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Thought and Language
Since it was introduced to the English-speaking world in 1962, Lev Vygotsky's highly original exploration of human mental development has become recognized as a classic foundational work of cognitive science. Vygotsky analyzes the relationship between words and consciousness, arguing that speech is social in its origins and that only as children develop does it become internalized verbal thought.
Now Alex Kozulin has created a new edition of the original MIT Press translation by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar that restores the work's complete text and adds materials that will help readers better understand Vygotsky's meaning and intentions. Kozulin has also contributed an introductory essay that offers new insight into the author's life, intellectual milieu, and research methods.
Now Alex Kozulin has created a new edition of the original MIT Press translation by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar that restores the work's complete text and adds materials that will help readers better understand Vygotsky's meaning and intentions. Kozulin has also contributed an introductory essay that offers new insight into the author's life, intellectual milieu, and research methods.
344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
About the author
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky
83 books199 followersLev Semenovich Vygotsky (Russian: Лев Семёнович Вы́готский or Выго́тский, born Lev Simyonovich Vygodsky) was a Soviet developmental psychologist and the founder of cultural-historical psychology.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
February 5, 2021
What an extraordinary person Vygotsky must have been. Here he is, in his late 30s, dying of TB and stuck in a Stalinist Russia that doesn't much appreciate him, and he still takes the trouble to write this little book which tries to summarise his unique approach to psychology. He puts Piaget in his place as politely and firmly as Weyl, another underappreciated contemporary, does with Russell. The edition I'm reading has long footnotes from Piaget, written much later, responding to Vygotsky's criticism. He is very respectful.
Vygotsky knows he doesn't have much time left, so he can't put in as much detail as he would have liked. He tells us how children learn to think and is remarkably categorical. Children below the age of puberty, he says, think quite differently from adolescents and adults. They do not use fully formed concepts, as they will when they're older; their view of the world is based on simpler structures. He names a series of developmental stages and sketches what they are, but he doesn't describe them closely enough that I properly grasp what distinguishes "complexes" and "pre-concepts" from true concepts. He seems sure of his facts, which he says are based on studying many children. It's frustrating.
I try to remember how I thought when I was eight or nine; my impression is that I remember my childhood better than most people. Did I lack the ability to think in concepts? I felt I could understand some quite complicated things. But it's true, since then I have become much more analytical. I am inclined to believe what he says. He tells us that formal study strengthens the mind by developing the basic intellectual faculties: ability to concentrate, to remember, to generalise, to categorise, to relate. He explains that these abilities can be developed in one discipline, then be used in another. He is impatient with psychologists who have tried to disprove the idea by, for example, teaching children to estimate the lengths of lines and then showing that this doesn't improve their ability to estimate the sizes of angles. He says it's obviously too small-scale: they should have known better. Vygotsky is not small-scale.
He's after the central thing, the relationship between language and thought. In the final part of the book, he pulls together all the themes he's introduced earlier and outlines how he believes it works. He tells us that the key is "ego-centric speech", the way small children talk out loud to themselves. This behaviour becomes less frequent as they grow up and more or less disappears by the time most kids are seven. Piaget explained it as a primitive stage that is displaced by socialization. Vygotsky says Piaget has got it completely backwards. Ego-centric speech starts off as social speech, but becomes transformed into the inner speech which every older child and adult has. He briefly quotes data which he says clearly shows how the characteristics of late ego-centric speech are heading in this direction. It is internal speech just before it becomes fully internal and can no longer be observed. In an extraordinary lyrical passage, he tries to explain to us the highly elliptical, condensed form of mature inner speech by comparing it with the scene from Anna Karenina where Levin and Kitty declare their love to each other by using only the initial letters of the words they don't dare say out loud. They can do this because their thoughts are so in tune with each other; but you are even more in tune with yourself, so you can go further. Is it poetry or science? Maybe he's run out of time to do science, and he's hoping poetry will be enough to get his ideas into the minds of future researchers. Maybe his strategy worked. I'm not sure.
You're a pretty impressive guy, Lev Vygotsky. I'm sorry you couldn't stay around longer.
Vygotsky knows he doesn't have much time left, so he can't put in as much detail as he would have liked. He tells us how children learn to think and is remarkably categorical. Children below the age of puberty, he says, think quite differently from adolescents and adults. They do not use fully formed concepts, as they will when they're older; their view of the world is based on simpler structures. He names a series of developmental stages and sketches what they are, but he doesn't describe them closely enough that I properly grasp what distinguishes "complexes" and "pre-concepts" from true concepts. He seems sure of his facts, which he says are based on studying many children. It's frustrating.
I try to remember how I thought when I was eight or nine; my impression is that I remember my childhood better than most people. Did I lack the ability to think in concepts? I felt I could understand some quite complicated things. But it's true, since then I have become much more analytical. I am inclined to believe what he says. He tells us that formal study strengthens the mind by developing the basic intellectual faculties: ability to concentrate, to remember, to generalise, to categorise, to relate. He explains that these abilities can be developed in one discipline, then be used in another. He is impatient with psychologists who have tried to disprove the idea by, for example, teaching children to estimate the lengths of lines and then showing that this doesn't improve their ability to estimate the sizes of angles. He says it's obviously too small-scale: they should have known better. Vygotsky is not small-scale.
