that the social–cultural–historical–institutional con-text plays in giving rise to human action and interaction (see Bruner, 1986, 1990; Cole,1988, 1996; Jahoda, 1992; Packer & Tappan, 2001; Rogoff, 1990; Rogoff & Chavajay,1995; Rogoff & Lave, 1984; Shweder, 1991; Stigler, Shweder, & Herdt, 1990; Turiel,2002; Valsiner, 1998; Wertsch, del Rio, & Alvarez, 1995; Winegar & Valsiner, 1992).

Similarly, scholars from a wide range of disciplines have turned to the work of Bakhtin(1981, 1984, 1986, 1990) to illuminate the dialogic character of all words, language, and

1The term sociocultural is used in this chapter to describe these approaches, following Wertsch (1985, 1989,1991, 1998; Wertsch et al., 1995), mindful, in so doing, that there are other terms currently in use to describe thesame approach: “cultural-historical activity theory” (see Cole, 1996), “cultural-historical theory” (see van derVeer & Valsiner, 1991), “sociohistorical theory” (see Cole, 1988; Rogoff, 1990), and “neo-Vygotskian” theory(see Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), among others.

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forms of discourse; and hence the fundamentally dialogical nature of the self (see Clark& Holquist, 1984; Emerson, 1986; Hermans & Kempen, 1993; Hermans, Kempen, & vanLoon, 1992; Holquist, 1990; Morson & Emerson, 1990; Sampson, 1993a; Wertsch, 1991;Wortham, 2001). Bakhtin was a contemporary of Vygotsky, and although it is doubtfulthat they ever met, their work shares many fundamental similarities (see Wertsch, 1991).Moreover, as Taylor (1991) argues, Bakhtin’s insights are critical to a conception of theself that accurately captures the dialogical realities of everyday life:

Children plainly need recognition, confirmation, love to grow and be inducted into adult life, atthe limit even to survive. But this can be conceived as a monological need, a comfort that theyhave to receive from others, as they depend on others for food, but that can only contingentlycome through conversation. Or it can be seen as a need that is essentially fulfilled in a certainform of conversation itself. This latter understanding places dialogue at the very center ofour understanding of human life, an indispensable key to its comprehension, and requires atransformed understanding of language. In order to follow up this line of thinking, we neednot Mead and his like, but rather Bakhtin. Human beings are constituted in conversation; andhence what gets internalized in the mature subject is not the reaction of others, but the wholeconversation, with the interanimation of its voices. Only a theory of this kind can do justiceto the dialogical nature of the self. (pp. 313–314)

A sociocultural/dialogical perspective also resonates with, and reflects, the so-calleddiscursive turn in the social sciences, in general, and the field of psychology, in particular,that has been underway for some time now (see, for example, Billig, 1987; Bruner, 1986,1990; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Gergen, 1982, 1985, 1991, 1994; Harre, 1984; Parker, 1992;Sampson, 1993a, 1993b; Shotter, 1990; Shotter & Gergen, 1989). Defining discourse asanything that humans do in their everyday lives that involves speaking (Parker, 1992),and focusing on the central role that speaking, talking, and conversing play in humanlife, discourse theorists (also called “social constructionists” [see Gergen, 1985, 1994])“maintain that talk is constitutive of the realities in which we live, rather than expressiveof an earlier, discourse-independent reality” (Sampson, 1993b, p. 1221). Moreover, onthis view, both language and communication are necessarily shared practices that giverise to the various realities one encounters in everyday life. Because discourse is notthe possession of a single individual, but must always be the product of a social andcommunicative relationship wherein both parties agree on the meaning of the words thatpass between them, it follows that “it is not the mind of the single individual that provideswhatever certitude we possess [about the world in which we live], but relationships ofinterdependency” (Gergen, 1994, p. viii).

Mindful of this rich and ever-changing scholarly and intellectual context, the purposeof this chapter, again, is to summarize the central elements of a sociocultural/dialogicalperspective on the study of moral development, and to review a variety of theoretical andempirical approaches that have emerged under its relatively broad purview over the courseof the past decade or so. It is also fitting that these approaches be considered in a volumesuch as this one, marking the field of moral development’s move into a new millennium.

A sociocultural/dialogical perspective on moral development begins with three claimsthat capture the fundamental assumptions of Vygotsky’s sociocultural psychology:

1. The claim that higher mental functions (mental functions, like decision making, problemsolving, deliberate memory, that are not biologically or instinctually motivated) can onlybe understood when one analyzes and interprets them genetically or developmentally;

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2. The claim that higher mental functioning is mediated by words, language, and forms ofdiscourse, which function as “psychological tools” that both facilitate and transform mentalaction; and

3. The claim that forms of higher mental functioning have their origins in social relations,as “intermental” processes between persons are internalized to become “intramental” pro-cesses within persons (Wertsch, 1985, pp. 14–16; see also Berk & Winsler, 1995; Kozulin,1990; van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991).

When these claims are extended and elaborated, four principles or assumptionsemerge that characterize various sociocultural/dialogical approaches to the study of moraldevelopment—assumptions that build on and extend central aspects of the theoretical andempirical work of both Vygotsky and Bakhtin:

1. Moral functioning (like all “higher psychological functioning”) is necessarily mediated bywords, language, and forms of discourse;

2. Such mediation occurs primarily in private or inner speech, in the form of inner moraldialogue;

3. Processes of social communication and social relations necessarily give rise to moralfunctioning; and

4. Moral development is always shaped by the particular social, cultural, and historical contextin which it occurs (see Tappan, 1997).

This chapter is organized around each of these four principles or assumptions. Eachone is summarized, and relevant theoretical and empirical work is reviewed, in turn. Thechapter then concludes with a number of questions for further inquiry and investigation,both theoretical and empirical.

