Valsiner, 2007 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES ch7 Semiotic fields

Prévia do material em texto

SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 
Affective Guiding of the 
Internauzation/Externalization Process 
... the airport official who asked cactus-pointed questions wore no shirt, 
nor did the porters, so that Lillian decided to be polite to the smoothest 
torso and show respect only to the strongest muscle. 
The absence of uniforms restored the dignity and importance of the < 
body. They all looked untamed and free in their bare feet, as if they had ■ 
assumed the duties of receiving the travelers only temporarily and would 
soon return to their hammocks, to swimming and singing. Work was one 
of the absurdities of existence. Don't you think so, Senorita? said their 
laughing eyes while they appraised her from head to toe. They looked at 
her openly, intently, as children and animals do, with a physical vision 
measuring only physical attributes, charm, aliveness, and not titles, pos 
sessions, or occupations. Their full, complete smile was not always an 
swered by foreigners, who blinked at such warmth of smile as they did at 
the dazzling sun. Against the sun they wore dark glasses, but against these 
smiles and open naked glances they could only defend their privacy with a 
half-smile. 
(Nin, 1987: 466-67) 
The sensual feeling of the encounter between an occasional traveler 
and another human being, who is playing the role of an "offi 
cial," leads us to the center of the role of subjectively-emerging 
affect in the middle of the most mundane everyday life events. Our sub 
jective worlds somehow register the details of our ambience-a building 
we happen to pass by looks beautiful (or ugly); our boss has either too 
big (or small) a nose which we evaluate in the middle of a business 
meeting; or children make too much noise (or are suspiciously quiet); the 
TV or radio is too loud or desirably inaudibly quiet (as a background for 
our actions), and so on. We construct meaning for many small and seem 
ingly inconsequential events in our lives. Yet, it is these inconsequential 
"Mil 
-■33 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 301 
events that have enormous consequences—we live through these episodic 
subjective constructions. We create ever new ones as we are on the move, 
and let them guide our further movement. It is a form of subjective 
curiosity about the Fernweh (see discussion of Boesch, Chapter 5) that is 
present in the nearest next step of encounters with our environments. 
All these episodic constructions involve feeling, and possible reflec 
tion upon feeling through the use of signs. These feelings emerge out 
of the constant process of experiencing which we undergo as temporary 
participants in the events taking place within the environments through 
which we pass. Moreover, we actively participate in the making of 
such experiences, by creating dramas, tragedies, adventures, and social 
norms. 
The central thesis of the semiotic perspective in cultural psychology 
as put forth in this book is straightforward: human psychological life 
in its sign-mediated forms is affective in its nature. We make sense of 
our relations with the world, and of the world itself, through our feelings 
that arc themselves culturally organized through the creation and use of 
signs. The realm of feelings is central for the construction of personal 
cultures. The mental—reflexive (or "cognitive")—side is an emergent 
semiotic tool to organize the affective relating with the world. 
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: MICROGENESIS,1 
MESOGENESIS,2 AND ONTOGENESIS3 
The centrality of affective experiencing is a whole that is created in time; 
never to recur in the specific ways it took place, yet illuminating our 
further potential encounters. It is regulated socially, through social sug 
gestions that are encoded into signs at different levels of generalization 
and in three mutually-embedded domains of continuous experiencing— 
microgenetic, mesogenetic, and ontogenetic (see Figure 7.1). 
The human immediate living experience is primarily microgenetic, 
occurring as the person faces the ever-new next time moment in the 
infinite sequence of irreversible time. In order to create stability of a 
psychological kind, the person creates semiotic devices—meaning fields— 
that temporarily stabilize that "lurking chaos" (Boesch, 2005) of experi 
encing ever-new moments. Such semiotic construction is constant and 
over-abundant; the creativity of the human psyche in generating new 
meanings while living one's life is hyper-productivc. Most of the semiotic 
devices created are abandoned, some even before their use,4 others 
302 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
Figure 7.1: Relations between Ontogenesis, Mesogenesis, ar 
Microgenesis {Aktualgenese) 
ONTOGENETIC MAINTENANCE 
Activity A 
lESOGENtTIC PROCESS (activity contexts) 
MICROGENETIC PROCESS (Aktualgenese) 
after their use, and still others under the conditions of no need for further 
use. Of course, there are many semiotic devices, or meanings, that are' 
retained over ontogenesis; some are retained over the course of human; 
cultural history.5 ■ 
Thus, personal cultures are tools for creating subjective stability on 
the background of inevitable uncertainties of experiencing. They are' 
assisted by the collective cultural canalization of these experiences; 
into culturally-structured activity settings. Such settings operate as a 
mesogenetic organizational level of human cultural ways of being (Saada-
Robert, 1994). The mesogenetic level consists of relatively repetitive 
situated activity frames, or settings. Thus, a situated activity context such 
as praying, or going to school, or to a bar, or taking a shower or bath, 
are all recurrent frames for human action that canalize the subjective 
experiencing by setting up a range of possible forms for such experiencing. 
Finally, the most enduring aspect of human cultural life is the ontoge 
nesis of the person, that is, the development of the person through the 
whole life course. Here some selected experiences—some directly from 
the microgenetic domain, and others through the recurrent mesogenetic 
events—become transformed into relatively stable meaning structures that 
guide the person within one's life course (see Valsiner, 1998a on the 
semiotic look at personality). 
>$ 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 303 
Relations between Levels of Organization of Experience 
Figure 7.1 indicates that there is no isomorphism—one-to-one corres 
pondence—between the three organizational levels of human living. 
Some microgenetic events—one-time, unexpected events in one's life 
that are not guided by the mesogenetic collective-cultural framing—may 
have a major impact on the ontogenetic level. Thus, the person's surviv 
ing a near-accident scenario, or a special feeling of unity with a particu 
lar partner in the act full mutuality (see Example 7.1), may become 
relevant for the construction of one's ontogenetic life trajectory. Other 
one-time, deeply-affective moments within personal lives, such as the 
death of a mother, father, friend, may be collective-culturally assisted by 
mesogenetic events that become integrated into the ontogenetic struc 
ture of developing subjectivity. Collective-culturally, the microgenetic 
experience is supported and guided through mesogenetic forms, for ex 
ample, collective-cultural funeral and mourning rituals, to buffer their 
potential impact for the ontogenetic organizational level. It is obvious 
that lack of one-to-one correspondences between these levels is adaptive 
for the successful survival of the person within his or her life course. At 
the microgenetic level, the encounter with dramatic, and traumatic, 
life events is inevitable in the course of living. Those people who live 
encounter the death of others around them, personal losses, changes 
between peace- and war-times, and so on. Yet, it is important that such 
highly affective experiences do not hinder theirbasic progression through 
their life courses. 
In Figure 7.2, a set of some theoretically possible relations between 
the levels of life-course organization are presented. "A" in Figure 7.2 
shows the theoretically possible relations between the levels of 
microgenesis and ontogenesis if there were no central organizer of the 
mesogenetic level. Here, we can observe three possibilities (out of many) 
that can be recognized as existing social representations of the develop 
mental transitions in the thinking of social scientists. Thus, trajectory A 
entails a belief that the frequency of microgenetically simitar recurrent 
events accumulates over time linearly to impact ontogenesis. If that model 
were true, the concerns of educationalists about the teaching/learning 
processes of human beings should be easy to satisfy—an increase in simi 
lar educational experiences should, by mere recurrence, guarantee onto 
genetic progression. No assumption of action by the teachers, nor 
counteraction by the learner, has a place in trajectory A. 
Trajectory B provides us with a social representation of how a single 
but affectively traumatic life event might "decay" in its ontogenetic rel 
evance if it enters into a phase of recurrence of similar events. People 
304 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
Figure 7.2: Different Theoretically Possible Forms of Relations 
between Microgenesis, Mesogenesis, and Ontogenes|: 
A. Possible forms of microgcnetic -> ontogenetic translation 
C = learning 
focus 
MICROGENETIC RECURRENCE 
B. How the mesogenetic level organizes the microgenesis -> ontogenesis 
translation 
MICROGENETIC RECURRENCE 
MESOGENETIC 
CONSTRAINTS (X, Y, Z) 
become habituated to similar "traumatic events" and so their impact 
on ontogeny is reduced. The reverse is true for trajectory C, where 
recurrence of similar events leads to a gradual "explosion" of the trans 
fer from the microgenetic to the ontogenetic domain. This would sub 
stantiate an educational philosophy of providing the learner with wide, 
f~ I 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 305 
recurrent immediate experiences, such as surrounding the child's envir 
onment with books, artwork and music, in the expectation that at some 
moment of quantitative increase of the exposure there is a qualitative 
translation of the experiences into the ontogenetic life-trajectory. 
