I’m digging into Volume 2 of the Theory of Communicative Action as Volume 1 has not yet arrived. As I’m reading Habermas’ critique of Mead, several thoughts come to mind. Mead’s theories are an interesting departure from behaviorism. If we assume that stimulus-response is the central tenet of behaviorism, the suggestion that in an interaction, not only do organisms (or people) react to one another, to suggest that the relationship between two speakers is transformed”so that “the participants learn to distinguish between acts of reaching understanding and actions oriented to success.” Each actor in an exchange will try to anticipate and immediately adjust to each other’s utterances.

As evidence of a break with a more behavioristic view, Mead cites “inhibited or delayed reaction,” which is defined as “the ability to solve the problems of present behavior in terms of its future possible consequences.” (11) In this way, our internal monitoring of this exchange is interested in more than an immediate response, we are holding sway over a potential future. Habermas identifies Mead’s other line of thought which is that “the pressure to adapt that participants in complex interactions exert on one another—whether the need to cooperate…puts a premium on the speed of interaction.” (12)

As I was reading one passage,

“Gestures become significant symbols when they implicitly arouse in an individual making them the same responses which they explicitly arouse…in other individuals, the individuals to whom they are addressed.”

This has interesting ramifications for my experience, which includes working with adult English as a Second Language learners. I used to work with someone who would follow every word he said in English with a Spanish equivalent. I think he really didn’t trust the word to symbolize what he wanted to communicate. I have noticed that with my own communication in another language. Sometimes, even if I could try to communicate something in another language, I worry about the message beyond the language– how the choice of words, the grammatical forms chosen have so much meaning to a native language speaker (which Habermas doesn’t begin to address yet in the beginning pages of this work), but I don’t trust the meaning of the words that I will come up with.

I also had another random association while reading this passage, particularly about the very instinctual gestures of animals…Habermas uses the example of a dog fight, where the stance of one creature sends a message to the other to adjust his/her stance…
Today I was reading an article about a study with chimpanzees in Tokyo where they discovered that adult chimps exhibit the same behavior that humans do when another person yawns…they also give a sympathy yawn (and as a tribute to the power of symbols —just reading that word is probably making you yawn!).
I was reading the article in Spanish on CNNEspañol to practice and found the vocabulary fairly easy, once you know that bostezo is yawn (and for the record, reading it in Spanish makes me yawn too!!!)
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