LEV VYGOTSKY-DEVELOPMENT IS BASED ON SOCIAL CONTEXT

Quotations from VYGOTSKY (1962; 1986; 1978)

John Shotter,

Department of Communication,

University of New Hampshire, 

Durham, NH 03824-3586

“The child begins to perceive the world not only through his [or her] eyes but also through his [or her] speech” (1978, p.32).

“The history of development of signs brings us to a much more general law governing the development of behavior. The essence of this law is that in the process of development the child begins to practice with respect to himself the same forms of behavior that others formerly practiced with respect to him” (1966, pp.39-40).

“Reflection is the transfer of argumentation within...” (1966, p.41).

“Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them” (1978, p.88).

“We could not describe this new significance of the whole operation otherwise than by saying that it is mastery of one’s own process of behavior. It is surprising to us that traditional psychology has completely failed to notice this phenomenon which we can call mastering one’s own reactions. In attempts to explain this fact of ‘will’ this psychology resorted to a miracle, to the intervention of a spiritual factor in the operation of nervous processes, and thus tried to explain the action by the line of most resistance, as did, for example, James in developing his theory of the creative character of the will” (1966, pp.33-34).

“Pedagogy must be oriented not to the yesterday, but to the tomorrow of the child’s development. Only then can it call to life in the process of education those processes of development which now lie in the zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky, 1993, pp. 251-252).

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What changes in development are ‘the interfunctional relations’ between our psychological abilities - we come to ‘orchestrate’ them:

“The unity of consciousness and the interrelation of all psychological functions were, it is true, accepted by all; the single functions were assumed to operate inseparably, in an uninterrupted connection with one another. But this unity of consciousness was usually taken as a postulate, rather then a subject of study... It was taken for granted that the relation between two given functions never varied; that perception, for example, was always connected in an ideal way with attention, memory with perceptions, thought with memory” (1986, pp.1-2).

‘Laws’ of development:

“The general law of development says that awareness and deliberate control appear only during a very advanced stage in the development of a mental function, after it has been used and practiced unconsciously and spontaneously. In order to subject a function to intellectual and volitional control, we must first possess it” (1986, p.168).

“An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one. Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people..., and then inside the child. This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher [mental] functions originate as actual relations between human individuals” (1978, p.57).

“The nature of the development itself changes, from biological to sociohistorical. Verbal thought is not an innate, natural form of behavior, but is determined by a historical-cultural process and has specific properties and laws that cannot be found in the natural forms of thought and speech” (1986, p.94).

“... a rejection of the frequently held view that cognitive development results from the gradual accumulation of separate changes. We believe that child development is a complex dialectical process characterized by periodicity, unevenness in the development of different functions, metamorphosis or qualitative transformations of one form into another, intertwining of external and internal factors, and adaptive processes which overcome impediments that the child encounters... To the naive mind, revolution and evolution seem incompatible and historic development continues only so long as it follows a straight line. Where upheavals occur, where the historical fabric is ruptured, the naive mind sees only catastrophe, gaps, and discontinuity... Scientific thought, on the contrary, sees revolution and evolution as two forms of development that are mutually related and mutually presuppose each other. Leaps in the child’s development are seen by the scientific mind as no more than a moment in the general line of development” (1978, p.73).

We ‘instruct’ ourselves as others ‘instruct’ us - through the use of ‘words’ as ‘tools:

“The child begins to practice with respect to himself the same forms of behavior that others formerly practiced with respect to him” (1966, pp.39-40).

“Hence, we may say that we become ourselves through others and that this rule applies not only to the personality as a whole, but also to the history of every individual function” (1966, p.43).

“Our experimental study proved that it was the functional use of the word, or any other sign, as means of focusing one’s attention, selecting distinctive features and analyzing and synthesizing them, that plays a central role in concept formation” (1986, p.106).

“Learning to direct one’s own mental processes with the aid of words or signs is an integral part of the process of concept formation” (1986, p.108).

“A most essential difference between a sign and a tool, and the basis for a real divergence of the two lines, is the different ways that they orient human behavior. The tool’s function is to serve as the conductor of human influence on the object of activity; it is externally oriented; it must lead to change in objects. It is a means by which human external activity is aimed at mastering, and triumphing over, nature. The sign, on the other hand, changes nothing in the object of a psychological operation. it is a means of internal activity aimed at mastering oneself; the sign is internally oriented” (1978, p.57).