He's after the central thing, the relationship between language and thought. In the final part of the book, he pulls together all the themes he's introduced earlier and outlines how he believes it works. He tells us that the key is "ego-centric speech", the way small children talk out loud to themselves. This behaviour becomes less frequent as they grow up and more or less disappears by the time most kids are seven. Piaget explained it as a primitive stage that is displaced by socialization. Vygotsky says Piaget has got it completely backwards. Ego-centric speech starts off as social speech, but becomes transformed into the inner speech which every older child and adult has. He briefly quotes data which he says clearly shows how the characteristics of late ego-centric speech are heading in this direction. It is internal speech just before it becomes fully internal and can no longer be observed. In an extraordinary lyrical passage, he tries to explain to us the highly elliptical, condensed form of mature inner speech by comparing it with the scene from Anna Karenina where Levin and Kitty declare their love to each other by using only the initial letters of the words they don't dare say out loud. They can do this because their thoughts are so in tune with each other; but you are even more in tune with yourself, so you can go further. Is it poetry or science? Maybe he's run out of time to do science, and he's hoping poetry will be enough to get his ideas into the minds of future researchers. Maybe his strategy worked. I'm not sure.
You're a pretty impressive guy, Lev Vygotsky. I'm sorry you couldn't stay around longer.
October 21, 2012
At a conference I attended recently someone asked a rhetorical question – where is the next education theory that will replace Dewey or Vygotsky? I wonder how many people outside of education know that these two utterly dominate education theory? And, amusingly enough, the person most people know about as a child and educational psychologist, Piaget, didn’t even rate a mention…
Thought and Language is regarded as Vygotsky’s most important work, and with good reason. This really is a fascinating book. What is probably his best-known idea – that of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) – is developed here. But this comes in the middle of a fascinating argument and, now that I’ve read this book, I find pulling the ZPD out of this makes it seem a little out of place. The other ideas around the ZPD seem equally important and I wonder why these are never really stressed. Vygotsky spends a lot of time in this book discussing Piaget and other theorists from the start of the 20th century. To be honest, you could probably get away with just reading the last chapter of this book called Thought and Word – as he begins this chapter with a thumbnail rehearsal of the rest of the book. This book, in the main, is available here http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygot....
What is the relationship between thinking and speaking? To what extent can we think outside of language? It is pretty clear, of course, that we can think outside of language – if you doubt this perhaps you haven’t listened to Mozart lately or looked at a painting by Turner or even used an iPhone. However, Vygotsky claims that there is a clear relationship between thought and language and that language is practical thought. But language is interesting in many, many ways. Firstly, he is not talking just about words – as if words were somehow fixed in stone. What he is interested in is word meanings – and for Vygotsky word meaning change as we grow from children into adults.
For the child word meanings tend to be what Vygotsky called ‘complexes’. To adults word meanings tend to be much more generalisations than mere complexes – that is, they tend to be associated with concepts. Now, we can’t really go on without getting a better idea of the difference between complexes and concepts. And the problem here is that these are remarkably similar things, and they operate in very similar ways, but their differences is the key insight from which Vygotsky builds the rest of his system. Take the word ‘brother’. A child has a remarkable amount of lived experience of a word like that. The child either has a brother or knows other children who have brothers. But the richness of this lived experience is what Vygotsky refers to as a complex. Why? Well, the child’s understanding of what ‘brother’ means is entirely tied up in their practical experience of that word. They don’t actually get the concept behind this word. And how do we know that? Well, by how easy it is to confuse the child when asking them questions about brothers. You know, ask a young enough child about the ‘brother of someone’s brother’ and they will be quite baffled. Because adults have the concept – a brother is a person’s male sibling – that is, because we have the word meaning that is generalizable into a concept – talk of a brother’s brother presents us with no problem at all. But for a child who is dealing in the mess of practicalities, such a concept is utterly beyond them. A brother’s brother is a concept with very little practical reality. I mean, a brother’s brother is also a brother, and such a phrase only makes sense at a level of abstraction that is simply unnecessary to most children. The point is that you have to get the concept – based on the essential relationship that makes a brother a brother – for a related concept like ‘brother’s brother’ to make sense.
There is a lovely experiment in this where they taught young children foreign words for various items of furniture – table, chair, cabinet and so on– and the children had no real difficulty in learning these words. However, when they tried to teach the young children the foreign word for furniture itself – that is, an abstract word which generalises these various items – the children had much more trouble in learning this word. His point was that the word, as a sound, should have been no harder to learn – but because the concept was beyond the children they simply could not learn that sound. They had hooks they could use to learn the words for chair or cabinet, but no hooks to learn ‘furniture’.
His point is that all words are generalisations and therefore are related to concepts. However, children learn – and become adults – by moving their thinking from complexes to concepts. But because these two things are remarkably similar – when you speak of a brother and your child speaks of a brother, you are, superficially at least, speaking about the same thing – this similarity hides the profound difference in what you are both actually talking about. Essentially, Vygotsky is saying that word meanings develop and change through the life-history of the child and that this development is linked to the child’s ability to think in increasingly more general ways about the world in which they live.
So, there is development and there is instruction. For Vygotsky development is not automatic. Instruction plays an essential role here. In fact, Vygotsky goes so far as to say that instruction leads development. This is an essential point and the key to understanding Vygotsky – this is also where his Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) comes in. So, you’ve got two 8 year olds and you give them an IQ test and they come out with an IQ of 100 – that is, they are perfectly average 8 year olds. But now you go further and you give them some maths problems to solve that are clearly above their ability to solve on their own. But instead of leaving them to flounder on their own you offer them some little hints and some help about how they could go about solving those questions. One of these kids, you find, with a little assistance, is able to solve problems that an average 12 year old is able to solve. The other is only able to solve, with assistance, problems an average 10 year old is able to solve. Remember, we tested their IQ before and they both got the same score. But an IQ test is done without any assistance – this tests the knowledge that is completely developed in the child. This other test Vygotsky is proposing – one where students are given a bit of assistance to see what they can perform – shows not what students have already developed, but what they are now on the cusp of being able to learn. There is no question that although the two students have currently fully developed knowledge at an equal level, the child that is able to solve problems four years above their current age with assistance is in a much better place than the other kid who can only solve problems two years above their current age.