THE SEMIOTIC MEDIATION OF MORAL FUNCTIONING

Perhaps the central idea in Vygotsky’s (1934/1987, 1978) theoretical perspective is thenotion that, to understand the mind, we must understand the “tools” that mediate and shapeits functioning (see Wertsch, 1985). Although physical (“technical”) tools are certainlyimportant in this process, Vygotsky was most interested in the role that “psychologicaltools,” or “signs,” play in human mental life. Ultimately, Vygotsky focused his attention onlanguage as the most important psychological tool. Psychological tools, like language, donot simply facilitate the operation of existing mental tasks, argued Vygotsky. Instead, theintroduction of new psychological tools (e.g., when new words are learned) fundamentallytransforms and reorganizes mental functioning.

This transformation is particularly critical in early childhood, of course, when, withthe advent of egocentric speech (as an intermediate step toward inner speech), languagebegins to be used as an “instrument of thought” in its own right, a “tool” that helps thechild plan activities and solve problems:

The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birthto the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech andpractical activity, two previously independent lines of development, converge. (Vygotsky,1978, p. 24)

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Thus, Vygotsky’s conception of semiotic mediation also shapes his view of the develop-mental process: he does not envision ontogenesis as a series of incremental quantitativechanges, but rather as a series of fundamental qualitative transformations or “revolutions”associated with changes in the psychological tools to which the person has access (Wertsch,1985).

The assumption that moral functioning (like all “higher psychological functioning”)is necessarily mediated by words, language, and forms of discourse is central to a so-ciocultural perspective on the process of moral development. Moral functioning is thehigher psychological process (in Vygotsky’s terms) that a person invokes to respond toand resolve a specific problem, conflict, or dilemma that requires a moral decision and amoral action—that is, when one is faced with the question “What is the ‘right’ or ‘moral’thing to do in this situation?”

The concept of mediation is critical here, because for an action to be considered “moral,”either by an actor or by an observer, a particular meaning must be associated with thataction. This holds whether that action is as “instinctive” as rushing out into busy trafficto rescue a wayward child, or as “deliberative” as weighing the pros and cons of havingan abortion. In either case, and in many others, because the designation “moral” is aninterpretation of the action in question, generated from the shared assumptions and un-derstandings that constitute culture, moral functioning can never be unmediated. Rather,it is always accomplished with the use of what Vygotsky called “psychological tools”(most importantly, words, language, and forms of moral discourse) that enable the per-son to think, feel, and act in a particular way—that is, in a way that, in her particularsociocultural context, is understood to be “moral,” “right,” “good,” and so on.

The crucial element here, from a sociocultural perspective, is the link between moralityand language—language, that is, used not merely to express moral meaning, but used,primarily, to create moral meaning in the first place. This is a link that is made explicitly bythe philosopher Oakeshott (1975; see also Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swindler, & Tipton,1985; MacIntyre, 1981; Stout, 1988). Oakeshott argues that morality is fundamentally a“practice” or a form of “conduct” that facilitates human interaction: “The conditions whichcompose a moral practice are not theorems or precepts about human conduct, nor do theyconstitute anything so specific as a ‘shared system of values’; they compose a vernacularlanguage of colloquial intercourse” (1975, p. 63; my emphasis). This language, claimsOakeshott, is thus fundamentally pragmatic; it is a tool

like any other language, it is an instrument of self-disclosure used by agents in diagnosing theirsituations and in choosing their responses; and it is a language of self-enactment which permitsthose who can use it to understand themselves and one another, to disclose to one anothertheir complex individualities, and to explore relationships far more varied and interestingthan those it has a name for or those which a commonplace acceptance of so-called ‘moralvalues’ would allow (1975, p. 63).

From Oakeshott’s (1975) perspective, therefore, morality itself is a cultural tool thatenables those who use it to accomplish certain things:

A morality, then, is neither a system of general principles nor a code of rules, but a vernacularlanguage. General principles and even rules may be elicited from it, but (like other languages)it is not the creation of grammarians; it is made by speakers. What has to be learned in amoral education [therefore] is not a theorem such as that good conduct is acting fairly orbeing charitable, nor is it a rule such as ‘always tell the truth,’ but how speak the languageintelligently. (pp. 78–79)

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Duncan (2001) has outlined a conception of moral development based on Vygotsky’s(1934/1987) theory of concept formation that echoes many of these assumptions about thenature of morality. His primary argument is that Vygotsky’s theory of concept formation, inwhich the child moves from using “syncretic heaps,” to thinking in “complexes,” to the useof “potential concepts,” can be used as a model for understanding the development of moralability. On Duncan’s view, however, moral ability is not understood as “rule-followingbehavior.” Rather, he defines moral ability, like concept formation, as a “present-centeredaptitude for creating meaning” (p. 113). As such, he argues, both conceptual thinking,on Vygotsky’s view, and moral ability, are activities that “use the tools of individualintelligence and interpersonal discourse (thought and language) to create something thatis not determined by these tools” (p. 118).

Although not embarked on a socioculturally inspired research program, per se, Gilligan(1982, 1983) and her colleagues have presented very compelling evidence regarding theways in which moral languages and forms of moral discourse mediate and shape persons’responses to moral problems, conflicts, and dilemmas in their lives. In identifying the twodifferent moral voices of “justice” and “care,” Gilligan and her colleagues have shownhow these two voices represent different ways of speaking about the world of humanrelationships, different ways of describing and understanding moral problems, and differ-ent approaches to and strategies for resolving such problems (see Gilligan, 1982, 1983;Gilligan, Ward, & Taylor, 1988; Gilligan & Wiggins, 1987).

