that participants indicate to one another. The word, and thus its sense and meaning are objective, social characteristics because it is in consciousness “absolutely impossible for one person, but possible for two” (Vygotskij 1934, 318 [285]). In making this statement, Vygotsky draws on the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who whose aphorism extended to any thing: “but only that exists, which exists for me and the other at the same time, wherein I and the other agree, which is not only mine [mein] – which is general [allgemein = common to all]” (Feuerbach 1846, 308). The philosopher argued that some object could not be said to exist unless there are at least two persons for which the thing objectively exists, that is, for whom the thing exists as object. This proof cannot be produced from thought alone, for the being of the object requires that it be different from thought. It is only when something also exists for another that we know it is not a mere figment of our mind. In this case, the object can be referred to. Among the earliest form of referring to an object is pointing. True pointing, however, presupposes the object pointed to.
True pointing thus presupposes both the object pointed to and the associated gesture that allows the object to be seen.
We are thus confronted with a complex of phenomena that are distinct in object- oriented theoretical approaches to psychology but that come to be closely related in an event-oriented transactional psychology of education. Here, the individual as self in the face of the other is a manifestation of the relation between subject and object.
It turns out that the relation between subject and object also is a manifestation of the human relation that emerges into the relation between self and other in the course of the development of an infant (which, as research shows, that not experience itself as distinct from its mother during the earliest phases of its life). The question of the other in the self inherently confers to the transactional approach its cultural and historical characters. In object-oriented approaches, the two members of each pair are approached as separate things, whereas they are constitutive parts of one phe- nomenon – the unity/identity of {individual | environment} (see Chap. 3) – in the transactional take. The emergence of the object and thus the emergence of the world is articulated and discussed below in an investigation of pointing and the original relations from which this evental phenomenon emerges.
ontology, which takes the existence of a word as thing-for-granted and then searches for a meaning-thing or meaning-as-character of the thing. The relation of the pointing- thing to the object is of the same kind as the relationship between some sound-word (a thing) and its “meaning.” To distinguish a reaching movement ori- ented toward an aspect of the perceived environment from pointing that has an object, the notion of “‘pure’ pointing” (Bruner 1983, 75) is used. This “object” may be a character of a material thing, such as the particular shape or position of a curve in the example below. In the usual object-oriented approach, it consists of a pointing gesture (one thing), serving as signifier, and the object (another thing), serving as the signified. Thus, pure pointing would not be observed prior to the existence of the permanent object. It may therefore come as little surprise that both object perma- nence and true pointing emerge some time between 8 and 11 months into the life of the infant.
True Pointing
In a pointing event, the presence of an object is presupposed. Consider the following exchange in an advanced biology laboratory where a professor (P) and his techni- cian (T) are gazing at the computer monitor on which a curve is visible. In this frag- ment from laboratory life, we observe two movements toward the monitor with the index finger pointing where there is actually nothing displayed associated with the sound-word “baseline.” Twice we observe the sound-word “baseline” occurring alongside a finger movement toward a part of the monitor where there is but ground against which a figure – the curve – appears.
Fragment 4.1
1 P: baseline right;
2 (1.2)
3 WELL
4 (0.9)
5 T: looks like a blue altogether.
6 P: yea
7 T: it’s a blue right up in here ((points to left peak))
6 (1.0)
7 P: this looks like baseline right here
8 T: yea (all that?)
9 P: that is baseline.
In this instance, a finger is moving to monitor, but at the point the index finger is touching, there actually is nothing. Yet in this particular situation, there does not appear to be trouble in the exchange event. Associated with the finger movement in both cases (turn 1, turns 7–9), there is the sound-word “baseline.” Those familiar with the work in the laboratory know that the professor is pointing to the “baseline”
even though there is nothing material to be seen. Those present, including the researcher, can “see” the baseline, as shown for example in an acceptance turn (turn 8). The baseline is an imaginary line that some real curve is “sitting on” giving rise to what is seen. The scientists are interested only in the curve, which is somehow hidden in the present display, thought to be a composite of the “baseline” and the curve. That is, the event has the finger paired with this invisible baseline, an object of thought rather than an object in the world – but nevertheless real. We can easily imagine a situation where the professor says, “See this?” and a new graduate student in the lab offers one of two replies: “What are you pointing to?” or “Are you point- ing to something?” In the first question, an object is presupposed but its nature is uncertain. In the second case, the very nature of the finger movement and configura- tion as an act of pointing is questioned. If there is no object, the index finger does not point and makes but an occasional, situationally irrelevant movement.
