Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Literatuire I 43

transforms his own nature. The interaction is mediated in increasingly
complex ways as the system of tools (technology) becomes more complex.

Vygotsky extended this concept of mediated interaction to the use of
signs, and suggested that it is the semiotic mediation of tool use that
creates the truly human forms of activity (Vertsch,19θ3; Lee,1985). 'Signs'
are socially created symbol systems like language, writing, number
systems. Some psychological processes rely on perceptual contexts, but
higher mental processes rely on sign-mediated activity and are uniquely
human.

The use of artificial means, the transition to mediated activity,
fundamentally changes all psychological operations Just as the use
of tools Iimitlessly broadens the range of activities within which
the new psychological functions may operate. In this context, we
use the term higher psychological functions ... as referring to the
combination of tool and sign in psychological activity.
(Vygotsky₄1978:55)

Linguistically-mediated social origins of higher mental functions.

The socio-historical tradition challenges one of the main assumptions,
seldom made explicit, of Vestern psychology, l.e. that 'the boundaries of
the Individual provide the proper framework within which psychological
processes can be adequately analyzed' (Vertsch and Sammarco,1985:276).
This assumption underlines the traditional dichotomy between psychology
(as the study of individual processes) and anthropology (as the study of
group cultural products). One attempt to bridge the gap, namely cross-
cultural psychology, goes no further than considering 'culture [as] an
important source of independent variables for the study of psychological
dependent variables' (Cole,1985a:147).

The Soviet approach maintains that the origins and explanations of the
highly complex forms of human consciousness must be sought in 'external
processes of social life, in the social and historical forms of human
existence' (Luria,1981:25). Its focus on how cultural variables become
transformed into psychological processes is important because (a) it

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