INTRODUCTION

In sociology, there is the concept known as "defining the context of a situation." This concept was developed by William Isaac Thomas (1923) in monograph called "The Unadjusted Girl." He argued that "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." Thomas directed this statement at the crude behaviorism of John Watson. He wanted to emphasize the fact that two individuals who are presented with identical stimuli will react differently to the situation because they have defined the context of that situation different. One is real for one is not real for the other. It is through the prism of the mind that these experiences are ordered and once these experiences have been defined by the mind, their consequent behavior is shaped by those ascribed meanings. This definition of the context of a situation has come to be known as the "Thomas Theorem."

This concept would be later expanded into "the social construction of reality" by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966). In their expansion of this idea, these scholars modified the Thomas Theorem in several ways. First, they brought to the concept was a social tradition known as the "sociology of knowledge" (Wissenssoziologie). This is a rich theoretical framework that was developed in Frankfurt by the New School for Social Research. Next, they make the claim that because human beings lack instincts in comparison to lower animals, it was the function of culture to replace these lost instinctual drives. Third, they argued that language is the medium through which social reality is constructed and functions as the medium of symbolic interactions. Finally, Berger and Luckman described the kinds of processes involved in the social construction of reality. They referred to these as externalization, objectification, and internalization. These were the processes that explained the dichotomy between the psychological self and the social self. These merit further discussion especially when they are discussed within the cognitive models of Vygotsky and his theory of how social events play a role in human cognition (Kulin, 1990).

LANGUAGE AND REALITY CONSTRUCTION

Language plays an important role in this model of reality construction because language provides the epistemological medium for human social interaction. Berger and Luckmann (1966) have noted, for example, that there are three processes operative in language at all times and that each of these contributes to misinformation, distortion, and social disparities in everyday interaction. What is significant about these processes is the fact that linguistic forms cannot be divorced from the social worlds in which they are articulated.

EXTERNALIZATION Ideas, thoughts, and feelings are externalized and put into linguistic form. Ideas are encoded. OBJECTIFICATION Language becomes objectified, a social institution in itself, it reifies and legitimates social knowledge. Ideas exist in codified form. INTERNALIZATION The social ideas, thoughts, and feelings are internalized from language. Codes influence how one comes to understand and interpret social reality. What is missing from this process of language and thought is how the dichotomy of the social self and the psychological self are adjusted into higher realms of mentality. Intention, it turns out, is socially directed. The intentionality of the speaker goes far beyond the documentation of logical presuppositions investigated by philosophers of language (Ratner, 1996; Ratner, web link; Sunderland, web link). It goes far beyond the logical forms based on formal linguistic features envisioned by advocates of universal grammar theory. Intentionality involves the incorporation of socially constructed worlds (Vygotsky, 1952; 1978) into the very structure of language in the form of frames, schemas, and scenarios. Language is replete with exemplars and categorical prototypes based on the experiences of life. Hence, the very nature of linguistic interpretation is based on these socially constructed worlds. Language is a social act; it is a phenomenal experience. Hence, it is predicated on a model of social semantics, situational pragmatics, and cultural consciousness. Language is about social roles, cultural episodes, and the foregrounding of events, happenings, and other forms of social behavior. These components of social semantics involve the process of externalization (the encoding or in-forming of knowledge), the sedimentation of forms or objectification (the establishment and legitimation of knowledge systems), and the process of internalization (the incorporation of social knowledge, scripts, plans and behaviors):

