On the other hand, if understanding is made manifest by our competent use of language (alongside associated skills and performances) in a public domain, then an appeal to the intercession of “inner speech” to facilitate it, is unnecessary. Indeed, we don’t need to anthropomorphise the brain/‘mind’/CNS in this way in order to account for our ability to comprehend one another --, since, of course, there is nothing here that needs accounting for.48
The contrary supposition (i.e., that “inner speech” is essential to understanding) is clearly motivated by a powerful set of ideological illusions, chief among which is the belief that unless something is internalised it can’t be understood. This by-now-familiar representational view of language and thought is itself based on the idea that it is mere proximity and internal immediacy that renders “inner speech” directly comprehensible to ‘consciousness’. That is, it is the inner manipulation of signs and/or symbols (or their physical or psychical correlates) that constitutes understanding, as opposed to ‘outer’ communication, behavioural competence and social interaction that does. [On this, see below.]
It is also plain that the traditional picture is itself motivated by yet another set of inappropriate nominalisations and reifications of everyday words – terms that ordinarily express or exhibit our intellectual and linguistic skills, dispositions and states --, a wrong turn that is compounded by their consequent fetishisation.48a
This traditional approach runs along the following (highly truncated) lines: if ‘consciousness’, ‘language’ and ‘the understanding’ are in fact objects or inner processes (and who can possibly doubt that if they have been given names?), or if they are based on these inner objects and processes, a successful theory (especially if it hopes to be ‘scientific’ and ‘philosophical’) must account for their inter-relationship.
However, these ‘inner entities’ have been conjured into existence by the simple expedient of ‘naming’ them – which plainly divides and then separates one from another by objectifying, or reifying, them. Because of such moves these separated ‘items’ now require a ‘theory’ to re-connect them! Enter Traditional Philosophy and contemporary Cognitive ‘Science’.49
But, this is an attempt to find a ‘solution’ to a bogus problem. Bogus, because the original distinction between these ‘internal objects and processes’ was motivated by these inappropriate linguistic moves, and nothing more. Attempt because it is impossible to complete the task this pseudo-problem presents those who invented it, or who now try to wrestle with it, since these entities (i.e., ‘consciousness’, ‘language’ and ‘the understanding’, etc.) are figments of the imagination, motivated by the reification and fetishisation of a handful of concepts.50
As any competent user of the language may readily confirm, this isn’t how we already use words like “understand”, “think” and “to be aware”; we don’t employ them to name inner objects and processes. This is revealed by the further fact that we ordinarily decide, for instance, whether someone has understood what is said to them by an appeal to outer criteria. We don’t examine the contents of their heads, or try to access their mental imagery. If this is what we mean by “understanding” (that is, if we apply this word successfully on the basis of outer criteria like this, which cri8teria are associated with publicly checkable performances, skills and achievements (as opposed to hidden and mysterious inner ‘events’), then the employment of this word to depict what goes on inside our heads will be seen for what it is – the Platonic-Christian-Cartesian Paradigm in all but name.
Naturally, this last set of bald assertions needs some defending – but, fortunately, no much.
Undeniably, language has developed and grown as result of the material interaction between human beings and the world. Manifestly, this didn’t take place as a result of the occult deliberations of an obscure, inner ethereal entity (i.e., “consciousness”, or “thought”) beloved of tradition. That observation isn’t just consonant with a Marxist view of the social nature of language and human beings, it agrees with everyday linguistic and social practice. When studying the social and intellectual development of humanity, for example, archaeologists and historians would make no progress at all if they attempted to consider the machinations of these mythical inner objects and processes.51 What they do (what we all do), of course, is examine the conditions under which our ancestors lived – the social and political forms they assumed --, their struggles, writings, inter-relationships, means of production, relations of exploitation, etc., etc. In addition to this, the study of artefacts, inscriptions, buildings, coffins, possessions, property relations, class structures, and so on, would add detail, where necessary. This is what constitutes an HM study of the past (and of the present, for that matter). If language is intimately connected with humanity’s social development, then a materialist account of discourse and comprehension need take no heed of these hidden, ‘inner objects and processes’, even if sense could be made of them.
‘Inner processes’ like these aren’t hidden from us because they are especially well-concealed, difficult to locate or inspect; there is in fact nothing there to study – or, rather, it makes no sense to suppose there is – and this is so for reasons given above (which are further elaborated upon below).
The contrary supposition that there are such occult (i.e., hidden) goings-on is often motivated by yet another inappropriate use of language, itself a result of the influence of an archaic tradition, the aforementioned Platonic-Christian-Cartesian Paradigm – and nothing more. Apart from a crass misuse of words, allied with this mystical tradition, there is nothing to suggest that such ‘inner processes’ exist. Indeed, that is why it was asserted above that these mysterious ‘inner objects and processes’ are immaterial (in both senses of that word); they couldn’t feature in a materialist account of anything since they don’t exist (or rather, once again, no sense can be made of the supposition that they do). In our practice we take no heed of them; our material use of language and our shared behaviour show that such ‘objects and processes’ are chimerical.51a
The social nature of language implies that individuals aren’t free to attach their own private meaning to words so that they become the meaning of those words – least of all a meaning that runs counter to the open, public application of terms like “understand”, “thought”, and “to be aware”. This is partly because whatever personal gloss might be put on any such words – as is the case with other social products, such as commodities --, their meaning or ‘value’ is fixed by outer, not ‘inner’, material conditions. [This topic will be examined in more detail presently.]
Hence, despite his disclaimers, Voloshinov’s theory not only depends on just such a reification of language, it relies on an anthropomorphisation of the mind or brain. That is, it depends on a inner projection of outer social categories onto the aforementioned fictional, ‘inner couch potato’ – i.e., onto what is, in all but name, the Cartesian Soul.
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