Nuances Est. Sobre Educ., Presidente Prudente, v. 33, e022030, 2022. e-ISSN: 2236-0441
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32930/nuances.v33i00.9535 7
discussed, the means for this transmission is the sign (the word, the sound, the gestures,
among others), moreover, for Vygotsky (2001, p. 27, our translation), "[...] true
communication requires meaning, that is, both generalization and signs" that, later, become
symbols.
To elucidate his point of view, the author uses the explanation of the German linguist
Eduardo Sapir who discussed "[...] some of the problems and criticisms directed at the
concept of culture" (GONÇALVES, 2021, p. 26, our translation), highlighting certain
fundamental dimensions of sociocultural life, such as its dimension of individual experience:
According to Eduardo Sapir's penetrating description, the world of
experience can be significantly simplified and generalized before being
translated into symbols. Communication is possible only in this way, for
individual experience resides solely in one's consciousness and is, strictly
speaking, incommunicable. To become communicable, it must be included
in a specific category, which by tacit convention, human society regards as a
unit. Thus, true communication presupposes a generalizing attitude, an
advanced stage in developing the meaning of words. Higher forms of human
exchange are possible only because man's thinking reflects a conceptualized
reality (VIGOTSKI, 2001, p 27, our translation).
Considering the word's meaning as a unit encompassing both thought and social
exchange, we can access a true (causal-genetic) analysis of its origin and development. As the
quotation shows, we understand that an initially simple word, such as mother, for example,
represents, in a simplified way, for the small child its experience with the one who feeds it,
cleans it, puts it to sleep, takes care of it, etc., and which, in a generalized way, translates into
the word mother.
As the child grows and develops, the word mother takes on new meanings,
representing a caring, reproductive woman with her characteristics, etc. In the two
exemplified moments, the mother presents different levels of generality, "[...] a typical
combination of the concrete and the abstract" (VIGOTSKI, 2001, p. 152, our translation).
Now, it is worthwhile to refer to what Vygotsky (2001) analogically exemplified about
the location of a concept in its highest abstraction and its objective place in reality. Based on
the measurement of the globe from its geographic coordinates - the longitude and latitude - he
explains that the first represents
[...] the nature of the act of thought itself, of the very encompassing of
objects in concepts, from the point of view of the unity of the concrete and
the abstract contained therein. The latitude of the idea will first characterize
the relation of the concept to the object, the point of application of the