ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter implies a developmental process, the endpoint of which is entry into a socially shared symbolic system, which serves as a means of communication within a community. The basic assumption here is that language is constituted of socially shared symbols and exists within socially shared symbolic systems, the use of which may take the individual simultaneously beyond the present into past and future, and beyond the self into a socially shared reality. The system can only operate effectively in communication if it is not only social, used within social environments, but shared; that is, its symbols mean the same thing (more or less) to all users in the same context, and both when speaking and listening (or reading and writing).