“For the young child, to think means to recall; but for the adolescent, to recall means to think. Her memory is so ‘logicalized’ that remembering is reduced to establishing and finding logical relations; recognizing consists in discovering that element which the task indicates [my emphasis] has to be found... When a human being ties a knot in her handkerchief as a reminder, she is, in essence, constructing the process of memorizing by forcing an external object to remind her of something; she transforms remembering into an external activity. This fact alone is enough to demonstrate the fundamental characteristic of the higher forms of behavior. In the elementary form something is remembered; in the higher form humans remember something. In the first case a temporary link is formed owing to the simultaneous occurrence of two stimuli that affect the organism; in the second case humans personally create a temporary link through the artificial combination of stimuli” (1978, p.51).

“[The child] may not acquire new grammatical or syntactic forms in school but, thanks to instruction in grammar and writing, he does become aware of what he is doing and learns to use his skills consciously. Just as the child realizes for the first time in learning to write that the word Moscow consists of the sounds m-o-s-k-ow and learns to pronounce each one separately, he also learns to construct sentences, to do consciously what he has been doing unconsciously in speaking” (1986, p.184).

The main question - the ‘means’?:

“The main question about the process of concept formation - or about any goal-directed activity - is the question of the means by which the operation is accomplished. Work, for instance, is not sufficiently explained by saying that it is prompted by human needs. We must consider as well the use of tools, the mobilization of the appropriate meanswithout which work could not be performed. To explain the higher forms of human behavior, we must uncover the means by which man learns to organize and direct his behavior” (1986, p.102, my emphasis).

“Our experiments demonstrate two important facts:

              (1) A child̓s speech is as important as the role of action in attaining a goal. Children not only speak about what they are doing; their speech and action are part of one and the same complex psychological function, directed toward the solution of the problem at hand.

              (2) The more complex the action demanded by the situation and the less direct its solution, the greater the importance played by speech in the operation as a whole. Sometimes speech becomes of such vital importance that if not permitted to use it, young children cannot accomplish the given task” (Vygotsky, 1978, pp. 25—26; italics in original).

In other words, “children solve practical tasks with the help of their speech, as well as their eyes and hands” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 26).

The relations between thought and speech:

“Experience teaches us that thought does not express itself in words, but rather realizes itself in them” (1986, p.251).

“The relation of thought to word is not a thing but a process, a continual movement backward and forth from thought to word and from word to thought. In that process, the relation of thought to word undergoes changes that themselves may be regarded as developmental in the functional sense. Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them. Every thought tends to connect something with something else, to establish a relation between things. Every thought moves, grows and develops, fulfills a function, solves a problem” (1986, p.218).

“The connection between thought and word... is neither preformed nor constant. It emerges in the course of development, and itself evolves. To the biblical ‘In the beginning was the Word’, Goethe makes Faust reply, ‘In the beginning was the deed’. The intent here is not to detract from the value of the word, but we can accept this version if we emphasize it differently: In the beginning was the deed. The word was not the beginning - action was there first; it is the end of development, crowning the deed” (1962, p.153/ 1986, p.255).

“The word I forgot/ which once I wished to say/ And voiceless thought/ returns to shadow’s chamber” (Osip Mandelstam, quoted in Vygotsky, 1986, p.210).

“The structure of speech does not simply mirror the structure of thought; that is why words cannot be put on by thought like a ready-made garment” (1986, p.219).

Meaning (concepts or “word meaning”):

“The conception of word meaning as a unit of both generalizing thought and social interchange is of incalculable value for the study of thought and language” (p.9).

“Behind words, there is the independent grammar of thought, the syntax of word meanings” (1986, p.222).

“A word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense. Meaning remains stable throughout the changes of sense. The dictionary meaning of a word is no more than a stone in the edifice of sense, no more than a potentiality that finds diversified realization in speech.

              The last words of the previously mentioned fable by Krylov, “The Dragonfly and the Ant,” are a good illustration of the difference between sense and meaning. The words “Go and dance!” have a definite and constant meaning, but in the context of the fable they acquire a much broader intellectual and affective sense. They mean both “Enjoy yourself!” and “Perish!” This enrichment of words by the sense they gain from the context is the fundamental law of the dynamics of word meanings. A word in a context means both more and less than the same word in isolation: more, because it acquires new context; less, because its meaning is limited and narrowed by the context. The sense of a word, says Paulhan, is a complex, mobile, protean phenomenon; it changes in different minds and situations and is almost unlimited. A word derives its sense from the sentence, which, in turn, gets its sense from the paragraph, the paragraph from the book, the book from all the works of the author” (p.245).

“The problem is that thought is mediated by signs externally, but it also is mediated internally, this time by word meanings. Direct communication between minds is impossible, not only physically but psychologically. Communication can be achieved only in a roundabout way. Thought must first pass through meanings and only then through words” (p.252).