Gilligan and her colleagues have also developed a method for identifying these voicesin persons’ narratives of real-life moral conflict and choice—the “Listening Guide” (seeBrown, Debold, Tappan, & Gilligan, 1992; Brown & Gilligan, 1991; Brown, Tappan,Gilligan, Miller, & Argyris, 1989). In addition, Gilligan and Attanucci (1988) report thatwhen asked to describe a moral problem or conflict they had recently faced, more thantwo-thirds of a group of 80 educationally advantaged adolescents and adults living in theU.S. represented the voices of both justice and care in their interview narratives. Thisfinding, and others reported by Gilligan and Attanucci, suggests that (a) justice and carerepresent two fundamentally different moral languages or forms of moral discourse; (b)persons can speak in the language of both justice and care; and (c) persons therefore canand do use both voices to mediate the process of moral functioning, and thus to help themrespond to moral problems and conflicts in their lives.

Tappan (2003) has extended the work of Wertsch (1998) to argue that moral func-tioning, in its cognitive, affective, and active dimensions, should be understood to be,fundamentally and irreducibly, mediated action. Mediated action, according to Wertsch(1998), entails two central elements: an “agent” (the person who is doing the acting), andspecific “cultural tools” or “mediational means” (the tools, means, or instruments [bothphysical and psychological], appropriated from the social world, and then used by theagent to accomplish the action in question). Moral functioning considered as a form ofmediated action thus entails focusing on both the agent and the cultural tools/mediationalmeans she or he employs in responding to the moral problem, conflict, or dilemma at hand.

In addition, Tappan (1999, 2000, 2005) has drawn on the work of Penuel and Wertsch(1995), who extended the concept of mediated action to the realm of identity development,and Bakhtin (1981), who described identity development as a process of “ideologicalbecoming,” to articulate a sociocultural/dialogical conception of moral identity. Accordingto Tappan, moral identity must be seen not as primarily a psychological understandingof oneself as a moral person that comes from access to or reflection on one’s “true” or“essential” self (see Blasi, 1984; Damon & Hart, 1988), but rather as a socioculturalprocess that takes the form of “mediated moral action”—action that is shaped by specific

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cultural tools and resources. Chief among these tools and resources are moral orientationsor ideologies that are carried and transmitted via words, language, and forms of discourse.One finds one’s moral identity, therefore, in the ideologically mediated moral action inwhich one engages, not in the process of reflection on one’s inner moral self. And thedevelopment of moral identity, on this view, entails a process of “ideological becoming,”whereby one selectively appropriates the words, language, and forms of discourse of otherswith whom one is in dialogue, and in so doing struggles to strike a healthy balance between“authoritative” and “internally persuasive” forms of discourse (see Bakhtin, 1981).

Lightfoot (1997, 2002a, 2002b, 2003) has also used Bakhtin’s (1981) distinction be-tween authoritative and internally persuasive discourse to analyze the phenomenon ofadolescent risk taking, particularly its moral dimensions. Lightfoot (1997) argues, specif-ically, that adolescent risk taking must be seen as a form of text construction throughwhich different moral discourses and perspectives come into dialogical contact. As such,engagement with another’s discourse contributes directly to the further development andarticulation of one’s social identity, as well as the awareness that one has a social iden-tity of moral consequence. Lightfoot suggests, therefore, that adolescent risk-taking oftenrepresents a struggle between various forms of authoritative discourse as they seek todifferentiate themselves from their parents, and to forge a separate, distinct, and “au-tonomous” moral identity. As a result, this struggle between various forms of authoritativediscourse, moreover, often leads to the formation of a more internally persuasive form of“ideological consciousness” (i.e., identity):

Although adolescents’ risk-taking can be construed in terms of a struggle with the authori-tative discourse of another, it is also a mechanism for creating a discourse of their own, theinternally persuasive one that Bakhtin wrote of. By these lights, the reflective awareness thatis engendered, the coming into ideological consciousness that follows in the wake of suchstruggle, is coupled alectically to processes of sociocultural identification. Untanglings andentanglements; engagement with another’s point of view is the fountainhead of mindedness.(pp. 113–114)

If moral functioning and activity (like all “higher psychological functioning”) is indeedmediated by words, language, and forms of discourse, then inner speech, and inner dia-logue, must play a primary role in that process. This issue has been addressed by a varietyof sociocultural/dialogical approaches to moral development.

SEMIOTIC MEDIATION IN INNER MORAL DIALOGUE

Vygotsky (1934/1987, 1978) explored a variety of means by which mental life is semioti-cally mediated. In the end, as indicated, he focused primary attention on the ways in whichlanguage, particularly in the form of inner speech, functions as a psychological tool. Just,therefore, as children learn to count first by using fingers, blocks, or other objects beforebeing able to count in their heads, they learn to speak first to others before learning to speakto themselves, in private, inner speech. Once this is accomplished, however, verbal thoughtbecomes possible, the nature of development changes from being biologically determinedto being socioculturally shaped, and there is a radical shift in the richness and complexityof consciousness (Vygotsky, 1934/1987; see also Diaz & Berk, 1992; Kohlberg, Yaeger,& Hjertholm, 1968; Zivin, 1979).

Although it is unclear whether Vygotsky viewed monologue or dialogue as the fun-damental characteristic of inner speech, the work of Bakhtin (1981) and his colleague

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Volosinov (1929/1986) can be used to extend Vygotsky’s insights, by focusing, explicitly,on the dialogic nature of inner speech (see also Emerson, 1986; Morson & Emerson, 1990).For Bakhtin and Volosinov, inner speech never consists of pure monologue, in which aperson simply talks in a single, solitary “voice.” Rather, there is always a dialogue betweenat least two voices—a dialogue that mediates and shapes human mental functioning inprofound ways.