If we introduce the notion of mesogenetic constraining into this rela 
tionship of microgenesis and ontogenesis ("B" in Figure 7.2), the mono-
tonicity of the theoretical relations becomes very different. For instance, 
the "trauma focus" (trajectory B) constrained by X leads to the use of the 
one-time "trauma" for its maintenance, without the relevance of its re 
currence. The one-time event—by its symbolic memories—"buffers" the 
person against impacts of further similar events. Thus, the initiation of 
adolescents into adulthood, or of military recruits into military actions, 
are expected to symbolically "buffer" their psychological systems against 
the impacts of similar events. 
However, of greater interest is the mesogenetic constraining of the 
"learning focus" (C) where some intermediate level of microgenetic 
recurrent events is set up to be the focus of intense translation to the 
ontogenetic level. Constraints Z and Y canalize that transition; after that 
transition has already happened there is no further relevance for the main 
tenance of the translated experience. Once established ontogenetically— 
under mesogenetic guidance—further microgenetic experiencing is no 
longer necessary, even if it actually occurs. Children may be guided to 
learn to read and write after accumulation of encounters with printed 
materials in educational settings. Once they master such skills—under 
educational guidance—further encounters need not translate into any fur 
ther ontogenetic relevance of such skills. If left uninstructed at relevant 
times (by mesogenetic constraining) they may still eventually reach some 
level of the skill by mere unconstrained accumulation (trajectory A). 
Thus, the focus on the mesogenetic level becomes crucial for an analysis 
of cultural-psychological phenomena (see Chapter 8). Of particular im 
portance is the analysis of processes that proceed between the different 
levels (as indicated by the arrows in Figure 7.1). Mesogenetic events-
due to their relative stability—are most easily detectable for observation 
and analysis. In and by themselves they are irrelevant; it is their "in-
between" role (linking the never-ending uniqueness of the microgenetic 
flow and the relatively conservative progression of ontogeny) that 
makes them a methodological "entrance point" into the study of cultural-
psychological processes. It is the affective creation of signs operating 
between the levels that guarantees both human cultural development 
of novel forms of being, and the blocking of the myriad of immediate 
experiences. 
306 culture in minds and societies 
Affect: Feeling Fields and Emotion Categories 
In cultural psychology, the question of primary affect (at its physiological 
level) is a precursor for the meaningful construction of feelings and 
emotions. The physiological processes of nerve excitation and inhibi 
tion constitute the basis of all feelings and emotions. These phenomena' 
cannot be reduced to mere physiological processes. They entail subjective 
reflexive characteristics that are prominent in the person's self-reflection, 
which are made available through semiotic mediation. The nature of 
affective phenomena sets the stage for conceptual difficulties for 
psychologists and linguists to make sense of them. Consider the following 
imaginary dialog between a Linguist (L) and Psychologist (P) on the role 
of language in dealing with affect: 
P: Sadness and anger are universal human conditions. 
L: Sadness and anger are English words, which do not have equivalents in 
all other languages. Why should these English words—rather than some 
words from language X, for which English has no equivalents—capture 
correctly some emotional universals? 
P: It doesn't matter whether other languages have words for sadness and anger 
or not. Let's not deify words! I am talking about emotions, not about words. 
L: Yes, but in talking about these emotions you are using culture-specific 
English words, and thus you are introducing an Anglo perspective on 
emotions into your discussion. 
P; I don't think so. I am sure that people in those other cultures also experi 
ence sadness and anger, even if they don't have words for them. 
L: Maybe they do experience sadness and anger, but their categorization of 
emotions is different from that reflected in the English lexicon. Why should 
the English taxonomy of emotions be a better guide to emotional univer 
sals than that embodied in some other language? 
P: Let's not exaggerate the importance of language (Wierzbicka, 1997: 9). 
Where Verbal Language Fails 
The difficulty of using language to denote something felt (but not imme 
diately language-encoded) has been a problem for psychology ever since 
the disputes about William James' ideas on feelings (James, 1890; Dewey, 
1896). The affective phenomena are dynamically complex, often defying 
even elaborate description in terms of ordinary language. It is my claim 
in this book that such verbal inaccessibility to affective phenomena is part 
of the psychological central fry of affect in human functioning. In other 
terms, it is the issue of feelings, in contrast to categories of emotion (which 
are discretely describable in language), that is the core of human condition. 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 307 
One of the pioneers in the study of affective phenomena, Felix Krueger, 
emphasized the distinction of phenomena of feeling: 
... the experience of a normal individual (and also all social experience) con 
sists in itsmain bulk of indistinctly bounded, diffused, slightly or not at 
all organized complexes in whose genesis all organs and functional systems 
take pan. It is significant and not at all obvious that, at least in adult human 
beings and higher animals, the total state of their experience often unfolds 
into a multitude of relatively closed pan-complexes. Bui even in the highest 
stages of development, this is not always the case, e.g., in states of the highest, 
permanent excitement, great fatigue, most complete self-subservience. Even 
when we observe experience in relief, its organization, as a rule, does not 
correspond at all and may never correspond exactly to the limitations of objects 
created by intellect, or to objective "situations'* Never are the differentiate 
pans or sides of real experience as isolated from one another as the pans of 
physical substance, i.e., its molecules and atoms (Krueger, 1928: 67). 
The subjective world of a human being is constantly in the state of a 
complex whole of the immediate experience, which is dynamically chang 
ing. Henri Bergson (1907) labeled that flowing subjectivity duration 
(duree). All semiotic processes that the person brings into one's life are 
oriented towards regulating and directing that flow into some selected 
future direction. Human beings are acting and feeling towards the future. 
John Dewey expressed this sentiment: 
Anticipation is... more primary than recollection; projection than summon 
ing of die past; the prospective man the retrospective. Given a world like that 
in which we live, a world in which environing changes are partly favorable 
and partly callously indifferent, and experience is bound to be prospective in 
import; for any control attainable by the living creature depends upon what is 
done to alter the state of things Imaginative forecast of the future is the 
forerunning quality of behavior rendered available for guidance in the present. 
Day-dreaming and castle-building and esthetic realization of what is not prac 
tically achieved are offshoots of this practical trait, or else practical intelli 
gence is a chastened fantasy (Dewey, 1917: 13). 
We feel forward, but how can this be conceptualized? Cultural psy 
chology is interested in basic principles of human affective life as it is 
semiotically organized, and thus it organizes itself. 
Universal Semantic Primitives and the 
Duality of Meaning Fields 
What different possibilities exist for conceptualizing the complexity of 
the affective fields? The differentiated field notion (of above) can be 
i 
308 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
complemented by general abstract depiction of emotions through the sim-J 
plest possible linguistic terms ("semantic primitives," Wierzbicka, 1992); 
These "minimal concepts," such as, I, you, someone, something, this,; 
want, don't want, think, say, imagine, feel, part, world, and become;! 
are used to set up structures for different emotions in different languages., „ 
Anna Wierzbicka has analyzed key concepts used in different languages | 
to refer to affective phenomena (Wierzbicka, 1997). As an example, j 
consider Wierzbicka's analysis of depressed: 
X feels something 
Sometimes a person thinks something like that: 
I can think: something bad will happen to me 
I can't think: something good will happen to me 
I can't think: I will do something good 
Because of this, this person feels something bad 
X feels like this (Wierzbicka, 1992: 565). 
This minimalist example reiterates the assumed mental operations (dis 
tinction of the no good versus something bad happening to a person), and 
the incapacity to think of one's activity. 
In terms of the theory of duality of meaning (Chapter 3), Wierzbicka's 
semantic primitives can be viewed as dynamic field structures (see Figure 
SEMIOTICS OF THE DOMAIN OF FEELINGS 
The subjective world is the world of feelings (German gefiihl, French 
sentiment, Hindi rasa, Italian sentimento, Russian chuvstva), on the ba 
sis of which different circumscribed emotions (German qffekt, French 
emotion, Italian emozione, Russian emotsii) are differentiated through 
semiotically-based reflexivity. Such reflexivity entails a generalization 
based on recurrent unique experiences that lead to the establishment of 
the use of one or another concrete term (for example, fuzzy field of "I 
feel something" ■* year is that what I feel"). 