Vygotsky points out that we tend to think that imitation isn’t really learning – but his point is that we seek to imitate that which we can’t quite do right now by ourselves, but that we are now ‘ready’ to learn. And what does this mean for teaching? Well, there isn’t much point teaching kids what they already know. And there isn’t much point teaching them stuff that is so far beyond them that they can’t do it even with all the assistance in the world. But what they can do with assistance today, what is in there Zone of Proximal Development, they can do without assistance tomorrow – this is what learning means – and structuring their learning so that instruction is always that one or two steps beyond where they are currently at is what learning means. That is, instruction leads development.
Language is central here. What is most interesting is the relationship of the child’s language to learning. Vygotsky found that what Piaget had referred to as egocentric speech was quite literally children ‘thinking aloud’. He found that children would talk to themselves as they tried to solve problems and that they were more likely to do this self-talk the harder they found the problem. Apparently, this self-talk goes away as we get older (more proof I never properly grew up, it seems). Or rather, it changes and becomes internal. What is really interesting here is that our self-talk changes in very predictable and standard ways.
Firstly, we tend to drop the subjects of our sentences. If we are trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle, say, we are very unlikely to say something like, “I wonder where this piece of the jigsaw puzzle is most likely to go?” Rather, we are probably likely to think, “here or, what, maybe there?” We keep the predicates, but drop subjects because we know what we are talking about, it’s their properties that have become important. Interestingly, this self-talk is following the opposite process to that of our speech for others. That speech becomes increasingly clear as we grow older – whereas our self-talk becomes more and more individual and abstract, so much so that if it was possible to somehow literally record our thoughts no one else would probably be able to understand them. This is because our thoughts are ‘whole’. He has the wonderful metaphor of our conceptual thoughts being like a cloud and our words being like the rain that falls from the cloud. Lots of words, but in our minds the cloud is grasped as a single whole.
What is blindingly interesting, though, is his distinction between ‘scientific’ concepts and pseudo-concepts. Pseudo-concepts are those that are based on complexes – they look like concepts, but aren’t really. If you give kids objects to group they often get distracted. They might start grouping things with straight lines, so they will separate out the circles from the squares and triangles, but suddenly they might become interested in yellow things and so some circles will end up being grouped with their squares and then the blue triangles will get left out. Objects have a vast array of different properties and only a fully formed concept can assist us in grouping things like with like. Pseudo-concepts make sense of the world by our experience with certain words in the rough and tumble of life. But, as we have seen, this may not be a consistent way of categorising the world as it isn’t really based on a consistent organising concept.
However, children often do better with understanding scientific concepts. Vygotsky was living in the Soviet Union – so his definition of a scientific concept relates to exploiting capitalists and exploited workers and peasants – but we can update this to neoliberal concepts of free citizens given incentive through choice if that makes you feel more confortable.
Vygotsky’s point is that kids tend to be able to finish sentences about ‘scientific’ concepts much more ‘reasonably’ than they are able to do with pseudo-concepts. To explain that – Let’s say you try to get a child to finish this sentence: ‘The boy that fell off his bike broke his arm because…’ The child is likely to finish that sentence by saying something that would be part of their rich experience, but not actually related to the causal relationship ‘because’ is asking for. That is, the child is likely to finish the sentence by saying something like, ‘because he went to the hospital’. But if you said to the child, “Capitalists are rich, because…” they are likely to respond, “because they live off the sweat and blood of the exploited working classes”.
Vygotsky makes it clear that kids don’t really have a very strong idea of what this ‘scientific’ concept actually means – but that isn’t the point. The point is that they understand the causal relationship for this scientific concept in a way they really struggle to understand the causal relationship in the pseudo-concepts, even though they have much more ‘experience’ with these pseudo ones. In fact, it is the richness of their life experience that gets in the way of their being able to abstract out the causal relationships in their pseudo-concepts. So, scientific concepts, which they learn through instruction, give them a model they can then use to structure their pseudo-concepts and thereby move these towards being real concepts. But look. What they have lots of experience with needs to move from the concrete to the abstract. To understand what ‘furniture’ is a child first comes into contact with lots of bookcases and beds and chairs and desks – lots of concrete things – and only then are they able to move to the abstract idea of ‘furniture’. But with scientific concepts they move in the opposite direction. They have a vague idea of the abstract concept, but with virtually no concrete understanding and a depth of understanding of the abstract concept requires a concrete elaboration of this vague concept.
Pseudo and scientific concepts both work to help the child develop real concepts – but in opposite directions.
The problem, as mentioned before, is that neither the child nor the adult is aware that there is a difference between the child’s pseudo concepts and the adults rich concepts – as, when they talk to each other, they seem to be referring to the same things. And, as the child grows they are generally unaware that their pseudo concept has been replaced by a rich one, as this is a developmental process, and it seems to ‘just happen’. Except, it doesn’t just happen, but rather happens under instruction. The point is that education is about developing concepts – but if we don’t realise there is a difference between pseudo, scientific and rich concepts and that these are related to a developmental continuum related to the child’s current level of educational development, we are unlikely to be able to help the child along that path.
I can’t recommend this book too highly. It is actually much more clear than this review, I think. It is actually a remarkably clear book and a stunningly interesting one too.