Process	Commentary and Explication
Externalization	Language is a verbal artifact, a symbolic tool. It is used socially just as a material artifact or instrumental tool is used to navigate within the world of persons and things (Vygotsky, 1978)
Externalization	Objects and things exist in the social world. Language is reified and functions as a social artifact. When they are reified, they end up as abstractions, one of the modes of higher mental functions.
Internalization	Non-verbal tools and verbal tools (language) provide the means by which higher mental functions are created through activity (Ratner, web link; Kozulin, 1990: Chapter Four; Kozulin, 1998).
Psychological Self	The psychological self of the child differs from that of an adult with regard to higher mental functions. This transition, Vygotsky argues, is not linear as the cognitive abilities of an adult differ significantly from those of a child. How does a child come to know these higher mental functions? How does this cognitive leap occur? Vygotky argues that it occurs because the child is aware of a zone of proximal development (ZPD). What this means is that he sees the next step along the road of psychological group. It is the world provided to him by a mentor, an adult who has made the journey to the higher level..
Social Self	The social self is the higher world of the adult. A child comes to notice the disparity between his current psychological self and the social self of his adult mentor. This disparity appears as a plan, a zone of proximal development. It provides the model upon which a child must re-structure his very being. He must develop a new social self and in the process this leads to him developing a new psychological self. In this process, he makes the cognitive leap to higher mental functions and these functions were mediated by tools and symbols articulated within the cultural milieu, the objectified world of reified language and social scripts. For Vygotsky higher mental functions were motivated by formal education. For Bakhtin (1986) literature provided the motivating force leading to higher forms of self understanding and consciousness

The original model presented by Berger and Luckmann is presented graphically as three ongoing processes.

As previously noted, in the first process, language is externalized in that thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories are framed into a given linguistic form (encoding). It is important to note that language as a code can never adequately represent the depth of one's thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, or other complex inner moods. Linguistic codes are not rich enough to capture these complexities of the inner self. Furthermore, language is a verbal tool. It is used for social action and interaction. It has a counterpart in praxis, manual activity, social routines, and other forms of activity (Ratner, web link; Vygotsky, 1978). In the second process, expressions of self are then objectified into a given system of institutionalized signs and symbols. This is where most of linguistic analysis resides, the study of language as signs (semiotics). Meanings and forms are conjoined into a linguistic sign . If a form does not have an underlying meaning, it is nonsensical. If a meaning has no form, it is ineffable. It cannot be spoken of. It has no existence within a symbolic system of signs. Within Vygotsky's model of culture as a mediating force in cognition, language functions in objectification as a verbal artifact. And, in the third process, language is internalized because the social mores and values embedded in the linguistic code itself provide a hidden curriculum of communal values, social history, intent and consciousness which influences the individual. This is the area of research that has confused those who adhere to models of linguistic relativity where language influences thought (internalization). They are unaware that thought also influences language (externalization), and language influences itself (objectification or the institutionalization of language) . Hence, as noted below, the problems of externalization can present major social challenges to those who wish to go beyond the bounds of formal linguistic expression. Poets and advertisers, for example, find it necessary to create new metaphors, rhythmical patterns, new word shapes, or other patterns of defamiliarization in order to express the richness of their thoughts, nuances of intent, or repertoire of emotional values. Since language consists of forms and patterns that are already organized within a system of signs, the linguistic creator must confine his or her expression of ideas to these forms. From time to time, the process of defamiliarization may be used to create new patterns. However, the usual practice is one in which ideas are constrained, distorted, and even misrepresented in order to fit the already established linguistic forms of language. This results in polysemy, homonyms, and lexical ambiguities.

Once an idea is expressed in language, however, it eventually becomes a part of the public domain, and takes on an institutional life of its own divorced from the concreteness of face-to-face interaction in everyday life. Those who study language in its institutional form are linguists. The key word here is "form." Linguists who are enamored of the study of form at the expense of social meanings, pragmatics, or cultural consciousness develop grammars, lexicons, scientific treatises on the diachrony of language, and interpretive strategies for translation from one system of signs to another . Language, however, is much more than a system of signs. Unfortunately, these formal investigations into language are framed within the historiography of their own academic traditions and are divorced from the original definition of the situation in which they are created. Hence, dictionaries and grammars do not represent real speech. They purport to be idealized forms, signs of public expression. However, language involves much more than speech forms. Language represents human categories and experiences. This is why investigators within translation theory realize that their discipline goes far beyond the study of institutionalized rhetorical forms. Translators understand that can never capture the nuances of one language when translating from one linguistic code into another. They adhere to the Old Italian adage: Traduttore P traditore (a translator is a traitor). One must choose between what can be translated and what cannot. A person who translates a poem knows that he is essentially creating a new poem in the process. This is particularly true of translations across disparate cultures, and linguistic systems.