The boundaries between different areas of feelings, as well as those 
between feelings and emotions, have been traditionally unclear in 
psychology. Emotions have usually been viewed as categories: in 
English, happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger are consid 
ered "basic emotions" and even acclaimed to be pan-human (Ekman 
et al., 1972). In contrast, feelings cannot be reduced to emotions. They 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 309 
Figure 7.3: The Duality Field of Depressed 
SOMETHING BAD WILL 
HAPPEN TO ME" 
; FEELING "NON-something* 
Non-"BADB = 
"something good* 
WILL HAPPEN 
WILL DO 
"Can't think: SOMETHING 
GOOD WILL HAPPEN TO ME" 
are intra-psychological, that is, they are accessible to their bearer 
through introspection, and to others only if expressed in some action; 
they pre-suppose an object; and include evaluation as part of their being. 
As human experience is constantly directed towards the future—in pre-
adaptation to the uncertainty of that future—the evaluation in the feeling 
is diffused, yet directed. 
Human affective processes are of the kind of complexity that has been 
a problem for straightforward efforts to describe and explain. Cultural 
mediating devices—meanings—are closely intertwined with that complex 
ity and emerge from its midst. Human experiencing of every here-and-
now setting is embedded within a field of self-generated affect, which 
can be depicted as fields. Furthermore, such fields grow; they become 
wider (and end up as all-encompassing hypergeneralized fields—some-
thing labeled "depression"), or narrow down to the point-like state of 
specific emotion categories (statement "lam surprised"). 
v 
i.i 
■»! t; 
! 
i; -i 
! i 
' ! 
310 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
Example 77: Affective Pilgrimages by the 
"Self" onto the "Other" 
Of course, we know that cruelty can be mutual between genders, and fits 
the present perspective of interpersonal closeness as an act of personal 
pilgrimage. The pilgrims here undertake a journey into the unknown but 
idealized intimate worlds of the "Other." The utmost crossing of bound 
aries of the self and the odier happens in selected moments of unity of the 
self and the world, as in devotional acts or religious or sensual moments 
of ecstasy. For instance, introspective accounts of orgasm, which is a 
theme of much interest mat is usually outside the domain of public 
taxability or private tellability, reveals the structure of opposites—unity 
and non-unity—even in the highest moments of affective experience. 
A male report: Before orgasm there is a tendency to the manifestation of 
contradictory impulses, as for instance to destroy, and at the same time to 
embrace; to separate, and at the same time to fuse 
At the moment of orgasm I felt something like an identification with space. 
When studying this primitive explanation more carefully I now see it very 
clearly; for instance the following image occurs very frequently: it is astro 
nomical space with its constellations of stars, each one of which is my own 
self but not as identical beings and in an abstract manner, but as desperate 
effort to give a biological value to an abstraction. 
A female report: As far as space feelings are concerned, intercourse presents 
a paradox: a feeling of expansion into infinity, a blending into the universe 
about one, a melting and fusing—yet also a feeling of infinite contraction, of 
an intense focusing to a minute part of spaceand even into a small part of 
one's physical self as it ordinarily is. There is another paradox in the 
identification's loss with one's partner, and yet a realization that 1 am myself, 
unalterable (Matte Blanco, 1998: 441-42). 
It may well be the case that access to the concentrated feeling of the 
present moment is available rarely, and the post-factum introspections of 
orgasm may be one of these rare reports. The meanings of stars—"space 
with its constellations of stars, each one of which is my own self— 
constitute substantive analog to the notion of Dialogical Self (Chapter 3) 
in the course of microgenesis of the orgasm. Internalized notions of 
celestial configurations, as well as the unity of fusion and un-fusion, that 
is, being together and simultaneously being alone, indicate the basic dual 
unity of the opposites (Chapter 2). 
From Personal Pilgrimages to Personal-cultural Appropriation 
On the basis of our coverage of the Dialogical Self (Chapter 3) and 
Lewin's look at the layers of bounded self-fields, ranging from infinite 
|§f 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 311 
personal-subjective center to the conduct in the public universe (Chapter 
5), we can consider all establishment of interpersonal relations as an act 
of subjective pilgrimage into the valued and charming center of the other's 
personal unknown. That core of personal culture is the "inner infinity" 
as conceptualized by William Stern (1935). Kerala-based author Kamala 
Das, writer of many recognized short stories in Malayalam, has com 
mented in one of her short stories: "A woman in love is never satisfied if 
her lover remembers with only one part of his body. She wishes to grow 
like cancer within him, to fill him with awareness and pain. This is the 
special cruelty of love" (Das, 1993: 79). 
The patterns of family and marriage (Chapter 4) provide collective-
cultural frameworks for such acts of personal-cultural colonizing of 
the "Other." It is an ontogenetic parallel to the Bakhtinian notion of a 
"voice" expressing itself through another "voice" within the dialogical 
self. Members of a multigenerational family create their personal-
cultural objectives through feeling with the "other"-grandparents/^ 
with their children and grandchildren in life activities that are no longer 
available to them (or never were). Teenagers feel with their favorite 
pop-stars without ever entering into intercourse with them. The reality of 
personal-cultural worlds entails a constant extension of that world to 
the immediate environment-through the person's affective Mtferleben 
(German: "experiencing with") and empathy ("feeling into"— Einfuhhmg) 
with others. The Hindi notion of rasa, an aesthetic feeling that is created 
in the process of experiencing art or in the middle of sensual passion 
(srngara rasa) in dance and intimacy, organizes the person's future in 
relating with the world. Rasa is created by the process of becoming 
(bhava) that involves active agency of the person. 
AFFECT IN BOUNDARY CROSSING 
The appeal of crossing boundaries is set up by the boundary of irrevers 
ible time: human striving for the unknown is an inevitable aspect of 
being—creating novelty—which in itself is an act of boundary crossing. 
The social worlds that human beings inhabit are set up to canalize that 
intrinsic striving for the unknown in the direction of interests of different 
social power units. It is not surprising that adolescents, post-adolescents, 
or children, have been recruited as soldiers throughout human history; 
and the striving for unspecified union with "the other" has been a power 
ful basis for religious conversion. Personal movement towards the lures 
i 
312 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
of the unknown is guided by the social expectations web of interested 
collective power units. 
The phenomena of human affectivity are organized at different levels, 
from those closest to immediate physiological processes, to hyper-
abstracted and over-generalized higher level total feelings. A hypotheti 
cal depiction of these levels is given in Figure 7.4. 
The hierarchy of levels of semiotic mediation of affective processes 
that is depicted in Figure 7.4 sets up emotions and feelings of different 
generality within the same scheme. Level 0 is the universal—for the 
Figure 7.4: Processes of Generalization and Hypergeneralization 
in Affective Regulation of the Flow of Experience 
Level 4 
(hypergcneralized 
affective semiotic 
field—creates 
subjective 
Cefuhston) 
Level 3 
(generalized cate 
gories of feeling) 
Level 2 
(specific emotion 
terms) 
Level 1 
(general 
immediate pre-
semiotic feeling 
subjective 
experience and 
its "natural" 
Gefiihstori) 
Level 0 
PHYSIOLOGICAL 
LEVEL 
(excitation and 
inhibition) 
k fi n% i / 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 313 
whole animal kingdom—physiological anticipation about the immediate 
next future event in life. Based on that level, organisms can develop 
generalized, non-mediated "feeling tone" attributable to their worlds. 
This is an anticipatory affective state—a kind of undifferentiated aware 
ness of something, be it positive, negative, or ambivalent, that is about 
to happen. The Level 1 phenomena do not require semiotic mediation— 
they are pre-verbal generalizations. One can grant the reality of dog-
lovers* reports about their favorite pets "feeling with" them when their 
owners are happy or sad; these phenomena (on the dogs' side) can belong 
to Level 1. Pre-verbal generalization allows the organism to maintain 
previous experiences for further use, but does not require their encoding 
through signs. 
Semiotically mediated (that is, cultural) organization of the affective 
field begins at the move from Level 0 to Level 1. The person's primary 
affective field is already oriented by one's previous experience. It be 
comes articulated at Level 2, where specific naming of emotions present 
"in" the experiencing person, by the person oneself, is taking place. The 
undifferentiated field of a particular directional quality, for example, 
positive, negative, or ambivalent, becomes reflected upon through as 
signing the present state of the field a specifc name for the felt emotion. 
