ABSTRACT
Over the last three decades, Vygotsky's work has become widely known among psychologists, social activity theorists and, above all, to an influential group of educationists. It is perhaps true to say that among the many brilliant insights provided by Vygotsky, he is best known for his richly productive concepts of semiotic mediation and the zone of proximal development. The present chapter focuses on the former, for reasons that will become apparent as I proceed. Simply paraphrased, semiotic mediation is concerned with the cultural mediation of mental development through acts of semiosis. The concept is set to become even more relevant to our ways of thinking about mental development as current trends in neurological research continue. Several well-known specialists have argued (for example, Edelman, 1992; Greenfield, 1996; Deacon, 1997) that both in the evolution of homo sapiens as well as in the development of any member of the species, the functioning of brain/mind cannot be dissociated from the experience of living with others. Susan Greenfield has described mind as a ‘personalized brain’ which develops the forms of consciousness that it does by virtue of what it experiences from day one of its inception. Since a large part of our experience of living is fashioned by our semiotic acts, i.e., by our acts of meaning and, because semiotic acts presuppose an ‘other’, both the social and the semiotic are crucially implicated in the processes of the formation of consciousness. My interest is based on the belief that the concept of consciousness is central to any code-based theory of sociology such as that of Bernstein. How consciousness is formed; how its distribution varies in form across different classes and groups in a society; what institutions contribute, and how, to such distribution; and what part variation in consciousness plays in the production and reproduction of society are all issues of importance to such a theory of sociology. In this chapter I will argue that Bernstein's ‘take’ on the issue of consciousness is of primary relevance to Vygotsky's concept of semiotic mediation. Not only do Bernstein's sociological insights contribute to the reach of the concept, but any application of it in official pedagogic sites that is not informed by such insights is simply likely to contribute to the reproduction of patterns of social injustices that have been long known to inhere in our educational systems. Before turning to this task, let me first present my understanding of Vygotsky's concept.