“The relation between thought and word is a living process; thought is born through words. A word devoid of thought is a dead thing... But thought that fails to realize itself in words remains a “Stygian shadow” [O. Mandelstam]... The connection between thought and word, however, is neither preformed nor constant. It emerges in the course of development, and itself evolves” (1986, p.255).

“The structure of speech does not simply mirror the structure of thought; that is why words cannot be put on by thought like a ready-made garment” (1986, p.219).

“Precisely because thought does not have its automatic counterpart in words, the transition of thought to word leads through meaning. In our speech, there is always the hidden thought, the subtext” (1986, p.251).

“A word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense. Meaning remains stable throughout the changes of sense. The dictionary meaning of a word is no more than a stone in the edifice of sense, no more than a potentiality that finds diversified realization in speech” (1986 p.245).

The development of ‘higher’ mental functions:

“Traditional views of the development of the higher mental functions are,” he says (Vygotsky, 1966, pp.11-12), “erroneous and one-sided primarily and mainly because they are unable to see facts as facts of historical development, regard them as natural processes and formations, confuse them and fail to differentiate the organic from the cultural, the natural from the historical, the biological from the social in the child’s mental development...”

It is all too easy, Vygotsky feels, to divide psychology metaphysically into two quite distinct approaches, into a lower and a higher form,

“into two separate and independent sciences: physiologic, natural-science, explanatory or causal psychology, on the one hand, and conceptual, descriptive, or teleological psychology of the spirit, as the basis of all the humanities, on the other hand” (1966, p.15).

But such an approach, he said, “forgets that ‘man also reacts on nature, changing it and creating new conditions of existence for himself’”(Vygotsky, 1966, p.21, quoting Engels).

Vygotsky (1978, p.8) discusses in this respect the subject matter of Marx’s theory-method, and its relevance for the understanding of developmental processes:

“The whole of Capital is written according to the following method: Marx analyses a single living “cell” of capitalist society - for example the nature of value. Within this cell he discovers the structure of the entire system and all its economic institutions... Anyone who could discover what a ‘psychological’ cell is - the mechanism producing even a single response - would find the key to psychology as a whole.”

What goes on between ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’? - JOINT ACTIVITY, i.e., two-way activity.

“To study something historically means to study it in the process of change; that is the dialectical method’s basic demand. To encompass in research the process of a given thing’s development in all its phases and changes - from birth to death - fundamentally means to discover its nature, its essence, for “it is only in movement that a body shows what it is.” ... The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of study (1978, p.65).

Marx (The German Ideology): “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that the thing, reality sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developedabstractly by idealism - which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective reality ... Hence, he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’ activity” (p.121).

The process that active subjects use to form real connections with the world of objects.

Five general themes:

-             1: Sensuous activity.

-             2: Developmental: An insistence upon the necessity for a genetic (i.e., developmental) analysis: ontogenesis; phylogenesis; social-cultural history; and ‘microgenesis’ (the ‘seed’ of a thought ‘grows’ into an utterance).

-             3: Nature/Culture interaction: The claim that the higher mental functions have their origins in lower forms, and that what constitutes a higher form is a socio-cultural organizational structure within which the ‘natural’ abilities available to human beings can be deployed according to humanly ‘invented’ purposes, rather than those in the immediate environment.

-             4: Tools and Signs: The claim that an essential key to understanding human social and psychological processes is the tools and signs used to mediate them - where what is at first a means of communication comes itself later to have a meaning (a referent).

-             5: The zone of proximal development: it is in this zone that Culture is appropriated from Nature, and Nature also reappropriates culture.

-             Plus a sixth (6): Each of these themes can only be understood by taking into account its interrelationships with the others.

Development: Right at the beginning of Thought and Language (Vygotsky, 1986, p.1) he formulates the problem of development as to do with the changing of “interfunctional relations,” especially of the relations between thought and language, but we can also add here, the relations between attention and action; thought and memory; memory and perception, etc.

He claimed then (i.e., in 1934) that:

“The study of thought and language is one of the areas of psychology in which a clear understanding of interfunctional relations is particularly important. As long as we do not understand the interrelation of thought and word, we cannot answer, or even correctly pose, any more specific questions in this area... Interfunctional relations in general have not yet received the attention they merit” (1986, p.1).

This was because, he claims,

“the unity of consciousness and the interrelation of all psychological relations [was/is] accepted by all... It was taken for granted that the relation between two given functions never varied; that perception, for example, was always connected in an ideal way with attention, memory with perception, thought with memory” (1986, pp.1-2).

Yet, as he goes on to say,

“all that is known about psychic development indicates that its very essence lies in the change of the interfunctional nature of consciousness” (1986, p.2).