So, the person can say "I am sad," "I am disgusted," "I am happy" or 
talk about emotions like happiness\ sadness, anger, and surprise, as if 
those are permanent properties of human affective life. 
Sign mediation creates the psychological distance of the thinker/talker 
from the differentiating affective field—discussing issues of human 
happiness does not mean that the discussing person oneself is happy. All 
the cognitive activity of persons that concentrates upon the decon-
textualizing emotions—in terms of their specific categories or general 
prototypes—takes place at Level 2. That is the level of maximum articu 
lation of the semiotic encoding of the affective field in terms of Werner's 
and Kaplan's "orthogenetic principle" (Werner and Kaplan, 1956). 
Still it does not amount to maximal hierarchical integration. The latter, 
as will be shown later, can entail the development of a higher level de-
differentiated field. 
The mediational processes of Level 2 can become further generalized 
in ways that lead to higher-level (in terms of abstraction) de-differentiation 
of the affective field. Level 3 in Figure 7.4 depicts a situation where a 
person—after excessive use of emotion categories in one's internal self-
dialog—arrives at a new generalized, but ill-defined, self-reflection. Thus, 
a statement "I feel bad" can result from a generalization higher in 
abstractness than the specification of emotion categories (sad, disgusted). 
314 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
The Escalation of Abstraction of Feeling: Hypergeneralization 
Finally, the generalization of the sign-mediated field of feelings can reach 
the highest levelof overgeneralization—that of a semioticaHy-mediated 
state which is at the same time de-differentiated (Level 4 in Figure 7.4). 
This entails emergence of feeling fields that overtake the person's psyche 
in its totality; yet these are not immediate (level 0-^1) diffused phenom 
ena. The person "just feels" something, but is unable to put that feeling 
into words. 
Examples of aesthetic feelings—be those catharsis experienced during 
a theater performance, reading deeply-moving poems or prose, or an 
interpersonal situation of extreme beauty—indicate that human affective 
field can become undifferentiated. This happens as a result of extensive 
abstraction of the emotions that are involved, and their overgeneralization 
to the person's general feelings about oneself or about the world. Theo 
retically, that process entails internalization and abbreviation. 
It becomes important to emphasize that—contrary to Werner's and 
Kaplan's "orthogenetic principle" or Lev Vygotsky's emphasis on use 
of concepts—the highest levels of hierarchical integration do not entail 
increased articulation of the parts of the affective system. To the 
contrary, the highest level of hierarchical integration is that of an 
hypergeneralized ("nebulous") semiotically-mediated feeling ("higherfeel-
ing"). Such feeling subordinates all rational (Level 2) discourse about 
emotions to its ever-present (inarticulate) guidance. In this respect, 
human rationality is profoundly irrational. 
The example of the difficulty that psychology has faced with the treat 
ment of higher-order affective phenomena, such as values (see Valsiner 
et al., 1997), is indicative of this process. Even as values can be posited— 
and traced—to be present in human conduct, bringing them out into the 
domain of explicit reflection by the carriers of values has been difficult. 
Values are basic human affective guidance means that are ontogenetically 
internalized, but their externalization can be observed in aspects of 
human conduct. As they reach a hypergeneralized way of being, they are 
no longer easily accessible through verbally mediated processes. We can 
decisively act as directed by our values, but are ill at ease telling others 
what these values are. If we succeed, we have performed the Level 4->3 
translation of a hypergeneralized semiotic field into general verbal 
statements (for example, "I feel totally dedicated to science") that may 
refer to the direction of the values but cannot capture them in their 
entirety. Values are not entities but are dynamic semiotic fields; superim-
position of language onto such nebulus-but-real fields makes them into an 
entity (see Chapter 8 on the perils of entification for methodology). 
semiotic fields in action 315 
From Hypergeneralized Feeling Fields to the 
Semiotic Mediation of Affect 
In human life, affective fields of higher kind, such as those depicted in 
Figure 7.4, regulate experience in its totality. Affective fields can be 
hypergeneralized meanings that have left their original context of 
emergence and flavor new experiences. Thus, a person may develop the 
notion "life is unfair" from a series of life events of being mistreated. 
Once hypergeneralized, the field sign of affective tone begins to color 
new experiences, sometimes each and every experience. The person 
can look at the rising (or setting) sun and consider this to carry the flavor 
of "unfairness of life." A person's depressive feelings can color each 
and every encounter with the world, even if it is impossible for her or 
him to describe those verbally. A flow of a general feeling just takes over 
the person's intra-personal world, begins to control one's concrete 
actions, and debilitate any efforts to counteract it. A person covered with 
a flow of depressive feelings cannot do anything to overcome those; 
a person overcome by a field of maniacal desires cannot stop oneself 
from hypcr-action. 
Verbal Encoding as Guided by Affective Semiotic Fields 
The feed-forward from Level 4 organizers to Level 2 (explicit discourse 
about emotions) entails the pre-organization of vocabulary for reflecting 
the feeling. This pre-organization entails a range of possibilities ranging 
from blocking the mentioning of a given feeling, to exaggeration of the 
use of a particular general verbal term beyond a feeling implied. The 
issue of secrecy within any society (or in personal culture) creates the 
basis for de-emphasizing talking about culturally constructed feelings, 
when such feelings relate with the fear of spirits (George, 1993). 
The other extreme in the cultural setup, by Level 4 of how to talk 
about feelings in terms of emotions (Level 2), can be found in over-
expansion of the semantic field of the sign. Thus, in English it is possible 
to talk about love in relation to (obvious) feelings towards someone that 
a person tries to describe (to oneself or to others), together with the use 
of the same term in relation to mundane objects (ice-cream, broccoli). As 
a result, talking about the feeling of love becomes both socially accept 
able (habitual) and distanced from the actual feeling (of Level 4). If a 
person, after eloquently telling others how much she loves broccoli, diet 
pills, sports cars, and Fendi perfume, subsequently talks about her love 
for her boyfriend, the meaning of the expression "love" is very different 
316 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
than in the case where a person can barely utter the word to the othfc, 
person towards whom the feeling is directed. In contrast, for the Dhult 
(in Kenya), the approximate equivalent of English "Iove"-Amj—is noU 
a meaning concentrating on feeling, but rather on social relations.6 Foil 
the Dhulo, it is impossible to denote the sentiments of feeling deeply ft*S 
somebody as "falling in love." Likewise, the American English phrasef 
"have crush on X" cannot be translated into other languages. ' 
Example 72: The "Christmas Spirit" 
The relations between Level 3 and Level 4 in Figure 7.4 are bidirectional. 
On the one hand, the generalizing, semiotically encoded feeling keeps 
open the general direction of feeling. On the other hand, that feeling 
becomes constructed as a de-differentiated field, and thus "vanishes" 
from the direct and crisp linguistic depiction, and becomes a "feeling-at-
large." Consider the following depiction of the "Christmas spirit": : M 
A major festival like Christmas among English-speaking North Americans is 
accompanied by a stereotypical sei of emotions. Certainly, we do not all actually 
feel these emotions: for many, Christmas is primarily lived, according to self-
reports and actions, in a mode of disgust at overindulgence or in a heightened 
sense of loneliness. But this does not mean that Christmas evokes feelings at 
random... [factors evoking feeling] depend.. .on personal elements that to a 
large degree are common to those who share common experiences and a 
common exposure to stories, songs, images, and ritual practices-all features 
that reinforce a message of comfort and joy, homeyness, and familial good 
cheer. For most English-speaking North Americans... such evocation of 
"Christmas cheer" or "Christmas spirit" extends beyond the words or images 
used to provoke it to involve in what we commonly call feelings. The exact 
nature of one's feelings will depend on background and circumstances but 
include a range of positive and negative emotions that are themselves reactions 
to the central stereotypical emotion offamilal and universal love and coziness 
(Leavitt, 1996: 527; emphases added). 
