Leontiev DISCUSSÕES SOBRE LINGUAGEM E PSICOLOGIA

7/28/2019 Leontiev DISCUSSES SOBRE LINGUAGEM E PSICOLOGIA

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(19362004)ALEKSI ALEKSEVITCH LEONTIEV (19362004)

DISCUSSES SOBRELINGUAGEM E PSICOLOGIA

(ARTIGOS DA J.R.E.E.P 2003 E 2006)

IMPRESSO EM UMUARAMA25 DE ABRIL DE 2013


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CONTENTS

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 41, nos. 3/4, MayJune/JulyAugust

A.A. LEONTIEV AND T.V. RYABOVA (AKHUTINA)The Phase Structure of the Speech Act and the Nature of Plans. pp. 3338.

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 44, no. 3, MayJune 2006.

A.A. LEONTIEV

The Social and the Natural in Semiotics. pp. 616.

Sign and Activity. pp. 1729.

Units and Levels of Activity. pp. 3046.

Personality, Culture, Languagepp. 4756.

Sense as a Psychological Concept.pp. 5769.

The Psychological Structure of Meaning.pp. 7082.

What Are the Types of Speech Activity?pp. 8386.

Some Problems in the General Theory of Speech Activity.pp. 89103.

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 44, no. 4, JulyAugust 2006,

A.A. LEONTIEVPsycholinguistic Units and Speech Generation. pp. 788.


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Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 41, nos. 3/4,

MayJune/JulyAugust, pp. 3338. 2003 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 10610405/2003 $9.50 + 0.00.

A.A. LEONTIEVAND T.V. RYABOVA (AKHUTINA)

The Phase Structure of the SpeechAct and the Nature of Plans

The notion of the phase structure of the speech actor to be moreprecisethe special structure of the inner speech stage in utter-ance production, belongs to L.S. Vygotsky. Vygotsky conceptual-

ized the process of speech production, the progress from thought toword to external speech, as follows: from the motive that engen-ders a thought, to the formulation of that thought, its mediation bythe inner word, and then by the meanings of external words, andfinally, by words themselves1 Elsewhere he said, Thought is aninternally mediated process. It moves from a vague desire to themediated formulation of meaning, or rather, not the formulation,but the fulfillment of the thought in the word. And finally,

Thought is not something ready-made that needs to be expressed.Thought strives to fulfill some function or goal. This is achievedby moving from the sensation of a taskthrough construction ofmeaningto the elaboration of the thought itself.2

These ideas of Vygotsky may be used to derive the following

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English translation 2003 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text Fazovaia

struktura rechevogo akta i priroda planov, Plany i modeli budushchego v rechi(materiali k obsuzhdeniiu) [Plans and Models of the Future in Speech (Materialfor Discussion)], pp. 2732. Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1970.

Translated by Lydia Razran Stone.


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34 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

sequence of stages (phases) in speech production: The process startswith (a) the motive. We have only slightly expanded Vygotskysconcept when we speak of the motive not as an isolated factor butas the set of extralinguistic factors that give rise to the motivationfor a speech act (in the broadest sense of the term).3 This motiva-tion gives rise to the (b) speech intention. This stage correspondsto a vague desire or a sensation of a task. (Cf. the category ofthe imagined situation in D.N. Uznadze.) At this phase, thespeaker has an image of the result (Miller et al.), but does notyet have a Plan of Action that must be performed to achieve thisresult. (Here we should probably provide some separate discus-sion of the dynamics of motivation. According to A.N. Leontiev,we should distinguish between motive and need. The need is ob-jectified in the motive, and a motive is the object that satisfies aparticular need and that, being reflected in one form or another,controls his behavior.4 During the motive stage we are dealingwith a need but not a motive per se. The shift from need to motiveis associated with the concept of speech intention.)

Vygotsky calls this the phase of thought. We have called itthe stage of speech intention because the use of the termthought to mean a particular stage in the speech-thinking pro-cess requires special discussion. First of all, we have to ask aboutthe meaning of thought in analysis of the system of concepts. Itis clear that Vygotsky uses this word in two senses. First, it is aprocess, and second, it is a particular stage in that process. But,does speech production include an independent stage in whichthought exists separately and independently of all other stages inthe speech act?

Let us point out, first of all, that thought, clearly does not neces-sarily entail verbalization of this thought (cf. the work of A.N.Leontiev and E.V. Ilenkov). Next, there are a number of possibledifferent ways in which the thinking process is realized in differ-ent psychological situations, even given that the thinking is verbal.(Cf. the concept of vicarious perceptual acts of V.P. Zinchenko,corresponding to the thinking component of perception.) Vygotsky


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supposes that today I saw a barefoot boy in a blue shirt run downthe street is a thought. (I see all of this together in a single act ofthought, but in speech I segment it into individual words.) Evi-dently, there is some terminological inaccuracy here: I the speakerdo not simply see a boy, I see him in a form that is already medi-ated. Boy is already a secondary image that carries a number ofattributive (= predicative) characteristics that are still not verbalizedin an objective language code: the boy I saw today; the boy ranalong the street; the boy was in a blue shirt; the boywas bare-foot. At the start of the process, there might also exist, in addi-tion to the visual image (communication of events), a secondaryimage that is already verbally represented, or a verbally repre-sented concept (communication of relationships). Finally, atthe start of the process, there also may be an indistinct emotionthat is not directly verbalized, and so on. It is important to em-phasize that all these cases, as do all others that are not discussedhere, differ psychologically. In each, thought takes different psy-chological forms.

Thus, we have considered two stages of the speech act that arepre-speech in the strict sense of the term. During these stagesconsideration of the future and planning occur in two forms: (1)that of stochastic (probabilistic) prediction (cf. the work of R.M.Frumkina) and (2) that of the image of the result, which is afunction of the structure of the action as a whole, that is, the goal

of the action.The next stage, and, in our opinion, a theoretically very impor-tant stage is (c) the inner program of the speech act. This corre-sponds to Vygotskys thought mediated by inner speech.Obviously, it also corresponds to the category of Miller et al., thegrammatical plan and N.I. Zhinkins category, plan. Repre-sentation of the speech intention in the code of personal senses(to use Leontievs terminology developing Vygotskys understand-

ing) occurs during this stage. These senses are represented bysome subjective code units (resulting from internalization of objec-tive external actions); it could be N.I. Zhinkins code of images


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and schemata. (We distinguish among the inner program, innerspeech, and inner pronunciation, talking to oneself.)5

Thus, what is usually called (by Vygotsky among others) innerspeech, and what we call here inner programming, is precisely thetool that fulfills thought, the connecting link between the inten-tion that gives rise to thought and the elaboration of the thoughtin an objective linguistic code. The transition to this code itselfis a two-step process: first there is the transition from sensesembodied in a subjective code to meanings of the external wordsof an actual language (i.e., a translation from a subjective codeof senses to the objective code of language meanings, represen-tation of the speech intention by the meanings of external words),and next: the transformation of the grammar of thoughts into thegrammar of words (because thought has a different structurefrom that of its verbal expression.) Thus, we have stage (d): imple-mentation of the inner program, which entails two relatively inde-pendent processessemantic implementation and grammaticalrealization implementation. (See Leontievs Psycholinguistic Units,with respect to the possible interactions and inner structure of theseprocesses.)6

In addition to the two processes in stage (d) that have been de-scribed, we can identify one morethe process of the acoustic-articulatory and morphological implementation of the program(representation of thought in external words to use Vygotskys

terms). This process must follow the selection of the utterancessyntactic structure and directly precede the next stage, that is, stage(e)the acoustic implementation of the utterance, or phonation.Strictly speaking, this last stage entails a process of motor pro-gramming (motor plan) , which is superimposed on the processesof semantic and grammatical implementation and depends on them.It is only through this motor programming and through the nextprocess of acoustic and articulatory implementation that phona-

tion per se occurs.During stages (c)(e) of speech production, there are three pro-cesses that involve consideration of the future: (1) probabilistic


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prediction in the selection of grammatical constructions, and thesemantic and phonetic features of words; (2) constructive predic-tion (when I select and start to implement, let us say, a particularsyntactic construction, I am predicting the future continuation ofthis construction; when I select an element I am not only selectingit but also predetermining quite a number of subsequent elementsand the nature of their interactions; the same is true with regard togrammatical obligations, that is, the selection of morphemes);(3) programming, that is, the creation of a system of key ele-ments that predetermines selection and decision making duringsubsequent stages of speech production.