Bakhtin (1981) focuses on the fundamentally dialogic character of all speech:

In the makeup of almost every utterance spoken by a social person—from a brief responsein a casual dialogue to major verbal-ideological works (literary, scholarly and others)—asignificant number of words can be identified that are implicitly or explicitly admitted assomeone else’s, and that are transmitted by a variety of different means. Within the arena ofalmost every utterance an intense interaction between one’s own and another’s word is beingwaged, a process in which they oppose or dialogically interanimate each other. (pp. 354–355)

Volosinov (1929/1986) focuses explicitly on the dialogic character of inner speech:

Close analysis would show that the units of which inner speech is constituted resemble thealternating lines of a dialogue. There was good reason [therefore] why thinkers in ancienttimes should have conceived of inner speech as inner dialogue. (p. 38; emphasis in original)

Tappan (1997) has extended Vygotsky’s (1934/1987) general view of the relationshipbetween inner speech and thinking to the realm of moral development, by arguing thatwhen a person (child, adolescent, or adult) is faced with a moral problem, conflict, ordilemma, she or he responds to it by means of inner speech as inner moral dialogue—bytalking through the solution to her- or himself—just as she or he responds to any otherproblem or task with which she or he is faced. Moreover, following Vygotsky, Tappanpredicts that such inner moral dialogue should exhibit the same “peculiar” syntactic andsemantic characteristics of inner speech. Thus, inner moral dialogue should consist pri-marily of predicates and other such abbreviated sentence structures. These characteristics,moreover, should contribute to the formation of an idiomatic moral language that consti-tutes the primary medium for inner moral speech, and thus the means by which inner moraldialogues are conducted–similar, as such, to Oakeshott’s (1975) conception of moralityas a vernacular or colloquial language.

In addition, Gilligan and Attannucci’s (1988) finding that most persons represent boththe moral voice of justice and the moral voice of care in their narratives of moral conflictand choice illuminates well the fundamentally dialogical relationship that appears to existbetween these two vernacular moral voices. Moreover, many persons describe their ownparticipation, literally, in an ongoing inner dialogue between these two voices—the justicevoice speaking the language of fairness and equality, advocating one solution, and the carevoice speaking the language of relationship and responsibility, advocating another. After atime, and depending on how the dialogue has proceeded, the person makes a decision, andresponds to the moral problem at hand. This suggests that persons are not only polyphonicor multivocal in their moral utterances at any one time (Bakhtin, 1981), but also thatthey can, and frequently do, oscillate from one voice to another when responding to andresolving moral problems, conflicts, and dilemmas in their lives (see also Brown et al.,1992; Brown & Gilligan, 1991; Brown et al., 1989).

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Day (1991) provides additional empirical evidence in support of the view that multiplevoices, multiple forms of reasoning, characterize the moral life, both within persons andacross the communities they compose. Arguing that moral life is not only storied, butalso distinctly theatrical, he explores the phenomenon of the “moral audience”—the waysin which children, adolescents, and adults, in the course of telling stories about theirlived moral experience, identify others (real and imagined, alive and dead) that composean “internalized” audience before whom they act, and by whom they are judged. Forthe persons in Day’s study, moral action always occurs in relationship to other persons;hence actions are always performed and interpreted in terms of these persons as audience.Consistency of moral action thus has much to do with the consistency of the audience towhich such actions are played. Moral principles are developed and sustained, or changed,in relation to the parties who compose the audience, and moral actions are mentallyrehearsed before them. Moral actions are then retrospectively analyzed and evaluated interms of the same audience. Day argues, therefore, that we can understand both moraljudgment and moral action only when we can grasp the nature of the actor’s relationshipto the audience(s) before whom she or her most centrally acts. He also suggests that moraldevelopment must be understood in terms of the formation and transformation of moralaudiences in the experience of moral actors across the lifespan.

The work of Gilligan and her colleagues, Day, and others also highlights the criticalimportance of narrative in the self-reports of interviewees representing their inner moraldialogues in response to real-life moral conflicts and dilemmas. A number of researchershave explored the variety of ways persons rely on narrative and story telling to chart, carryout, evaluate, and justify the actions they take when confronted with such dilemmas (At-tanucci, 1991; Day & Tappan, 1996; Johnston, 1991; Lyons, 1983; Tappan, 1991a, 1991b;Tappan & Brown, 1989; Tappan & Packer, 1991; Ward, 1991; Witherell & Edwards,1991; Witherell & Noddings, 1991). There is, in fact, a growing consensus that becausemoral experience, like all lived experience, always occurs in time and in relationship (thefundamental dimensions of narrative [see Gilligan, Brown, & Rogers, 1990]), whenevera person has to report “what really happened,” the natural impulse is to tell a story, tocompose a narrative that recounts the actions and events of interest in some kind of tem-poral sequence (see also Bruner, 1986; Mischler, 1986; Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986,1990).

A recent and very promising empirical exploration and elaboration of these dialogicaland narrative insights has been undertaken by Mkhize (2003). Studying indigenous SouthAfrican isiZulu speakers’ conception of morality, Mkhize interviewed 52 participants (bothwomen and men) living in urban, suburban, and rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal. Participantswere asked to tell a story about a moral conflict or dilemma in their lives, and the narrativeswere analyzed using a modification of the Listening Guide developed by Gilligan and hercolleagues (see Brown & Gilligan, 1991). Mkhize found that conceptions of morality wererelated to participants’ understanding of the self. The view that morality is characterizedby connection was associated mainly with what Mkhize calls a “communal” or “familial”self, which was the most common conception of self in the isuZulu cultural context.But Mkhize also identified tensions between competing conceptions of the self withinpersons—tensions, that is, between the communal self and the independent self. Thesedialogical tensions, moreover, complicated participants’ responses to moral conflicts anddilemmas in their lives.