There are other forms of pointing occurring in the fragment. In this laboratory, the statement “looks like a blue altogether” brings the left of the two humps in the graph into the saliently visible. This is so because the hump appears in a region of the display historically associated with blue light; the right hump is associated with red light. “The blue” is shorthand for a kind of object they are investigating (i.e.
photoreceptors) that maximally absorbs in the blue part of the spectrum. Thus, the sound-words “the blue” actually is taken to be a pointing event associated with one part of the curve. It allows that part of the display to show itself to anyone present.
But there is a second kind of pointing, this time associated with some uncertainty.
The professor had visually identified an object for measurement on the slide at which he was looking through the microscope. But there are different kinds of objects, distinguished by the type of light they absorb. Thus, knowing what the pro- fessor sees under the microscope depends on what the graph shows; and what the graph shows depends on what the professor sees. It is only based on their past expe- rience that there is agreement at the time of the fragment that the object on the slide is more likely an object absorbing in the blue region rather than one of the two pos- sible objects absorbing in the red part of the spectrum corresponding to the second hump that can be seen in the offprints (Fragment 4.1). There is therefore an interde- pendence between two percipient events, one related to the contents of the computer display, the other related to the contents of the materials on the slide as seen through the microscope. In this case, the two shapes are abstractions (signifier and signified) from a unity/identity: a true signing event.
The present analysis exemplifies pointing as a phenomenon transactional in nature: it exists in the pairing and mutual constitution of two phenomena, one of which functions as signifier and the other one as signified. The relationship goes
both ways, and each phenomenon can take either position. The example from the laboratory where the two images – what shows itself on the microscopic slide and what shows itself on the monitor – can serve as signifier relative to the other. Even in the case of a pointing event, though initially perhaps not as intuitive, object and gesture point to each other. In the exchange event involving two or more people, the index finger movement is pointing because there is an object, and there is an object (salient) because the finger movement is pointing. Take one of the two phenomena away and the pointing disappears much as the clapping sound disappears with the removal of one of the two hands.
Pointing does not exist in and for itself. A finger, arm, or other body configura- tion or movement is not a signifier (often falsely named sign) as object-in-itself.
Within an event-oriented transactional approach, we investigate pointing as an event. This event is understood in terms of the intersection of several events. In the same duration that extends over the pointing event we also find one or more cogredi- ent percipient events. The hand and finger movements also are events, which, here clearly seen, related to the changing screen display (curves), where the changing lines are events against, for example, changing coordinates. Though pointing gener- ally is observed in groups of individuals, it does in some occasions occur one only one person is present, such as when readers move a finger along the row of words simultaneously read (silently or aloud). Even though it might be observed when there is only one person in the current situation, the nature of pointing is social through and through. It, as the objects it implies – what is pointed to and the finger (word) doing the pointing – first is a social relation with another person (cf. Vygotsky 1989). But this relation is an event, where at least two person-as-events are inter- sected by one and the same evental phenomenon. In Chap. 3, this phenomenon is treated in terms of the group of coordinated micro-events {speaking | attending to and receiving}. Pointing is thus a joint – not merely jointly achieved – and thus inherently social event rather than something that could be attributed to one or another individual. In other words, it is a characteristic of a {person | environment}
relation, generally also involving another person. Social event means that the two or more person-events come to be related when they are intersecting in a third event common to both. Pointing is a manifestation of the fact that the individual takes the attitude (not to be thought of in mental terms) of the other to the movement for the purpose of initiating a form of action (an event) that the individual already has taken toward the phenomenon in the environment (Mead 1972). In pointing, the visibility and existence of the object for the other is presupposed. Pointing thus also means that individuals have been and are taking the attitude of the generalized other towards their own actions.
The Joint Work of Pointing
A pointing event – existing, for example, in the form of an index finger oriented in a particular direction where something shows itself – often is analyzed and theo- rized in terms (indexical) signs, that is, as a thing, a gestural index. Educational psychologists have treated it as “a part of a primitive marking system for singling out the noteworthy” (Bruner 1983, 75). In this approach, the infant at some point in its early development comprehends an adult point, a signifier, and about one or two months later begins to point. The approach is similar to language, which commonly is treated as something like a toolkit containing many words (Bertau 2014), that is, again a thing or collection of things, that the child learns to use as it participates with others to produce culture. A transactional approach, on the other hand, rethinks pointing and speaking in process terms: events for which the subject-as-event is not merely an “‘active’ condition” (Whitehead 1919, 86) but where events that are cogredient in a duration that also include other people and events against which speaking and pointing stand out (as figure against ground). Pointing, as speaking, is an event; and it takes joint work (event) to make it happen and to perceive. That work often is hidden because pointing tends to be successful; and when it is not, we deal with it quickly and in such mundane ways that we do not become aware of the work that we are doing. To see and understand that work of pointing, we therefore need to look at situations where it is no longer invisible. For this, we turn to an event of reading in the early life of an infant boy (I) sitting in the lap of his mother (M).