In analyzing these stages of speech production from the stand-point of the role of simultaneity and succession, we can see thatthe processes of inner programming (both grammatical and mo-tor) and grammatical structuring (grammatical or syntactic actu-alization of the utterance) are processes that occur through successivesynthesis involving the combination of elements. (Compare the dataon the natural order of the components of an utterance in childrensagrammatical speech, the speech of the deaf, spontaneous mimicand hand speech, autonomous speech, and certain other cases, wherethe order agent-attribute-patient-attribute-predicate-circumstance[as in the sentence The cat his black ear licks lazily] is clearlyfixed. Semantic elaboration [semantic realization], the translationof units in subjective code into units in the code of an external lan-

guage, and acoustic-articulatory implementation are based on si-multaneous synthesis and entail selecting elements from a paradigm.This interpretation is confirmed by data on impairments in variousforms of aphasia.)7

In conclusion, we would like to relate the model presented inthis report to statements by A.R. Luria and L.S. Tsvetkova. Theyidentify all the basic stages in speech production that we have de-scribed, but they do not separate the stage of inner programming

and the process of grammatical realization of the program, merg-ing them in the concept of the inner schema of the utterance, orthe dynamic schema of the sentence.


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6

English translation 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text

Sotsialnoe i estestvennoe v semiotike, in Iazyk i rechevaia deiatelnost vobshchei i pedagogicheskoi psikhologii (Moscow and Voronezh: IPO MODEK,2001), pp. 919. Published with the permission of Dmitry A. Leontiev.

Translated by Nora Favorov.

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 44, no. 3,MayJune 2006, pp. 616. 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 10610405/2006 $9.50 + 0.00.DOI 10.2753RPO10610405440301

A.A. LEONTIEV

The Social and the Natural

in Semiotics

It is not the mission of this work1 to communicate any new, pre-viously unknown facts. The present work will be devoted to areview and rethinking of certain concepts and theoretical prin-ciples that are based on facts that are already well known. We will

endeavor to demonstrate that, given a different methodologicalapproach, the same causes can give rise to different effects.We will start with the concept of semiotics, referred to in the

title of this article. In recent years, use of the term semiotics hascome to serve as a sort of signal that an author in principle drawsno qualitative distinction between the sign systems of animals andhuman language. In our opinion, it is useful to return to the origi-nal sense of this term and recall the words of Ferdinand de Saussure,

who believed that semiotics or semiology are part of social psy-chology and consequently of general psychology. . . . Defining theexact place of semiology is a task for psychology.2 In keepingwith Saussures view, semiotics, as we see it, is a discipline thatstudies the role of signs in the formation and functioning of the


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human psyche. In other words, semiotics is the branch of psy-chology that deals with behavior that is sign oriented in nature

and guided by signs.The main distinction between the sign behavior of man and the

communication-conditioned behavior of animals lies in the spe-cificallypsychological nature of the human sign, something thatis completely alien to contemporary semiotics. We will permitourselves to explain this distinction using the words of L.S.Vygotsky:

[U]ntil quite recently . . . it was presumed that . . . a sound in and ofitself could be associated with any experience, with any content of

mental life, and for this reason can convey or communicate this con-

tent or this experience to another person. At the same time . . . in order

to convey a particular experience or content of consciousness to an-

other person, there is no alternative to relating the content being con-

veyed to a specific class, and this . . . makes generalization absolutely

essential. . . . Thus, the higher-order forms of psychological associa-

tion that are characteristic of man are possible only as a result of the

fact that man, through thought, reflects reality in generalized form.3

It would seem that the animal is also capable of generalization,inasmuch as it is capable of functional identification of things thatare materially different and of drawing functional distinctions be-tween similar signals. But does this mean that we can place an

equal sign between the two? Can we conclude that a word has afixed meaning for man just because it replaces something, becauseit is standing for[English in original] another, nonverbal signal?Consider, for example, the frequently encountered ideas of CharlesOsgood. It is well known that the concept of meaning is usuallyimbued with this very understanding, while the social charac-ter of a word or the meaning of a word is understood by what iscommon in it for many people, as societys or the socialenvironments verbal usage adhering to an individual, as bound-aries placed around variations in the usage of a particular word

through association with other people. Hence, meaning ceases tobe a social fact; its social aspect turns out to be extremely superfi-cial, reduced to the commonality of principles according to whicha word substitutes for nonverbal signals in different individuals.


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It appears that there is a serious misunderstanding here, stem-ming from the fact that humanity is understood as a totality of

individuals, of biological beings who live on their own in thebiological world and only occasionally come together with other

individuals for various purposes. This, however, does not corre-spond to reality: the social nature of a human being is part of whatdefines him as the biological species Homo sapiens.

All individual beings that we place into a single species be-long to it specifically because they are connected by a certainnumber of properties common to all, properties inherited from a

common ancestor.4 The biological nature of every newborn ani-mal reproduces changes that have accumulated throughout thehistory of the species. And, what is specific to the species and isrealized in the individual is primarily morphological features,characteristics of the structure of the body of animals. Progres-sive development, evolution in the world of animals results in theimprovement of biological adaptation of animals of a given spe-cies to the life conditions of that species.

The pace of human development is not at all comparable withthe pace of evolution in the world of animals. From the appear-ance of the first stone axe with a wooden handle, to mans firstflight into space, the horse, for example, barely had time to replaceits three toes with a hoof. But, while evolution was progressing atsuch an amazing rate, human morphology essentially did notchange; if you could dress a Cro-Magnon in European clothing

and walk him through the streets of London, he would barely begiven a second glance. It was not in the biological sphere that theevolution of the human species took place, but [in] some othersphere; it was not in the form of morphological changes that the

accumulation of features and experiences belonging to the speciestook shape, but in some other form. The sphere was the social lifeof man, and the form was the preservation of the achievements ofhuman activity within the sociohistorical experience of humanity.

Now, the experience of the species is reflected not in changes tothe structure of the human arm, for example, but in changes to thetool the arm uses, that is, the techniques and ways of using it that


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are generalizedin it, that are encompassed in it. In the tools oflabor, man acquires something akin to new organs that change

his anatomical structure. Since the point in time where he at-tained the level at which he started using them, he has endowed

the history of his development with a completely new feature. Inthe past, this history, like the history of all other animals,amounted to modifications in his natural organs; now it has turnedinto something that is primarily the history of advances in hisartificial [functional] organs.5

Another reason that the pace of human evolution is incommen-

surable with the pace of animal evolution is that man is never onhis own in dealing with nature, as animals are (even RobinsonCrusoe had centuries of human experience at his disposal on hisisland). Mans relationship with nature is mediated by his rela-tionship with society. He is always able to draw from the store-house of social experience, and, therefore, does not need toexperience everything firsthand; he is always one step ahead ofnature, not letting himself be taken by surprise, while the animalis always one step behind nature. Man learns from his mistakesand even more so from the achievementsof others. The animallearns from his own mistakes.

But if we accept the thesis that the evolution of man is prima-rily the evolution of his artificial [organic] organs,6 then it becomesapparent that the subjectof this evolution, and also of interactionwith nature generally, is not the human individual, but the human

species as a whole, the socium.* It is not the individual personwho interacts with the biological environment, but human societyoverall; this is why within this society laws of evolution such asthe law of natural selection, become invalid. It is not by mere chance

that the principle of morality that rejects the legitimacy, the natu-ralness of natural selection[the word] humanismcomes fromthe word human.

This applies not only to the practical, labor-oriented activity of

man that is mediated by the tools of labor, but to the theoretical,

*Knowledge of the society by every individual.Ed.


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predominantly cognitive activity that is mediated by whatVygotsky called psychological tools, that is, signs. As a part

of the process of behavior, the psychological tool also alters theentire course and structure of mental functions, just as the techni-

cal tool alters the process of natural adaptation determining theform of labor operations.7 And, in exactly the same way that thetooltogether with the work skills and abilities that lie hidden init and are objectified in itis introduced into the practical activityof the individual from the outside (a child is given a spoon andtaught how to use it), the sign, the wordtogether with the means

of using this sign that is objectified in it, its meaningis intro-duced into verbal-cognitive activity from the outside.