These various approaches illustrate well the ways in which moral functioning is me-diated primarily through inner speech as inner moral dialogue, and represented in nar-rative. Yet they also raise questions regarding the ways in which processes of social

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communication and social relations give rise, via the medium of language, to moral func-tioning in the first place.

THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF MORAL FUNCTIONING

The notion that all higher mental functions have their origin in communicative processesand social relations is another key element of Vygotsky’s theoretical framework (Wertsch,1985). Vygotsky’s view here is captured most succinctly in what Wertsch (1985) calls his“general genetic law of cultural development”:

Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it ap-pears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between peopleas an interpsychological [intermental] category, and then within the child as an intrapsycho-logical [intramental] category. This is equally true with regard to voluntary attention, logicalmemory, the formation of concepts, and the development of volition. We may consider thisposition as a law in the full sense of the word, but it goes without saying that internaliza-tion transforms the process itself and changes its structure and functions. Social relationsor relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships.(Vygotsky, 1981a, p. 163)

Key to this process is the phenomenon of internalization, in which “an operation thatinitially represents an external activity is reconstructed and begins to appear internally”(Vygotsky, 1978, pp. 56–57). As such, Vygotsky’s approach provides a developmentalperspective not only on the ways in which such higher mental functions as thinking,reasoning, remembering, and willing are mediated by language and other semiotic mech-anisms, but also on how such functions necessarily have their origins in the interpersonalrelationships that constitute human social life.

From a sociocultural perspective, moral development must entail the internalizationof semiotically and linguistically mediated social relations, as external speech becomesinner speech—that is, as overt, external dialogue becomes silent, inner dialogue. Thisprocess has been illustrated elegantly by Bhatia (2000) in his exploration of the criticalrole that language-based socialization strategies and patterns employed by caregivers playin children’s construction of what he calls “sociomoral meanings.” Bhatia studied Hindi-speaking Indian caregivers interacting with their children; he focuses particular attentionon the ways in which children’s participation in dialogical and narrative practices enablethem to begin to understand cultural conceptions of morality. Declarative, directive, andinterrogative communicative patterns and forms of discourse all play central roles in thisprocess, according to Bhatia:

Hindi-speaking care-givers use social acts to foreground certain aspects of their socio-moralorder. Care-givers, through directives such as “behave properly” or “recite the poem to aunty”and declaratives such as “this is bad language” are . . . indexing what Ochs (1996) has referredto as epistemic stances about one’s culture. These “epistemic stances: carry important con-textual information related to roles, status, social obligations and duty, and provide materialfrom which the construction of socio-moral meanings occurs. (p. 164)

Finally, Bhatia (2000) concludes with these reflections on the relationship between lan-guage, human development, and morality that forms the core of a sociocultural perspectiveon moral development:

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[L]anguage as a symbolic form allows human beings to articulate their experiences in ameaningful way. At one level, one may conceive of these forms in terms of “symbols andreferents,” but at a deeper level, everyday cultural discourse provides a novel language: alanguage of morals and ethics through which children come to understand what it means tobe human. (164)

Similarly, Dunn’s (1987) work suggests that children begin to learn from parents, grand-parents, caregivers, and even older siblings about social rules, standards of behavior, andthe effect of their actions on others’ feelings in the second year of life. Moreover, this learn-ing occurs primarily in the context of conversation, as adults and children begin to talkwith each other about “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” “should” and “shouldn’t”(Snow, 1987). Dunn (1987) also reports high correlations between the frequency of ma-ternal talk about feelings to 18-month-olds and subsequent talk about inner states by thesechildren at 24 months.

From a sociocultural perspective, therefore, what is initially communication for and withothers regarding rules, standards, and the consequences of their transgression gradually,as a result of communicative interactions over the course of a number of years, becomescommunication with oneself regarding what one should and should not do in a givensituation: “in inner speech culturally prescribed forms of language and reasoning find theirindividualized realization. . . . [as] culturally sanctioned symbolic systems are remodeledinto individualized verbal thought” (Kozulin, 1986, p. xxxvi). Children, therefore, asVygotsky predicted, do not simply make internal what was once external, but also bothcreate and transform their own internal plane of moral thinking, feeling, and acting, basedon their experiences in the social world.

Another clear description of this process at work in the preschool context has beenprovided by Buzzelli and Johnston (Buzzelli, 1993; Buzzelli & Johnston, 2001, 2002;Johnston & Buzzelli, 2002). Buzzelli and Johnston study the ways in which childreninternalize moral norms, and then use these norms to guide their own behavior. In so doing,Buzzelli and Johnston employ an explicitly sociocultural framework to illuminate howinterpersonal dialogue between children and teachers is transformed into inner dialoguethat children use for “self-regulation”:

An important part of children’s moral understanding is formed through dialogue with adultswho interpret and frame events and rules within a moral context that reflects their own uniqueperspective. . . . [T]his process is a social one influenced by the words adults use in theirdialogue with children. . . . For example, the teacher might ask the child “Is that toy yours?”“Who does it belong to?” “Did you take it?” “What is the rule about taking things that belongto others?” Another teacher may approach the situation differently by asking “Where did youget that toy?” “Did you find it?” “Does it belong to another child?” “What does it mean to takea toy that belongs to someone else?” “How do you think the other child feels?” In the secondexample each question asked is based upon the child’s response to the previous question.The two examples represent different types of questioning within adult–child dialogue. It isthrough such interactions, by questioning and responding, that adult and child create a sharedmeaning of the behavior which serves as the basis for the child’s moral norm concerning thebehavior. (Buzzelli, 1993, p. 383)

Buzzelli also argues, following Bakhtin (1981), that encouraging children to “retell” moralrules in their own words (using internally persuasive discourse) provides the basis for amore positive type of moral self-regulation than simply asking children to “recite” the rules

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by heart (using the authoritative words of adults—parents or teachers) (see also Tappan,1991a).

