mind, self, and consciousness as discourse

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New Ideas in Psychology 24 (2006) 63–81

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Mind, self, and consciousness as discourse

Shi-xu

Institute of Discourse & Cultural Studies, Zhejiang University, Zijingang Campus, 310058 Hangzhou, China

Available online 1 September 2006

Abstract

The present paper argues for the essential relationship between discourse and the human mind.

Drawing upon the critical insights from a range of social sciences including Cultural Psychology and

Discourse Studies, I outline in the first part of the paper a discursive account of the mind—of

cognition, emotion, self and consciousness and the like: the human mind is constituted in text and

talk which are situated in cultural and historical context. The discursive account is based on a social

constructionist view of the human cultural world as meanings constructed primarily through

linguistic communication in order to accomplish interactional purposes. The central argument here

will be that our thinking and feeling are discursive by nature and in origin. Specifically, our minds are

(a) derived from, (b) constrained by, (c) utilized in (d) modelled upon, (e) distributed through, and (f)

begun with discourse. In the second part, I try to show how, in modern Western linguistics,

metaphors from the natural sciences have come to define, and become part of, ‘‘the human mind’’

itself.

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1. Introduction

In recent years various language-oriented approaches to the human mind have increasedour awareness of the role that language plays in the study of the human psyche. And yet,because of differences in the foundational notion of what ‘‘language’’ is, the question of therelation of mind to language is far from settled. Moreover, even under the general headingof ‘‘language’’ as discourse, i.e. language use—where the present endeavour is subsumed—there are conceptual differences with respect to mind as well (e.g. is mind theoretically partof discourse or is that a question to be deferred?).

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ARTICLE IN PRESSShi-xu / New Ideas in Psychology 24 (2006) 63–8164

In this paper, I attempt to provide an account of mind as essentially discursive. By‘‘mind’’ are meant such human properties as consciousness, cognition, emotion, self, andthe like. ‘‘Discursive’’/ ‘‘discourse’’ is used to refer to meanings, social and cultural context,strategies and so on that are realized through linguistic symbols (or linguisticcommunication). Thus, the central thesis here, more specifically, is that the human mindis a special meaningful element or dimension of discourse. This means that notions of mind(and for that matter, opinions, attitudes, emotions, memory) are to be viewed as culturallyembedded ways of making sense, or making meanings, and socially consequential ways ofsaying things.1 In other terms, the very assumption that there are such things as culturesand minds, whether it is made theoretically, commonsensically, or empirically, isattributable to tropes of discourse from specific historical and cultural contexts. I termthis discourse-constituted psychological world ‘‘the discourse of mind’’ (DM). At the sametime that I provide theoretical arguments I shall also supply empirical examples toillustrate those points. As part of the concern underlying the present proposal, I willindicate how the goals of studying DM can be usefully and critically applied to society.The basic argument for this thesis will be six-fold. The reality of our thinking and

feeling, as in our real-time individual and social experience, is derived from, constrained by,

utilized in, distributed through, modelled upon and begun with culturally differentiateddiscourse—so mind does not exist outside of the realm of semiotic practice, discourse inparticular.Of course underlying these discourse-oriented arguments is a fundamental notion of

discourse, which stems from the general framework of language research (Shi-xu, 2005).Here ‘‘language’’ is defined as ‘‘discourse’’: primarily linguistic-symbolic activity in thesocial context. Discourse, ordinary as well as scientific, is understood, not as truth-bearing

but sense-making and reality-constitutive.

It may be noted that in one sense the object under research here is not the same one thatpsychologists study. For, here the domain of inquiry will be the speaking and writing, inwhich meanings, concepts, categories and evaluations of the human inner experience,taken-for-granted or otherwise, are embedded. In another sense, the topics or objects ofinquiry that mainstream psychologists are concerned with (e.g. the individual, or theuniversal, or cognitive-affective structures and processes) will be subsumed theoreticallyunder the current framework, i.e. as part of our discourse-research domain. So whendealing with the discourse of mind, I am not merely studying ‘‘rhetoric,’’ shunning theissue of the reality of mind.The present research should have implications for both theory and practice. On the one

hand, study of the discourse of mind may shed light on what ‘‘mind’’ does and theorganizing role of its socio-cultural context. On the other hand, explications, in terms ofproperties of discourse, of the taken-for-granted in scientific psychology may reveal theorigins and nature of mind. Specifically, they may highlight the discursive, rhetorical,social-interactional qualities of the ontology of ‘‘mind.’’ Further, this discursive theory ofmind may have relevance to other human and social disciplines as well, especially whereminds are usually not part of the theory but are treated as independent entities.

1Similarly inner experience is reflected in other semiotic modes as a meaning, a way of sense-making. What

Winston is doing in the following passage from Orwell’s novel 1984 illustrates this point: ‘‘He knew it and they

knew it, and he could see the knowledge in their faces. There was no reproach either in their faces or in their hearts,

only the knowledge that they must die in order that he might remain alive [y]’’ ( p. 32, emphasis mine).

ARTICLE IN PRESSShi-xu / New Ideas in Psychology 24 (2006) 63–81 65

2. Kinds of discourse of mind

There are currently at least three general types of paradigmatic notions, or discourse, ofthe human mind. First of all, there is a notion of mind as having an independent existenceand as being individualistic in nature, as has by and large characterized traditional Westernpsychological discourse. It is a notion that can be traced back through Cartesianism toPlatonism. Second, in more recent years, Cultural Psychology (CP) has argued instead thatmind and culture interpenetrate each other and that it is the interrelation between the twothat should be the proper domain of research. Third, Discursive Psychology (DP) hasdrawn attention to the social-functional nature of ‘‘psychological’’ data and recommendeddiscourse as the central topic of analysis. Because these intellectual trends form importantreference points and, in the latter two cases, provide inspirations, for the current theses, Ishall briefly outline them here.