But this means that, in talking about man as a biological beingand ignoring the fact that it is not the individual who serves as thesubject in interactions with nature, with the reality that surroundshim, but the socium (or rather the individual as the representativeof the socium, as the carrier of not only biological but also socialcharacteristics), we create not only a philosophical, but a psycho-logical, inaccuracy. At the same time, within the problem of theinnateness of linguistic ability, we encounter just such abiologized understanding.

We will briefly mention the view held by Eric Lenneberg onthis question. Heredity, in his view, provides the individual withlanguage readiness, in which we find the latent language struc-ture; a persons language acquisition is the process of actualizing,

of transforming this latent structure into a real one. Social condi-tions can be viewed as a type of trigger that sets off a reaction.Perhaps the best metaphor is the concept of resonance.8 Accordingto this understanding, where the individual is viewed as causa sui,

the motive for his linguistic development is [an] internal need,with no role whatsoever for arbitrary external factors, such as,for example, the influence of mature adults on the child.

It is illustrative that in Lennebergs book, which certainly holds

a prominent place in the psychological literature on speech, ev-erything associated with the acoustic-articulatory aspect of lan-guage is well argued [by] using biological, physioanatomical,


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whether behavior that is certainly biological, in particular in ani-mals, can also be based on a principle of rulesthese questions are

not raised by theoreticians of innate ideas. In general, it appearsthat within this theory, an actual psychological and physiological

analysis has largely been replaced by a logical-philosophical analy-sis. Whatever the case may be, for its proponents, biological andbiosocial components of behavior are fundamentally united; theydo not envision physiological mechanisms that are specific to hu-man behavior.

At the same time, mechanisms that sustain uniquely human

abilities exist, and, as they pertain to sense of pitch and certainother cases, have recently been investigated by A.N. Leontiev, who,following the physiologist A.A. Ukhtomskii, has advanced theconcept of a functional organ formed during life as a result of aspecific activity of uniting different physiological mechanismsinto a single functional system. We will mention that this broaderconcept, advanced by P.K. Anokhin, presumes a broad functionalunity of variously localized structures and processes on the basisof attainment of a final (adaptive) effect.12 One of the most im-portant features of functional organs is their plasticity: in ful-filling one and the same objective, they can have differingstructures,13 which provides for diverse possibilities in compen-sating for breakdowns in functions. These ideas of A.N. Leontievstem back to Vygotskys well-known proposition that in com-parison with animals, the human brain possesses a new localiza-

tion principle, as a result of which it became the human brain, theorgan of human consciousness.14

According to VygotskyLeontievLuria,15 uniquely humanmental abilities are supported by just such mechanisms. These

mechanisms take shape over the course of a persons life in soci-ety (we will examine how that formation takes place below), andcan certainly not be reduced to a mechanical actualization of ready-made principles of development already situated within individu-

als. But, consequently, the alternative on which Lenneberg and hiscolleagues base their thinking (compare: The individual does notserve as a passive means or channel through which information


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is conveyed)16 is no more correct than the opposition of rational-istic and empirical viewpoints initiated by Chomsky. The alter-

native to empiricism is not necessarily rationalism: otherapproaches are possible, and there is one to which we subscribe.

We just mentioned theformation of functional organs, contrast-ing it to the actualization of innate structures. At this point, it isimportant to underscore that the process of development of mentalfunctions and abilities supported by functional organs differs atits very core both from the process of the unfolding of biologicallyinherited behavior, and from the process of acquiring individual

experience. This process is carried out specifically in the form ofthe assimilation by each individual of a social and historical expe-rience, of the collective knowledge of the socium.

Before the individual entering into life . . . is a world of objects em-

bodying human abilities that came into existence through the process

of the development of sociohistorical practice. . . . For the individual

to discover the human aspect of the objects that surround him, he must

carry out energetic activity in relation to them, activity that is consis-

tent (although, of course, not identical) to the activity that is crystal-

lized within them. Of course, this also applies to language. Another

condition is that the relationships between the individual and the world

of human objects must be mediated by his relationships with people;

they must be included in the process of communication. . . . The indi-

vidual, the child, is not simply thrown into the human world, but is

introduced into this world by the people around him, and they guide

him in this world.17

Therefore, society participates in the formation of human abilitiesmore as an active force within this formation than merely as alanguage environment.

The aforementioned mediated nature of uniquely human types ofactivity is the other side of the process of the active socializationof natural/inborn processes, as a result of the incorporation ofobjects and phenomena of the external world into these processesthat objectify human abilities. If in the natural interrelations withthe surrounding world that is characteristic of the animal the onlyregulator of these interrelations is its individual experience (the


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experience of the species is already provided in ready-made form),in the social interrelations that are characteristic of man, his re-

lationship with reality is regulated primarily by societal experi-ence that has taken shape in the tool of labor or the psychological

tool (sign) in the form of itsfunctionin the form of those abili-ties and skills that can take shape and be realized through this tool.The natural processes that are mediated, socialized throughthe introduction of tools and signs are in and of themselves innateor at least can be actualized through a signal, but not through theformative influence of the external world; the introduction of so-

cial elements into these processes forces man to switch to a newway of enabling them physiologically.

It appears that human activity, even at the early stages of itsontogenesis, has a psychophysiological character that does not lenditself in the least to interpretation popular to the theory of innateideas. In the words of Vygotsky, The childs system of activity isdetermined at every given stage both by the extent of its organicdevelopment and the extent of its mastery of tools. Two distinctsystems develop in tandem, forming, in essence, a third system, anew system of a special kind.18

Turning again to Lennebergs book, we are told that there is asubstantial difference between the formation of concepts in manand the generalization of stimuli in animals. According toLenneberg, there is a display of word tagging in cognitive pro-cesses; therefore, concepts are essentially superstructures above

physical data, they are a means of ordering . . . sensory data.

19

But what has been said above about the role of tools and signsin the formation of uniquely human behavior to a great extent re-lates to the processes of perception and to other components of hu-

man cognition. This is expressed in that the experiential momentappears in cognitive processes not only in the external, sensorylink of the perceiving system, as is also commonly presumed bypsycholinguists;20 also, its main role is in the organization of this

systems effector link.21

The most important thing here is that lan-guage serves as a mediating link in the activity of cognition andimmediately conditions this activity.


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The process of verbal denotation in recognition . . . is not understood

as a special processseparate from cognitionwhich then processes

its product through thought, but as a process that is incorporated intothe very activity of cognition. . . . After all, recognition, or the actual

cognition of an object, demands the correlation of pre-information

received with a reference, which in man is stored in generalizing sys-

tems that have a linguistic basis. Such references are not only the re-

cipients of incoming pre-information, but they carry out the function

of guiding recognition processes.22

All of this makes it evident that language does more than make

the individuals understanding of the external world easier, moreprecise, and faster. It serves as a force that indeed shapes this cat-egorization, introducing a fundamentally new principle: The childis compelled to reorganize his way of seeing and conceiving thingsso as to have the possibility of using language to signify what heknows;23 but this reorganization itself is performed with the help oflanguage. One hundred years ago, Steinthal said, In order to think,one must be able to speak.24In order to perceive, it is also necessary

to be able to speak, at least if we are talking about the human way ofseeing things. After all, man sees things specifically as social ele-ments, projecting onto them knowledge of their objective proper-ties. For it to be possible to separate an object from the world aroundit, as a carrier of such objective traits, it has to be recognized; and, inorder for it to be recognized, it has to be signified.

This was well understood by the great Russian linguist and phi-losopher A.A. Potebnialittle known, unfortunately, outside his

native landwhen he was still a follower of Humboldt. We willconclude with his words. Language is more than an external tool,and its function for cognition and action is closer to that of an organin terms of its significance for man, like an eye or an ear. . . . Thesum of acquired abilities and traditions always stands as an inter-mediary between a thing and the ability to perceive it.25

Notes

1. This work is taken from the Russian text of a paper that was intended forpresentation at the nineteenth International Congress of Psychology (London,


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1969) as a part of the symposium, Biological, Social and Linguistic Fac-tors in Psycholinguistics.