The "Christmas spirit" is an overgeneralized field which, being labeled 
as such (Level 3), entails feelings which guide lower levels of dealing 
with bodily experiences and categories of emotion. Any encounter by 
a person with an environment filled with Christmas paraphernalia (for 
example, pervasive Christmassongs) can lead to primary feelings 
(Level 1) which become framed by the highest (Level 4) affective field 
The person may feel in the bliss of "Christmas spirit," or in the middle 
of unspeakable alienation (dependent upon the semiotic organization 
of the Level 4 field). Both these extreme ways of structuring feelings can 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 317 
be accomplished without direct verbal mediation—the persons need not 
talk about their feelings in the setting, neither to one another, nor within 
themselves. 
Highest Semiotic Fields: Personal "Life Philosophies" 
An appropriate example of such abstracted and hypergeneralized field 
of regulating affect is the ways in which different religious systems have 
dealt with the complex of life phenomena labeled suffering. Suffering 
is a label potentially usable at many different levels of generality (for 
example, "I suffer from the snoring of my husband," to "I suffer because 
of all the injustice in the world"). It is a term that refers to the person's 
generalized feeling (Level 4 in Figure 7.4), and it colors the ways in which 
people conduct their daily lives. 
Psychology is a discipline that developed within the European, 
Christianity-dominated social context. Hence, it has been guided by the 
prevailing life philosophies of Christianity as those have transformed all 
European social life since the fourth century ad. In respect to the meaning 
complex of suffering, Christianity has acknowledged it, and turned it 
into a vehicle to attain its social goals in regulating human lives. Max 
Scheler has described it in the following way: 
In Christianity, there is... mellowing of the soul in totally enduring suffering 
either alone or with others. However, an entirely new source of power emerges 
that sustains suffering, a power that flows of a blessedly intuited higher order 
of things as revealed through love, insight, and action. The endurance of 
suffering has a new meaning—it is a purification by God's compassionate 
love, which has sent suffering as a friend of the soul. Only through these two 
thoughts together did Christianity, without reinterpretation, apparently suc 
ceed in integrating the full gravity and misery of suffering as an essential 
factor with the order of the world and its redemption. In spite of its torment, 
Christianity succeeded in making suffering a welcome friend of the soul, not 
an enemy to be resisted. Suffering is purification, not punishment or correc 
tion (Scheler, 1992: 110-11). 
Cultural construction of suffering as purification is a way to maintain the 
focus on that complex feeling, and to get it to function for specific social 
goals. It is by maintaining the suffering, through the social suggestion 
that it is purifying, that Christianity guides its followers to accept its 
teaching through their regular being within their lives. 
An alternative treatment of suffering in human cultural history is its 
elimination by persons' active work of psychological distancing of the 
318 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
generalized feeling from the rest of experiences. In terms of the content! 
of Figure 7.4, that entails turning the two-sided relation (Level 3 <- ^f 
Level 4) into a single-direction relation (Level 4 -> Level 3). As a result^ 
the overgeneralized feeling becomes unmentionable in terms of verbal^ 
encoding (or it becomes "empty"; see the Taoist notion of mu in Ohnuki<L 
Tierney, 1994). The highest level of semiotic regulation of the affective If 
fields is that of "beyond the ordinary" life experiences. The person whof* 
lives within one's life-world feels that s/he is beyond that world. This is| 
the ordinary direction of generalization of affect through which oriental 1 
ascetics create their highest goals in living. In the Buddhist world, the ' 
suffering is to be eliminated by distancing: 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 319 
w-i 
"Elimination of suffering" in Buddhist thought means no more than to un 
mask, by means of spontaneously obtained knowledge, the chimera of objects 
existing independently of us. This means locating the void of "nothing"—in ,-1 
the sense that things no longer resist us—at exactly the point where the things "'* 
previously appeared in their separate existence with all their prominence, 
freshness, and splendor. As seen with complete knowledge, the world and 
nothing, nirvana, are strictly parallel correlates. For Buddha, knowledge is 
not "participation," "image," "order," or "form," but an emptying of the 
contents of the world from our apprehension by severing the chain of desire 
that binds us to these contents and makes their existence possible. Knowledge 
is thus a stopping of the conflict as to whether our worlds contents exist or do 
not exist in our immediate present; in this respect, knowledge is primarily an 
abolishing of all affirmations or denials of existence (Scheler, 1992: 105). 
The elimination of suffering through distanced emptiness—in Buddhist 
thought—as knowledge functionally accomplishes the same social goals 
that the emphasis on suffering as purification does for the Christians. It 
guides the persons towards acting—either in suffering-in-the field, or 
in distancing in-relation-with the field—and through such acting, to'the 
acceptance of the given life philosophy. That philosophy becomes per 
sonal, through internalization/externalization (as described later). 
Individuals need not become followers of the given religion; in fact, 
they may be active opponents of the organizer religions, yet their life 
philosophies are framed by the orientation towards suffering within which 
they develop (see Figure 7.5). 
In the social world, a person encounters some sort of general sugges 
tion for a particular direction of how to feel (for example, "feeling of 
suffering is important for becoming pure"). Such a general suggestion is 
embedded in the person's surroundings in many different versions. The 
encodings include visual signs in the environment, explicit or implicit 
m 
Figure 7.5: How Collective-cultural Social Suggestions 
are Processed by the Personal-cultural 
Hypergeneralization of Affective Fields 
SOCIALLY SUGGESTED 
GENERAL VALUE 
("suffering = purification") 
RECONSTITUTED 
GENERAL VALUE 
("suffering = purification" = 
"ascetism") 
THE EXTRA-
PERSONAL 
SOCIAL WORLD 
("collective culture") 
CONSTRUCTION OF 
AFFECTIVE 
FIELDS 
THE INTRA-
PERSONAL 
CULTURAL 
WORLD 
PERSONAL 
VALUE 
PERSONAL LIFE EXPERIENCING IN IRREVERSIBLE TIME 
comments by other human beings, and texts of literature, films and TV 
programs, and so on. The person cannot ignore the input of these sug 
gestions, and in one way or another relates to them. As a result, the 
general suggested value becomes relevant in the person's own organiza 
tion of the development. This leads to two kinds of "side effects" over 
ontogeny. In the first, the person externalizes a personally modified model 
of the value {general reconstructed value) to the social realm, where it 
becomes as part of the "input" to some others (for example, parents* 
reconstructed values become part of the social suggestion system for the 
offspring). The second "side effect" of the process entails the develop 
ment and consolidation of one's own personal life philosophy. Human 
beings may become contemplative analysts of their life wisdom over 
their life courses. 
Example 7.3: Semiofic Structure of Jealousy 
Algirdas Greimas' (Greimas and Fontaneille, 1993, Chapter 3) analysis 
of the creation of the feeling of jealousy through intra-personal semiotic 
activity illustrate the personal being-in-the world (possession of objects) 
320 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
and construct the hypergeneralized feeling fields that guide (and at times 
completely overtake) the conduct of a person. At the level of immedi 
ately relating with the world, a personguided by jealousy is obsessed 
with details, all linked together through the indeterminate worry of the 
loss of an object-usually a person-who is being considered "one's own " 
to a rival. Here, the connection of the feeling field of jealousy to the 
social meanings of personal (rather than communal sharing) nature of 
objects, and the notion of ownership, come into play. Thus, 
the jealous lover is in the first instance a worried person. If we can trust the 
definitions of worry, the jealous one is going to know "agitation," "perpetual 
lack of satisfaction," and "concern." This absence of repose, this trouble that 
is an obstacle to the peaceful enjoyment of the desired object, is in essence 
based on an oscillation between euphoria and dysphoria, so that the jealous 
person is neither truly euphoric nor truly dysphoric (Greimas and FontaneiUe, 
Jealousy is thus a hypergeneralized field of "flip-flopping" between the 
A and non-A states, rather than a field of integration of the opposites 
It is a case of non-integrated ambivalence (Giordano, 1989) where the 
opposites, valued positively and negatively, dominate each other tempo 
rarily ("A" in Figure 7.6), instead of integrating them through a general 
ized promoter sign <"B" in Figure 7.6). The latter can happen through 
a hypergeneralized meaning (for ecample, "God's will" or "fate") or 
through introduction of iconic or indexical signs (see the function of the 
"wooden spouses" in West Africa in Figure 7.10 and Example 7.7). 
"C" in Figure 7.6 provides a Greimasian example of the semiotic 
square of opposites (trust < > non-trust) where the latter can take three 
different forms pre-tntst (= initial positive expectation for the other) 
dis-trust (suspicion about the other) and mis-trust (proven, or declared 
proven," non-trustability of the other). 