2.1. Modern Western psychology

Modern Western psychology has been characterized by individualization in theory and,consequently, idealization in research practice. In this view, mind is ‘‘the centralinformation-processing mechanism’’ hidden behind observable behavior. Within thistradition, a language-related approach would proceed from the assumption that languageis a window onto mind and therefore use the former as a tool to describe the latter. Takethe classic individualistic kind of psychology—for example, Aphek and Tobin’s (1990)semiotics of fortune telling; Karl Buhler’s (1990) communication theory; Heider’s, 1958theory of making sense through language use; Jan Smedslund’s (2004) theory of language;or Wierzbicka’s (1999) semantics. Here attempts are made to elevate ordinaryconversations and specify the formal structures of language in the organisation ofpsychological phenomena.

However, from the point of view of the social and cultural context of language andhuman conduct, this psychology is based on a wrong presupposition about the nature oflanguage (see ‘‘Discursive Psychology’’ below). Although the foregoing presentation maybe rejected as a caricature, it remains a fact that is has led to little understanding of humanconduct in real-life circumstances, even less to educational reform or resolutions of socio-cultural conflict (Bruner, 1986; Wertsch, 1991, pp. 1–5).

2.2. Cultural psychology

A major challenge to mainstream psychology is the (re)turn to CP. This is a resurgenceof the cultural understanding of psychology, which dates back to Humboldt, Boas, Sapirand Whorf. It is most forcefully formulated by Cole (1996a), Wertsch (1991), Jahoda(1992), and Shweder (1990); cf. Gumperz and Levinson (1991, 1996). The central thesis isthat on the one hand psychology does not exist in a cultural vacuum but is fashioned and

penetrated by cultural elements and on the other the cultural environment is an intentional

world and infiltrated by human desires and designs. The connection between culture andpsychology is ‘‘seamless’’ (Shweder, 1990). Similarly, it has been argued that there is anexternalized cognition partaking of physical objects, language use and social interaction(Gumperz & Levinson, 1991, pp. 614–615).


Specifically, on the one hand, human minds are variable across cultures. That is, theydiffer in form and meaning from community to community. They have particular habits andpatterns of thinking, constrained by concepts, categories and evaluations that originate inthe traditions of the communities. The Protestant and Catholic communities in NorthernIreland, for instance, may have different perceptions of their (group or individual) identity,because of the process of cultural development or enculturation. For individuals are notmerely inward-looking—they are oriented towards the Other and social interaction. When Ithink of myself or of how to act, even in private, I have to place myself in relation to someculturally organized community of individuals or groups or norms of behaviour. Morethan two decades of cross-cultural research support this thesis of cultural diversity.How does the enculturation actually take place? A typical discussion can be found in

Cole (1996b; cf. Shweder, 1990). Endorsing the position of early Russian cultural–histo-rical psychologists, Cole (1996b, p. 60) points out the central importance of what he callsthe ‘‘cultural medium’’ for interaction between human minds and so also for under-standing of the relationship between mind and culture:

Although the Russian cultural–historical psychologists, like many of theircontemporaries (e.g., Bergson, 1911/1983), spoke of mediation through tools, theywere thinking not only of hammers and needles, but of signs, symbols, and language.All mediators are double sided; they partake of and constitute the borders betweenthe individual and the social, what is ‘‘in the mind’’ and what the mind is in.[y] the cultural–historical approach to mental actions emphasizes that as a result ofthe process of enculturation, human minds come to interact indirectly, in/through thecultural medium they share. Hence, understanding how the cultural mediumstructures the interaction of minds is crucial for comprehending the relation betweenculture and cognitive development.

Given the highly metaphorical, non-specific language in which ‘‘mediators,’’ ‘‘borders,’’‘‘the cultural medium,’’ ‘‘the interaction of minds’’ and so on are couched, however, a firmand clear research domain remains to be carved out. Furthermore, since there is no clearconception of the metaphorically loaded objects of research, a theoretical framework hasyet to be formulated.

2.3. Discursive psychology

One of the major inputs for the present deliberation is DP (Antaki, 1988, 1994; Billig,1987; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Harre & Gillett, 1994; Parker, 1989, 1992; Potter &Wetherell, 1987; Shotter, 1993). Because it is impossible to do justice to individual writersin a reference here, I shall only mention a few general characteristics of this dynamic trend.Within DP there appear to be at least two broad kinds of social constructionist

orientation. Rejecting the decontextualized approach to human conduct and the associatedrepresentationalist view of language in mainstream psychology (recall the section onmodern Western psychology above), it studies the discourse in which mind is constructedand used in the social context, drawing on insights from ethnomethodology, conversationanalysis and pragmatics and deferring a prior theory of mind. Here special attention is paidto the ways that versions of mental experience are formulated and to the social functionsthat they fulfil. As opposed to orthodox psychology, this approach represents a majoradvancement in methodology because of its sensitivity to the context and complexity of


discourse. But, more significantly, it represents a re-orientation in analysis. It breaks awayfrom the traditional preoccupation with the mental mechanism and embraces as theobject(ive) of research mind-in-discursive-action, as may be found in conversation, speechacts, on so on. In language studies, it also identifies an important domain of research, viz.discourse on and about thoughts and feelings, because hardly any systematic account hasbeen offered as yet.

The other kind of social constructionist orientation starts with what might be called ananti-Cartesian, semiotic theory of mind: mind envisaged as symbol use and discourse(Bakhtin, 1981; Billig, 1987; Gergen, 1994; Volosinov, 1986, Chapter 3, 1987; Vygotsky,1978, 1986; Wertsch, 1991; cf. Harre & Gillett, 1994).2 There is nothing ‘‘in our mind’’other than symbolic discourse—nothing but structures (e.g., categories) and processes(e.g., argumentation) which are derived from discourse. The mind-discourse can be bothpublic and private and is accessible (e.g., as social practice) when required. Billig (1987) forinstance, drawing on classical rhetoric, argues that thinking is basically debating betweentwo opposing positions and that therefore to study the human mind is to studyargumentative discourse and related ideologies (as historically derived, power related,common sense). As no theoretical distinction is considered necessary in this approachbetween ‘‘internal’’ and ‘‘external’’ discourse, ‘‘observable’’ public discourse becomes asuitable focus for analysis.