Adults create situations which set children tasks which, if they accomplish them, makes it seem as if the child has already the skill to interrelate his/her abilities in the appropriate way. But:

“The general law of development says that awareness and deliberate control appear only during a very advanced stage in the development of a mental function, after it has been used and practiced unconsciously and spontaneously. In order to subject a function to intellectual and volitional control, we must first possess it” (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 168).

But once the child has been ‘motivated’ to act thus, the adult’s task is then to make them aware of what they have done:

“In general we may say that the relations between the higher mental functions were at one time real relations among people. I act with respect to myself as people act with respect to me. As verbal thinking is the transfer of speech within, [and] as reflection is the transfer of argumentation within, so can the mental function of the word, as Janet has shown, never be explained other than by using for the explanation a vaster system than man himself. The original psychology of the functions of the word is a social function, and, if we want to trace the function of the word in the behaviour of the personality, we must consider its former function in the social behaviour of people” (Vygotsky, 1966, p.41).

“We might formulate the general genetic law of cultural development as follows, any function in the child’s cultural development appears on the stage twice, on two planes, first on the social plane and then on the psychological], first among people as an intermental category and then within the child as an intramental category” (Vygotsky, 1966, p.44).

“To explain the higher functions of behaviour,” says Vygotsky (1962, p.56; 1983, p.102), “we must uncover the means by which man learns to organize and direct his behaviour” (emphasis added).

“All the higher psychic functions are mediated processes, and signs are the basic means used to master and direct them. The mediating sign is incorporated in their structure as an indispensable, indeed the central, part of the total process. In concept formation that sign is the word, which at first plays the role of means in forming the concept but later becomes its symbol” (1962, p.56, this paragraph is missing from 1986 translation).

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Prosthetic devices, we might say, reside ‘on the side of the agent’, we may come to “dwell in” them (Polanyi, 1958), and learn how to embody them as an instrumental means through which to achieve our ends. As such, they do not have any content in themselves, but become ‘transparent’ - blind people do not feel their sticks vibrating in the palms of their hands, nor do they have to infer as if solving a problem that the terrain ahead of them is rough; they experience it directly as rough, as a result of their stick-assisted ‘way’ of investigating it in their movement through it. Furthermore, the knowledge they obtain in that way can be complete and not fragmentary, for any ‘gaps’ in it can be further investigated. In a similar way, by acting prosthetically ‘through’ our words, e.g., in telling or asking things of other people, we can actively discover things about them. As Polanyi (1958, pp.55-57) describes it, we attend in such activities from ongoing and changing “subsidiary awarenesses” to a “focal awareness” of their organized result - there is a movement from a ‘knowing how’ to a ‘knowing what’. It is only when the flow of activity mediated by such instruments breaks down or is otherwise interrupted in some way - a tool is damaged (to use Heidegger’s example), or there is no connection between our activity and the state of the instrument - that we become aware of them as “instruments” as such. They become unsuitable for use as “ready-to-hand” equipment, and become conspicuous as “present-to-hand” things or objects (Heidegger, 1967, pp. 102-103), i.e., from being transparent they become opaque - but they may still function then in an ‘indicatory’ mode.

              Wertsch (1991, p.27) mentions the example of the 6 year old child who has lost a toy, and who asks her father for help in finding it. Instead of beginning to look on her behalf, he starts to talk, to ask questions:

“The father asks where she last saw the toy: the child says I can’t remember’. He asks a series of questions - did you have it in your room? Outside? Nextdoor? To each question, the child answers ‘no’. When he says ‘in the car?’, she says, ‘I think so’ and goes to retrieve the toy.”

As Wertsch remarks: “In such cases one cannot answer the question ‘Who did the remembering?’ by pointing to one person or the other. The remembering is a ‘joint product’ of the interaction.

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“Later on we shall discuss in detail the real concepts and their preconceptual equivalents. But right now we must focus on the process of concept formation in general. Our experimental study proved that ti si the functional use of the word, or any other sign, as means of focusing one’s attention, selecting distinctive features and analyzing and synthesizing them, that plays a central role in concept formation...Words and other signs are those means that direct our mental operations, control their courser, and channel them toward the solution of the problem confronting us” (in 1986 only, pp.106-107).

