Language, Society And Consciousness

by Hasan, Ruqaiya

• ISBN13: 9781904768340
• ISBN10: 1904768342
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-30
• Publisher: Equinox

Summary

The chapters of this volume explore the intimate relations of society, language and mind: the development of each of these depends on the contribution of the other two. In this sense they are co-genetic: mind has recently been described by the famous neuro-scientist, Susan Greenfield, as 'personalized brain.' The development of human mind depends on what it experiences; for human beings, experience goes beyond sensation: it is made of meaning, and interpretation / meaning, in turn, is construed by the various semiotic modalities, of which language is perhaps the most flexible and most pervasive. But language has itself evolved in the course of attempts to reach an 'other.' By shaping the nature of communication, human relations shape also the nature of language; meanings exchanged in verbal interaction become a major force in shaping forms of consiousness; and our consciousness reveals itself in our cultural practices, our ways of being, doing and saying.

Table of Contents

Editor's preface
Introduction	3	(15)
Language, Society and Consciousness: transdisciplinary orientations and the tradition of specialisation
Section 1 Editor's Introduction: The sociosemiotic mediation of mind	18	(139)
Basil Bernstein: an exceptional 1924--2000	21	(27)
Society, Language and Mind: the metadialogism of Basil Bernstein's theory	48	(20)
Speech Genre, Semiotic Mediation and the Development of Higher Mental Functions	68	(38)
On the Social Conditions for Semiotic Mediation: the genesis of mind in society	106	(24)
Semiotic Mediation and Three Exotropic Theories: Vygotsky, Halliday and Bernstein	130	(27)
Section 2 Editor's Introduction: Coding orientations and forms of consciousness	157	(118)
Code, Register and Social Dialect	160	(34)
Semiotic Mediation and Mental Development in Pluralistic Societies: some implications for tomorrow's schooling	194	(21)
Ways of Meaning, Ways of Learning: code as an explanatory concept	215	(13)
Reading Picture Reading: a study in ideology and inference	228	(28)
The Ontogenesis of Ideology: an interpretation of mother child talk	256	(19)
Section 3 Editor's Introduction: Language and society: conflict or co-genesis?	275	(79)
The Disempowerment Game: Bourdieu on language	277	(60)
Bourdieu on Linguistics and Language: a response to my commentators	337	(17)
References	354	(17)
Index	371