It may be realized that these discursive-psychological approaches rely on a notion of‘‘discourse’’ (ultimately, of ‘‘language’’) that needs to be made explicit. They have tendedto assume, implicitly and eclectically, concepts of language and discourse fromconversation analysis, pragmatics, and certain versions of discourse analysis. A moreinclusive, dynamic view of human language needs to be made explicit, in which discourse isseen as both constituting reality and changing it. Moreover, there has been a tendency torefuse to consider second-order—psychological—questions. Notable among these are howto contribute to psychological well-being, and how mind is interconnected with culture(recall the section on ‘‘cultural psychology’’ above).

2In their ‘‘second cognitive revolution,’’ Harre and Gillett (1994) draw upon Wittgenstein’s understanding of

language as symbol(ic) use and suggest that the subject matter of psychology should be the ‘‘discourses,

significations, subjectivities, and positionings [regardless of what these terms mean], for it is in these that

psychological phenomena actually exist’’ (p. 22). On the other hand, however, they seem to assume another—

philosophical, or at least non-discursive—level of the human mind: ‘‘We will therefore identify a person as having

a coherent mind or personality to the extent that individuals can be credited with adopting various positions

within different discourses and fashioning for themselves, however intentionally or unintentionally, a unique

complex of subjectivities (essentially private discourses) with some longitudinal integrity. In this sense, there is a

psychological reality to each individual. [y] And to be a psychological being at all, one must be in possession of

some minimal repertoire of the cluster of skills necessary to the management of the discourses into which one may

from time to time enter’’ (pp. 25–26, emphases mine). Here one might wonder how to relate symbolic use of

language mentioned earlier with the ‘‘unique complex of subjectivities,’’ ‘‘psychological reality’’ ‘‘skills,’’ and so

on. Furthermore, one might wonder how these clearly philosophically reified, ‘‘unique’’ properties are then

connected with their context when they write, ‘‘The difference between the mind or personality as seen in this way

and the traditional view is that we see it as dynamic and essentially embedded in historical, political, cultural,

social, and interpersonal contexts. It is not definable in isolation’’ (p. 25). They are trying to bring together

essentially incompatible frameworks. Moreover, in either case, one still has to decide and define how the discourse

of mind might differ from other kinds of discourse; otherwise all discourse becomes the domain of the study of

mind.


2.4. Social constructionist linguistics: a theoretical preamble

The notion of mind that this paper is devoted to spelling out is derived from aframework for language study that I have called Social Constructionist Linguistics (SCL;cf. Shi-xu, 1999, 2000). SCL is ‘‘social constructionist’’ in at least two related senses: Itcontains as its meta-theoretical rationale a social constructionist critique of modernWestern linguistics, and it offers an alternative social constructionist framework oflanguage. Before embarking upon SCL itself, let me clarify the notion of ‘‘socialconstructionism’’ that I am using in this connection.

2.5. Social constructionism

Like many versions of social constructionism (SC), the present one can be traced toBerger and Luckmann’s (1967) sociology of knowledge, according to which, our world isconstructed out of social practices and arrangements. However, unlike the other kinds withtheir specific objects of knowledge (Pearce, 1995), the present framework is concerned withthe social human world, as opposed to the material natural world.3 It is a world of being-

meaningful, meaning-giving and meaning-making. And the rule governing this world is notsolely ‘‘the ultimate truth,’’ but morals or norms for speaking and writing, or moregenerally for (inter)action. This social human world is equivalent to what Sismondo (1993,p. 547) terms ‘‘social projects, whereby such things as cities, economies, legislation andknowledge are constructed by many people interacting, possibly with differing orconflicting goals.’’4 Thus the present form of social constructionism will have no quarrelwith what Potter (1996) has called the ‘‘furniture/death argument,’’ because it deals witharguments concerning other—social, human—subject matter alone. With particularreference to the subject matter of the present paper, it is concerned with emotion,cognition, self, consciousness—indeed, with the reality of mind.One anthropological work is particularly amenable to and to a large extent consistent

with our discourse approach Geertz’s book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) hasalready become a classic of social science. In the following I shall provide a gist of the ideasthat are central to our discourse studies of culture. Geertz’s semiotic approach is a reactionon the one hand against ‘‘subjectivism,’’ wherein culture is viewed as a psychologicalphenomenon. On the other, it rejects ‘‘objectivism,’’ wherein culture is assumed to bepatterned observable behaviour. Geertz argues that both misconstrue cultural phenomena.Violin playing, for example, neither reduced to the player’s knowledge and skills nor to theviolin. Culture, according to Geertz, is essentially a semiotic, symbolic or meaningful

phenomenon, ‘‘webs of significance’’ that human beings have spun themselves and in whichthey are ‘‘suspended’’ (p. 5). Consequently, the task of the anthropologist is to interpret it;hence anthropology should be an interpretive science (see. p. 15). The term ‘‘interpret’’implies that the researcher’s subjective dimension is in his/her investigation andconclusion; similarly, the accounts provided by informants are also subjective (pp. 9,20). Further, the term may be understood to take account of the fact that anthropology is a

3However, the boundary between the two is not clear-cut and may be subject to rhetorical maintenance (Gieryn,

1995).4Another near parallel would be what Parker (1992) categorizes as the ‘‘epistemological sphere’’—things we

give meaning to and talk about (cf. Burr, 1995, p. 86).


form of (literary) writing (pp. 16, 19) and as such it involves reconstructing data (p. 9). Theterm further implies that what is interpreted is meaning (instead of predictive laws), and itsuggests that an anthropological interpretation is not the singular truth but incomplete andcontestable.

