ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1 we see that communication exceeds the use of words. Communication, therefore, cannot be reduced to language because (a) there are modes other than language involved, and (b) translation even within one and the same mode (e.g., language) changes what is articulated. In this chapter, I present a more comprehensive approach to communication, of which the verbal utterance becomes but a one-sided expression. Moreover, talking does not follow thinking. Speaking and thinking are each processes that unfold in time, intersect with one another, mediate each other in their evolution (Vygotsky 1986). Thought becomes in speaking-that is, it is not merely expressed following prior thinking but thought becomes thought in speaking. Thought is produced in speaking in the same way as the proverbial garden path is laid in walking. The difference between the two processes-thinking and speaking-thereby becomes undecidable because they are internally related moments of one and the same process rather than external relations of thematized aspects (factors, functions, dimensions). This relation between thinking and speaking as two irreducible, but constitutive, processes is indicated in the concept of speaking | thinking. Here the Sheffer stroke “|,” which corresponds to the logical operation “NAND,” produces a new process that cannot be reduced to one of its moments, thinking or speaking. I use the Sheffer stroke whenever I denote phenomena that articulate themselves in different forms but the difference of which is undecidable in any practical situations that we might face or analyze. In this chapter, I provide detailed descriptions of, and explanations for, the fact that there is more to lectures than the talk plus the notes on the chalkboard. This informational more consists of forms of communication other than speech (words), including gestures, body positions, body movements with respect to aspects of the setting, and other information in the setting; most importantly, these communicative forms do not simply add up, but interact and mutually constitute each other. When students are sitting in the lecture, they, in fact, participate in an experiential totality-including the lecturer, other students, the room, the university, society, and so on-and in the forms of consciousness that comes with it. There is, therefore, a totality and any individual moment cannot be understood outside this relation to the whole. The informational more that I describe here may explain (part of) the gap between understanding students’
experiences while sitting in lectures versus that which they experience while studying for an exam from their lecture notes. The first fundamental message of this chapter, therefore, is that to study intelligibility, comprehension, and understanding we need to study communication writ large, not merely language (text) but the irreducible relation between text and context. The second fundamental message is that speaking | thinking is an irreducible and unfolding process rather than an externalization of existing thought into speech.