Prosthetic devices, we might say, reside ‘on the side of the agent’, we may come to “dwell in” them (Polanyi, 1958), and learn how to embody them as an instrumental means through which to achieve our ends. As such, they do not have any content in themselves, but become ‘transparent’ - blind people do not feel their sticks vibrating in the palms of their hands, nor do they have to infer as if solving a problem that the terrain ahead of them is rough; they experience it directly as rough, as a result of their stick-assisted ‘way’ of investigating it in their movement through it. Furthermore, the knowledge they obtain in that way can be complete and not fragmentary, for any ‘gaps’ in it can be further investigated. In a similar way, by acting prosthetically ‘through’ our words, e.g., in telling or asking things of other people, we can actively discover things about them. As Polanyi (1958, pp.55-57) describes it, we attend in such activities from ongoing and changing “subsidiary awarenesses” to a “focal awareness” of their organized result - there is a movement from a ‘knowing how’ to a ‘knowing what’. It is only when the flow of activity mediated by such instruments breaks down or is otherwise interrupted in some way - a tool is damaged (to use Heidegger’s example), or there is no connection between our activity and the state of the instrument - that we become aware of them as “instruments” as such. They become unsuitable for use as “ready-to-hand” equipment, and become conspicuous as “present-to-hand” things or objects (Heidegger, 1967, pp. 102-103), i.e., from being transparent they become opaque - but they may still function then in an ‘indicatory’ mode.

Wertsch (1991, p.27) mentions the example of the 6 year old child who has lost a toy, and who asks her father for help in finding it. Instead of beginning to look on her behalf, he starts to talk, to ask questions:

“The father asks where she last saw the toy: the child says I can’t remember’. He asks a series of questions - did you have it in your room? Outside? Next door? To each question, the child answers ‘no’. When he says ‘in the car?’, she says, ‘I think so’ and goes to retrieve the toy.”

As Wertsch remarks: “In such cases one cannot answer the question ‘Who did the remembering?’ by pointing to one person or the other. The remembering is a ‘joint product’ of the interaction.

The relations between ‘instruction’ and ‘development’: and between ‘writing’ and ‘speech’:

-             “Our investigation has shown that the development of writing does not repeat the developmental history of speaking” (1986, p.180).

-             Consider here also the historical effect of the invention of writing and print (and the learning of writing) upon one’s understanding of speech. It clearly produces (see Vygotsky, 1986, pp.180-183) a radical and irreversible difference in what a language ‘is’ for those who belong to a literate society, in which writing is a major form of communication - to such an extent that it is quite impossible for us, as members of a literate culture, to imagine quite what speech is for members of an oral culture. Indeed, if faced with the task of saying what a thought is like before we have expressed it, what is the image that you come up with? A ‘sentence with the sound stripped off?

Six points:

-             Vygotsky draws six differences between writing and speech (oral and inner speech):

1) Writing is a separate linguistic function, in both structure and mode of functioning. “It is speech in thought and image only, lacking the musical, expressive, intonational qualities of oral speech. In learning to write, the child must disengage himself from the sensory aspect of speech and replace words by images of words (p.181) - it is it’s abstract quality that is the main stumbling block to its use.

2) Writing is also speech without an actual interlocutor. It has to be addressed to an absent, imaginary person. Thus writing requires a double abstraction: from both the sound and rhythm, and from the possibility of reply.

3) Children have little motivation to learn writing because they experience no need for it. In conversation, every utterance is prompted by a motive (cf. Bakhtin, on the ‘responsive’ nature of language), by the need for a reply to what has gone before: an answer to a question; an explanation for puzzlement; etc. The motives for writing (sentences) are more abstract.

4) Writing requires deliberate analytical work on the part of children. They put words and sentences together, they must take notice of both the sound structure of words (to get the spelling right) and of word sequences (to get the syntax of their sentences right).

Writing stands in a different relation to inner speech than oral speech: written speech follows inner speech and presupposes its existence; while oral speech does not.

5) However, written and inner speech have very different forms - hence the task of putting one’s thought into words: While inner speech is condensed and abbreviated; predicative, i.e., abut he subject of thought without the subject being explicitly present, because always known to the thinker. Written speech must explain the situation fully, in order to be intelligible. It must within itself construct a fully intelligible ‘intralinguistic reality’.

6) Written speech is considerably more conscious, and it is produced more deliberately that oral speech.

“We may conclude that (a) the essential difference between written and oral speech reflects the difference between two types of activity, one of which is spontaneous, involuntary, and nonconscious, while the other is abstract, voluntary, and conscious; (b) the psychological functions on which written speech is based have not even begun to develop in the proper sense when instruction in writing starts. It must build on barely emerging, immature processes” (1986, p.183).