As Greimas indicated: 
The jealous person's trajectory thus includes two fiduciary transformations 
one involving the move from trust to distrust, the other the move from distrust 
to mistrust. The first, because of the conflictual situation that has been in 
place from the beginning, even before the crisis of jealousy, is enacted on the 
slightest pretext. The slightest fact, the slightest sign can compromise the 
unstable equilibrium of exclusive attachment, thus giving preeminence to the 
negative side of the internal contradiction. At this stage, the jealous person is 
a pure receiver of indexes and signs. Next the suspension of trust sets of a 
cognitive quest that is made possible by a metaknowledge (Greimas and 
Fontanille, 1993: 141). 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 321 
Figure 7.6: The Psychological and Semiotic Structures of Jealousy 
A. A closed cycle of recurrent dominance reversal between positively and 
negatively valenced opposites (non-integrated ambivalence) 
6. Integration of ambivalent opposites 
C. The process of emergence of jealousy (after Greimas and Fontaneille, 
1993: 142) 
TRUST MISTRUST 
Sings as circumvention strategies 
INDICATORS PROOF 
PRE-TRUST DISTRUST 
322 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
The utilization of promoter signs can block the emergence of jealousy 
in two ways-by circumventing the interpretation of indicators in terms 
of distrust, or by blocking the generalization of the proof in the move 
from distrust to mistrust. In a similar vein, promoter signs can enable the 
distrust -> mistrust escalation. In any case, the semiotic structure in "C" 
in Figure 7.6 depends on the constriction of the field of conceptualization 
of the object of jealousy, to the notion of exclusive possession and inten 
sive attachment to the object. The presence of the rival claim to the 
"possessed object" requires not only the restriction of access to these 
possessions (an objective guaranteed symbolically by locks, passwords, 
and security guards), but particularly the recognition of the impossibility 
to control the goals-oriented and strategic conduct of the "possessed 
object" him or herself. The construction of the mistrust in the field of 
{trust < > non-trust -» mistrust} meaning field feeds further into the in 
terpretation of the indicators of distrust and creates an escalatory loop of 
affective hypergeneralization. Such a loop can be exited through the 
action of elimination of the jealously-guarded, highly-valuable object 
(that is, the "Othello strategy"), or by way of bringing into the loop a 
meta-level promoter sign (for example, "B" in Figure 7.5) that creates 
affective distance from the interpretation of the particular conduct signs. 
CULTURAL-HISTORICAL PROMOTION OF 
AFFECTIVE FIELD CONSTRUCTION 
As all semiotic tools used in the creation of affective fields are cultural 
constructions, it can be said that all personal affective fields are cultural 
in their nature. Furthermore, they arc historical, that is, they can be 
constructed under the historical conditions of one generation, and tran 
scend it in the next. Human ontogeny involves constant meaning-making 
around the issue "what is it how I feel" in a here-and-now setting, with a 
comparison to "how should I feel here." The latter comparison base 
entails the introduction of socially suggested generic values which are 
intertwined with the higher affective field. 
Example 7.4: A "Revolutionary function" of Rape 
Undoubtedly, there is wide variability in the ways in which specific events 
are linked with hypergeneralized values. What is construed as 
psychotrauma for one age/social activity cohort can take on the role of 
dedication to some overgeneralized ideology for others. An example for 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 323 
such transitions comes from the discussion of rape in early Soviet society 
in Russia where, in the context of war, endurance of rape by women was 
viewed (by Communist psychiatrists) as an act of revolutionary heroism, 
rather than trauma. Moreover, the way a woman dealt with rape was 
viewed as a diagnostic device. Thus, in the words of Aaron Zalkind, a 
hyper-communist psychiatrist in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, the 
description of the following case is of interest: 
... F., 26 years, female, from intelligentsia, in RCP [Russian Communist Party] 
since 1919. Severe nervous excitability, shivers, trembles, excited at smallest 
of noises, strong neuralgic pains that were considered psychoalgic (i.e., of no 
organic basis, self-suggestive) by doctors; constant anguish, gross alienation, 
strong heartbeats, disturbed sleep; the critical analytic capability is not dis 
turbed; energetically takes care of her appearances, despite the depressed mood. 
It turns out that she went with the revolution "for pure romanticism": 
^P heroically, with heightened and bright feelings. Was a low-level political 
f-fl commander—during the events on the front line had to experience much. 
i:|| While retreating with her unit, was captured by a group of kazaks (anti-
V ^ communist cavalry in the Civil War], and raped. After that—sharp change: 
:;■;■&■ desperation, from which she could not recover; feeling of emptiness in herself 
h%- and around, step-by-step separation from all her surrounding and growth of 
!•$ the above-mentioned nervous symptoms. The college to which she entered in 
.■f. order to get distracted also gave her no solution, the studies did not affect the 
;: 3' mind. During our only medical session with F. she was already excluded 
■^| from RCP as useless element, and was about to leave for her home place. 
. & In this case the characteristic fact—which is beyond F's coping capability— 
■■ :~§ is that of rape. The author [Zalkind] has met minimum ten party comrades who 
x| were raped in the process of bloody struggle with the enemy, and only F., and 
i,}^ one other reacted to that as incurable disaster (by the way, F. did not get either 
:.£ vencric disease or pregnancy from the rapists). The others, in general rather 
^ sexually normal,possessors of healthy femininity, comrades related to that in 
: a revolutionary way, recognizing that bloody struggle entails all kinds of cruel 
' '; trials and that one has to be capable of living through all of those; they did not 
: live through any ideological crises after it. This is the best proof that in case of 
correct, strongly social and class-conscious orientation—mere sexuality, even 
the most difficult, does not create psychoneurosis and plays only a secondary 
■ role, in service to the relationship with the social (Zalkind, 1925: 44-45). 
The linking of the suffering (of rape) with the purification through 
"class struggle" in the "revolutionary way" here is continuous with 
the use of suffering in the service of Christianity discussed above. The 
notion of "revolution" is an example of a totem—a general idea that 
permeates the whole sphere of life activities of a society. The notion 
of "revolution" is not merely a label, but a hypergeneralized feeling 
324 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
(Level 4 in Figure 7.4). Totems permeate human social lives as they 
operate via the highest semiotic regulation level. 
RITUALS AS PROMOTERS OF 
HYPERGENERALIZED FEELING FIELDS 
Totems can be found in any society or established social group. All no 
tions of patriotism or group identity are based on ideas that play totemic 
roles, often in conjunction with supportive symbolic objects, for instance, 
the notion of liberty in the United States, supported by the national flag 
(Marvin and Ingle, 1999). The totems-supported by corresponding 
environment-encoded symbols and myths-create the basis for social 
rituals. These rituals involve persons' participation, and through that the 
modulation of their affective field system. 
Affective fields become reorganized by ritualistic action patterns, which 
can be viewed as externalized imagery. Thus, the acts of prayer, or of 
abbreviated moments of it in everyday situations (for example, a person 
crossing oneself in an uncertain situation) are performed acts from which 
the person oneself gets immediate feedback. In human development, 
different social institutions—religious, educational, medical-promote 
the establishment of such action patterns as affective field regulators. 
Social Suggestion Embedded in Coordinated Action 
In the organization of children's group activities, it is the rhythmic and 
multi-sensory features of activity that are utilized to canalize the affective 
field development of the children. Getting children to sing and dance, 
and to perform in children's theatre primarily guides the development of 
feelings. Ritualistic repetitions of acts are the dynamic affective embodi 
ment of the content of activity. For example, rote learning of religious 
texts (or learning and reciting poetry) can carry the function of affective 
field establishment: 
A Muslim should be able to read the Qua'ran [Koran] even without being able 
to understand the words, because the ability to read the Qua'ran itself has 
been to evoke in people a response to the teachings of Islam which sociologic 
ally has been very valuable. Beyond this most of these people will hardly go, 
but provided they learn in their childhood to respond to the music of Arabic 
consonants and vowels, and to the rhythms of the Qua'ran, they will continue 
throughout their lives to have an emotional attachment to it (Husain and Ashraf 
quoted in Wagner, 1983: 185-86; emphasis added). 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 325 
The focus on future (life-long) emotional attachment to the religious 
text is an explicit goal here. It guides the children—through participation 
in an activity structure, be it studying the Koran, or prayer or fasting in 
any religion—towards internalization of die generalized meaning fields 
that operate as values regulating all concrete conduct (Seesemann, 1999: 
51). Modern Arabic "alphabet songs" used in Indonesia to help children 
master literacy are infused with the affective ideas of Qur'anic motiva 
tion (Gade, 2004). 