Finally, institutionalized forms can also influence developmental thought because linguistic forms are never neutral and they bring with them a hidden agenda of social values, institutional beliefs, and cultural mores. When Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir spoke of the impact of linguistic forms on the thought processes, they had this aspect of language in mind (St. Clair, 2002). They argued that people who speak different languages tend to differ in how they think and feel about life. What this means, in essence, is that the social system of the culture is internalized into the individual through language. This internalization is evident from studies of grammaticalization, cognitive grammar, and cognitive linguistics . What is significant about this discussion of language and thought is that all three phases of externalization, objectification and internalization take place simultaneously. It is for this reason that feedback is essential to successful communication. The concept of internalization belongs to the world on paper. It is part of the cult of literacy. Berger and Luckmann (1966) do not fully realize that their model of the social construction of reality is limited to print cultures. This does not detract from the fact that human beings socially construct reality. It merely means that they employ different cognitive tools and consequently construct reality in different ways, through metaphors of music, visual thinking, and other forms of analogical thought.

David Olson (1996), a cognitive psychologist, claims that the use of language through oral communication differs significantly from that of communication in a print culture, which he calls "literacy." Oral communication contains a different kind of code than written communication. They process reality in different ways. There are things that one can do with print that makes it significantly different. It is a new form of discourse that allows one to treat reality subjectively (to relate to ideas within one's own mind), to reflect on what is said (one can return to the written form and treat it as an object of thought) and to interpret what is said (language has to be seen as an object that can be analyzed and subjected to a different interpretation). Olson claims that only in cultures that have written forms of language that one finds such institutional developments as mathematics, linguistics, hermeneutics, and other forms of subjectivity.
Not only must Berger and Luckmann (1966) explain how the processes of externalization and internalization different in print and oral cultures, they also need to further articulate how language structures these different models of social reality. That is the focus of social script theory. However, before discussing the details of that theory, one must consider some of the earlier work by cognitive scientists in their attempt to simulate language use through artificial intelligence.

LINGUISTICS AS A COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Scholars from several disciplines (psychology, neurology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and anthropology) joined in a common effort of using the computer to model language and human cognition. They called this newly emerging field of investigation the cognitive sciences (Gardner, 1987). Just as a computer makes use of plans that are imbedded in the machine as software, so it was argued that the human mind has plans that are represented in the form of goals, and cognitive functions. If programs exist in the mind and if they designate and articulate human behavior, then what are they? One of the earliest attempts to model this ability came from research on protocol statements by Schank and Abelson, 1977). They argued that knowledge structures must be built into computer programs as part of an a priori data-base. These canonical set of events were called scripts. They used the concept of eating at a restaurant as a content area that could be readily scripted . The vocabulary that can be associated with the restaurant can be designated. Restaurants have menus, waiters, bus boys, utensils, serving ware, tables, chairs, cashiers, and other related items. Furthermore, there are certain kinds of protocol statements or designated requests that can be effortlessly associated with restaurants. One asks for a menu, one orders a meal, one may ask for a dessert cart, and one asks for the check before going to the cashier to pay for the meal and exiting the culinary place of business. This structured framework of knowledge was significant because it enabled the computer understand the context of the situation based on the language used in that situation. This approach to creating background knowledge is known as expert systems and has met with great success in the realms of artificial intelligence.

The Restaurant Schema as Structured Social Activity
Event Frame	Dinning at a restaurant
Social Roles	Waiter, customer, cashier, busboy, manager, cook
Lexicon	Waiter, customer, table, main meal, deserts, tip, cashier, restaurant, the bill, the check, the menu, etc.
Script	Eat a meal at a restaurant.