2. F. de Saussure, Kurs obshchei lingvistiki (translated from the French)(Moscow, 1933), p. 40.

3. L.S. Vygotskii [Vygotsky], Izbrannye psikhologicheskie issledovaniia(Moscow, 1956), pp. 5051.

4. V.D. Komarov, Uchenie o vide u rastenii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1944),p. 207.

5. G.V. Plekhanov, K voprosu o razvitii monosticheskogo vzgliada naistoriiu.Izbrannye filosofskie proizvedeniia, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1956), p. 610.

6. This thesis appears to be generally accepted in anthropology and geneticpsychology at present. See H. Pieron, Le dveloppement de la penseconceptuelle et hominisation, inLes processus de hominisation (Paris, 1958).

7. L.S. Vygotskii [Vygotsky],Razvitie vysshikh psikhologicheskikh funktsii(Moscow, 1960), p. 255.

8. E.H. Lenneberg,Biological Foundations of Language (New York [: Wiley],1967), p. 378.

9. Ibid., p. 379.10. N. Chomsky, A Review of B.F. Skinners Verbal Behavior,Language,

1959, vol. 35, no. 1.11. Lenneberg,Biological Foundations, p. 332.12. P.K. Anokhin, Biologiia i neirofiziologiia uslovnogo refleksa (Moscow

1968), p. 79.

13. A.N. Leontev [Leontiev], Problemy razvitiia psikhiki (Moscow, 1965),p. 206.

14. Vygotskii,Razvitie vysshikh psikhicheskikh funktsii, p. 393.15. In addition to the works already mentioned, see in this regard the book

by A.R. Luria, Mozg cheloveka i psikhicheskie protsessy (Moscow, 1963).16. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations, p. 378.17. Leontev, Problemy razvitiia psikhiki, pp. 18586.18. Vygotskii, Razvitie vysshikh psikhologicheskikh funktsii, p. 50.19. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations, p. 333.20. Charles Osgood is a typical example. Concerning his views on this

question, see A.A. Leontev [Leontiev], Psikholingvistika i problemafunktsionalnykh edinits rechi, p. 6, and Voprosy teorii iazyka v sovremennoizarubezhnoi lingvistike (Moscow, 1961).

21. See A.N. Leontev, O mekhanizme chuvstvennogo otrazheniia, Voprosypsikhologii, 1959, no. 2, as well as numerous works by V.P. Zinchenko et al.

22. A.N. Leontev and Iu.B. Gippenreiter, O deiatelnosti zritelnoi sistemycheloveka, in Psikhologicheskie issledovaniia (Moscow, 1968), p. 19.

23. J. Bruner, An Overview, in Studies in Cognitive Growth, ed. J.S.Braner et al. (New York, 1966), p. 323.

24. H. Steinthal, Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1871).

25. A.A. Potebnia, Iz zapisok po teorii slovesnosti (Kharkov, 1905), pp.643, 646.

To order reprints, call 1-800-352-2210; outside the United States, call 717-632-3535.


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English translation 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text Znak i

deiatel

nost

, inIazyk i rechevaia deiatel

nost

v obshchei i pedagogicheskoipsikhologii (Moscow and Voronezh: IPO MODEK, 2001), pp. 3345. Publishedwith the permission of Dmitry A. Leontiev.

Translated by Nora Favorov.Notes renumbered for this edition.Ed.

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology,vol. 44, no. 3,MayJune 2006, pp. 1729. 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 10610405/2006 $9.50 + 0.00.DOI 10.2753RPO10610405440302

A.A. LEONTIEV

Sign and Activity

The goal of this article is to provide an analysis of a category ofmeaning outside the system of any particular science (and cer-tainly not from the perspective of any particular scientific prob-lem), but within a more general system, suitable to an integratedapproach toward language, speech, and speech activity. The ne-cessity of such an integrated approach is increasingly evident both

on the theoretical level and in the framing and solving of appliedproblems. The external expression of this necessity is the birth ofsuch international scientific disciplines as psycholinguistics,sociolinguistics, and ethnolinguistics, among others.

The movement of scientific thought along the path of an inte-grated analysis of speech activity is hindered, however (among otherdifficulties), by the vagueness of a number of basic concepts, thelogical consequence of which is the shifting of the interpretation of

these concepts, provided within the framework of a specific science(usually linguistics), to a more general theoretical context, and fromthis stems the limitation of their treatment. This primarily effectsthe concept of meaning, a concept that is central not only to lin-guistics but also to psychology, logic, and semiotics. Only once


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we have defined meaning as an object category of the science ofman will we have the right to undertake its interpretation within

the framework of a particular field, as something to which we ap-ply scientific methods of investigation.

Such an analytical path is all the more desirable when we ad-dress psycholinguistic problems associated with meaning. As iswell known, in Soviet science, psycholinguistics from the verybeginning takes the form of a theory of speech activity. It viewsspeech as one of the types of activity (along with other types suchas labor, cognitive, and mnemonic activity, etc.), and strives to

apply the study of speech to those propositions and categories thathave been developed within the general theory of activity, both inits social and psychological aspects.

In this case, our task consists in applying an approach based onthe perspective of activity theory to a more general circle of ques-tions associated with the category of meaning, and discoveringthe factors involved in the emergence and mode of functioning ofmeaning within the system of human social activity.

We encounter the concept of activity at the very start of our analysisof meaning, when we raise the question of the relationship betweenmeaning and the sign. As works by Soviet philosophers show,1 theproblem of the sign in its interpretation, from the perspective of thetheory of reflection, is inseparable from the problem of the so-calledideal, or quasi-object. As is well known, the ideal object (quasi-object) arises in social activity as the transformed form of true con-

nections and relations. These connections and relations are transferredonto a material object that is alien to them by its nature, or are takeninto it, and are replaced by other relations that blend with the prop-erties of this object, and serve as its properties and features. The

apparent form of true relations takes their place; the direct reflec-tion of content in form becomes impossible. An example is themonetary form, which is the form of transformed goods. For thisreason, a tremendously important gnoseological problem arises: in


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MAYJUNE 2006 19

analyzing the quasi-object as a converted form* of true connectionsand relations, how is it possible to isolate in it what arises from its

substance, from its own uniqueness, its features and properties,from what is transferred onto it and has been transformed in it.

Language is the system of such ideal or quasi-objectslinguisticsignswhere real relationships are replaced with their apparentform, where the real properties and relationships of the objectsand phenomena of reality, actualized in activity involving theseobjects and phenomena, wind up being taken and moved into anew (linguistic) substance, and are filled with the materiality and

properties of language. As in a number of other cases, here themateriality of quasi-objects prompts the emergence of fancies ofconsciousness: we often immediately correlate language with theobjects and phenomena of the external world forgetting that be-tween them there is no direct and unequivocal correlation, andthat rigorous scientific analysis of the nature of any quasi-objectdemands an intermediate link, which was first introduced by Marx:the system of social activity.

What is given to our consciousness, through immediate observa-tion of and reflection on language, what in language presents itselfto consciousness, hardly begins to cover the essence of language.For this reason, a one-sided semiotic and a one-sided linguistic ap-proach to language, however subtle their analysis might be, arefundamentally incapable of discovering its essence.

The concept of the quasi-object as the converted form of real

*Merab Mamardashvili (1970) introduced the concept ofconverted form todenote the processes of transition of some content from one substrate to another.The features of the content change in the course of this transition according tothe properties of the substrate. An illustration can be borrowed from the psychol-ogy of art. When you try to transform a novel into a movie, even if you plan tomaintain the content as close as possible to the original work, you cant do itwithout some important changes. Indeed, the substrate, the film, imposes somelimitations and offers some new possibilities.Dmitry A. Leontiev.


