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).
_________________________________________________________________
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).
______________________________________________________________________
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.
___________________________________________________________
“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).
_________________________________________________________________________________
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.
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