Accessing to “read-writing”. Production of signs, enunciation, exaptation

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to show how cognitive semiotics could mediate between the domains of neurosciences both and the theory of learning. This mediation happens to take place in the study of literacy acquisition. The analysis of writing acts of pre-school children displays how a first access to literacy occurs through the construction of an unlearned linguistic theory and a related series of abductive inferences. Stepwise attempts and corrections lead the child to tune in to a collectively regulated horizon of meaning. We will see how both neuroscience and semiotics refer to the concept of exaptation, in order to describe the relationship between learning, brain plasticity and interpretation of new cultural practices. Finally, we will try to set a comparison between the description of neuronal mechanism and the abdutive process of building literacy skills, grounded on the results of intensive rehabilitation of reading in dyslexia.