An explication of concordance between man’s mental structure and the narrative structure in the light of Vygotsky’s SCT

• Main Author: Behrooz Azabdaftari
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Urmia University 2013-10-01
• Series: Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research
• Subjects: Mental structure; Narrative structure; Sociocultural theory; Phylogeny; Ontogeny; Genetic method; Innaitism; Empiricism
• Online Access: http://www.urmia.ac.ir/ijltr/Lists/archive_p3/Attachments/22/%286%29%20Behrooz%20Azabdaftari.pdf

This paper seeks to throw light on the concordance between man’s mental structure and the structure of narrative with regard to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. In so doing, the author first provides the backdrop of the literature on the topic by first explaining Vygotsky’s approach to the genesis of mind, and then gives a synoptic account of the views expressed by the men of letters regarding the structure and function of short stories. According to Vygotsky, man’s higher mental development is mediated by cultural inheritances – the process whereby man wins over his biological constraints, manages to control his internal processes as well as the external world, and accumulates his cultural assets throughout history. In literary studies, views regarding the effect of structure and function of story on shaping up the child’s mind are rampant. Almost all of the literary critics are committed to the belief that the formal structure of story (a) affects the child’s emergent mind, (b) helps him to store, organize, and recall events in the story, (c) aids him, as he grows up, to understand the working of social life, and (d) serves as a means for the child to record events and things in the fashion of narrative when receiving any data. All these points attest to the viable fact that man’s mind is genetically attuned to order and organization.