These sociocultural perspectives on moral development suggest that processes of socialcommunication and social relations necessarily give rise to moral functioning. Socialinteraction, however, always takes place in the context of culture. Thus, moral developmentis necessarily shaped by the particular social, cultural, and historical context in which itoccurs.

THE SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

There is a fundamental connection between human mental functioning and the social,cultural, and historical contexts in which it occurs. This assumption follows directly fromthe central tenets of Vygotsky’s theoretical framework (Wertsch, 1985, 1991). Consider,for example, Vygotsky’s (1934/1987) claim that “thought development is determined bylanguage, i.e., by the linguistic tools of thought and by the sociocultural experience of thechild” (p. 94). In addition, Vygotsky argues that with the onset of inner speech and verbalthought in early childhood comes a dramatic shift in the nature of development, “frombiological to sociohistorical . . . [because] [v]erbal thought is not an innate, natural formof behavior, but is determined by a historical-cultural process and has specific propertiesand laws that cannot be found in the natural forms of thought and speech” (p. 94).

Despite the importance of these assumptions, claims, and arguments to his researchprogram, Vygotsky never directly addressed many of the critical issues to which theygive rise. Specifically, because Vygotsky’s own analyses did not move beyond the levelof intermental processes, “he did little to spell out how specific historical, cultural, andinstitutional settings are tied to various forms of mediated action” (Wertsch, 1991, p. 46).Nevertheless, a genuinely “sociocultural approach to mind” can be developed quite easilyon the basis of Vygotsky’s theoretical insights:

In order to formulate a more comprehensive sociocultural approach to mental functioning oneshould identify historically, culturally, and institutionally situated forms of mediated [inter-mental] action and specify how their mastery leads to particular forms of mediated action onthe intramental plane. This amounts to extending Vygotsky’s ideas to bring the socioculturalsituatedness of mediated action on the intermental plan to the fore. It is the socioculturalsituatedness of mediated action that provides the essential link between the cultural, histor-ical, and institutional setting on the one hand and the mental functioning of the individualon the other. (Wertsch, 1991, p. 49)

The development of moral functioning, therefore, like the development of all forms ofhigher mental functioning, is necessarily and inescapably socioculturally situated. As such,moral development is shaped by social, cultural, historical, and institutional forces, becausethe various forms of intermental functioning that give rise to intramental processes of moralfunctioning are mediated by words, language, and forms of discourse that are similarlyshaped and contextualized. As the studies reviewed in the previous section illustrate well,the words that a young child uses to help her understand that her actions are “right” or“wrong,” “good” or “bad,” come out of a specific social, cultural, and linguistic milieu.Moreover, the types of conversations and interactions in which parents and children engagearound standards and their transgression are always culturally and historically determined(see Bhatia, 2000; Dunn, 1987; Snow, 1987).

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Bellah and associates (1985), whose work focuses on exploring the ways in whichAmericans talk about moral issues and moral concerns, in both the public and privatespheres of their lives, provide additional evidence supporting the claim that moral devel-opment is socioculturally situated (as well as semiotically mediated). Key to their analysisis a notion of language that is similar to that used by other sociocultural theorists:

We use the term [language] to refer to modes of moral discourse that include distinct vocab-ularies and characteristic patterns of moral reasoning. We use first language to refer to theindividualistic mode that is the dominant American form of discourse about moral, social,and political matters. We use the term second languages to refer to other forms, primarilybiblical and republican, that provide at least part of the moral discourse of most Americans.(p. 334)

It is useful, in this context, to link the work of Bellah and co-workers (1985) to that ofGilligan (1982) and her colleagues. In so doing, it becomes clear that the moral voices ofjustice and care represent two prominent social/moral languages in American culture, atthis time in our history. The discourse of justice, fairness, and individual rights has been,and continues to be, the predominant moral language in the U.S.—our “first language.” Itis the language in which our most important historical moral documents are written (e.g.,the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights), and it is thelanguage that constitutes our modern-day legal system. As such, it is the language thatframes the bulk of our public discussions about morality and moral decision making—from discussions about abortion (is a mother’s “right” to free choice more important thana fetus’ “right” to life?) to discussions about euthanasia (is a patient’s “right” to die moreimportant than a doctor’s “obligation” to sustain life?).

The discourse of care, compassion, and responsibility in relationships, in contrast, hasbeen, and continues to be, one of our “second languages.” Historically it has not occupieda predominant place in our public moral discourse; and when it has entered into the publicsphere it has often been denigrated and devalued (see, for example, Kohlberg & Kramer,1969). But the language of care has always occupied a predominant place in the privatelives and relationships of Americans—particularly through the language of caregivers andcaregiving as it has been spoken by mothers and others responsible for childcare, nurses,social workers, among others. One of the consequences of the work of Gilligan and hercolleagues, however, has been not only to identify the care voice as a moral languagetypically associated with women and women’s experience, but also to legitimize it as alanguage that has an important role to play in transforming public moral, political, andlegal discourse (see also Blum, 1980; Noddings, 1984; Ruddick, 1989).

This view suggests, therefore, that the moral voices of justice and care are certainlynot universal, but are rather socioculturally situated—that they are social/moral languagesthat have emerged out of the American culture of the last 20 years (the culture in whichboth Gilligan and her colleagues and the children, adolescents, and adults whom theyhave interviewed have lived). Moreover, because these moral languages have emerged ina specific sociocultural context, a similar effort in another social, cultural, and historicalcontext might well have identified very different moral voices, moral languages, and typesof moral discourse.

