0000000000103335
AUTHOR
Saeed Karimi Aghdam
Rethinking Vygotskian Cultural-Historical Theory in Light of Pepperian Root Metaphor Theory : Dynamic Interplay of the Organicism and Contextualism
This article examines Vygotskian cultural-historical theory by putting it into dialogue with Stephen Pepper's root metaphor theory. I focus on Vygotsky's insistence on the dialectical unity of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic domains in ontogenesis, which he articulated in his account of how the natural-psychological and cultural-psychological lines of development merge with the emergence of speeching in ontogenesis. I compare Vygotsky's two genetic domains and Pepper's world hypotheses of organicism and contextualism. I argue that Vygotsky transcended what is often thought of as a fundamental dichotomy between organicism and contextualism. In accomplishing this effective reconciliation, Vy…
Dancing with Alternative Lyrics : Integrating Sociocultural, Dialogical, Distributed and Dynamical Conceptualization of Language and its Development for L2 Studies
This paper sets out to chart underlying assumptions and fundamental axioms of an integrative research edifice for studying language and how it is developed over time as a human- and culture-centered and multifaceted phenomenon. Specifically, invoking Vygotskian sociocultural theory, the Bakhtin circle dialogism, distributed language and cognition and dynamic systems theory, it is argued that language is a purposive, multifaceted, complex, dialogical, and dynamic system that emerges distributively across the interpenetrated web of human somatic and brain activities, socio-cultural umwelt, sociohistorically-fashioned artifacts and realized affordances simultaneously and over time. Suggestions…