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relationships is inseparable from the Marxist interpretation of theconcept of the ideal. From this perspective, the linguistic sign, as

the quasi-object, is the immediate body of the ideal image of anexternal thing.2 Having its own sensory nature, the sign at the

same time serves as a component part of a system of forms, and ameans of external expression and a capturing of the ideal phenom-ena that are generally accepted, and whose meanings are gener-ally agreed upon. And here again it is important to emphasize thatthe ideal itself has immediate existence only as the form (means,an image) ofactivity of the social person. . . . The ideal can under

no circumstances be equated with the state of the material foundunder an individuals cranium. . . . The ideal is a special functionof man, as the subject of social-labor activity.3

The concept of the sign must also be introduced (as distinctfrom the concept of the quasi-object), as an implication of such anunderstanding of the ideal. If, in principle, the quasi-object has, asMarx said, its material existence, then being used as the bodyof an ideal image, in a certain sense, loses this materiality. Ac-cording to Marx, in signs, functional existence . . . so to speak,absorbs its material existence:4 a thing in its material existenceand functional properties is transformed into a sign, that is, intoan object that has no meaning in and of itself, but merely repre-sents, expresses another object, with which it has nothing imme-diately in common, such as, for example, the name of a thing andthe thing itself.5

In light of the above, it is obvious that in the practice of scien-tific research the single term sign serves three different purposes.First, there is the sign as a thing oras it applies to languageasa material linguistic body incorporated into the activity of man;

in this sense, we will refer hereafter to the sign. Second, there isthe sign as the equivalent of the real sign in everyday conscious-ness; this concept will be referred to as the sign image. Third, asign is the product of the scientific conceptualization of the struc-

ture and functions of the objective signthe model of the sign orthe sign model.

These three purposes, as a rule, have not been clearly distin-guished or have not been distinguished at all in the course of analy-


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MAYJUNE 2006 21

sis, giving rise not only to terminological homonymy, but also to afundamental confusion.

Let us return now to the problem of meaning. From what wasstated above it follows that the sign (in the sense of the term just

mentioned) has a material side (its body) and that it has an idealweight that is expressed and anchoredin this body. The idealaspect of the sign is not reducible to a subjects subjective concep-tion of the content of the sign image, but it also does not representreal objectivity or those real properties and features of objects andphenomena that stand behind the sign (the quasi-object). The para-

dox is that, existing before and beyond a particular sign, theseproperties may be regarded as meaning only after they have beentransformed, that is, after we introduce the quasi-object with itsown content characteristics: extralinguistic meaning does notexist, and at the same time sign meaning is not a simple copy ofreal connections and relationships. The ideal aspect of a sign is theresult of transference, of transformation, in the Marxist sense,of connections and relationships of actual reality that take place inthe process of activity.

Objectively, the sign stands before the subject as a real signwith all that underlies it, including all its functional characteris-tics, which are determined by the special features of activity intowhich this sign is incorporated. But, subjectively, a sign is per-ceived as a sort of psychological formation in which actual socialcontent of this sign is blended and transformed. The conscious-

ness of the subject in this case remains a contemplating con-sciousness, and from his perspective the sign appears as a signimage, and meaning, as the form in which he fixes and experi-ences his own social experience, without assigning himself the

task of penetrating its true roots and true nature. This is the pathtaken by most researchers regarding meaning, working not withthe real sign, but with the sign image, and not reflecting, or onlyreflecting in part, those sign properties in which the socially

conditioned manner of its functioning is expressed, its functionalexistence6 onto the corresponding sign model.

Thus, several interconnected, but by no means identical, cat-egories are correlated with what is intuitively understood as mean-


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ing. First, there is the system of connections and relationships be-tween objects and phenomena of reality that exists beyond and

before the individual sign; we will call this system the objectivecontentof the sign. Second, the ideal weight of the sign, the

ideal aspect of it, which is the converted form of the objectivecontent, we will call the ideal contentof the sign. Third, there isthe social experience of the subject, projected onto the sign im-age, or, as we will refer to it, the subjective contentof the sign (thesign image).

Until now, stretching things somewhat, we have kept to the

level of the isolated sign. Obviously, this is a mere convention:both signs objectivelyin a persons activityand subjectivelyin his consciousnessserve as an integrated system, as a signsystem.

The first question this raises is the following: to what extent dowe have the right to talk about the existence of an objective-socialsystem of signs? To put it another way, to what extent does theconcept of a sign system correlate with the concepts of objectiveand ideational sign content that we introduced above? It is com-pletely obvious that as it applies to objects and phenomena of ac-tual realitytaken in the abstract, extra-activity existencewehave no basis for talking about a system in the sense that concernsus here. It arises only when these objects and phenomena are in-corporated into activity that arises as a system of content-basedsocial connections, subsequently transferred onto quasi-objects

and transformed in them and as the structure of activity withthese objects and phenomena. In the process of such a transfer-ence and transformation, this system converts into a system ofquasi-objects in which the system itself undergoes a radical change.

This happens primarily due to the fact that in and of themselves,taken in their own content-based (and formal) characteristics, quasi-objects cannot form a system. As it applies to linguistic signs andother quasi-objectsin which, according to Marx, material ex-

istence is absorbed by their functional existencethis thesistakes on a somewhat different appearance: it is as if the content-based interconnections between these quasi-objects descend to a


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MAYJUNE 2006 23

lower level and become their formal connections; dislodged bythe system of content-based social connections that are trans-

ferred onto them and transformed in them. These formal relationslink up in this system to form a new, systemic, functional whole.

The difference between activity that generates a quasi-objectsystem and activity that generates an object system is that theformer is for the most part cognitive activity, a reflective activity,while the latter is primarily an activity of social interaction. Andthe systematicity of linguistic signs is specifically that equal ef-fect that permits them to holdin the taken, converted form, of

courseboth the system of content-based social connections,and the system of operations that we can potentially realize withthese signs in the activity of communication, correlating them withspecific objects and phenomena; referring to them, and substitut-ing them, generating the selection of the most appropriate signs(in particular, appellation), and combining them into a meaning-ful wholean utterance.

Correspondingly, it is possible to identify two sides, two as-pects of the ideal content of the sign. One of them is the correla-tion of the ideal content with cognitive activity. The other is itscorrelation with activity of social interaction, with the use of signsfor communication. The first dominates in those cases where weuse signs in the process of communication. Neither aspect is astatic component of content or abstract isolated units. It is as ifsign content is poured out to the side where we lean our sign.

The immediate reason for this is the incorporation of the sign intodifferent systems, while the reason itself is rooted in the differentnature of goals and objective problems that are solved in the pro-cess of activity, in the differences between problem situations that

arise during that activity.The subjective content of the sign image is not identical with

itself in different problem situations of sign usage. However thiscontent might be modified for a speaker of a language, which re-

mains, on the one hand, a cognitive invariant, which is dictatedby the sign content, in correlation with the system of content-based social connections fixed in the sign;7 and on the other hand,


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its communicative invariant, the system of operations with thissign that is fixed in it and comprises the rules of its use within the

framework of more complex communicative structures.The cognitive invariant of the subjective content of the sign

image, as follows from what was stated above, is that in the contentthat stems from social activity is fixed in the sign, while its com-municative invariant is what stems from activity that uses the sign.It appears that the former is closest to what is usually called a con-cept and the latter is exactly what is most often called meaning.

In the most general sense:

behind linguistic meanings are hidden socially developed manners

(operations) of action, in the process by which people come to know

and change objective reality. In other words, in meanings something is

representedtransformed and condensed in the material of language

the ideal form of existence of the objective world, its properties, con-

nections, and relationships, discovered through the entirety of social

practice. Therefore, meanings in and of themselves, that is, abstracted

from their functioning in individual consciousness, are just as

unpsychological as the socially known reality that underlies them.8

Because of this they develop in accordance with sociohistorical laws

that are an outside individual consciousness. But, at the same time,reality is presented to human consciousness as signified reality.Meaning is a form of presentation of reality in consciousness.

In their second life, meanings become individualized and subjectified,

but only in the sense that their movement within the system of rela-

tionships of society are no longer immediately contained in them. Theyenter into a different system of relationships, into another movement.

