The formation of sense as a product of semiotic activity

Abstract

This article presents part of a PhD research whose purpose is to analyze the ways in which the child appropriates the cultural meanings conventionally elaborated by society, converting them into personal meanings, with language as a mediator of this process. The comprehension about how the conversion of the social and the cultural happens and the dynamics of this process in the formation of the higher psychic functions becomes relevant for the understanding of the concept of semiotic mediation. Elucidating the way the child uses the word in situations that require the formation of a concept of meaning and the generalization of this process in communication with the social other, provides us with elements to organize social situations of development of effectively developing thought. The analysis is based on the genetic historical instrumental method and the Historical-Cultural Theory, with the purpose of emphasizing the role of language in the formation of higher psychic functions. The results revealed that the process of signification, mediated by the word, from cultural experiences experienced, enables the child to develop verbal thought, and ascend from the immediate perception of objects and phenomena to the comprehensive perception of the surrounding reality.