The Phase Structure of the Speech Act and the Nature of Plans

Translated from the Russian text " Fazovaia struktura rechevogo akta i priroda planov, " Planyi i modeli budushchego v rechi (materiali k obsuzhdeniiu) [Plans and Models of The notion of the phase structure of the speech act—or to be more precise—the special structure of the " inner speech " stage in utterance production, belongs to L.S. Vygotsky. Vygotsky conceptualized the process of speech production, the progress from thought to word to external speech, as follows: ". .. from the motive that engenders a thought, to the formulation of that thought, its mediation by the inner word, and then by the meanings of external words, and finally, by words themselves " i [ Elsewhere he said, " Thought is an internally mediated process. It moves from a vague desire to the mediated by meaning formulation , or rather, not the formulation, but the fulfilment of the thought in the word. " And finally, " Thought is not something readymade that needs to be expressed. Thought strives to fulfill some function or goal. This is achieved by moving from the sensation of a task—through construction of meaning—to the elaboration of the thought itself. " 2 These ideas of Vygotsky may be used to derive the following sequence of stages, (phases) in speech production: The process starts with (a) the motive. We have only slightly expanded Vygotsky's concept when we speak of the motive not as an isolated factor but as the set of extralinguistic factors that give rise to the motivation for a speech act (in the broadest sense of the term) 3. This motivation gives rise to the (b) speech intention. This stage corresponds to a " vague desire " or " a sensation of a task. " (Cf. the category of the " imagined situation " in D.N. Uznadze.) At this phase, the speaker has " an Image of the result. " (Miller et al.), but does not yet have a Plan of Action that must be performed to achieve this result. (Here we should probably provide some separate discussion of the dynamics of motivation. According to A.N. Leontiev, we should distinguish between motive and need. The need is objectified in the motive, and a motive is " the object that satisfies a particular need and that, being reflected in one form or another, controls his behavior " 4. During the " motive " stage we are dealing with a …