What does interpretation involve specifically? Geertz uses various terms to explicate it,perhaps inconsistently in some cases. It is, says Geertz, ‘‘explication’’ (p. 5), ‘‘thick

description’’ (as opposed to ‘‘thin description’’, p. 7) of what people do. But what is ‘‘thickdescription’’—which has become a catch phrase? The anthropologist should try to determinethe ‘‘social ground and import’’ of ‘‘symbolic action’’ (p. 9); or ‘‘what it is, ridicule orchallenge, irony or anger, snobbery or pride, that, in their occurrence and through theiragency, is getting said’’ (p. 10) or done; a people’s culture’s ‘‘normalness without reducingtheir particularity’’ (p. 14); or ‘‘the flow of social discourse’’ (p. 20). Other expressions forthick description are: ‘‘to clarify what goes on in [y] [particular] places, to reduce thepuzzlement [y]—to which unfamiliar acts emerging out of unknown background naturallygive rise’’ (p. 16), or ‘‘tracing the curve of a social discourse; fixing it into an inspectableform’’ (p. 19). Further, thick description requires the anthropologist to pay special attentionto the participant or actor’s own perspective, or to ‘‘construct actor-oriented descriptions’’(p. 15), hence ‘‘the verstehen approach’’ or ‘‘emic analysis.’’ (pp. 14–15). Another specialquality of thick description is its specificity: ‘‘The important thing about the anthropologist’sfindings is their complex specificness, their circumstantiality. It is with the kind of materialproduced by long-term, mainly (though not exclusively) qualitative, highly participative, andalmost obsessively fine-comb field study in confined contexts [y]’’ (p. 23).

There seems a broader—proactive—aim in Geertz’s interpretative anthropology: to‘‘converse with’’ the people one studies (p. 13) or, in other words, ‘‘the enlargement of theuniverse of human discourse’’ (p. 14).

From the above, it appears that Geertz conceptualizes culture as a piece of discourse (seealso p. 18). To study culture is ‘‘like trying to read (in the sense of ‘construct a reading of’)a manuscript—foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, andtendentious commentaries [y]’’ (p. 10). Other times, he considers it as the context (p. 14)in which things of interest can be rendered intelligible. But it should be grasped that thecentral thrust of Geertz’s thesis is (explicitly) a late Wittgensteinian one: to study culture isto study the meaning of what people do (p. 17). For culture is articulated in and throughsocial actions and its meaning is found, not in intrinsic relationships between signs andother signs in social isolation, but in their use in social actions.

Geertz projects a relative picture of culture and cultural studies, but he explicitly rejectsrelativism in anthropological research. It seems that for him the criteria for ‘‘appraisal’’(p. 16) should be the ones that distinguish ‘‘winks from twitches and real winks frommimicked ones’’ (p. 16), or that distinguish better guesses from worse ones (p. 20).However, on this issue he seems to be particularly vague: ‘‘It [appraisal] is not against abody of uninterpreted data, radically thinned descriptions, that we must measure thecogency of our explications, but against the power of the scientific imagination to bring usinto touch with the lives of strangers’’ (p. 16).

2.6. Social constructionist linguistics

When one takes a discursive approach to opinions and to the human mind moregenerally, it should be realized that one operates under a general theory of discourse,


consciously or inadvertently. It is necessary, therefore, to make clear the notion ofdiscourse at the outset. The present study of opinion is conducted within the framework ofSocial Constructionist Linguistics (SCL), an inter-disciplinary language research programdesigned for the study of culture and mind (cf. Shi-xu, 1999, 2000). This is neither anentirely new or unique framework nor an existing tradition. It is rather a program in the re-making. And I must acknowledge that it has been inspired by many ideas and insights inthe language-oriented social and human sciences (Billig, 1987; Caldas-Coulthard &Coulthard, 1996; Cole, 1996a; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Fairclough, 1989, 1995; Gergen,1994; Grace, 1987; Harris, 1981; Kress, 1991; Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Shweder, 1990;Van Dijk, 1993; Wertsch, 1991; Wodak, 1996, to name but a few). The most importantfeature of this work is the attempt to construct a notion of language through which we canstudy culture and mind together and search for critical and helpful insights and strategies. Itis not possible to give a full account of this here; I shall only briefly outline the notions ofdiscourse, the discourse of mind and the discourse of opinion.

2.7. Discourse

In SCL, it is reasoned that real human language should be defined as linguistic– symbolic

activity in the social context; such activity is referred to here as ‘‘discourse,’’ or alternatively‘‘linguistic communication.’’ The concept of discourse has been variously characterized indifferent traditions, but, in the present framework, three properties are highlighted withreference to the particular issues of truth, the Self–Other relation, and human reality.First, because of the primarily moral, meaningful and performative nature of our social

and cultural world, discourse does not mirror reality and therefore cannot be assessed interms of truth (Austin, 1962; Wittgenstein, 1968). Rather, discourse constructs and acts

upon reality, by means of its own resources, in light of the norms and rules of particularspeech communities, with ideological purposes and consequences.Second, discourse is a process and product of the interplay between two sub-themes: the

Self and the Other. That is, on the one hand is the notion of individual or group agency—the discourse of Self, so to speak. On the other hand is the discourse of Other, whichincludes such meaningful components as: (a) linguistic resources (e.g. words, metaphors,and grammar); (b) social others—the second, third and generalized persons (i.e., ‘‘you’’,‘‘he/she/they,’’ or a potential interactant); and (c) the cultural ways of discourseproduction and interpretation. Here it is important to emphasize that the linguistic, socialand cultural Other interacts with the speaking Self dialectically.Third, and the most importantly, discourse is co-constitutive of our human-social reality

(‘‘co’’ is used to emphasize that the one entity cannot exist without the other; each is‘‘constitutive’’ through concepts, categories, and other meaning-making processes ofdiscourse). In particular, the cultural and psychological dimensions of our reality areunderstood interpenetrate each other in and through the medium of discourse.