As the fragment shows, the infant does not yet speak recognizable words but the sounds coming from his mouth and vocal cords, after some work, come to be treated as specific words.
The fragment begins with an apparent offer to begin orienting toward a doggy bone (turns 1–4). Though the offer is acknowledged in the turning of the gaze toward the left page, it is also not accepted when the gaze is returning toward the right page (turn 5). That event – which has the gaze move from the right page to the left and back to the right – comes to be treated as manifesting an orientation toward a particular feature, the precise nature of which is not apparent in the public sphere at that point (turn 6). The thumb of the infant’s right hand rests or is moving back and fort over a ball on the dog’s head, though the fact that the two are to be associ- ated is itself an aspect of the joint work that the two participants are accomplishing.
A variety of possible objects and characters are offered up in speaking: “doggy,”
“doggy do tricks,” and “a ball on his (the doggy’s) head.”
Fragment 4.2
1 M: isthat doggy bone?
2 (1.3) ((taps 5 times)) 3 s there doggy bone?
4 (1.9)
5 I: ((moves head left, then the right))
6 M: whatcha looking at.
7 (1.22)
8 doggy?
9 (0.88)
10 doggy do tricks 11 (0.53)
12 I: oong gue da dis (0.45) po poo:::
13 (0.15)
14 M: a ball on his head?
15 I: guee guee::neen
16 (0.44) 17 M: oueee 18 (0.36)
19 I: guee:::::::aaaee:n 20 (0.18)
21 M: oueee 22 I: a guee n
23 M: a ao green okay. you telling me the colors hu.
24 I: ((turns gaze toward left page))
The offerings apparently are not resonating, but instead a sound is produced by the infant boy “po poo,” which comes to be heard and treated as a ball on the head of the dog (turn 14), a treatment that does not find resonance when another sound form rings out (turn 14). The sound form comes to be repeated in this or similar form on the part of both participants, until one of the repetitions becomes the condi- tion from which a specific English sound-word emerges: green (turn 23). A
formulation2 of the event that has just happened follows: “you are telling me the colors.” The infant boy’s turning of the gaze toward the left page then initiates another phase in this reading episode, and thereby also constitutes a positive affir- mation of what the saying in turn 23 will have said.
It is quite apparent that in the exchange, the movement of the head and the direc- tion of gazing are taken as a manifestation of the orientation toward a specific object.
But the nature of this object is not apparent to the second participant. We observe a series of {offering | rejecting} sequences until success is manifested by means of an {offering | accepting} pair (turn 23 | turn 24). The naming of the characters presup- poses their objective existence in the public forum of their joint work and the pos- sibility for the character to be identified on the part of the infant. Thus, the joint work also includes percipient events, the results of which are manifested in naming.
The event pairs such as {offering | rejecting} are to be considered in the same way as the verbal exchanges in Chap. 3, for the event of rejecting implies the events of having attended to and received an offering. Naming, which in one case occurs through recognizable English words and in the other through what we might take to be proto-words that already have the ring of real words to them. They are already social through and through, for they have a function in their joint work to assist another in the identifying a specific object of orientation presupposed to exist for the other in the same way that it exists for the self. These “proto-words” are sound events that establish a double relation: between mother and infant and between the pair and the features on the book page. In each instance, the infant-produced sound and his thumb on the ball is but the initial phase in the completion of a social act of pointing that it initiates.
The very fact that the work is conducted makes evident that there is something missing on the part of the doings associated with the infant that would have made the object apparent. Possible ways of making the object of interest apparent are first offered on the part of the parent, followed by the offerings on the part of the infant boy. That is, we now observe events on the part of the “‘active’ conditioning” family of infant-related events that are part of the work of achieving successful pointing, which will have arrived only with turn 23. Here, it takes a number of exchange events until the mutual alignment of the pair to a specific character – the color of the ball on the dog’s head – comes to be successfully achieved. At that point, reading continues concerning other features on another page.