Thought and Language is regarded as Vygotsky’s most important work, and with good reason. This really is a fascinating book. What is probably his best-known idea – that of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) – is developed here. But this comes in the middle of a fascinating argument and, now that I’ve read this book, I find pulling the ZPD out of this makes it seem a little out of place. The other ideas around the ZPD seem equally important and I wonder why these are never really stressed. Vygotsky spends a lot of time in this book discussing Piaget and other theorists from the start of the 20th century. To be honest, you could probably get away with just reading the last chapter of this book called Thought and Word – as he begins this chapter with a thumbnail rehearsal of the rest of the book. This book, in the main, is available here http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygot....
What is the relationship between thinking and speaking? To what extent can we think outside of language? It is pretty clear, of course, that we can think outside of language – if you doubt this perhaps you haven’t listened to Mozart lately or looked at a painting by Turner or even used an iPhone. However, Vygotsky claims that there is a clear relationship between thought and language and that language is practical thought. But language is interesting in many, many ways. Firstly, he is not talking just about words – as if words were somehow fixed in stone. What he is interested in is word meanings – and for Vygotsky word meaning change as we grow from children into adults.
For the child word meanings tend to be what Vygotsky called ‘complexes’. To adults word meanings tend to be much more generalisations than mere complexes – that is, they tend to be associated with concepts. Now, we can’t really go on without getting a better idea of the difference between complexes and concepts. And the problem here is that these are remarkably similar things, and they operate in very similar ways, but their differences is the key insight from which Vygotsky builds the rest of his system. Take the word ‘brother’. A child has a remarkable amount of lived experience of a word like that. The child either has a brother or knows other children who have brothers. But the richness of this lived experience is what Vygotsky refers to as a complex. Why? Well, the child’s understanding of what ‘brother’ means is entirely tied up in their practical experience of that word. They don’t actually get the concept behind this word. And how do we know that? Well, by how easy it is to confuse the child when asking them questions about brothers. You know, ask a young enough child about the ‘brother of someone’s brother’ and they will be quite baffled. Because adults have the concept – a brother is a person’s male sibling – that is, because we have the word meaning that is generalizable into a concept – talk of a brother’s brother presents us with no problem at all. But for a child who is dealing in the mess of practicalities, such a concept is utterly beyond them. A brother’s brother is a concept with very little practical reality. I mean, a brother’s brother is also a brother, and such a phrase only makes sense at a level of abstraction that is simply unnecessary to most children. The point is that you have to get the concept – based on the essential relationship that makes a brother a brother – for a related concept like ‘brother’s brother’ to make sense.
There is a lovely experiment in this where they taught young children foreign words for various items of furniture – table, chair, cabinet and so on– and the children had no real difficulty in learning these words. However, when they tried to teach the young children the foreign word for furniture itself – that is, an abstract word which generalises these various items – the children had much more trouble in learning this word. His point was that the word, as a sound, should have been no harder to learn – but because the concept was beyond the children they simply could not learn that sound. They had hooks they could use to learn the words for chair or cabinet, but no hooks to learn ‘furniture’.
His point is that all words are generalisations and therefore are related to concepts. However, children learn – and become adults – by moving their thinking from complexes to concepts. But because these two things are remarkably similar – when you speak of a brother and your child speaks of a brother, you are, superficially at least, speaking about the same thing – this similarity hides the profound difference in what you are both actually talking about. Essentially, Vygotsky is saying that word meanings develop and change through the life-history of the child and that this development is linked to the child’s ability to think in increasingly more general ways about the world in which they live.
So, there is development and there is instruction. For Vygotsky development is not automatic. Instruction plays an essential role here. In fact, Vygotsky goes so far as to say that instruction leads development. This is an essential point and the key to understanding Vygotsky – this is also where his Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) comes in. So, you’ve got two 8 year olds and you give them an IQ test and they come out with an IQ of 100 – that is, they are perfectly average 8 year olds. But now you go further and you give them some maths problems to solve that are clearly above their ability to solve on their own. But instead of leaving them to flounder on their own you offer them some little hints and some help about how they could go about solving those questions. One of these kids, you find, with a little assistance, is able to solve problems that an average 12 year old is able to solve. The other is only able to solve, with assistance, problems an average 10 year old is able to solve. Remember, we tested their IQ before and they both got the same score. But an IQ test is done without any assistance – this tests the knowledge that is completely developed in the child. This other test Vygotsky is proposing – one where students are given a bit of assistance to see what they can perform – shows not what students have already developed, but what they are now on the cusp of being able to learn. There is no question that although the two students have currently fully developed knowledge at an equal level, the child that is able to solve problems four years above their current age with assistance is in a much better place than the other kid who can only solve problems two years above their current age.
Vygotsky points out that we tend to think that imitation isn’t really learning – but his point is that we seek to imitate that which we can’t quite do right now by ourselves, but that we are now ‘ready’ to learn. And what does this mean for teaching? Well, there isn’t much point teaching kids what they already know. And there isn’t much point teaching them stuff that is so far beyond them that they can’t do it even with all the assistance in the world. But what they can do with assistance today, what is in there Zone of Proximal Development, they can do without assistance tomorrow – this is what learning means – and structuring their learning so that instruction is always that one or two steps beyond where they are currently at is what learning means. That is, instruction leads development.
Language is central here. What is most interesting is the relationship of the child’s language to learning. Vygotsky found that what Piaget had referred to as egocentric speech was quite literally children ‘thinking aloud’. He found that children would talk to themselves as they tried to solve problems and that they were more likely to do this self-talk the harder they found the problem. Apparently, this self-talk goes away as we get older (more proof I never properly grew up, it seems). Or rather, it changes and becomes internal. What is really interesting here is that our self-talk changes in very predictable and standard ways.