3. Discursive co-constitution of mind

Having defined our foundational notion of discourse and its interconnection with thesocial human world generally, we are now in a position to tease out how exactly the humanmind fits in. The central thesis I will be advocating is that, to reiterate, mind is co-

constituted by discourse. The prefix ‘‘co’’ is used both to allow for psychological reality and


to deny its independent, universal existence. It implies a dialectical relationship of mind todiscourse—mind is made up of discourse, and discourse is made up of mind—and anindeterminate boundary between mind and discourse, though my emphasis is on the latter.Furthermore, ‘‘co’’ is used to suggest that discourse is one semiotic mode amongst othersin which mind operates—but it is the most important one. For this thesis, I find myarguments in five specific loci. Mind is (a) derived from cultural (meanings of) discourse;(b) constrained by discourse; (c) utilized by discourse; (d) modelled upon discourse; (e)distributed in discourse; and (f) begun with discourse.5

Taken individually, none of the following arguments is entirely new. What I havewanted to do is to align them in one place so as to form a distinct understanding of mindand to consolidate the foundation for discursive study of psychology. In the final section, Ishall suggest that to understand people’s minds and to improve their psychological well-being is to engage with discourse.

3.1. Derived from (cultural) discourse

First, the very idea that there is a thing called ‘‘mind’’ (or that we ‘‘have minds’’) and thatit has such and such a property is a meaning that arose from culturally differentiateddiscourse (Billig, 1995, p. 57; Danziger, 1997; Simons, 1989). In many cultures of theworld, people have a way of talking about mind and in the various cultural and historicalcontexts; yet the definitions and classifications of mind in particular languages aredifferent. This cultural diversity in discourse meanings about what constitutes mind atteststo the discursive grounding and origins of mind.

Modern Western scientific psychology, for example, can be traced back to at least theCartesian philosophical discourse of mind and body three and a half centuries ago (Harre& Gillett, 1994, p. 4). To retain its object of research, Western psychology has also oftenresorted to metaphors, presuppositions and other discursive strategies (Soyland, 1994).The Freudian conscious and unconscious, as Volosinov’s (1987) critical analysis reveals,are really like each other and they are both discursively produced. Freud divided up thehuman mind into a set of hidden layers to which ordinary people have no access, but thatnotion of the human psyche is contradicted in other cultures. The notion of ‘‘cognition’’ inmodern Western psychology, similarly, can only be given an artificial translation like‘‘Ren-zhi’’ (‘‘perception-knowledge’’); it does not have a counterpart in Chineseprofessional discourse or it would have different significance.

Everyday language, too, contains a good deal of common sense and maxims about whatmind is and does, e.g. in the discourse of novelists, politicians, lovers, players of games(Ryle, 1949, pp. 319–330; Heider, 1958). Often, concepts and categories of mind arepresupposed in discourse and these presuppositions differ from period to period and fromcommunity to community. For example, the Chinese concepts ‘‘Qin-Cao’’ or ‘‘Xin-Suan’’can only be awkwardly translated into, say, English. The Chinese classical thinker, MengZi (‘‘Mencius’’), had very different notions of ‘‘mind,’’ ‘‘will,’’ ‘‘propensities,’’ and‘‘feelings’’ from those that prevail in the West (Richards, 1932). Danziger (1997) reportsthat Western ‘‘motivation’’ would not constitute a coherent concept or topic in Indonesianpsychological studies. The emotion of ‘‘anger’’ in one Filipino tribal culture is necessary

5Some (elements) of the arguments below are interrelated and therefore may have to be repeated for the sake of

logic.


for the conception of life (Rosaldo, 1980). What Self is/means in one cultural setting mayhave different significance from that in another. Similarly, the notion of ‘‘centralinformation-processing mechanism’’ is but a product of the discourse of the moderncomputer age.

4. Introduction: the inter-infiltration of culture and mind

One of the central themes I want to develop in the SCL programme is that culture andmind are constructed and co-constituted by discourse. In this part I shall therefore outlinethe arguments for the interpenetration of culture and mind, drawing on recent work inCultural Psychology (Shweder, 1990), and cross-cultural psychology (Cole, 1996b), as wellas ideas from other disciplines. Towards the end I shall indicate why it is essential andnecessary for us to move on to formulate a discursive theory of culture and mind.The relation between culture and mind has to do with the notions of the individual and

the environment, of nature and culture, of subjectivity and objectivity, and a host ofothers.Throughout the history of Western scholarship, mind has by and large been construed

as residing in the individual.Culture, on the other hand, has been thought of as either a set of beliefs and norms of

behaviour (‘‘knowledge’’) or a set of entities out there.In the social and human sciences, approaches to culture have tended to ignore mind

(think of anthropology) and, conversely, approaches to mind have tended to ignore culture(think of psychology, even ‘‘cross-cultural’’ psychology). But there is no mind withoutculture and vice versa. Culture is subject to individual interpretation; it is what Shweder(1990) calls an ‘‘intentional world.’’ Mind, on the other hand, is a cultural product in thatit is interpreted differently across cultures. They interpenetrate each other.Behind these central themes of SCL and of culture-and-mind-in-discourse in particular

are two major sets of assumptions. On the one hand, I take it as basically true that cultureand mind interpenetrate and are interdependent upon each other. On the other hand, Iassume that discourse is linguistic–symbolic activity that makes meaning for and givesmeaning to our human experience.The three worlds interpenetrate, saturate, make up, depend on, one another, but

discourse is regarded as the principal mode in which the social and the individualexperiences exist and develop.

5. The intentional world: cultural psychology

I shall approach the issue of the interrelation of culture and mind from two tacks, viz.culture on the one side and mind on the other.In this section I shall try to argue that culture is interpretive (or intentional), diversified

(or variable) and exists in individual–social practice. It is in these senses that culture ispenetrated by mind. Many anthropological studies have suggested that this is the case.Culture is imbued with human concepts, categories, desires, goals, wants, etc. Dogs are

beloved pets in some communities but may be eaten as food in others. Pets and food arehuman intentional categories. Why do different kinds of weather seen from the windowmean different things to people? Why does the abuse of some species of land animals causemore outrage than say the damage to marine life forms caused by polluting the oceans?


Culture is not a set of propositions and norms (such that they can be shared bymembers); rather it is diversified in that it is interpreted or understood variably with different

members of a community. People may not agree on every aspect of a culture. Do the peoplein Northern Ireland have a distinct identity? Do they have one, two, or three differentidentities?

