Grounding Signs of Culture: Primary Intersubjectivity in Social Semiosis Stephen J. Cowley, Sheshni Moodley, and Agnese Fiori–Cowley Social Sciences and Humanities University of Bradford, UK University of KwaZulu–Natal, Durban, South Africa The article examines how infants are first permeated by culture. Building on Thibault (2000), semiogenesis is traced to the joint activity of primary intersubjectivity. Using an African example, analysis shows how—at 14 weeks—an infant already uses culturally specific indicators of “what a caregiver wants.” Human predispositions and the mother’s enactment of cultural processes enable the child to give joint activity a specific “sense.” Developmentally, the child prods the caregiver to shaping his or her actions around social norms that transform the infant’s world. This nascent lopsided relation is probably necessary for learning to talk. Acting with its mother, the baby’s full-bodied activity uses adult “understanding” in ways that are cultural, contingent, and indexical. Infant activity is already semiotic. INTRODUCTION When examining how infants learn to talk, the issue is usually conceptualized around theories of how language is learned or acquired. It is presupposed that, grosso modo, what they learn, lan- guage, is a determinate entity or symbol system. As 50 years of debate has shown, this assumption engenders arguments that swing between rationalist and empiricist views of language develop- ment (see Cowley, 2001a). Arguments that putative internal systems arise through general mecha- nisms (e.g., Piaget, 1980; Sampson, 1997) are countered by claims to have demonstrated that we need dedicated devices for language acquisition (e.g., Chomsky, 1965; Pinker, 1994). Surpris- ingly, perhaps, this stale discussion also haunts work in the sociocultural tradition. As often con- ceded (e.g., Cole, 1996; Perinat & Sadurni, 1999; Wertsch, 1985), there is currently no satisfactory way of explaining how Vygotsky’s (1978) higher cognitive functions derive from what is some- times termed the natural “line” of development. Tracing the stalemate to injudicious assumptions about brains and language, we argue that hasty identification of language with symbolic forms blinds us to how social semiosis is grounded in brains and bodies. Ceasing to identify language with symbolic entities, we examine how infants come to engage with mediational means. By thus reframing the issue around grounding “signs of culture,” we give empirical support to Thibault’s (2000) general theory. Social semiosis brings in- MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY, 11(2), 109–132 Copyright © 2004, Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition Requests for reprints should be sent to Stephen J. Cowley, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Bradford, Richmond Road, Bradford BD7 1DP, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. E-mail: S.J.Cowley@bradford.ac.uk Do Not Copy