Firstly, we tend to drop the subjects of our sentences. If we are trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle, say, we are very unlikely to say something like, “I wonder where this piece of the jigsaw puzzle is most likely to go?” Rather, we are probably likely to think, “here or, what, maybe there?” We keep the predicates, but drop subjects because we know what we are talking about, it’s their properties that have become important. Interestingly, this self-talk is following the opposite process to that of our speech for others. That speech becomes increasingly clear as we grow older – whereas our self-talk becomes more and more individual and abstract, so much so that if it was possible to somehow literally record our thoughts no one else would probably be able to understand them. This is because our thoughts are ‘whole’. He has the wonderful metaphor of our conceptual thoughts being like a cloud and our words being like the rain that falls from the cloud. Lots of words, but in our minds the cloud is grasped as a single whole.
What is blindingly interesting, though, is his distinction between ‘scientific’ concepts and pseudo-concepts. Pseudo-concepts are those that are based on complexes – they look like concepts, but aren’t really. If you give kids objects to group they often get distracted. They might start grouping things with straight lines, so they will separate out the circles from the squares and triangles, but suddenly they might become interested in yellow things and so some circles will end up being grouped with their squares and then the blue triangles will get left out. Objects have a vast array of different properties and only a fully formed concept can assist us in grouping things like with like. Pseudo-concepts make sense of the world by our experience with certain words in the rough and tumble of life. But, as we have seen, this may not be a consistent way of categorising the world as it isn’t really based on a consistent organising concept.
However, children often do better with understanding scientific concepts. Vygotsky was living in the Soviet Union – so his definition of a scientific concept relates to exploiting capitalists and exploited workers and peasants – but we can update this to neoliberal concepts of free citizens given incentive through choice if that makes you feel more confortable.
Vygotsky’s point is that kids tend to be able to finish sentences about ‘scientific’ concepts much more ‘reasonably’ than they are able to do with pseudo-concepts. To explain that – Let’s say you try to get a child to finish this sentence: ‘The boy that fell off his bike broke his arm because…’ The child is likely to finish that sentence by saying something that would be part of their rich experience, but not actually related to the causal relationship ‘because’ is asking for. That is, the child is likely to finish the sentence by saying something like, ‘because he went to the hospital’. But if you said to the child, “Capitalists are rich, because…” they are likely to respond, “because they live off the sweat and blood of the exploited working classes”.
Vygotsky makes it clear that kids don’t really have a very strong idea of what this ‘scientific’ concept actually means – but that isn’t the point. The point is that they understand the causal relationship for this scientific concept in a way they really struggle to understand the causal relationship in the pseudo-concepts, even though they have much more ‘experience’ with these pseudo ones. In fact, it is the richness of their life experience that gets in the way of their being able to abstract out the causal relationships in their pseudo-concepts. So, scientific concepts, which they learn through instruction, give them a model they can then use to structure their pseudo-concepts and thereby move these towards being real concepts. But look. What they have lots of experience with needs to move from the concrete to the abstract. To understand what ‘furniture’ is a child first comes into contact with lots of bookcases and beds and chairs and desks – lots of concrete things – and only then are they able to move to the abstract idea of ‘furniture’. But with scientific concepts they move in the opposite direction. They have a vague idea of the abstract concept, but with virtually no concrete understanding and a depth of understanding of the abstract concept requires a concrete elaboration of this vague concept.
Pseudo and scientific concepts both work to help the child develop real concepts – but in opposite directions.
The problem, as mentioned before, is that neither the child nor the adult is aware that there is a difference between the child’s pseudo concepts and the adults rich concepts – as, when they talk to each other, they seem to be referring to the same things. And, as the child grows they are generally unaware that their pseudo concept has been replaced by a rich one, as this is a developmental process, and it seems to ‘just happen’. Except, it doesn’t just happen, but rather happens under instruction. The point is that education is about developing concepts – but if we don’t realise there is a difference between pseudo, scientific and rich concepts and that these are related to a developmental continuum related to the child’s current level of educational development, we are unlikely to be able to help the child along that path.
I can’t recommend this book too highly. It is actually much more clear than this review, I think. It is actually a remarkably clear book and a stunningly interesting one too.
June 25, 2019
A classic of its own kind!
Reading Vygotsky elaborating on Piaget and Freud and the theory of learning and language is a treat, but not easy or quick. It immediately puts the teacher in the zone of proximal development. After all, the topic is mindbogglingly complex: how does thought relate to language, and how do children develop their critical thinking skills? How do children move from egocentric speech in early infancy over mastering syntax to mastering the inner (reflective) voice of logic?
Vygotsky seems to have gained more relevance now than he ever had during his lifetime, a century ago. His idea that the environment of learning shapes the human mind and influences the learner's path towards more complex thinking skills is the basis of almost all classroom management guidelines in the 21st century.
Make sure you create an environment that is stimulating the child to pick up new impulses, and lead the student towards the zone of proximal development - that fragile zone in which a learner is just so much outside his or her comfort zone that learning can take place. If you stay inside your comfort zone, the learning outcome is zero, as you know everything that is taught already, and if you move to topics and concepts that are far too complicated for your level of understanding, you will be equally lost and the outcome will again be zero. ZPD - the art of balancing education.
To a tired teacher on vacation, Vygotsky is one thing above all else: a reassuring voice in the darkness whispering: "Teaching does matter!"
Reading Vygotsky elaborating on Piaget and Freud and the theory of learning and language is a treat, but not easy or quick. It immediately puts the teacher in the zone of proximal development. After all, the topic is mindbogglingly complex: how does thought relate to language, and how do children develop their critical thinking skills? How do children move from egocentric speech in early infancy over mastering syntax to mastering the inner (reflective) voice of logic?
Vygotsky seems to have gained more relevance now than he ever had during his lifetime, a century ago. His idea that the environment of learning shapes the human mind and influences the learner's path towards more complex thinking skills is the basis of almost all classroom management guidelines in the 21st century.