But here is what is remarkable: at the same time they do no lose any of

their sociohistorical nature, their objectivity.9

One of the most important features of the second life of mean-ings is their interrelatedness with sensory stimuli. In its role as theideal content of the sign, meaning remains extrasensory, since,although the converted form of objective content presumes the

material of the sign, it is taken as an extra-individual, abstract for-mation. But as soon as we switch to meaning as subjective contentof the sign, it turns out that its existence in activity and its presen-


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MAYJUNE 2006 25

tation in the consciousness of the individual is inextricably tied tomaterial (sensory-material) interrelatedness. Meanings do not ex-

ist for every one of us outside of the subjective reflection of mate-riality, for example, in the form of visual images or any image of

perception. But at the same time it would be a mistake to thinkthat such images precede meanings, and that meanings do nothingbut tag (Lenneberg) cognitive processes. As numerous studiesby Soviet psychologists demonstrate, uniquely human object per-ception is not possible without the participation of socially devel-oped references primarily based in language, and the process of

verbal signification in recognition . . . is understood not as a sepa-rate processisolated from perceptionwhich then processes itsproduct through thought, but as a process that is incorporated intothe very activity of perception.10

These references, which are stored in the visual system and arenot possible without language (or some other means of social an-choring), nonetheless have a sensory nature. Experiments by V.P.Zinchenko, for example, showed that names were assigned onlyafter the collation and selection of references that correspond toimages.11 Here we are dealing with what M.S. Shekhter fortu-itously labeled secondary images, that is, images forming as aresult of generalization, usually mediated by language. We seea triangle, we recognize it because a generalized image of a tri-angle has been formed in our consciousness, but the image itselfarises only as a consequence of an operation with immediate sen-

sory data and on the basis of abstract features of any triangle thathave been fixed in its linguistic form and reflected in the meaningof the word triangle.

This materiality, this sensory nature of meaning, taken as the

subjective content of the sign, is particularly clear in the processof meaning formation in child language acquisition. This is whereone of the components of meaning comes from, one that is reduc-ible neither to a cognitive nor a communicative invariant: the ele-

ment in it that comes from psychological processes that standbehind the sign in various forms of its usage in activity, specifi-cally, the extent and means of interrelatedness between content and


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its sensory aspect, the interrelatedness of subjective content withsecondary images, with visuality. This aspect of subjective con-

tent can in certain cases (for example, in the child) take on anuncharacteristic significance: it is as if the subjective content of

the sign image is projected onto sensory images that are related tothe sign, and which becomes deformed to the extent of their lim-ited (in comparison with the sign) psychological capabilities. Forthe subject, the sign seems to lose its ideal content, preservingonly the part of it that is fixed in the and extracted from it. Andsince the sensory image, to a large extent, depends on the subjects

individual experience, the objective content of the sign is in a cer-tain sense subjectivized, in a certain sense. A person begins toevaluate a sign in terms of his own individual experience, to give itthose features that reflect, in essence, only the relationship of thatperson to the sensory image that represents for him represents aclass of some real objects and phenomena. Below, when we speakofsensuous coloring of subjective content, this is what we referto. This sensuous coloring is potentially greater in some signs thanin others.

The second component of meaning is that within the subjectivecontent of the sign image, which comes from various levels ofawareness and various levels of semantic explication of this con-tent in the subjects consciousness, in the speaker of the language.Undoubtedly, in the final analysis, both of these depend on factorsthat lie beyond individual consciousness. A person is aware of and

explicates the content of a sign to the extent he needs. But theopposite direction is also criticalin certain situations the use ofa sign is limited by the ability to explicate it (as happens, for ex-ample, with scientific terminology). We will call this aspect of

subjective content itspotential for explication, including the po-tential depth at which it is cognized. This can also differ fordifferent signs.

The third component of meaning is that within the subjective

content of the sign image that derives from personal meaning andcan be called semantic coloring of this content. Here, various formsof distortion are especially common; particularly characteristic isthe substitution of objective (ideal) content with personal mean-


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MAYJUNE 2006 27

ing. The degree of semantic coloring, evidently, is largely tied tothe degree of sensuous coloring and potential explicability of the

sign: the greater the sensuous coloring and the less potential forexplication, the greater the likelihood that the meaning of a sign

will diverge from its ideal content.The fourth component of meaning is what can be called the

sensuous coloring of the sign images subjective content. In thehistorical development of the system of linguistic meanings, all ofthese aspects of subjective content take on the status of factorsthat effect its change.

Concerning the communicative invariant of subjective content,it can be presented in scientific analysis as a system of types ofrules that set the boundaries of sign usage in the activity of com-munication. What are these rules? What operations with a sign arefixed in the sign image (however vaguely, as potential) and, con-sequently, must be viewed as forming the subjective content ofthis image?

1. Operations that are directly dictated by cognitive invariance,that is, signs cognitive-typological features that are brought intotheir usage. These are primarily rules that are warranted for a givensign concerning situational indication and substitution. There aretypes of signs (deictic signs) for which these operations almostexhaust the communicative invariant of their subjective content.

2. Interrelation and interchange operations among signs as ele-ments of a sign system, that is, semantic elements, in the narrow

sense of the word. As I.S. Narskii notes, they form a sort of permis-sible circle of cases within which subject operations [that use signsA.L.] correspond, despite all their individual differencesto aparticular meaning.12 Operations of this sort are realized in the

mechanism of sign interchange, primarily in the rules for select-ing semantic units for communication purposes. Specifically inthis sense the psychological structure of meaning is determinedby a system of interrelations and contrasts between words in the

process of their use in activity. It is this network of oppositionsthat, through interdiction, limits and directs the process of select-ing appropriate meanings.13

3. Operations that combine signs into quasi-objects (signs) of a


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higher order, that is, within a signs semantics that is connectedwith the semantics of the utterance and represents compressed rules

(that are attributed by us to the sign in question) of transition be-tween sign and utterance.14

Operations of the second and third type can, in turn, be fixed indifferent ways in the sign. They can be content based, that is, theycan enter the subjective content of the sign image of the speaker(or listener). For example, in isolating-type languages, rules forsign organization within an utterance are reduced to the organiza-tion of the corresponding semantic classes. But they can also be

formal. In languages such as Russian, operations on formally gram-matically marked classes of signs dominate the rules of utterancestructuring. This characteristic is marginal for their subjective con-tent and is relatively independent in relation to this content.

In our previous analysis we purposely ignored, or at leastavoided, the fact that a meaning of a sign appears not simply in thespeech activity of a particular individual and in a particular situa-tion (or, correspondingly, in a particular activity, which is not cen-tral here, as use of language in any nonspeech activity has as itsnecessary prerequisite actual or potential communicative use). Thesign is a part and a condition of the processes of communicationas one of the aspects of social interaction among people as mem-bers of a class or society overall. Contemporary psycholinguistics,as a rule, loses sight of that aspect of the problem, something thatis associated with the treatment of communication itself by for-

eign (and Soviet, in some cases) science usually as interindividualcommunication aimed at conveying information.15 For this veryreason, [in psycholinguistics today] speech is usually treated inthe spirit of K. Bhlers famous scheme,16 according to which the

task of the speaker consists in conveying information about someobjects and phenomena of the real world in a form allowing thisinformation to be appropriately received by the listener.

Be that as it may, only an approach based on the perspective of

the psychology of communication can give us the key to correctlyinterpreting the nature of meaning and its interrelation with otherphilosophical and psychological categories. V.N. Voloshinov wascorrect when he wrote almost a half century ago, Meaning is not


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MAYJUNE 2006 29

in the word or in the soul of the speaker, and not in the soul of thelistener. Meaning is the effect of the interaction between the speaker

and the listener on the material of the given sound complex. . . .Only the flow of speech communication sheds light of meaning

on a word.17

Notes

1. See E.V. Ilenkov [Ilyenkov], Idealnoe, in Filosofskaia entsiklopediia,vol. 2 (Moscow, 1962); A. Poltoratskii and V. Shvyrev,Znak i deiatelnost(Mos-

cow, 1970); A.M. Korshunov, Teoriia otrazheniia i tvorchestvo (Moscow, 1971);M.K. Mamardashvili, Forma prevrashchennaia, in Filosofskaia entsiklopediia,vol. 5 (Moscow, 1970), and Analiz soznaniia v rabotakh Marksa, Voprosyfilosofii, 1968, no. 6.

2. Ilenkov, Idealnoe, p. 224.3. Ibid., pp. 22021.4. K. Marks [Marx] and F. Engels [Engels], Sochineniia, vol. 23, p. 140.5. Ilenkov, Idealnoe, p. 224.6. Korshunov, Teoriia otrazheniia i tvorchestvo, pp. 18081.7. This system is not always fully reflected in the subjective content of the

sign. It would be more accurate to say that it is never adequately reflected in it.8. A.N. Leontev, Deitelnost i soznanie, Voprosy filosofii, 1972, no. 12,p. 134.