In other words, writing transforms speech utterly, in a way which seemingly ‘disconnects’ it from its origins. In writing, “we are obliged to create the situation, to represent it to ourselves. This demands detachment from the actual situation” (Vygotsky, 1962, p.99). This is our ability too in literate speech. The point is: no amount of investigation in biological or naturalistic terms will uncover the nature of our current linguistic abilities to talk in such a detached manner; only a historical (developmental transformational) analysis is adequate. But the point is also, that such discontinuities are only apparent; the disconnections are functional; at each stage, what is transformed is the imaginaryintralinguistic context in terms of which we represent ourselves to ourselves.

The relation between thinking and speech:

“Studying the development of thought and speech in childhood, we found that the process of their development depends not so much on the changes within these two functions, but rather upon changes in the primary relations between them.... Their relations and connections do not remain constant. That is why the leading idea is that there is no constant formula of relation between thought and speech that would be applicable to all stages and forms of development or involution. Each of these stages has its own characteristic form of relation between these two functions” (in Collected Papers, vol.1., p.110).

Inner vs. external relations: the natural, spontaneous connections things have for us, which we find to exist between things, and which we cannot undo vs. those we create ourselves and impose upon things.

“It became plain that the inner relations we were looking for [between thought and speech] were not a prerequisite for, but rather a product of, the historical development of human consciousness” (1986, p.210).

Thought and speech not always connected in the same way (ref. p.2). “Thought and speech not connected by a primary bond. A connection originates, changes, and grows in the course of the evolution of thinking and speech” (pp.210-11).

Genetic roots of thought and speech (Ch4):

A prelinguistic period of thought

A preintellectual period of speech

“But he most important discovery is that at a certain moment about the age of two the curves of development of thought and speech, till then separate, meet and join to initiate a new form of behavior... This crucial instant, when speech begins to serve intellect, and thoughts begin to be spoken, is indicated by two unmistakable objective symptoms: (1) the child’s sudden, active curiosity about word, his questions about every new thing, ‘What is this?’ and (2) the resulting rapid, saccadic increases in his vocabulary” (p.82).

“...speech is interiorized psychologically before it is interiorized physically. Egocentric speech is inner speech in its functions; it is speech on its way inward, intimately tied up with the ordering of the child’s behavior, already partly incomprehensible to others, yet still overt in form and showing no tendency to change into whispering or any other sort of half-sounded speech” (p.86).

Yet, the connection between the two, speech and thought, is ‘internal’ not ‘external’ and mechanical.

Four stages: “The first is the primitive or natural stage, corresponding to preintellectual speech and preverbal thought, when these operations appear in their original form, as they were evolved at the primitive level of behavior” (pp.86-87).

              “Next comes the stage that we might call ‘naive psychology’... This phase is clearly defined in the speech development of the child. It is manifest ed in the concrete use of grammatical forms and structures before the child has understood the logical relations for which they stand. The child may operate with subordinate clauses, with words likebecause, if, when, and but, long before he really grasps causal, conditional, or temporal relations. He masters syntax of speech before syntax of thought (cf. C.S. Lewis: “syntax masquerading as meaning”)... grammar develops before logic and.. The child learns relatively late the mental operations corresponding to the verbal forms he has been using for a long time” (p.87).

              “...a third stage, distinguished by external signs, external operations that are used as aids in the solution of internal problems. The child counts on his fingers, resorts to mnemonic aids, and so on” (p.87).

              “The fourth stage we call the ‘ingrowth stage’.. The child begins to count in his head, to use ‘logical memory’, that is, to operate with inherent relations and inner signs...” (p.87).

[Associationism (mechanical): A word calls to mind its content as the overcoat of a friend reminds us of the friend. But in Vygotsky’s view: “...words cannot be put on a thought like a ready-made garment” (1986, p.219), i.e., a word does not recall its ‘content’, nor does is a ‘content’ fitted by a word - the relationship between the two is of an utterly different kind.]

“Bühler also observed that each new object appears for the child as a problem, a problem to which he has the general schema of a solution – enunciating a word – but not always the particular means – a definite word. When he lacks the word for a new object he demands it from adults” (p.92).

“We can now formulate the main conclusions to be drawn from our analysis. If we compare the early development of speech and intellect – which, as we have seen, develop along separate lines both in animals and very young children – with the development of inner speech and verbal thought, we must conclude that the later stage is not a simple continuation of the earlier. The nature of the development itself changes, from biological to sociohistorical. Verbal thought is not an innate, natural form of behavior, but is determined by a historical-cultural process and has specific properties and laws that cannot be found in the natural forms of thought and speech” (1986, p.94).

Words as ‘means’, exp study of development of concepts (Ch5):

Traditional methods: Fail i) to tap the child’s own thinking, and elicit the reproduction of ready-made definitions provided from the outside; and ii) fail to take into account the perception and elaboration of the sensory material that gives birth to usable concepts.