Marvin Minsky (1975) also worked on a top-down (deductive) approach to computer processing . His contribution came from the creation of frames, expected structures of knowledge. In lieu of lexical domains and protocol statements, Minsky developed frames that modeled an event or location in the form of slots. Hence, in his attempt to create a robot that could navigate the parameters of a building, he built in the frame of a room and one of the slots in that construction was a doorway. What Minsky wanted to do was to create a robot that would recognize a doorway when it came upon it. He also wanted the robot to have prior knowledge of what constitutes a room. Hence, he created a system in which the recognition of a doorway by the robot would simultaneously activate the whole room frame, a metonymic concept. Minsky (1985) went on to argue for a theory of mind that is constituted by numerous mental agents which can handle different types of knowledge. Even though he did not mention this in his model as a Society of Mind, Minsky incorporated the concept of metonymy into his robotic models. By invoking a part of the room, the computer program was able to associate that part for the whole. What constitutes metonymy is interesting because it is related to how one sees the event. For Minsky, his entrance to the room and all of its constituents comes from the door. The door invokes the room. His rationale for this is obvious. He is operating with a model of a robot that travels on the floor of a building and envisions only the door as the significant context of the door.
What is significant about the work of these early cognitive scientists is that they argued for a deeper understanding of language in artificial intelligence programs. Schank and Abelson (1977), for example, noted that scripts, protocols, and vocabularies were about language. So they naturally asked not only about how computers code human behavior, but also about how languages are used to negotiate social reality. Minsky (1985) noted that in addition to using language to structure frames, scripts, metaphors, and the society of mind, one needs to look at the mind as a parallel processor, one capable of handling several scripts simultaneously, a situation comparable to how human languages function within social contexts. Understandably, linguistics became one of the central disciplines within the cognitive sciences.

SOCIAL SCRIPT THEORY

Unfortunately, these earlier cognitive scientists did not articulate the structure of these social scripts in sufficient detail. The reason for this is simply the fact that they assumed that words would evoke links to other concept, event, or actions. What is missing from their account was social script theory? To answer this question, one must first look into the concept of "social recipes." Within existential sociology, for example, it is argued that most human beings are not able to envision themselves in terms of grand theories or models of social thought. All that they know are their day to day existences and these are always highly contextualized (Douglas et al, 1980; chapter 6). This is because for them, life is situated (Douglas and Johnson, 1977; Kotarba and Fontana, 1984). Things may occur from one moment to the next and they must learn how to deal with these exigencies. How do they deal with these problems? Where did they learn how to cope with these problems? They learned them as minidramas and social acts (Lyman and Scott, 1976, 1978). They learned them by observing and experiencing similar problems in natural situations. What is a natural situation? It is one that is not dictated by the kinds of laboratory conditions found in psychological testing. It is not a situation that is taken out of context. By natural, they mean the situations that are common to everyday life. These are situations in which individuals meat each other in face-to-face encounters. It is a common sense world in which meanings refer to feelings, perceptions, emotions, moods, thoughts, values, and ideas shared with other members of society. It is that internal connection with others that is referred to as the meanings of life. Natural means that one is able to analyze and understand social situations from the standpoint of the members of a group or community. Natural situations are depend on actual situations and circumstances. It involves being-in-the-situation.

From these actual situations, one is able to develop social scripts of the events and the actions. These are best described as episodic events. One does not just enter a restaurant, he must follow a script. That script already exists. It is one that he has seen many times as a child and has participated in. These scripts refer to social functions. They dictate what one should be doing at a particular time and in a particular place if one is to play the role characteristically associated with that script. There may be several people involved in the same situation, but they may differ in the roles that they have been given or have chosen to enact. Hence, the following is a revision of the Restaurant Schema under Social Script Theory.

 

The Restaurant Schema under Social Script Theory
Event Frame	Dinning at a restaurant
Social Roles	Waiter, customer, cashier, busboy, manager, cook
Episodic Functions	Enter a restaurant Approach the host Have someone direct the customer to a table Have someone bring a menu to the customer The customer peruses the menu Have the waiter approach the customer and ask for an order The customer puts in his order The water leave and eventually returns with the food The waiter signals the end of the main meal by asking about deserts. The waiter customer signals the end of the meal by asking for the bill The waiter brings the bill or the check The customer either pays the waiter or pays the cashier The customer pays the cashier The customer may leave a tip The customer leaves the restaurant
Lexicon	Waiter, customer, table, main meal, deserts, tip, cashier, restaurant, the bill, the check, the menu, etc.
Script	Enter a restaurant, approach the cashier, get assigned to a waiter, go to your assigned table, accept the menus, read them, make an order, wait for the meal, eat your meal, discuss the topic of conversation during the meal, wait for the waiter to ask if you want to have a dessert, order the dessert (0ptional), receive the bill, leave a tip, pay the cashier, leave the establishment.