Culture consists in individual– social practices or activities. The Irish people are renownedfor being warm and friendly. Is each and every Irish person like that? In all times andcircumstances?

6. The diverse mind: cross-cultural psychology

In this section, I wish to argue that human mind is variable across communities, Other-oriented and distributed in social practice. For these reasons, mind may be said to beinfiltrated by culture. For instance, more than two decades of cross-cultural researchsupport this thesis.

Our thinking or mind is interconnected with other individuals or groups, or the Other.When I think of myself, even in private, I have to place myself in some sort of communityof other individuals.

Mind is often habitual or patterned; this also means that it is constrained by concepts,categories and assumptions. These habits or constraints have their origin in the history of acommunity. People may tend to think that Protestants and Catholics behave in such-and-such a way, though this may not be true in reality or practice.

Mind is distributed in social practices and jointly constructed through social interaction.Some accountants in China can use the abacus to do certain calculations faster than acomputer can. Resuming playing the piano or riding a bicycle after long years of disuserequires more of ‘‘doing it’’ than knowing it. On a most common, everyday level, what andhow we think in real time is always tied to some specific activity and situation, in public orprivate. Often our thoughts are subject to challenge, negotiation and change through socialinteraction.

It will have been realized from my exposition so far on the characteristics ofculture and mind that they share one central feature: they exist only in the actualdoings of real individuals or groups of them. This leads me to the major themeof this book: The mode of existence and interaction of culture and mind is socialpractice; in particular, it is language use or discourse. To say that such things arediscursive, however, we must first of all clarify the notion of discourse, which we shall do inthe next part.

7. Research questions on culture and culture as interlocked

Ponder on the following questions: Are weeds or the ocean detached from our conceptsand emotions? Do all the people in Northern Ireland agree on their identities? Are culturalnorms always followed? Can you think of yourself without thinking about others orgroups of them? Why are our expectations about other (groups of) people sometimesfrustrated?


7.1. Working definitions

‘‘The discourse of mind’’ refers to that dimension of language/discourse in andthrough which individuals or groups, across human cultures, make present,maintain, utilize or change the human individual and/or collective interior—thoughts, emotions, self, consciousness and the like.‘‘The discourse of culture’’ refers to that dimension of language/discourse in andthrough which individuals or groups, across human cultures, make present,maintain, utilize or change the origin, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, patternsof thinking and acting and the like of a particular group of people associated with aparticular geopolitical place and a particular historical time.

These dimensions of discourse are thus special kinds of meaningful components oflanguage/discourse. And they can be explicitly or implicitly expressed.It should be noted that these definitions are not meant to close their boundaries; they are

merely working definitions, starting points for detailed empirical and critical research.Indeed these two kinds of discourse may be inextricably bound up with each other andother kinds of discourse. For example, ‘‘I don’t think that I am entirely Chinese; I haveassimilated values from other cultures’’ is a mixture of different kinds of discourse. The fullcomplexities of these notions will have to be worked out both theoretically and empirically.

7.2. Constrained by (formal and conceptual) discourse

The very notions that people have minds and that their minds are not merely organizedin particular ways attributable to culturally originated discourse. It can be further arguedthat descriptions or accounts of minds are susceptible to or mediated by the properties andresources of culture-specific discourse. Or to put this quite simply, what is said and whatcan be said about mind are constrained by the available resources, formal as well asconceptual. That is, because discourse has its own properties, it will impose them upon themind that is the object of its ‘‘description.’’It should be pointed out that mind is constrained by discourse, not in the Sapir-

Whorfian sense in which mind is fixed by decontextualized linguistic structures, but in twospecific situated senses. First, the context of existing ways of speaking about mind in aculture—concepts, categories, evaluations, etc—constrain the range of possibilities ofconstructing mind. A second, closely related point is that the construction of mind isrestricted by the variety of linguistic resources available. Thus, the theories and commonsense of mind that are disseminated through stories, conversations, (text)books, journalarticles and so on, are shaped to some extent by (the context of) the linguistic tools and thekinds of narratives that are available—and permissible—in the relevant culture (Foucault,1970). For example, our sense of self, its nature and organization are also carved out for usin our discourse, and learnt from early on in our life. Certain vocabulary, syntax and waysof speaking in the following section from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll, 1971)illustrate the discursive nature of our ‘‘inner self’’:

(1)
‘Come, there’s no use in crying like that!’ said Alice to herself, (2) rather sharply; ‘I advise you to leave off this minute!’ She generally (3) gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it,) (4) and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into


(5)
her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears (6) for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was (7) playing against herself, for this curious child was very (8) fond of pretending to be two people. ‘But it’s no use now,’ (9) thought poor Alice, ‘to pretend to be two people.
(10)
Why, there’s hardly enough of me left (11) to make one respectable person!’ (pp. 38–39)
There are two persons in oneself: one speaker can talk to one listener (line 01); one cancommand the action of the other (02); one can give something to the other (03); one can actupon the other (04, 06); one can act against the other (07); there is really only oneperson(ality) (08); and one outer (respectable) person is made up of quantities of the innerself (10–11). Up to 06 it can also be seen that inside a person there is an active person and apassive person. So these notions, qualities, and relations of the Self and identity are carvedout in the grammar as well as particular ways of talking, so that forms of discourseorganize the sense of Self. Furthermore, the present instance is a children’s story and fromhere it might be suggested that these early forms of discourse have an important role toplay in the development of Self-identity. Thus, it may be asserted that mind is defined,shaped, and infiltrated—mediated—by the characteristics of discourse.