It is a similar situation in case of political identity-building rituals. 
The saying of prayers at regular intervals, or reciting the "Pledge of 
Allegiance" in US schools in the morning, are similar in function to the 
example of rote learning. Likewise, joint mass activities, such as march 
ing with a band, choir singing, and listening to music, provide similar 
rhythmic unification of the person and the activity. 
Suggestions for Fusion 
For different social goals, moments of complete affective fusion with the 
immediate setting can be suggested. These can entail phenomena of trance, 
or can be built on the notion of overgeneralized feelings that guide 
action and feeling. Thus, in words of one remarkable woman, her love 
relationship to another person has received the following description: 
After that he came himself to me, took me entirely in his arms and pressed me 
to him; and all my members felt his in full felicity, in accordance with the 
desire of my heart and my humanity. So I was outwardly satisfied and fully 
transported. Also then, for a short while, I had the strength to bear this; but 
soon, after a short time, I lost that manly beauty outwardly in the sight of his 
form. I saw him completely come to naught and so fade and all at once dis 
solve that I could no longer distinguish him within me. Then it was to me as if 
we were one without difference (Bynum, 1991: 168). 
This description is given by a thirteenth century female mystic Hadewich. 
It indicates the affective fusion of the person with a social other. In this 
case, the role played by the latter was Jesus Christ, who probably was 
quite unaware of this event ever happening. Poems and letters by 
Hadewich, an independent practitioner of devotional Christianity (a 
beguine1 rather than a nun), were circulated widely in medieval Europe 
and guided the religious feelings of many women (Hart, 1980). Uniting 
of sensual feelings with devotion to a deity is a worldwide phenomenon. 
Similarly to Hadewich's feelings, those of the Hindu temple dancers 
(devdasis) displayed religious devotion through their sensuality (Valsincr, 
1996; 1998a, Chapter 9). 
326 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
Suggestions for Distancing 
Quite opposite to the example of medieval European beguines and Hindu 
temple dancers, the social world of the twentieth century United States is 
imbued with the orientation towards a hedonistic relating to one's own 
body and self (Steams and Lewis, 1998). In the US middle-class social 
world, it has become accepted that the emotional stance in interaction 
with others is mild, yet positive ("impersonal but friendly"). Intense 
emotions are targets for control; they should be neither seen nor heard, 
and if they occur, they are considered infantile and embarrassing. The 
focus on self-control of feelings, in accordance with social norm follow 
ing, is the ideal for the self (Planalp, 1999). 
The guidance of organization of feelings is particularly set-up as 
relevant in professional contexts where the person-in-social role needs to 
distance oneself from the assumed everyday social roles. For example, 
in the medical profession different actions in relation to another person's 
body. Especially in societies (such as the US) where collective tactile 
phobia and over-sexualization of human body has been collectively 
set up as a norm, the medical professionals need to undertake ritualistic 
acts to legitimize their contact with patients' bodies. Medical students in 
the US undergo the professional distancing of their feelings from the act 
of touching the body. They do this mostly in the privacy of their minds, 
as the medical training operates under general suppression of interper 
sonal sharing of their experiences. Thus, a second-year male medical 
student describes his experience in examining a woman patient: 
Whenyou listen to the heart you have to work around the breast, and move it 
to listen to one spot. I tried to do it with minimum contact, without staring at 
her tit... breast— The different words (pause) shows I was feeling both things 
at once (Smith and Kleinman, 1989: 59). 
The medical students are guided towards distancing their feelings from 
sexual relations towards purely professional ones, through forcing them 
to act and find intra-psychologtcat solutions for the distancing task by 
themselves.8 Intra-mentally, they may rearrange their vocabulary with 
the help of which they think during the medical procedure. Thus, think 
ing of oneself as "palpating the abdomen" entails distancing, which "feel 
ing the belly" does not. That the distancing is personally practiced is 
evident from the following report about experiences of a first-year fe 
male student at a dissection: 
When we were dissecting the pelvis, the wrong words kept coming to mind, 
and it was uncomfortable. 1 tried to be sure to use the right words, penis and 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 327 
testicles (pause) not cock and balls. Even just thinking. Would have been 
embarrassing to make that mistake that day. School language, it made it into a 
science project (Smith and Kleinman, 1989: 61; emphases added). 
The general genre of "school language" (or "science") is itself a cultural 
vehicle for personal distancing. Yet, at the same time in the same (US or 
other) society, the very same people can be guided towards fusion of 
their identities with a social unit. Religious or national symbols, such as 
the national flag, indicate in parallel the guidance towards sacrificing 
oneself for the social role (of a medical doctor, or citizen). The public 
symbolic object can be taken and turned into a personal symbolic object, 
as in a case of a top-level athlete: 
Jenny Thompson wraps herself in the American flag every night when she 
goes to bed. Her comforter is all stars and stripes and quilted padding. Her 
pillow, her lampshade, are both decorated in red, white, and blue. She tried to 
hang an oversized flag on the ceiling of her dorm room at Stanford so she 
could go to sleep dreaming the American dream about medal stands and na 
tional anthems. The flag wouldn't stick. It went on the wall, instead.... (Marvin 
and Ingle, 1999: 221). 
In each social context, guidance towards feeling-full unification (with 
some social roles, or values) is coordinated with guidance for affective 
distancing from some aspects of those roles in specific domains. A US 
medical student may be distancing himself or herself from aspects of the 
bodies of the patients (or cadavers), while at the same time aligning one's 
affective field completely with the general role of the medical doctor. A 
soldier who kills others distances one's affective domain from that act 
through the fusion of oneself with the ideology that not only legitimizes 
the killing, but socially prescribes it. 
The system of feelings (and their development) that was outlined 
above gains further support from cultural anthropologists' work on the 
meanings of emotion terms in different languages. Demonstrations of the 
difficulties of translating the semantic nuances of the same basic emotion 
term from one language to another is evidence for the local (society 
and language-based) construction of the particular emotion category. 
Undoubtedly, the semantic fields of the category in different languages 
has some core overlap, at least for the "basic emotions." It is the margins 
of the semantic fields that demonstrate the role of emotion terms as 
phenomena which are in between the primary and higher affective 
fields. The inductively emerged—labeled—emotion in one society need 
not include some domain of meaning nuances as its counterpart in 
328 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 329 
another language. Yet, they function as relevant articulated semiotic 
devices in both, resolving the tension between the primary and higher 
affective fields. 
Example 7.5: Getting Angry at Being Helped 
Cross-societal comparisons by anthropologists and descriptions by histo 
rians of everyday life provide evidence of many feeling organization 
patterns. Consider the following episode of interaction: on a rainy day, a 
mother is waiting for her son to come back from school, with an umbrella 
for him at a bus stop. When the bus arrives the son sees the mother and 
gets angry saying, "You shouldn't have come out here with me umbrella 
for me." The mother replies, "My baby, I am sorry about that." 
This episode can be explained in different ways, beginning with the 
ego-centered manifest content interpretation of the son's independence 
of the self. The maximum depth of this manifest level interpretation is 3 
[Level 1-^ Level 2 (anger)-> Level 3 (feeling of independence crushed) 
Level 0/1 (new action)]. In the case of non-manifest interpretation, tak 
ing into account the cultural hypergeneralized semiotic field of Korean 
Shimcheong provides an alternative interpretation: 
The son must be grateful for the considerate behavior of his mother. Nonethe 
less the son hides his real Shimcheong of gratitude by getting angry with his 
mother. The mother also conceals her true Shimcheong of being disappointed 
by her son just by apologizing to him. Oftentimes, the strength of Shimcheong 
in close relationships is reinforced by expressed emotions that are opposite to 
the real and hidden emotions. The parent-child relationship and in particular, 
the mother-son relationship is based on in-depth Shimcheong (Choi and Kim, 
2001: 8). 
The particular hypergeneralized feeling {Shimcheong, empathy) sets 
the stage for complex hypergames in close interpersonal relations. 
Hypergames are games where the partners do not know the list of strat 
egies of the other players (as those lists may change), nor their goal 
orientations (and their changes) in the course of the game. 