Before leaving the concept of social scripts, it is important to note that Vygotsky was concerned with the process of psychological internalization. He found that the cognitive abilities of children and those of adults appear to evolve linearly, but he claims that this is an illusion. There is a cognitive leap between the cognitive world of a child and one of an adult in such higher functions as reading, perception, writing, memory, and learning. How did these significant changes occur between the higher mental functions of children and adults? He argues that the higher mental functions of the adults were constructed through social activity. He refers to these mediating factors as tools. There are two kinds of social tools that function in the process of internalization (or socialization). One of them is instrumental tools and the other is symbolic acts. In the modeling being espoused in this essay, the authors differentiate between the use of tools in externalization and internalization. In the case of the latter, such tools are used in socialization, the focus of Vygotky's model. What he does not account for is the use of tools that enable one to function within a cultural environment as evidenced in the case of externalization. Berger and Luckmann's model of language adds a new dimension to activity theory. It brings a deeper meaning to the concept of artifacts. They are forms of culture, reified language and activities in the form of social script. There is one more point that needs to be elaborated in this model and that is the difference between the psychological self and the social self. It is due to the disparity between the two that the cognitive leap to higher functions occur. One reassesses this disparity and re-evaluates his psychological being in the form of a cognitive leap. Vygotsky (1962) refers to this leap as scaffolding and he argues that there is a mentor that assists the child in moving up into a higher level of mental processes. The child is aware of the zone of proximal distance (ZPD) because he or she notices the disparity between his psychological self and his social self. This child makes the effort to emulate the adult and revises or remodels the psychological self to fit the social self.
One of the weaknesses in Vygotsky's model that he was not able to articulate how actions and objects mediated the cognitive leap or transition from the higher mental functions of the child to that of the adult. He was able to discuss cultural entities, but not social functions. Activity theory (Ratner, 1996, web link) and social script theory explain how psychological is grounded in cultural activities. As a matter of fact, cognitive linguistics suffers from the same weakness. It can construct a personal model of culture within the individual, but it cannot explain how this model is socially constructed. A child learns by doing thing, by following others, by trying to emulate them, by trying to make his world similar to their world. There is agency involved in these events. The agency comes from the child, but it is an attempt to emulate the social world and the cultural world that he is immersed in. He uses social scripts and language as learning tools and experiential devices to navigate within that milieu. Co-constructionist models of cultural psychology separate the production of social relations from the ways in which individuals utilize and consume them. One learns a social script by participating in that socially constructed event. In many cultures (Hicks and Gwynne, 1996) a child is not considered to be a human until they have mastered a certain level of secondary socialization. In these cultures, this transition is marked by a rite of passage (van Gennep, 1961). At this point in their lives, they have mastered the major social scripts demanded of them by their culture. They leave the world and the mentality of a child and enter into a world that is cognitively different, the world of the adult.

SENSES AND PROTOTYPES AMONG SOCIAL SCRIPTS

As noted earlier under Activity Theory, social actions are motivated. One of these actions involves dinning out either as an individual or as a family. Under social script theory, one of the procedures for dinning out a restaurant was articulated as a chain of mini-procedures that comprise a mega-event. What need to be discussed are the other scenarios for dinning out. Consider, for example, the situation in which one enters a cafeteria in order to purchase a meal.

The Cafeteria Schema under Social Script Theory
Event Frame	Dinning at a Cafeteria, a self-serve establishment
Social Roles	No Waiters, customer, cashier, busboy, manager, cook and many servers
Episodic Functions	Enter a Cafeteria There is no host. One encounters a hallway or a series of roped areas that guide the customer towards the serving area The customer goes along a row of food selections and chooses what he wants to eat. He either pays for his food when he exists this area or when he is ready to leave the premises. No one directs the customer to his table. He carries his own tray and finds himself a table There are no menus. One sees what is available before him. There is no waiter. One acts as his or her own waiter. Contrary to a restaurant, one does puts in his order for food by pointing to selections along the food line. The customer is his own waiter. The main meal and the desserts are not separated from the mail meal. One purchases them together and puts them on his own tray. . At the end of the mail, there is no waiter to remind one to pay his bill. The customer simply walks up to the cashier with his cash register receipt and pay the stipulated amount plus taxes. The customer pays the cashier The customer is not expected to leave a a tip The customer leaves the restaurant
Lexicon	Waiter, customer, table, main meal, servers, desserts, tip, cashier, restaurant, the cash-register receipt, the check, the menu, etc.
Script	Enter a cafeteria, approach the hallway, move towards the food line, pick up a tray, ask for servings from a wide range of meals (salads, desserts, main meal, etc.). There are no waiters. One serves himself. There are no menus. The menu is a visual array along the food line. . The customer leaves when he is ready. In some cafeterias, one must bus his own tray. In others, one may leave the remaining food on the table and quietly leave the establishment.