Summary:

1. Signs and words serve first as a means of contact with others.

2. Later become the basis for a new and superior form of activity in children.

3. But changes do not occur in a one-dimensional fashion.

4. Everything is at first mixed together in an undifferentiated way: children address objects with both sticks and words (Levina’s example in 1978, pp.25-27).

“While the interrelationship of these two functions of language is apparent in this setting, it is important to remember that egocentric speech is linked to children̓s social speech by many transitional forms. The first significant illustration of the link between these two language functions occurs when children find that they are unable to solve a problem by themselves They then turn to an adult, and verbally describe the method that they cannot carry out by themselves. The greatest change in children̓s capacity to use language as a problem-solving tool takes place somewhat later in their development, when socialized speech (which has previously been used to address an adult) is turned inward. Instead of appealing to the adult, children appeal to themselves, language thus takes on an intrapersonal function in addition to its interpersonal use. When children develop a method of behavior for guiding themselves that had previously been used in relation to another person, when they organize their own activities according to a social form of behavior, they succeed m applying a social attitude to themselves. The history of the process of the internalization of social speech is also the history of the socialization of children̓s practical intellect” (1978, p.27).

Unevenness:

i) Attempts to solve problem through verbal formulations and by appeals to the experimenter for help - a mixture of diverse forms;

ii) by asking a question the child indicates that he has indeed formed a plan, but is unable to perform the necessary operations - the question ‘bridges the gap’;

iii) the child’s ability to control another person’s behavior becomes a necessary part of the child’s practical skills.

“It takes into account that a concept is not an isolated, ossified, and changeless formation, but an active part of the intellectual process, constantly engaged in serving communication, understanding, and problem solving” (p.98).

Ach: the “determining tendency” in purposeful, consciously directed acts of thought...”This characterization of concept formation, however, is still insufficient” (p.100).

Uznadze: “Word, obviously, is a tool of human understanding. This moment plays a decisive role in concept formation.... a group of sounds acquires certain meaning (??)... Without this functional moment of mutual understanding [acknowledgment], no one group of sounds would ever be[end100]come a bearer of meaning, and no concept would ever appear” (pp.100-101).

“The main question about the process of concept formation - or about any goal-directed activity - is the question of the means by which the operation is accomplished. Work, for instance, is not sufficiently explained by saying that it is prompted by human needs. We must consider as well the use of tools, the mobilization of the appropriate means without which the work could not be performed. To explain the higher forms of human behavior, we must uncover the means by which man learns to organize and direct his behavior” (1986, p.102).

“All the higher psychic functions are mediated processes, and signs are the basic means used to master and direct them. The mediating sign is incorporated in their structure as an indispensable, indeed, the central part of the total process. In concept formation, that sign is the word which at first plays the role of means in forming a concept and later becomes its symbol. (1962, p.90) (very different translation, 1986, p.102)

“Our experimental study proved that it is the functional use of the word, or any other sign, as means of focusing one’s attention, selecting distinctive features and analyzing and synthesizing them, that plays a central role on concept formation” (1986, p.106).

“Words and other signs are those means that direct our mental operations, control their course, and channel them toward the solution of the problem confronting us” (186, pp.106-7).

“Learning to direct one’s own mental processes with the aid of words or signs is an integral part of the process of concept formation. The ability to regulate one’s actions by using auxiliary means reaches its full development only in adolescence” (1986, p.108).

“From the very first days of the child’s development his activities acquire a meaning of their own in a system of social behavior and, being directed towards a definite purpose, are refracted through the prism of the child’s environment. The path from object to child and from child to object passes through another person. This complex human structure is the product of a developmental process deeply rooted in the links between individual and social history” (Vygotsky, 1978, p.30).

Word meanings are not static structures, but dynamic formations, a matter of “interfunctional relations”:

i) they change as the child develops

ii) they change in different context of usage

iii) they change with the ways in which thought functions

Vygotsky on thinking in “complexes”:

“In perception, in thinking, and in acting, the child tends to merge the most diverse elements into one unarticulated image on the strength of some chance impression” (p.110).... Claparède: “syncretism,” Blonsky: “incoherent coherence.”

“In a complex, the bonds between its components are discovered through direct experience. A complex, therefore, is first and foremost a concrete grouping of objects connected by factual bonds. Since a complex is not formed on the plane of abstract logical thinking, the bonds that create it, as well as the bonds it helps to create, lack logical unity; they may be of many different kinds” (p.113).

Types of complex: “associative” (p.113); “collections” (p.114): “chain complex” (p.115); “diffuse complex” (p.117); the “pseudoconcept” (p.119).