7.3. Utilized through (interpersonal) discourse

Mind is an object of (discursive) construction that is contested and utilised for socialgoals and effects. There is nothing intrinsic to or inherent in mind that requires ourdiscourse about it. People use language to convey their inner life as part of their normal,routine business. In other words, aspects of particular mental states are required to fulfilthe purposes of their practical tasks. ‘‘I am concerned, ‘‘in my opinion,’’ ‘‘he knows that,’’‘‘I did that becausey’’ and such like can be mobilised to accomplish particular goals. Forexample they may be pragmatically motivated to persuade and influence others. Ourthinking is for speaking, according to Harre and Gillett (1994) following the laterWittgenstein (cf. Edwards, 1997 for the notion of category). Moreover, as we share ourinner experiences with others we are also concerned with our own image and our relationwith others. Because of the social orientations, it should be pointed out that versions ofinner experience can be suppressed, maintained, or changed. Therefore it may be said thatfeelings and thoughts, be it in the scientific–psychological world or commonsensicalcontext, are oriented by such social considerations.

From the following courtroom conversation (borrowed from Drew and Sorjonen, 1997)it may be seen that the nature of emotion and whether having it or not have practicalconsequences for specific situations. (The exchange takes place during a murder trial.Defendant D is charged with being an accessory to murder; her boyfriend, Larry, shotdead a friend of his/theirs, after an altercation during which the friend/victim stabbed andwounded Larry. She is being cross-examined by the prosecutor, DA.)

01
DA: And you had strong feelings over Larry at that time? 02 D: Yes (.) I was his girlfriend at the time. 03 DA: You were upset because he was stabbed? 04 D: I was not upset.


05
DA: You weren’t upset? You were happy? 06 D: No. 07 DA: You had no feelings at all about the wound that he had. 08 D: I was concerned about what was going on. 09 DA: Did you feel sad that he was wounded? 10 D: I don’t know. 11 DA: You don’t know how you felt? I mean you could have been happy? 12 D: No. 13 DA: You know you didn’t feel happy? 14 D: I gue::ss. 15 DA: But you don’t know if you felt sad or not? 16 D: I felt ba:d some. ((Voice breaks)) 17 DA: You felt ba:d some. You do remember. 18 D: Yes, I felt bad some.
But the use of psychological experience is not confined to ordinary discourse; it is also animportant part of scientific discourse: ‘‘What seems to me particularly exciting about thepresent period in linguistic research is that we can begin to see the glimmerings of what sucha theory might be like. [y]’’ (Chomsky, 1981, p. 4).

7.4. Distributed in (social) discourse

As may become evident from the reasons put forward above, mind does not just residein the individual. It is distributed socially, particularly in social discourse—linguisticproduction and interpretation by participants in a culture. From our earlier generalunderstanding of discourse as joint social activity, a similar conclusion would follow, viz.that the human mind is encountered in social discursive interaction (cf. Sampson, 1999,p. 3). Further, thinking relies on semiotic activity or practice—in particular, linguistic,textual and discursive activity or practice—for its existence and functioning. In recentanthropology, mind has been seen as existing in discursive practice as well as in cognitivetools or intentional objects, such as computers or abacuses (Gumperz & Levinson, 1996).Sharing states of mind, collective remembering, emotional appeals, and so on and so forthare rife in our discourse.

7.5. Modeled upon (public) discourse

To the notion of mind as public social discourse, one might object by saying, ‘‘Do younot think when you are not engaged in such discourse?’’ or ‘‘Do deaf and dumb people nothave thoughts and feelings?’’ The answer to such questions is that the ‘‘private’’ mode ofthinking and feeling takes public discourse as its context. That is, it relates to, models uponand reacts against public discourse. Another way of describing this relationship is to saythat the private mode of thinking is ‘‘dialogic’’ to public discourse in the Bakhtinian sense;that is, thinking is oriented in one way or another to other kinds of voices in thebackground. Our private thoughts and feelings are formed, changed, planned, etc., in andthrough concepts, categories, metaphors and other meaning-making resources available inpublic discourse. For example, notions of time as a cultural product, often linguistically


defined, guide our ways of thinking. ‘‘At two o’clock I have an appointment with John; attwo thirty I have another with Alison, followed by a fifteen minute interview withstudents.’’ Without the linguistic and textual frames of time, our thinking about suchthings would be blurred and our plans screwed up. Soliloquies, monologues or other usesof inner voice in literature are a good piece of evidence.

The major difference between private and public discourse lies merely in the kind ofcontext, intrapersonal or interpersonal. It is the thesis of Volosinov (1986, Chapter 3) thatthe inner world is a symbol-using, semiotic, one and that the difference between outer andinner speech is merely quantitative (cf. Vygotsky, 1986; Bakhtin, 1981). Harre and Gillett(1994) have claimed that private thinking is ‘‘derived from public discourse.’’6 Harre andStearns (1995, p. 2), similarly, suggest that ‘‘The psychological universe is a continuouslymodulating public and private discourse.’’ Consistent with this view, it has been arguedthat our thinking is organized around certain genres or discursive types, such asargumentation (Billig, 1987), explanation (Antaki, 1988) and narrative (Bruner, 1992; seealso papers in Baltes and Staudinger, 1996).

7.6. Begun with (child) discourse

Finally, from the point of view of the (onto)genesis of concepts and categories—thebasis of thinking—it may be seen that the human psyche is born out of talk (Bakhtin, 1981;Harre & Gillett, 1994, p. 27; Luria, 1979; Vygotsky, 1978, 1986). That is, concepts andcategories in early life do not come before talk, or for that matter, after talk; they comealong with it. More precisely, acquiring concepts and categories toddlerhood or childhoodmeans to learn to talk coherently or in patterns—presumably a process of becomingcompetent participants in a culture. Consistent with this role of child languagedevelopment as social activity, it may also be noted, the recent change of intellectualclimate has already put the notion of individual knowledge at an impasse.