Another kind of dinning scenario can be found among Fast Food Restaurants.

The Fast Food Restaurant Schema under Social Script Theory
Event Frame	Dinning at a Fast Food establishment
Social Roles	No Waiter, customer, cashier, busboy, no visible manager, several cooks visible in the background.
Episodic Functions	Enter a Fast Food restaurant There is no host There is no one to direct the customer to a table. One finds his own table after he has purchased a meal. The menu is visible to all in big letters and with pictures on the wall behind the many cashiers. One orders by numbers. The customer peruses the menu He approaches the cashier and just state the number. There is a small dialogue about dinning in or eating out. In the first case, one receives his food on a tray, otherwise it is given to him in a paper bag. After the customer gives his order to the cashier, he waits for his food. The order is filled and handed over to the customer. He is given an empty cup so that he can pour his own drinks. The customer leaves the cashier with his food and finds himself a table. There is no waiter. The customer finishes his meal, empties his tray and leaves the restaurant. There are no tips. There is no final meal to pay for as that was purchased before receiving the meal. The customer leaves the restaurant
Lexicon	Customer, table, main meal, deserts, cashiers, fast food establishment, waiting lines, order food by the number, and the bill is prepaid.
Script	Enter a fast food establishment, approach the cashier, order a meal from the menu on the wall, pay for the food before receiving it, take the food and serve your own drinks, napkins, etc. Find a table, command it, sit down and finish the meal. Clean the table and return the tray and deposit the garbage before leaving the establishment.

Since social practices are goal oriented, it should be noted that the rationale behind "dinning out" was to seek food for consumption. It could easily have other motives such as celebrating an event, a business meeting, or the site of a dating scene. In the case of seeking food, one other scenario needs to be articulated and that is the one that includes eating at home.

The Eating at Traditional Home Schema under Social Script Theory
Event Frame	Dinning at home at the kitchen table or dinning room table
Social Roles	Food preparer, family as customers, no cashier, wife as busboy, wife as dishwasher, wife as manager, wife as cook, wife as server, etc.
Episodic Functions	Call for dinner begins the episode. Everyone moves to the dinning site. The wife acts as the hostess If there are seating arrangement problems, she manages the situation. There is not menu. If one is asked, then the response is verbal. The server brings in the prepared food. She sets pots and dishes of food on the table and may even personally serve each person. The menu is set; there are no special orders. If a customer puts in an order it may be ignored. The server frequently leaves and returns with more food The server signals the end of the main meal by asking about desserts. The customer signals the end of the meal by leaving the table. The only gratuity is a comment about the food. Often this is not made by directly addressing the cook. There is no direct payment for the meal. There are no tips Everyone leaves the table except for the wife who is the busboy, the dishwasher, and the maintenance crew at the kitchen site.
Lexicon	Waitress or server, family as customers, table and chairs, table cloth, utensils, dishes, pots and pans, main meal, desserts, verbal gratuity, verbal menu, verbal gratuity, individual servings, seconds, wife as hostess, wife as cook, wife as server, wife as dish washer, wife as chef, wife as food planner, leaving the table and the clean up.
Script	Call to dinner. Enter the dinning site (kitchen or dining room), sit down at selected places, the food is brought in and served, banal conversation or group watching of television, go to your assigned table, accept the menus, read them, make an order, wait for the meal, eat your meal, discuss the topic of conversation during the meal, wait for the server to provide seconds, wait for server to announce the dessert, provide a verbal gratuity (optional), and leave the table.