“Pseudoconcepts predominate over all other complexes in the preschool child’s thinking for the simple reason that [end 119] in real life complexes corresponding to word meanings are not spontaneously developed by the child: The lines along which a complex develops are predetermined by the meaning a given word already has in the language of adults” (pp.119-120).

“The linguistic milieu, with its stable, permanent words meanings, charts the way that the child’s generalizations will take... But the adult cannot pass on to the child his mode of thinking. He merely supplies the ready-made meanings of the words, around which the child builds complexes” (p.120).

“In the word, he does not create his own speech, but acquires the speech of adults” (p.122).

Participation: “The term is applied to the relation pf partial identity or close interdependence established by primitive thought between two objects or phenomena that actually have neither contiguity nor any other recognizable connection” (p.128).

“The phenomenon of participation among primitive peoples also has its roots in the complex character of their thinking. Primitive people think in complexes, and consequently the word in their language does not function as a carrier of the concept, but rather as a family name [cf. LW] for a group of concrete objects belonging together, not logically, but factually” (p.129).

Dead and living metaphors, the neck of a bottle (grouping things in a complex fashion), prior to “literized” metaphors.... “In a dialogue between child and adult, a somewhat similar process takes place – both of them may refer to the same object, but each will think of it in a fundamentally different framework. The child’s framework is purely situational, with the word tied to something concrete, whereas the adult’s framework is conceptual” (p.133).

“The primordial word by no means could be reduced to a mere sign of the concept. Such a word is rather a picture, image, mental sketch of the concept. It is work of art indeed. That is why such a word has a ‘complex’ character and may denote a number of objects belonging to one complex” (p.133). [“When we look into ourselves as we do philosophy, we often get to see just such a picture. A full-blown pictorial representation of our grammar. Not facts; but as it were illustrated turns of speech” (PI, no.295)]

** “The adult constantly shifts from conceptual to concrete, complex thinking. The transitional, pseudoconceptual form of thought is not confined to the child’s thinking; we too resort to it very often in our daily lives” (p.134).

“The principle function of complexes is to establish bonds and relations. Complex thinking begins the unification of scattered impressions; by organizing discrete elements into groups, it creates a basis for later generalizations” (p.135).

“When the process of concept formation [ref ** above] is seen in all its complexity, it appears as a movement of thought within the pyramid of concepts, constantly alternating between two directions: from the particular to the general, and from the general to the particular” (pp.142-143).

“Like a word that exists only in the phrase, and like a sentence that appears only in the4 child’s speech earlier that a separate word, judgment appears in the child prior to the concept. That is why association alone cannot engender a concept” (p.144).

 Scientific concepts, Ch6:

“... as long as the curriculum supplies the necessary material, the development of scientific concepts runs ahead of the development of spontaneous concepts” (p.147).

“These findings led us to a hypothesis of two different paths in the development of two different forms of reasoning. In the case of scientific thinking, the primary role is played by initial verbal definition, which being applied systematically, gradually comes down to concrete phenomena. The development of spontaneous concepts knows no systematicity and goes from the phenomena upward toward generalizations.

              The scientific concepts evolve under the conditions of systematic cooperation between the child and the teacher. Development and maturation of the child̓s higher mental functions are products of this cooperation. Our study shows that the developmental progress reveals itself in the growing relativity of causal thinking, and in the achievement of a certain freedom of thinking in scientific concepts. Scientific concepts develop earlier than spontaneous concepts because they benefit from the systematicity of instruction and cooperation. This early maturity of scientific concepts gives them the role of a propaedeutic guide in the development of spontaneous concepts” (p.148).

(Leave development out of it for the moment) Relations between thought and word in the mature mind:

“The relation of thought to word is not a thing but a process, a continual movement backward and forth from thought to word and from word to thought. In that process, the relation of thought to word undergoes changes that themselves may be regarded as developmental in the functional sense. Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into [socially intelligible] existence through them. Every thought tends to connect something with something else [intentionality], to establish a relation between things. Every thought moves, grows and develops, fulfils a function, solves a problem” (1962, p.125; 1986, p.218).

Inner speech:

“Inner speech is speech for oneself; external speech is speech for others” (1962, p.131; 1986, p.225).

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References:

Vygotsky, L.S. (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1966) Development of higher mental functions. In A.N. Leontyev, A.R. Luria and A. Smirnov (Eds.) Psychological Research in the USSR. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1986) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Vygotsky, L. (1993). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, Vol. 2: 77 fundamentals of defectology (R.Rieber & A. Carton, Eds., J. Knox & Stevens, Trans.). New York: Plenum.