Make sure you create an environment that is stimulating the child to pick up new impulses, and lead the student towards the zone of proximal development - that fragile zone in which a learner is just so much outside his or her comfort zone that learning can take place. If you stay inside your comfort zone, the learning outcome is zero, as you know everything that is taught already, and if you move to topics and concepts that are far too complicated for your level of understanding, you will be equally lost and the outcome will again be zero. ZPD - the art of balancing education.
To a tired teacher on vacation, Vygotsky is one thing above all else: a reassuring voice in the darkness whispering: "Teaching does matter!"
February 14, 2008
Vygotsky is to Piaget as Wittgenstein is to St. Augustine.
Puzzle over that one, why don't you?
What is taken for granted in any system of thought is often the thing most in need of explanation. Piaget talked about the development of language, but took for granted many of the substructures that set the stage for language learning. Vygotsky effectively said of Piaget's work, "Yes, of course that's what children do... but how are they doing it?"
St. Augustine, meanwhile, espoused a view of language that was (and is) emblematic of what Ludwig Wittgenstein would centuries later call, "the picture that holds us captive." St. Augustine talked about language as being a simple case of reference and referent: the word "chair" points to the thing "chair." But this view of language -- like Piaget's view of childhood language learning -- misses the point that a huge rule-following substructure is necessary. And that substructure represents everything that's really difficult, and really exciting, in the endeavor to understand how we actually use words.
And now you are all enlightened. Thank you, thank you. Please, you're too kind.
Puzzle over that one, why don't you?
What is taken for granted in any system of thought is often the thing most in need of explanation. Piaget talked about the development of language, but took for granted many of the substructures that set the stage for language learning. Vygotsky effectively said of Piaget's work, "Yes, of course that's what children do... but how are they doing it?"
St. Augustine, meanwhile, espoused a view of language that was (and is) emblematic of what Ludwig Wittgenstein would centuries later call, "the picture that holds us captive." St. Augustine talked about language as being a simple case of reference and referent: the word "chair" points to the thing "chair." But this view of language -- like Piaget's view of childhood language learning -- misses the point that a huge rule-following substructure is necessary. And that substructure represents everything that's really difficult, and really exciting, in the endeavor to understand how we actually use words.
And now you are all enlightened. Thank you, thank you. Please, you're too kind.
October 26, 2018
یه کتاب خوب و مرجع و منبع در زمینۀ روانشناسی شناختی و زبانشناسی حساب میشه. کتابی که خوب تونسته این دو زمینه رو به هم پیوند بزنه. ویگوتسکی مطالعات گستردهای کرده؛ درین حد که توی این کتاب از داستایوفسکی و تولستوی مثال میآره و از یه طرف دیگه خیلی خوب هم دیدگاههای رفتارگرایی، گشتالتی و مکتب روسیه(که ما نخونده بودیمش) و پیاژه رو هم میدونه و نقدشون میکنه. نمیشه از زبان حرف زد و اسمی از ویگوتسکی نیوورد.
September 20, 2020
Vygotsky understands language and thought as modes of accessing reality. They differ from perception with respect to their presenting reality in a generalized manner; perception, instead, presents reality in its particularities. Vygotsky challenges the basic, underlying assumptions about the nature of language and thought, held by virtually all psychologists of his day. His critiques are not only rigorous and compelling. Even more, his positive proposals, in place of these old assumptions, are stunning and have born out to be more truthful. Developmental psychologists have taken on his insights and proven them to be explanatorily powerful.
Here's a summary of some of his main ideas. Previous thinkers either assumed that language and thought totally independent capacities, having no influence on one another. Or, they assumed that the two are merely identical with one another. Vygotsky's thesis opposes both extreme assumptions: instead, one's capacities to speak and to think are interdependent, each shaping the possible expressions of the other capacity.
Piaget, the most influential of Vygotsky's predecessors, was spot-on in aiming to understand the development of linguistic thought by examining its ontogenetic stages. But his main failing is his view that human infants start off as solipsistic individuals, and so language use progresses in the direction from egocentric-driven usages to more socially-driven and adapted usages. Piaget believed that infants are capable of only "autistic" thinking, which in his time meant thought that is not adapted to reality; that is, it is hallucinatory and illusory thought that is not responsive to real environmental conditions and that does not adapt in accordance to feedback given by the environment. (This is largely influenced by Freud).
Against this, Vygtosky argues that such "autistic" or imaginative thinking is a relatively late development. Infants are born in attunement with their environments; it is evolutionarily critical to be so, to be constantly responsive and sensitive to real events. Only later can children learn to recombine concepts learned from real experience in imaginative ways, and language is critical for enabling this activity. Moreover, language is essentially communicative from the start, rather than private and egocentric. We first learn language in dialogue with other people, and only later on discover ways to use speech when they are not physically present. For example, Piaget identified "egocentric" speech (the expression of autistic thinking) is not actually solipsistic. Vygotsky's empirical work showed that children talk to themselves precisely when they face challenges and need guidance. They use words to tell themselves instructions and engage in "dialogue" with themselves. This is with the aim to enable greater focus on the tasks that are needed to overcome challenges. Older children are able to "internalize" this speech, or to think linguistic thoughts, rather than utter them overtly.
