Chapter 4: Self and Symbol Emerging From Dialogical Dynamics¹

This chapter examines dialogical processes in the development of early mother-infant communication. I argue that the communication process is constitutive of a significant achievement in early development. The differentiation of the infant’s position in dialogue lays the seeds for symbolic functioning and consequently for the emergence of the infant’s self. Starting with a short discussion connecting the communication process and the self in infancy, I present first the Establishment Extension Abbreviation (EEA)] model. ’Establishment,’ ’extension’ and ’abbreviation’ refer to three organizational patterns of dyadic infant-mother exchange observed in microgenetic studies (see below for details). The model is elaborated using basic dynamic systems principles that are relevant to our understanding of the communication process as a self-organizing system. As well, I review Bakhtin’s contributions toward conceptualizing selfhood as a dialogical enterprise., Then I introduce and discuss in some detail the concept of ’abbreviation,’ a type of very early infant-mother dialogical exchange that has a short duration, a small number of turn-takings and a coordinated pattern of exchange. Abbreviated dialogues, I argue, show a new quality of dyadic, mutual understanding. They presage recognition of a partner in dialogue. The text then reports some examples of abbreviation from the aforementioned microgenetic studies of mother-infant dialogues. These allow one to infer the beginnings of differentiation and integration in the emergence of abbreviated dialogues—the infant can construct her own position in dialogue, but can also infer the partner’s position. These early exchanges are embedded in a medium that requires a degree of abstraction, detached from the immediate and concrete partner’s actions.