Tidskrift för lärarutbildning och forskning 4/2005

Literature as Exploration
sky for instance pointed it out. Vygotsky was
very aware of and impressed by the fact that the
language is a social creation. But at the same
time he also pointed out that the meaning of
any sign for any individual depends on what
that particular individual brings to that sign.
What experience, both in language and in life,
the reader has had that can enable that reader
to make a meaning with that sign. So it is that
which you also place into transactional approach
that I have been stressing so much and that I
continue to stress. And actually the newer psychologists
are starting to talk very much, I discovered,
in what I would consider triadic terms.
C.S Peirce particularly stressed that approach
to language. Perhaps later I can mention how
that differs from what the constructionists say
about language. And so it is that the changes in
ways of thinking about human beings, the ways
of thinking about the relationships of human
beings, relationships to the environment, about
the relationships to one another take on a whole
different way of construction when you realize
that there is this process going on. I suppose I
am thinking also constantly in terms of how
these things affected my own thinking about
reading. Another influence that certainly reflects
changing views was the increasing understanding
of human psychology that William James
certainly initiated with his emphasis of stream
of consciousness. What I found was that most
people were not aware of, sufficiently, the fact
that James did not just say it was a stream of
consciousness: He said it was a choosing activity
that the transaction with the environment
is constantly producing a kind of stream of
elements, items in consciousness and that it is
the attention, what he call selective attention,
that determines what we select out, what we pay
attention to and what, therefore, our consciousness
is aware of. The things that are not at the
center of our attention tend to be pushed into
the background or the periphery. So that any
thinking, any consciousness, any awareness,
has all sorts of elements. The psychologists
and philosophers particularly pointed out to
us that this means that there are always both
cognitive and effective elements, even when we
think we are most analytic, most rational, and
most impersonal. There is still an awareness of
the self; there is a feeling that is surrounding
that awareness. And just the times when we are
most emotional there is still a cognitive element,
because we are emotional about something
and that is the cognitive part. So it is always a
matter of degree of attention. And there again,
of course, on the one hand you come to what
I feel to be transaction and on the other hand
what I call the aesthetic-efferent continuum,
which emerges out of that awareness.
58