The cultural canalization of affect by the hypergeneralized field of 
Shimcheong in Korea has parallels in other cultural areas. For example, 
the seemingly irrational (for a Westerner) positive feelings expressed at 
the loss of a close person by people on Bali (Wikan, 1990) are easily 
explainable through the use of affective self-organizing mechanisms. 
Within the manifest—behavioral outcomes—domain different societies 
seem fundamentally different in their emotional expression. 
■Pi it 
Promotion of Different Levels of Affective 
Sign Fields in Different Societies 
The cultural constraining perspective on human life-course development 
leads to locating the value of evidence about differences between social 
units (Valsiner and Lawrence, 1997; for a similar developmental take 
cf. Fischer et al., 2003). The "cross-cultural differences/ as those are 
referred to in cross-cultural psychology, are not mere differences. These 
detected differences show us various versions of how different levels of 
semiotic mediation reveal the basic structure of constraining the affective 
expression under different circumstances. Hence, differences speak of 
basic fundamental similarity of the human cultural world. 
Cross-societies' comparisons can provide psychology with the basic 
structure of the ways in which the generic model of society functions 
(Chapter 1). Recorded cross-societal contrasts are merely "snapshots" of 
the different ways in which that generic model of society works. 
At the level of personal affective self-regulation, all levels (and their 
feedforward connections) can be in operation. The social suggestions 
that surround the developing person during ontogeny may differentially 
highlight (or diminish) some levels in contrast with others. Some societ 
ies may emphasize the use of the higher levels of semiotic mediation, 
while others may de-emphasize it. Figure 7.7 describes one such(hypo 
thetical) contrast between two societies in terms of differential highlight 
ing of different levels of semiotic mediation. 
The two societies—"A" and "B"—differ in the ways in which verbal 
accessibility to affective phenomena is emphasized. In Society A, the 
maximally highlighted state of affairs is Level 2. People in that society 
are expected to focus on the categorical description of their emotions 
(and similar categorical recognition of feeling states of others). General 
ization beyond Level 2 is accepted but not emphasized, and deep intra-
psychological affective "feeling through" (Level 4) is socially blocked 
(by "strict constraint"). Surely it happens—as an individual does not 
follow the social constraining, and transcends it. Within the given 
social group this would be considered an unmentionable, socially unnec 
essary, aberration. In contrast, the capability to classify any feeling into 
a clearly defined emotion category (Level 2) is given the highest positive 
social value. Society A is one where the rationality of bureaucrats, busi 
ness executives, and tax collectors is the ideal for affective grasping of 
the human life-worlds, and transcendental meditators, philosophers, 
poets, artists, and naive youngsters of the kind of Young Werther (Goethe, 
1973) would be considered as barely tolerable weirdos. 
330 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
Figure 7.7: Levels of Affective Semiotic Mediation and Their 
Selective Social Amplification, Attenuation, and 
Blocking by "Barriers for Affect" 
LEVELS OF 
GENERALIZATION 
LEVEL 4: 
HYPERGENERALIZED 
FEELING FIELD 
LEVEL 3: 
GENERALIZED 
AFFECTIVE 
REFERENCING 
LEVEL 2: 
EMOTION 
CATEGORIES 
LEVEL 1: 
DIFFERENTIATING 
FEELINGS 
LEVEL 0: 
PHYSIOLOGICAL 
In contrast, Society B is one where the exploration of the highest 
levels of semiotic mediation of affective processes is supported. The 
naming of experienced (or recognized) emotion categories (Level 2) is 
recognized, but not given a high goal value in the process of socializa 
tion. Instead, the persons are encouraged to contemplate on the general 
meanings of their lived-through experiences (Level 3), and to reach 
the highest levels of affective understanding of the world (Level 4) that 
would guide their personal life philosophies. It is here that the social 
value of the precious few who reach that level—gurus, yogis, poets, 
writers, and philosophers-are given the highest social value within the 
given society. 
Interestingly, the contrast between these two hypothetical societies 
seems to overlap—at least in general terms-with the oft-used contrast 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 331 
between "Western industrialized" ("individualistic" cultures) and "East 
ern societies" ("collectivistic" cultures). These contrasts are not onto-
logical, but constitute different states of the general state of affairs 
of affect regulation in a universal model of society as a whole. Not 
surprisingly, the history of both Eastern and Western societies gives 
us evidence about changes from one state into the other. Developing 
business relations in the Oriental world may bring the people involved 
in these areas closer to the emphasis on the rational and verbalized 
treatment of affect (Level 2). In a similar vein, the relevance of poets in 
the cultural history of the Occident remains a fact. 
Affective fields—Level 4 phenomena—are constantly a major target 
for social canalization efforts. Specific activity contexts are used for the 
promotion of generalization of feeling beyond the given here-and-now 
context. The "social others" of the developing person suggest how the 
present situation can, or should, relate to the ways of being in general. 
Solving the problem of the development of feelings can take different 
forms. The most usual one is descriptive—outlining of the ontogenetic 
changes as those can be observed at different age levels. Thus, in 
the second and third years of life children begin to make reference to 
their internal psychological states. Around the same time they begin to 
describe other persons* experiences. By the fourth year of life there is a 
differentiation in children's use of emotion categories. However, mere 
description of a sequence of similarity classes does not explain their 
development. 
Cultural Framing of Affective Development 
One needs to uncover the underlying processes by which the social 
world surrounding the developing person is gradually directed to feel in 
ways that are mutually comprehensible and personally meaningful. In 
the history of a society such canalization devices—collectively called 
emotionology (Steams and Steams, 1986)—undergo transformations, 
accentuating the expected ways of letting the personal-cultural affect 
regulation system operate. The social organization of anger in the history 
of North America is a good case. Over the last 300 years, what is now 
US society has been embarked on the historical trajectory of regulating 
anger. It has led to the segregation of anger expressable against animals 
(pre-eighteenth century) to the unexpressability of anger towards some 
animals (emergence of regulations against "cruelty to animals"), other 
adults and, finally, to children: 
332 CULTURE IN MINDS AND SOCIETIES 
Concern abouc anger in child rearing was surely bom ou. of Ihe same eigh- I S?S ^.T' f^i"- ^'produced the new desire ,o JZ, I? 
While anger had been allowed-yet regulated-tn the US over centuries 
envy has not (Foster, 1972). Fear in America has been removed histori 
cally from a major social control mechanism to become one of the emo 
tions of no positive function". In the course of history, different political 
events set up concentrated periods of change in the feeling canalization 
in a society. Thus, the terrors of the French Revolution drastically changed 
the sentimentalist ethos of most of eighteenth century France and led 
into an upsurge of romanticism. Similarly, World War II adjusted the 
ET™ 100^" WWCh feeIingS Were handIed in American m^-ies (Lyman, 1992). Of course, there were other sides of everyday reali 
ties, such as epidemics, childhood accidents, and famines, that were part 
and parcel of children's affective worlds. 
The external situations structures for feeling entailed different de 
mands at different historical periods, which were encoded into the cul 
tural contexts of the times, in public rituals, novels, theater performances 
movies, and TV shows. The social demands of major activities guided 
die development of these structures. This, however, is not a homoge 
neous story. On the contrary, within the same society at the same histori 
cal period, one can see attenuation (or suppression) of the same affect in 
one situation, and exaggeration of it in another. Among the Toraja in 
Indonesia, crying by adults is permitted and expected (lamenting) in con-
necnon with the death and funeral of relatives, but strictly prohibited in 
other settings (Wellencamp, 1992). 
Crying is a Level 0 phenomenon, emerging at the intersection of 
nunediate activation fluctuation and meaningful semiotically-encoded 
Sf^T °f ^ ^ f°IIOWing iifi 
My wife of 50 years had died. I cried a lot. There were plenty of opportunities 
to engage m silent microanalysis of crying. Friends would come by the house to offer condolences. I could carry on a normal flow of conversation except when a visitor would refer to one or more of my wife's talents and graces 
„ f 'and wife- Explicit anger advice ,„ u.c cigHicenui cen- , tury focused more directly on adults than on children, to be su^e TlTme $ 
neologism tantrum was originally applied to adult behavior and only gradu- -
about a certain kind of childish 
mm 
mm 
m m 
-^ it 
SEMIOTIC FIELDS IN ACTION 333 
At these moments, my ability to engage in sequential talk was inhibited. 
Normally integrated movements of respiration