Similar questions about the degree to which Kohlberg’s (1981, 1984) sequence of sixstructurally defined stages of reasoning about justice and fairness is cross-culturallyuniversal (rather than culturally specific), and thus whether observed cultural differencesin moral judgment represent differences in content (allowed by Kohlberg) or structure

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(assumed, by Kohlberg, to be universal), have been raised numerous times over the pastseveral decades (see Blasi, 1987; Boyes & Walker, 1988; Dien, 1982; Shweder, Maha-patra, & Miller, 1987; Shweder & Much, 1987; Snarey, 1985; Turiel, 1983). Exempli-fying these criticisms is Dien’s (1982) argument that Kohlberg’s theory cannot be usedto understand native Chinese moral experience, because Kohlberg’s theory and methodboth instantiate “the prevailing Western conception of man [sic] as an autonomous be-ing, free to make choices and determine his destiny” (p. 339). As such, claims Dien,Kohlberg’s approach adequately captures neither “the Confucian view of man as an in-tegral part of an orderly universe with an innate moral sense to maintain harmony,” northe preferred mode of conflict resolution in China, which focuses on “reconciliation andcollective decision making rather than individual choice, commitment, and responsibility”(p. 331).

It is important to clarify here that Dien’s criticism is leveled specifically at Kohlberg’stheory and research method. There are many other researchers, many of whom also alignthemselves with the broader cognitive–developmental paradigm, who have conductedcross-cultural research that is much more sensitive to local cultural meanings, messages,interactions, and traditions than is Kohlberg’s approach. Much of this work is representedherein (see Helwig, chap. 7; Killen, Margic, & Sinno, chap. 6; Nucci, chap. 24; Smetana,chap. 5; Turiel, chap. 1; and Wainryb, chap. 8, this volume for example).

Of particular relevance, in this regard, is research conducted by Huebner and Garrod(1991, 1993). Huebner and Garrod studied the moral reasoning of adolescent and youngadult Tibetan Buddhist monks living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal. Theyinterviewed twenty monks using a “culturally adapted” form of Kohlberg’s hypotheticalMoral Judgment Interview (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987). After transcribing, translating, andanalyzing these interviews, Huebner and Garrod (1993) were able to chart a standard age-related developmental progression in moral judgment among the monks they interviewed(movement from a mean stage of 2 or 3 for the young adolescent group to a mean stage of3 or 4 for the young adults, based on Kohlberg’s developmental sequence). They found,however, that it was very difficult to interpret the monks’ moral reasoning using scoringcategories provided by Kohlberg’s scheme, largely because the notion of karma, whichwas so central to the Buddhist philosophy and to the worldview of the monks with whomthey talked, was understandably absent in the Standard Issue Scoring Manual (Colby &Kohlberg, 1987). As a result, Huebner and Garrod (1991) argue, quite forcefully, for theimportance of sociocultural sensitivity in the study of moral development:

In order to map the moral domain of a culture, we must first understand that culture . . . through[its] own history, philosophy, and language. Indeed, the importance of language has beensorely neglected by moral reasoning researchers. More is needed than simply a researcher’sability to collect data in subjects’ native language, or even the understanding of “foreign”concepts (such as karma) that can be brought into our system by the addition of a single newword to our lexicon. We must strive, too, to understand concepts . . . that cannot be capturedin direct word-for-word translation. (p. 350)

More recently, Garrod and his colleagues have undertaken a cross-cultural explorationof the existence of the two moral voices of justice and care (Gilligan, 1982), and theassociation of political violence and ethnic conflict with these voices, among childrenliving in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Garrod et al., 2003). The children (age 6 to 12) whomGarrod and his colleagues interviewed were more likely to offer solutions to dilemmas

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involving both animal characters (see Johnston, 1988) and human characters framed inthe care perspective than in the justice perspective. Although these voice-related patternsresemble, for the most part, those from studies of children living in North America (seeGarrod, Beal, & Shin, 1990), the content of Bosnian children’s responses to both types ofmoral dilemmas reflected their experience with political displacement and their concernsabout the role of power, physical force, and violence in conflict resolution. Here is a briefexample:

CHILD: The cow couldn’t enter the house because the dog was barking. Becausethe cow can’t do any harm. I don’t know what should be done.

INTERVIEWER: You can’t think of any solution?

C: Maybe if the cow had strong legs, she could kick him. . . .

I: Would that be good?

C: Yes, because it is her house and she can use force.

I: Can you think of another way to solve the problem?

C: The cow could explain to the dog that it’s the cow’s house and the dogshould just leave. I think the dog should leave because people can expeleach other from their houses (Garrod, et al., 2003, p. 143)

Given these findings, Garrod and his colleagues conclude with the following caveat, onethat applies not only to their research, but also more broadly: “It is important to focusnot only on the particular moral orientation—justice or care—represented in the solutionthat is offered, but also on the content of the children’s responses and the motivation fortheir solution, drawn at least in part from the children’s experiences with violence and thestruggle of formerly warring groups to live together” (p. 146).

From a sociocultural perspective, both the concept of karma from the Buddhist tradition,and the Bosnian children’s experience with violence and political displacement (“expul-sion”) are socioculturally significant not only because they represent external symbolsthat have specific religious, moral, or political meaning, but also because they function assemiotic resources that mediate and shape moral thinking, feeling, and acting (see Tappan,2003). They are, moreover, part of a vernacular moral language whose meaning is sharedby those who share the same cultural activities. Thus, the research of Garrod and hiscolleagues illuminates quite clearly how morality is shaped by culture, on the one hand,and how moral language and forms of moral discourse are shared dialogically, on theother.