The development of one's conceptual repertoire is closely tied to the development of speech. The meaning of words are conceptual in nature. Vygotsky examines the development of concepts in chapters 5 and 6. Vygotsky distinguishes between "scientific" and "spontaneous" concepts. The former are concepts that must be explicitly taught to us, in order to be learned, whereas the latter are concepts that we naturally form as we experience the world. Each kind of concept acquisition enhances and enables the developmental trajectory of the other. When we learn scientific concepts, these provide sophisticated structures (e.g., the ways concepts of this kind can formally relate to each other, such as standing in a hierarchy of generality to particularity) which we can apply to our spontaneous concepts, thereby ordering and renewing them. Scientific concepts can only be learned on the basis of our current conceptual repertoire, which for children largely consists in spontaneous concepts. The famous term in developmental psychology "scaffolding" is based in these accounts.
The core of Vygotsky's theory, found in the last chapter 7, is that the developmental tracks that mark the progression of thought and language are distinguishable but deeply interrelated. Overt speech advances from parts to whole (i.e., a few words to sophisticated sentences), while thought advances from whole to parts (i.e., a nebulous overall thought to nuanced, articulated thoughts).
Language and speech move in "opposite directions" in this sense, but are unified. When a thought is immature and nebulous, it can be expressed in a single world. As a thought becomes more differentiated, it can be expressed in more sophisticated sentences. Overt speech can serve as a tool that enables one to create greater nuances in one's thoughts, and with more nuanced thought, one is capable of more sophisticated speech. Thought must undergo ontological changes in order to become mature speech, and so thought and speech are not identical versions of one another, simply laying in different media, as some previous thinkers assumed.
Vygotsky also explores how young children don't distinguish between the referent and the meaning of words at the beginning of language development. That is, a child, in uttering a word and apprehending its meaning, conflates this meaning with the real object in the world to which the word refers. I am fascinated by this finding; I wonder whether this infantile tendency is still latent in adult behavior, where most of us find us compelled at times to make prayers or wishes. Such practices presuppose that the meaning that unfolds in language use can causally interact with objects in the world itself, if not even being identical to those objects. When we engage in wishful thinking, it is as if the desired, new arrangements of objects that we configure in our language now are real, manifested in the world itself.
Vygotsky has fascinating insights about the process by which the capacities for overt, verbalized speech can be "internalized" or transformed for the generation of inner speech, or linguistic thoughts. He starts of with the principle that the more familiar with one another two conversational partners are -- and the greater the shared background knowledge or context is between them -- the more "abbreviated" their speech can be. Between two best friends, one can just utter "Yeah..." with a particular intonation, and the net semantic meaning of this utterance can be equivalent to that of many sophisticated sentences.
Vygotsky points out that in engaging in inner speech, we essentially speak to ourselves. When we relate to ourselves, the dynamic this affords is loosely similar to that which emerges between two conversational partners (Vygotsky does not state this explicitly, this is my interpretation on what his premises must be). We know ourselves quite well, or we literally are ourselves. This makes for the highest degree of shared background knowledge and context between the "conversational partners" that are our self-conscious and our implicit selves. So this enables the most extreme extent of abbreviation in speech. When we think linguistic thoughts, we don't have to use much explicit wording, in order to express very complicated thoughts, which could take long discourses to express if we were speaking to a literal, other person.
Vygotsky also explores a point that is shared with late Wittgenstein. He points out that the meaning of a word can consist in meanings originally based in words usually associated with that word, or in the overall discourse or context in which that word appears. For example, the meaning of "The Brothers Karamozov" can consist in the vast stretches of meanings that make up this epic novel as a whole. We can apprehend all of this vast meaning in a nebulous way at 'one fell swoop'.
Overall, this book is rich is insights and ideas about basic processes in psychological development. It is a fascinating read. My only complaint is that many ideas presented in the body chapters of the book do not seem connected to the core of Vygotsky's theory, presented only in the last chapter. So the book feels somewhat disjointed. The heart of Vygotsky's critique of previous thinkers is found in chapter 1. Chapters 2-3 involve elaboration on Vygotsky's critique of his major predecessors. Chapters 4-6 involve Vygotsky's argument for the importance of a genetic/developmental account of language, and findings from his empirical research -- this culminates into the principles of his theory, which is laid out in chapter 7. I'd say the first and last chapters are the most interesting and important, and the rest of the book could be skimmed.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in naturalistic approaches to understanding semantic meaning or language.
Here's a summary of some of his main ideas. Previous thinkers either assumed that language and thought totally independent capacities, having no influence on one another. Or, they assumed that the two are merely identical with one another. Vygotsky's thesis opposes both extreme assumptions: instead, one's capacities to speak and to think are interdependent, each shaping the possible expressions of the other capacity.
Piaget, the most influential of Vygotsky's predecessors, was spot-on in aiming to understand the development of linguistic thought by examining its ontogenetic stages. But his main failing is his view that human infants start off as solipsistic individuals, and so language use progresses in the direction from egocentric-driven usages to more socially-driven and adapted usages. Piaget believed that infants are capable of only "autistic" thinking, which in his time meant thought that is not adapted to reality; that is, it is hallucinatory and illusory thought that is not responsive to real environmental conditions and that does not adapt in accordance to feedback given by the environment. (This is largely influenced by Freud).
Against this, Vygtosky argues that such "autistic" or imaginative thinking is a relatively late development. Infants are born in attunement with their environments; it is evolutionarily critical to be so, to be constantly responsive and sensitive to real events. Only later can children learn to recombine concepts learned from real experience in imaginative ways, and language is critical for enabling this activity. Moreover, language is essentially communicative from the start, rather than private and egocentric. We first learn language in dialogue with other people, and only later on discover ways to use speech when they are not physically present. For example, Piaget identified "egocentric" speech (the expression of autistic thinking) is not actually solipsistic. Vygotsky's empirical work showed that children talk to themselves precisely when they face challenges and need guidance. They use words to tell themselves instructions and engage in "dialogue" with themselves. This is with the aim to enable greater focus on the tasks that are needed to overcome challenges. Older children are able to "internalize" this speech, or to think linguistic thoughts, rather than utter them overtly.