9. Ibid., p. 136.10. A.N. Leontev and Iu.B. Gippenreiter, O deiatelnosti zritelnoi sistemy

cheloveka, in Psikhologicheskie issledovaniia (Moscow, 1968), p. 19.11. V.P. Zinchenko, Produktivnoe vospriiatie, Voprosy psikhologii, 1971,

no. 6, p. 40.12. I.S. Narskii, Kritika neopozitivistskikh kontseptsii znacheniia, in

Problema znacheniia v lingvistike i logike (Moscow, 1963), pp. 1516.13. A.A. Brudnii, Znachenie slova i psikhologiia protivopostavlenii, in

Semanticheskaia struktura slova (Moscow, 1971), p. 22.14. This is how we arrived at a system that on the surface coincides with the

known differentiation between semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic meanings.However, our content-based interpretation of this differentiation is entirely dif-ferent from its traditional interpretation.

15. See A.A. Leontev [Leontiev], Psikhologiia obshcheniia (Tartu, 1974).16. K. Bhler, Sprachtheorie (Jena, 1934).17. V.N. Voloshinov, Marksizm i filosofiia iazyka (Leningrad, 1929), p. 123.

To order reprints, call 1-800-352-2210; outside the United States, call 717-632-3535.


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30

English translation 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text Edinitsyi urovni deiatelnosti, in Iazyk i rechevaia deiatelnost v obshchei i peda-gogicheskoi psikhologii (Moscow and Voronezh: IPO MODEK, 2001), pp. 6682. Published with the permission of Dmitry A. Leontiev.

Translated by Nora Favorov.

Journal of Russian and East European Psychology,vol. 44, no. 3,MayJune 2006, pp. 3046. 2006 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 10610405/2006 $9.50 + 0.00.DOI 10.2753RPO10610405440303

A.A. LEONTIEV

Units and Levels of Activity

The psychological structure of activityits levels and its main units,or formativeshas been extensively analyzed in contemporarypsychology, especially Soviet psychology. As early as 1935, in hisFoundations of Psychology [Osnovy psikhologii] S.L. Rubinshteinintroduced the following system of concepts: reactionconsciousaction (or operation)act (an action regulated by conscious rela-

tions); and in 1946, in Foundations of General Psychology [Osnovyobshchei psikhologii] the triad of movementactionactivity.

But the most prevalent theory in our country and abroad wasthe theory of the internal structure of activity developed within theframework of the psychological school of L.S. Vygotsky and de-scribed in detail in the book by A.N. Leontiev, Problems of the

Development of Mind[Problemy razvitiia psikhiki] (1959).This theory has undergone many restatements and interpreta-

tions and has been combined with various approaches andadapted to a variety of specific studies. Throughout, even withinthe framework of activity theory itself, an ambiguous understand-ing of the units and levels of activity organization can be seen.P.Ia. Galperins concept of action can be cited as an example


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MAYJUNE 2006 31

(e.g., Galperin, 1976), an understanding that, like certain otheraspects of his theory, demands analysis beyond the scope of this

article.It appears that the very possibility of alternative solutions to the

problem of units and levels of activity given the sameness of theoriginal theoretical postures reflects the open-ended, preliminarynature of the proposed theory, the existence from the very start ofreserves within it for further development and clarification, andits fundamentally antidogmatic nature. At the same time, how-ever, activity theory imposes certain methodological and theoreti-

cal limits on the diversity of possible interpretations of the structureof activitysomething that is not always fully understood by someresearchers. This makes it imperative that the problem of the struc-tural levels of activity, as an object of special theoretical investiga-tion, be given particular attention.

Inasmuch as the theory of A.N. Leontiev served as a startingpoint for many psychologists and philosophers working on thequestion of the structure of activity, it would be wise to clarifyhis understanding of the problem of units and levels that inter-ests us here. First and foremost, attention should be paid to thefact that Problems of the Development of Mindwas not writtenall at once: works from various years, reflecting the evolution ofactivity theory, are collected in this book. The chronological struc-ture of he book and subsequent evolution of its authors views (seethe monographActivity. Consciousness. Personality [Deiatelnost.

Soznanie. Lichnost

]) are often overlooked in reference to itsvarious propositions.Before characterizing the understanding of the problem of ac-

tivity units and levels in article, there are several things that should

be said about the very concepts of level and unit in psychol-ogy. It is no secret that the concept of level in activity theory isgenetically tied to the concept of level in the work of N.A.Bernstein, formulated in 1935. In Bernstein, this concept is dy-

namic, system-activity-oriented; levels are interpreted as a way ofrealizing sensory synthesis, a way that is best suited for solving aparticular problem given the quality and makeup of its contribut-ing afferentations and their synthesis (Bernstein, 1966, p. 97).


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According to Bernstein, one and the same movement can be sup-ported by different physiological organizations; but such an orga-

nization always has multiple levels.The concept of the unit is particularly complicated. As is well

known, A.N. Leontiev does not provide an explicit definition of it;as a rule, he puts the term unit within quotation marks, and in sodoing, determines it. And this is justified: after all, as it appliesto his point of view, the concept of unit has little applicability toactivity, action, or operation, since it presumes their discrete na-ture. In other words, the concept of the unit is better suited to the

model of Miller, Pribram, and Gallanter, for example (the TOTEunit). In A.N. Leontievs conception, the only thing that can becalled a unit in the strict sense is activity (an activity act).

As A.N. Leontiev sees it, the structure of activity takes the fol-lowing form. At its basis lies the concept of action, of process, theobject and motive of which are not the same. Next, there is theconcept of operation. Psychologically . . . the merging of sepa-rate, individual actions into unified actions is their transformationinto operations (Leontiev, 1972, p. 298). Another sort of opera-tion is born out of the simple adaptation of action to the conditionsof its execution. (For the sake of brevity, we will call operations ofthe first type conscious operations or C-operations, and opera-tions of the second type, which have a different relationship withconsciousness, will be called adaptive operations, or A-operations.)Finally, we have the introduction of the concept of activity as an

action that has acquired an independent motive. In this case, andonly in this case, we are dealing with a conscious motive. We shouldnote that awareness of a motive is not elemental, but it demands acertain special process of reflection of the relationship between a

particular activitys motive to the motive of the broader activity.All of these tenets of the related theory of activity are often

cited. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for these citations to de-pict the structure of activity as being closed; concepts relating to

the psychological nature of consciousness are given only an ex-planatory role. In fact, the most important feature of this concep-tion is constituted in the fact that within it, the structure of activity


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and the structure of consciousness are interchangeable conceptsthey are tied to one another in a unified, integrated system. The

fact that an analysis of the structure of activity usually precedes ananalysis of the structure of consciousness, which is determined

genetically by the primate. But genetically, consciousness cannotbe understood in any other way than as a product of activity. Func-tionally, they are interconnected: activity is directed by conscious-ness, and at the same time, in a certain sense, it is activity thatdirects consciousness.

It is particularly important, therefore, to devote particular atten-

tion to the problem of the connection between the structure ofactivity and the structure of consciousness.

From the very beginning, A.N. Leontiev emphasizes that theappearance of a differentiated internal structure in activity is theconsequence of the emergence of collective labor activity (1972,p. 273). It is possible when, and only then that man subjectivelyreflects the real or potential connection between his actions andthe attainment of the overall end result. This is what makes itpossible for a person to carry out separate actions that would notappear to be effective if taken in isolation, outside of collectiveactivity.

Together with the birth of an action, A.N. Leontiev writes,with this main unit of human activity, there arises the mainsocial (by its nature) unit of the human psyche, the rationalefor a person regarding what he is directing his activity toward

(ibid., p. 274). At the same time, the possibility of awarenessappears, of presentation of the material world, as a result of whichawareness in the true sense emerges, as a reflection of realitythrough meanings.