In the end, therefore, sociocultural assumptions about mediation, inner moral dialogue,the social origins of moral functioning, and the sociocultural context of moral developmentcome together. If morality is not a naturally occurring universal concept, but is dependent,instead, on words, language, and forms of discourse, as well as on forms and patterns ofsocial interaction, all of which are socioculturally specific, then moral development cannot be understood as the result of a constructive process undertaken by transcendental epis-temic subjects (Kohlberg’s view). Rather, moral development must be seen as the outcomeof dialogue, social communication, and social interaction between real, live, speaking per-sons (not occupants of imaginary “positions,” “original” or otherwise [see Rawls, 1970;Kohlberg, 1981, 1984])—dialogue, communication, and interaction, moreover, that occurin specific social, cultural, and historical contexts and settings.

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CONCLUSION

This chapter has outlined common characteristics shared explicitly sociocultural/dialogicalapproaches to the study of moral development. Grounded in Vygotsky’s (1934/1987, 1978)empirical and theoretical work on the development of higher mental functioning, and in-formed by Bakhtin’s (1981) conception of the dialogic nature of all discourse, these ap-proaches extend Vygotsky’s insights about the semiotic mediation of the mental function-ing via inner speech (and inner dialogue), the social origins of higher psychological func-tioning, and the sociocultural situatedness of human development into the realm of moraldevelopment. As such, this perspective not only points toward a new account of the processand dynamics of moral development, but also gives rise to a number of important questions.

Questions about differences in moral development—gender differences, racial differ-ences, social class differences, cultural differences—lie at the heart of many of the currentdebates in the field of moral development. Thus perhaps it would be useful to focus on suchquestions, briefly, and to indicate some of the ways in which a sociocultural/dialogicalperspective addresses them.

Vygotsky clearly considered differences between persons—for example, differences inreasoning or problem-solving ability—not to be indicators of developmental successes orfailures, measured against a universal standard, but rather to be manifestations of the par-ticular, and necessarily differential, effects of sociocultural setting on mental functioning(Wertsch, 1991). From a sociocultural/dialogical perspective, therefore, moral develop-ment does not occur in the same way, following the same sequence, for all persons aroundthe globe, but rather it is specific to unique social, cultural, and historical contexts. More-over, these unique sociocultural settings may well occur within the confines of a largersociety, settings defined by those who share similar experiences, values, or social, po-litical, or economic assumptions (see Bellah et al., 1985; Cortese, 1990; Walker, 2000).Thus, from this perspective, gender, racial, cultural, or socioeconomic differences in moraldevelopment, and in the forms of moral functioning, exhibited by members of differentsocial groups, are not problems, indicators of developmental deficit, or the function ofvariables that have to be “controlled.” Rather, they are to be expected, and they must betreated as differences, not deviations, by researchers and practitioners alike.

A sociocultural/dialogical perspective on the study of moral development also givesrise to a number of other important questions. One set of empirical questions concerns thedegree of correspondence between person’s inner moral dialogues and the external inter-actions and conversations from which they arise, on the one hand, and the moral narrativesto which they give rise, on the other. Another set of more educational or applied questionsconcerns whether or not Vygotsky’s (1978) conception of the “Zone of Proximal Devel-opment” (ZPD) might provide a helpful model for moral education efforts. On this view,certain activities of adults and more competent peers might encourage children and youthto move through the ZPD, from their actual level of moral functioning to their potentiallevel (see Tappan, 1998a, 1998b; also Moll, 1990; Rogoff & Wertsch, 1984; Tharp & Gal-limore, 1988). This last set of questions, needless to say, clearly calls for more work, boththeoretical and empirical, regarding how to assess developmental levels of moral func-tioning in a way that avoids the universal standards that have traditionally been employedto chart developmental progress, and yet provides some means by which distinctions canbe drawn between different types/forms/manifestations of moral functioning (while stillhonoring differences between social groups, as described).

This raises, of course, the question of moral relativism—always a hot button issue in anydiscussion of moral development. Although this issue cannot be explored in detail here, a

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sociocultural/dialogical perspective seeks to remain open to all types/forms/manifestationsof moral functioning, and thus does not assume, unlike Kohlberg (1981, 1984), that nor-mative moral judgments must be embedded in a theory of moral development. Judgmentsabout developmental adequacy, on the other hand, using differentiation and hierarchical in-tegration, for example, as evidence of ontogenetic progress (see Werner & Kaplan, 1956),are certainly an appropriate, and necessary part of theoretical, empirical, and appliedefforts.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, by linking Vygotskian insights about semioticmediation and the social origins of mind to a Bakhtinian conception of the dialogic moralself (see Day & Tappan, 1996), a sociocultural/dialogical approach offers a distributed orshared vision of moral development (in contrast to the individualistic/psychological viewthat has dominated the field for the past century or so). This vision, among other things,sets the stage for a new and powerful understanding of moral community: Communitiesthat promote moral development are not composed of discrete, self-contained, isolatedindividuals. Rather, successful moral communities consist of dialogical selves engaged inan ongoing process of interpretation, and committed, necessarily, to dialogue, discussion,and mutual exchange across differences (see Burbules, 1993; Oakeshott, 1975; Sandel,1982; Walzer, 1987). In addition, such a perspective on moral community provides thekey to answering critical questions about both “morality” and “development” that must beaddressed as the field of moral development enters the 21st century. On this view moralitymust be understood as a discursively mediated practice or an activity that facilitates humaninteraction in community. And development must be understood not as an individualachievement, but as a process that, at its core, entails relational, communal, political, andeven cultural transformation.

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