Psychosemiotics

Howard A. Smith - Psychosemiotics. Peter Lang, 2001. 332 lk

Teine raamat, mida pean enda ülikoolihariduse alusteoseks. See teos võtab kokku mõlemad alusmoodulid, mille ma ülikoolist saan: psühholoogia ja semiootika. Tagatipuks on see kirjutatud mehe poolt, kelle valdkonnaks on nonverbal communication in teaching. Nö edusemiotics on ka selles teoses olemas. Ausalt öeldes on see kõige selgesõnalisem, arusaadavaim ja parim semiootikaraamat, mida ma seni lugenud olen. "Abstruse" silti see raamat ei saa. Kavatsen seda korduvalt üle lugeda ja mitte selle pärast, et raamat oleks arusaamatuks jäänud, vaid selle tõttu, et see raamat sisaldab asju, mida tahan lõpuks mõiste täielikult ja pidada meeles. Mälu, taju, tõlgendamine, mõistmine, ruum, käitumine, kehakeel, märgiteed - neist kõigist on midagi ja sealjuures kasulike viidetega, milles nii mõnigi oli juba tuttav. Väga armas on see, et peatükkide lõpus olevate soovitatavate raamatute järele on kirjutatud ka ühelauselised kokkuvõted. Raamatu lõpus olev bibliograafia sütitas kadedust, sest autor on lugenud ja tsiteerinud The Semiotics of Language and Culture volume 2s sisalduvat psühhosemiootikast kõnelevat Watti artiklit (millele mul ei ole ligipääsu). Mõne kuu pärast loen seda raamatut kindlasti uuesti. Seniks kasutan sellest raamatust edasisteks õpinguteks kahte väljavõtet - kultuuripsühholoogia viited ja näited Peirce'i märgikategooriatest.

Two Traditions of Cognitive Psychology
Beginning readers in mainstream psychology can be excused for believing that a single epistemological paradigm underlies all psychological theory and research. Every psychology student soon becomes familiar with a standard toolkit of experimental tactics used to conduct research on psychological questions and with such names as John B. Watson, Robert Thorndike, B. F. Skinnes, Herbert Simon, and Jerry Fodor. However, despite appearances, the history of psychology in western scholarship has been marked by at least two main perspectives about how to conceptualize the discipline and how to its attending problems and issues. The second and lesser-known view is linked to purpose, meaning and interpretation and today carries the label of cultural psychology. This "second psychology" (Cahan & White, 1992) has been represented over time by such individuals as Franz Brentano, James Mark Baldwin, Lev Vygotsky, George Herbert Mead, and Jeome Bruner. Unfortunately, too few psychology students are familiar with the works of this second group of scholars.
Psychology's two main perspectives are replicated in the history of the discipline's major subarea of cognitive studies. Hence, assorted elements of cognition have been subjected to two models of inquiry: the currently-dominant quantitative and essentially causal approach, and the increasingly popular qualitative and essentially interpretative model. However, another large and diverse group of individuals that is also deeply interested in the processes and products of human cognition lurks on the margins of psychology. This group is composed of the linguists, philosophers, biologists, pshysicians, and other human scientists who consider themselves semioticians and who share many of the same fundamental views as the cultural psychologists. Representatives of this latter group of scholars include Charles Peirce, Jakob von Uexküll, Karl Bühler, Julia Kristeva, and Roman Jakobson. A safe guess is that almost no student of mainstream psychology is familiar with the works of any of these individuals.

Table 1: The Ten Classes of Peirce's Sign

Class	Name	Code	Example
1	Rhematic iconic qualisign	111	Feeling of red
2	Rhematic iconic sinsign	211	An individual diagram
3	Rhematic indexical sinsign	221	A spontaneous cry, "Ow!"
4	Dicent indexical sinsign	222	A weather vane
5	Rhematic iconic legisign	311	A diagram, generally
6	Rhematic indexical legisign	321	Demonstrative pronoun
7	Dicent indexical legisign	322	A street cry, "Showtime!"
8	Rhematic symbol legisign	331	A common noun, "Chair"
9	Dicent symbol legisign	332	Any proposition
10	Argument symbol legisign	333	A syllogism