The genesis, the development, and the functioning of conscious-ness are products of a level of development of the forms and func-tions of activity. Along with a change in the structure of a personsactivity there is also a change in the internal structure of his con-

sciousness (ibid., p. 186). How does this happen? Any mentalreflection is always biased. But it features what has objective ties,relationships, interactions, what enters into social consciousness and


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is fixed in language, and what depends on the relationship of agiven subject to the reflected object. This is the origin of the dif-

ferentiation ofsignification andpersonal meaning that is so oftenanalyzed by various authors. What interests us now is meaning as

the specific relationship that arises in a subjects activity betweenwhat motivates him to act and what his action is directed toward,that is, the relationship between motive and goal. The relationshipbetween signification and meaning is the relationship between themain formatives of the internal structure of human conscious-ness. We could put it even more categorically: this relationship is

its main formative.The development of production dictates the emergence of a sys-

tem of coordinated actions, that is, of complex action; and thissignifieson the level of consciousnessthe most important step:the move from a conscious goal to a conceived condition of ac-tion, the appearance oflevels of awareness. On the other hand, thedivision of labor and production specializations give birth to a shiftof motives onto goals, and the transformation of action into ac-tivity. New motives and new needs are born, and from here we getthe subsequent qualitative differentiation of awareness.

Another exceptionally important step is the transition to trulyinternal mental processes, the emergence of a theoretical phase ofpractical activity. Internal speech actions appear, which, accord-ingly, form the general law of the shift of motives, internal activi-ties and internal operations.

Like activity, consciousness is not merely the sum total of itselements; it has its own structure, its internal integrity, its logic. Andif human life is a system of activities that alternate with one anotherand coexist or conflict with one another, then consciousness unites,

supports their creation, their variation, their development, their hi-erarchy. So it is not the element-by-element connections of unitsof consciousness with units of activity that is most important, but,first, the system-forming role of consciousness in relation to the

entirety of activities; and second, in the double-sided interdepen-dence between the dynamic of the internal structure of conscious-ness and the dynamic structure of activity.


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Let us look at how the ideas described above are treated in thebookActivity. Consciousness. Personality (Leontiev, 1975, 1977).

What is emphasized here is primarily the nonadditive, molarnature of activity. It is a system with its own structure, its own

internal transitions and transformations, its own development, . . .incorporated into the system of social relationships (ibid., p. 82).After all, in society, it is not merely a matter of man encounteringexternal conditions to which he must adjust his activity; these so-cietal conditions themselves encompass motives and goals for hisactivity, its means and ways, and through this society generates

the activity of the individuals who comprise it (ibid., p. 83, em-phasis added). What directs the process of activity is, primarily,the object itself, the material world, and, secondarily, its image asa subjective product of activity that fixes, stabilizes, and encom-passes the material content. The conscious image is understoodhere as the ideal measure, reified in activity; human conscious-ness plays an essential role in the movement of activity. Thus,along with consciousness-image the concept of consciousness-activity is introduced; and overall, consciousness is defined asthe internal movement of its formative structures, movement in-corporated into the overall movement of activity (ibid., p. 157).

It is emphasized again and again: actions are not isolated, sepa-rate entities within the makeup of activity: uniquely human ac-tivity exists in no other way than in the form of actions or chainsof actions (ibid., p. 104). One and the same process serves as ac-

tivity in its relation to motive, and as actions or a chain of actionsin subordination to a goal. Thus, action is neither a component nora unit of activityit is specifically its formative, its moment.

He goes on to analyze in greater detail the relationship between

motives and goals. The concept of the motive-goal is introduced,that is, the motive serving the role of the overall goal (the goalof activity and not of action), and the idea of the zone of goals,the delineation of which is entirely dependent on the motive. The

selection of a specific goal and the process of goal formation isconnected with the approbation of goals through action (ibid.,p. 106). Along with this line of thought, the concept of the two


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aspects of action is introduced. Besides its intentional aspect (whatmust be achieved), action also has its operational aspect (such as,

the means by which it will be achieved) (ibid., p. 107). This leadsto a somewhat different definition of operationit is the quality

that forms actions. While the genesis of action is in the exchangeof activities, in the interrelations between the collective subject(Marx) and the individual subject, the genesis of operation is foundin the interrelation among actions of a subject (one and the same),their incorporation into one another.

The question is raised as to the decomposition of activity into

units smaller than operations (here no quotation marks are placedaround the word units). The concept of the functional block, pro-posed by V.P. Zinchenko, is given as an example. But this is atransition to the analysis of the intracerebral processes that imple-ment activity.

Finally, the concept of personality as the internal element ofactivity is introduced. It is specifically, and only as a result of thehierarchy of an individuals separate activities, which realize hisessentially social relationship with the world, that he takes on aspecial qualityhe becomes a personality. A new step in theanalysis here is reflected in the fact thatwhile it was the con-cept of a system of actions that took center stage in the examina-tion of activityin the analysis of personality, the most importantaspect is the concept of hierarchical connections between activi-ties, the hierarchy of their motives. These connections, however,

are in no way assigned to the individual as something that takesshape outside of activity or over activity. The development, theexpansion of the circle of activities itself by necessity leads totheir connection into nodes, and from here to the formation of a

new level of consciousnessthe consciousness of personality.It has been necessary to repeat certain well-known propositions

about the conception of activity in order to show that, on the basisof its internal logic, this conception is widely open to further de-

velopment. It is open both downward and upward. It is opendownward because it demands investigation of the intracerebral(psychophysiological) processes and structures generated by the


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phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of material activity, thatis, studying them as dependent on activity and at the same time

conditioning the possibility of implementing activity. It is openupward in that it demands attention to concepts and categories

of a more global nature than the concept of activity (as a unit),and first and foremost to concepts of the system and hierarchy ofactivities. But, naturally, this attention presumes the study of theinterrelations between the structure of activity and the structureof consciousness and, thenwith the concept of personalityincluding an analysis of the structure of activity in a broader

context.Even from the cursory representation of the state of inquiry into

the structure of activity provided above, it is evident that manyquestions essentially remain unexplored and have been posed onlyin general terms. Therefore, broad possibilities open up for a vari-ety of solutions, which have indeed been proposed by a number ofauthors.

Without pretending to offer a summary that is by any meanscomplete, we will pause to examine only two ideas of this issuethat appear to raise the most serious questions. Let us first turn tothe propositions put forth by E.G. Iudin in his articles from 197677. Perhaps the most important points here are this authors under-standing concerning the methodological status of activity theoryand the resulting dilemma he sees: does the threefold structure ofactivity pertain to an analysis and explanation or to the actual

object of study?Iudin believes that in activity theory, the only true psychologi-cal object is the level of action, while two other levels carry out amore clarifying role: activity, as a means of integrating psychol-

ogy into a social-philosophical context, and operation, which in-tegrates psychology into neurophysiology (1976, p. 75). Iudinbelieves that these levels are only an explanatory schema, un-consciously understood, also as a schema of the object.

Assuming from the beginning that concepts identified within thesystem of activity are units of analysis, Iudin further notes furtherthat in the trinomial structure of activity, such categories as motive,


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goal, and condition occupy their own special place and that, evi-dently, they must form a special category of units (ibid., p. 77).

In another article (1976a), Iudin expresses the opinion that thetrinomial scheme, sufficient as an explanatory scheme, demands

special verification as the object of study. Furthermore, he reproachesA.N. Leontiev for turning directly to social phenomena (the divi-sion of labor, etc.) in explaining psychological phenomena. Theauthor generally believes that one is not justified in defining con-sciousness and personality solely through activity (1977, p. 36),and calls for the creation of a psychological taxonomy.

While in the psychological theory discussed above, the nonad-ditive nature of activity is emphasized and viewed as a developingsystem that is characterized by the movement of its internalformatives, of its moments, and by their transformations, whatstands out in the works of Iudin is the concept of units, their cat-egories, their connections as independent entities, their taxonomy.

Consequently, the main proposition of the conception criticizedby Iudin has been replaced. There is another problem in the worksof this author. While he claims to hold a neutral positionherefuses to answer the question whether activity theory is the char-acterization of an object or a tool of analysisin actuality, Iudinclearly understands it as a theoretical construct. This is the basisfor the socialization reproach concerning some of its concepts.

If activity theory is a system of units of analysis, then this analysisshould be undertaken within the framework of one particular sci-

ence, in this case, psychology. But, if we are going to look at ac-tivity not simply as a theoretical construct, but as a methodologicalcategory, it becomes obvious that, in principle, it is impossible toconstruct a system of concepts of activity theory that would be

self-sufficient, that could describe a system of activity as such,in isolation from the big system in which it is contained, of whichit is a part. For this reason, Iudins reproaches in the socializa-tion of certain concepts of activity theory appear to us to lack any

foundation.In essence, we have absolutely no methodological bases for the

dilemma Iudin proposes. Units of analysis do not have their own


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