Within a dinning scene, certain roles and functions may go completely unnoticed. In a formal restaurant, for example, one does not see what is happening in the kitchen. One is not allowed in that section of the restaurant. Each person has a definite role to function, but the guests may be completely unaware of the depth of those roles. He does not know what the busboy does after he leaves his station. He does not know what the waiters and waitresses are doing when they are not near his table. He does not know what the cashier does at the end of the day or how she tallies the accounts when she is ready to leave. He does not know who really owns the restaurant and what kind of financial obligation that they may have towards it or its customers. What they know is limited by the social spaces in the restaurant that has been provided to them. They know the entrance, the cashier's booth, the hostess station, the path towards their table, their waiter or waitress, the rest room area, the décor and the ambience in the staging area, and the orchestrated items of doing business at a restaurant (the bill, charge card, the tip, the account statement, etc.).
This same kind of unnoticed activity occurs in eating a home. The family members do not know how much time was spend in planning the meal. They do not know of how many trips it took to the store to prepare for the meal. They do not know how much time was spent on food preparation (cutting, dicing, roasting, frying, and freezing the food). They do not know how much time was spend in setting up the table for dinner, preparing the seating arrangements, organizing the table, timing the food preparations, and serving the food. After all of the work has been done and the food is quickly eaten, they do not know what reaction the person who organized and orchestrated all of this feels about the event. They are oblivious to her emotions. They see her as a function and not a person.
Some of the different senses of the Dinning Schema can be compared and contrasted below:

Praxiological Extensions of the formal Restaurant
Site	Formal Restaurant	Cafeteria	Fast Food Place	Eating at Home
Host	X	No hostess		Wife serves as hostess
Cashier	X	No cashier	no cashier	no cashier
Formality	Dining Site - Formal	Informal	Informal	Informal
Waiter	X	No Waiters	No Waiters	Wife serves as Waitress
Menu	X	Visual tray line	Menu located on the wall	Visual - servings on the table
Busboy	X	X	Customer is the bus boy	Wife is the bus boyt. She does the clean up
Gratuity	X	optional	none	verbal gratuity or none
Conclusion of the scene	Leave the restaurant	Leave the cafeteria	Leave the fast food site	change rooms or locations

First, how does one go about constructing these activities? One feasible answer is that one constructs these activities by socially participating in them. This is what Leontiev attempted to account for (Kozulin, 1990: 257). What he could not account for was the next step of taking this repeated event and turn it into a concept. When a person participates in such scenarios, they are doing it for their significant others. What is needed, according to Vygotsky (1978) is for that individual to do something for himself, thereby utilizing the concept as his own. He needs to generalize his experience. He needs to construct its ideal form and experiment with it. Kozulin (1990: 259) argues that this is the task of the educator and the psychologists. They must design special scenarios of learning activity that can lead to theoretical reasoning. This reasoning is structured. It is embedded within a goal structure, a zone of proximal distance. It is the job of the mentor to orient the student to his stipulated goal. The mediator who guides the student constitutes a part of his own social world.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Social behavior is scripted. The scene has already been socially constructed and individuals learn to play different roles within the theater of life (Lyman and Scott, 1976, 1978). Those who know how to perform in the theater of life (Goffman, 1959, 1967, and 1974) will be in character and have success in following the script that they have been handed. They who fail at these tasks will be out of character or will be performing the wrong role at the wrong time or in the wrong place. Social Script Theory articulates those roles as social functions and they do so within the context of a situation as witnessed by others(Vygotsky, 1962; 1978; Ratner, 1996; Kozulin, 1998). Hence, these scripts have a social function. They are performed on front stage before others. Consider a situation in which two different announcers are watching an international soccer game. Each comes from a different culture and each has learned different scripts on how to evaluate the life performance. They will perform to these scripts. They are performing for their audiences which may be thousands of miles away watching television or listening to the radio. Even though they are witnessing the same scene, they do not describe the scene in the same way. They are on different stages before different audiences. Consequently, they are defining the contexts of the situation in very different ways. Just what they consider their scripts to be is the investigation of social script theory (St. Clair and Busch, 2003).

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, Mihail. Speech Genres and other Late Essays. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. 1986.

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ADDENDA

Citation: Intercultual Communication Studiues XV (1) 2005