To illustrate the current point, I would like to use a personal example. When my sonSander was around 18 months of age, and he picked up a non-toy object to play with (e.g.a watch), I often asked him, ‘‘Is this a toy?.’’ He’d reply, ‘‘No.’’ Then I’d say, ‘‘Then youdon’t play with it. Give it to me.’’ And he’d comply without a problem. So I had assumedthat he had formed the category of ‘‘toys’’—until one day, it occurred to me to ask:

6However, tha

verbal thought (

I:
(Pointing to a toy car): Is this a toy? Sander: No. I: (Pointing to a doll) Is this a toy? Sander: No.
This experiment shows that what Sander has acquired is not a mental category of‘‘toys,’’ versus ‘‘non-toys,’’ so much as it is a pattern of speaking. That is, as soon as thatparticular question arose, he’d respond that way in speech. Eventually, learning to graspthat concept will mean that he will have to learn to talk appropriately. Therefore there isno sharp distinction to be made between concepts/categories and ways of talking.

t fails to recognize the possibility that our public discourse may draw upon our inner voice and

as a strategy for example).


Sophisticated concepts, too, begin with talk. At the age of around 20 months, Sanderwould say ‘‘Knives are very dangerous!’’ ‘‘Scissors are very dangerous’’ on hearing thewords ‘‘knife’’ and ‘‘scissors,’’ or seeing those objects. At the age of two and half, I heardhim say ‘‘Wash hands before meal’’ on hearing ‘‘meal is served.’’ These examples mean,not necessarily that he has fully understood the meaning of ‘‘dangerous,’’ or the reason forwashing hands, but that he is learning to use appropriate ways of talking in particularkinds of situation.

8. Conclusions and research goals

The multiple foundations of mind in situated linguistic communication highlightedabove make it futile to try to distil human minds from discourse (cf. Wertsch, 1991, pp.12–13, following Vygotsky and Bakhtin; Volosinov, 1986, Chapter 3). A similar idea isfurnished by Grace (1987, p. 10) when, in describing the relationship between language andthinking, he says, ‘‘That it is impossible to draw a clear line between thinking, i.e. bringinga thought into being, and encoding the thought, i.e. putting it into words.’’ Given thesevarious strands of consideration, let us proceed to defining what mind really is. ‘‘Mind’’ isthat meaningful dimension of discourse in and through which individuals and groups make

present, maintain, utilize and change the human individual and/or collective interior—

cognition, emotion, self, consciousness and the like. In this sense, it is a special kind ofmeaning-making and meaningful product and process of discourse as a whole (cf. Mead,1977, pp. 153, 161, 195; Goffman, 1959). Still another way of saying this is that mind is co-

constituted in discourse. What constitutes mind I call the discourse of mind (DM).7

It should be emphasized that human minds as described here are not merely text andtalk about mind, but also a functioning process of mind itself. This discursive notion ofmind is not simply a shift of research focus or interest (from ‘‘mind’’ to ‘‘discourse’’), but,rather, a theoretical re-constitution of mind. It is tempting, but erroneous, to think thattaking mind to be a property of discourse is a form of reductionism. For, as I have argued,especially in (A), the very idea that there is a mind originates in cultural discourse.Analytically, DM may be distinguished into sub-categories, say ‘‘‘emotive discourse,’’

‘‘opinion discourse,’’ ‘‘attitudinal discourse,’’ ‘‘memory discourse,’’ and so on, accordingto a culture’s meaning system as well as the analyst’s interest (see below). Suchsubcategories will be interrelated with one another, however: it would be hard to make asharp distinction between opinion discourse and attitudinal discourse (Shi-xu, 1995), orbetween identity discourse and attributional discourse (Shi-xu, 1999). Furthermore, DMmay be linked with other kinds or dimensions of discourse, such as the discourse of socialrelations or culture; ‘‘I don’t feel Chinese at all’’ mixes meanings of psychological andcultural experience. DM as a whole and its subcategories vary in reference and significancefrom one cultural context to another, e.g. the notions of ‘‘Self’’ in European and Asiancultures. It is not just that the construction and significance of DM are framed by aculture-specific context, but DM is capable of (re)shaping that cultural context as well.Thus, for social-interactional or cultural reasons, DM may be implicitly or explicitly

7Incidentally, this step will not just be useful for guiding empirical psychological analysis, but it will be

interesting to linguistics and discourse studies as well. For in these disciplines ‘‘’mind’’ has usually been treated as

a separate, often explanatory, category, instead of as a constituent part (for exceptions see Lemke, 1997; cf.

Gumperz & Levinson, 1996).


formulated in discourse; however, creative or resistant ways of speaking about one’s innerexperience can in turn affect the cultural environment.

The current conception of mind is intended, really, to be conducive to the study of realhuman minds that is both instructive to academic researchers and helpful to society. Letme, finally, say a few words about how such an unabashedly ambitious project mightbegin. On the one side, we need to try to delimit and distinguish, in principle, DM fromother dimensions of discourse. Obviously when people are engaged in discourse, noteverything that they mean, or are concerned with, is their own state of mind or others’. Inthis connection, we should further classify DM into subcategories, e.g. perceptual vs.emotive. In this regard, we should pay far more attention than has been the practicehitherto, to cultural members’ own experience and understanding. Important insights canalso be gained by researching the interplay between DM and other dimensions ofdiscourse, especially the discourse of culture. For, as we have shown in previous chapters,culture plays a penetrating role. Thus, it will be rewarding to examine exactly howconstructions of culture (and of groups, ethnicity, gender, etc.) come to interact with thetext and talk of inner experiences. Such endeavors will effectively identify the proper site orobject for psychological and socio-cultural studies.

The real challenge to such a project—indeed to any academic work—is how such atheory can contribute to a good society and a good life—not least, how it can confrontpressing social issues. Given the realization of DM as purposeful and consequential activity,for example, we should attempt to make transparent such social orientations—the goalsand effects of people’s reports on their minds. In particular, we should try to reveal thoseinstances of mind-constructive production and interpretation that negatively affectpeople’s lives. By the same token, we should help people enhance their critical awarenessin this regard by highlighting the social and ideological framing of minds. Given theunderstanding of DM as joint, constructive and reflexive process, researchers and analystsshould become more conscious of playing an active, ‘‘transformative’’ role in people’s‘‘mental’’ life. For example, we should try to create, develop and transform individual andcollective ways of thinking and feeling by undermining detrimental visions or versions ofindividual and social experience and furnishing new ways of speaking and writing.

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mind, self, and consciousness as discourse

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