The development of one's conceptual repertoire is closely tied to the development of speech. The meaning of words are conceptual in nature. Vygotsky examines the development of concepts in chapters 5 and 6. Vygotsky distinguishes between "scientific" and "spontaneous" concepts. The former are concepts that must be explicitly taught to us, in order to be learned, whereas the latter are concepts that we naturally form as we experience the world. Each kind of concept acquisition enhances and enables the developmental trajectory of the other. When we learn scientific concepts, these provide sophisticated structures (e.g., the ways concepts of this kind can formally relate to each other, such as standing in a hierarchy of generality to particularity) which we can apply to our spontaneous concepts, thereby ordering and renewing them. Scientific concepts can only be learned on the basis of our current conceptual repertoire, which for children largely consists in spontaneous concepts. The famous term in developmental psychology "scaffolding" is based in these accounts.
The core of Vygotsky's theory, found in the last chapter 7, is that the developmental tracks that mark the progression of thought and language are distinguishable but deeply interrelated. Overt speech advances from parts to whole (i.e., a few words to sophisticated sentences), while thought advances from whole to parts (i.e., a nebulous overall thought to nuanced, articulated thoughts).
Language and speech move in "opposite directions" in this sense, but are unified. When a thought is immature and nebulous, it can be expressed in a single world. As a thought becomes more differentiated, it can be expressed in more sophisticated sentences. Overt speech can serve as a tool that enables one to create greater nuances in one's thoughts, and with more nuanced thought, one is capable of more sophisticated speech. Thought must undergo ontological changes in order to become mature speech, and so thought and speech are not identical versions of one another, simply laying in different media, as some previous thinkers assumed.
Vygotsky also explores how young children don't distinguish between the referent and the meaning of words at the beginning of language development. That is, a child, in uttering a word and apprehending its meaning, conflates this meaning with the real object in the world to which the word refers. I am fascinated by this finding; I wonder whether this infantile tendency is still latent in adult behavior, where most of us find us compelled at times to make prayers or wishes. Such practices presuppose that the meaning that unfolds in language use can causally interact with objects in the world itself, if not even being identical to those objects. When we engage in wishful thinking, it is as if the desired, new arrangements of objects that we configure in our language now are real, manifested in the world itself.
Vygotsky has fascinating insights about the process by which the capacities for overt, verbalized speech can be "internalized" or transformed for the generation of inner speech, or linguistic thoughts. He starts of with the principle that the more familiar with one another two conversational partners are -- and the greater the shared background knowledge or context is between them -- the more "abbreviated" their speech can be. Between two best friends, one can just utter "Yeah..." with a particular intonation, and the net semantic meaning of this utterance can be equivalent to that of many sophisticated sentences.
Vygotsky points out that in engaging in inner speech, we essentially speak to ourselves. When we relate to ourselves, the dynamic this affords is loosely similar to that which emerges between two conversational partners (Vygotsky does not state this explicitly, this is my interpretation on what his premises must be). We know ourselves quite well, or we literally are ourselves. This makes for the highest degree of shared background knowledge and context between the "conversational partners" that are our self-conscious and our implicit selves. So this enables the most extreme extent of abbreviation in speech. When we think linguistic thoughts, we don't have to use much explicit wording, in order to express very complicated thoughts, which could take long discourses to express if we were speaking to a literal, other person.
Vygotsky also explores a point that is shared with late Wittgenstein. He points out that the meaning of a word can consist in meanings originally based in words usually associated with that word, or in the overall discourse or context in which that word appears. For example, the meaning of "The Brothers Karamozov" can consist in the vast stretches of meanings that make up this epic novel as a whole. We can apprehend all of this vast meaning in a nebulous way at 'one fell swoop'.
Overall, this book is rich is insights and ideas about basic processes in psychological development. It is a fascinating read. My only complaint is that many ideas presented in the body chapters of the book do not seem connected to the core of Vygotsky's theory, presented only in the last chapter. So the book feels somewhat disjointed. The heart of Vygotsky's critique of previous thinkers is found in chapter 1. Chapters 2-3 involve elaboration on Vygotsky's critique of his major predecessors. Chapters 4-6 involve Vygotsky's argument for the importance of a genetic/developmental account of language, and findings from his empirical research -- this culminates into the principles of his theory, which is laid out in chapter 7. I'd say the first and last chapters are the most interesting and important, and the rest of the book could be skimmed.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in naturalistic approaches to understanding semantic meaning or language.
November 26, 2020
Language is social; as Wittgenstein famously argued, "private language" is meaningless. Yet we have inner monologues, and even a castaway describes his situation to himself in language. Why does this inner speech exist? In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Julian Jaynes argued that it is a neurological artifact: a voice coming from inside the brain but not perceived by it, interpreted by ancient cultures as the voice of the gods, and finally suppressed by collective force of will, noticed fully today only by schizophrenics and people with rare brain injuries. Lev Vygotsky used it as a jumping-off point in analysing early childhood development (a field his circle called "pedology", though the term hasn't stuck) in both normal and abnormally developed subjects.
Vygotsky, described as the "father of Soviet psychology", was born to middle-class Russian Jewish parents and torn between medicine and the humanities, compromising with psychology. His writing is replete with literary references - Goethe, Molière, Spinoza. Instead of gleaning psychological ideas from Marx's writings, he sought to establish the field from first principles by the lights of dialectical materialism. As a result he avoided both the psychoanalytical and behaviourist schools then popular in Western psychology - now mostly discredited - and his work has belatedly gained more respect in English translations.
Vygotsky sought to avoid the original sin of Cartesian dualism, analysing the development of skills and abstract reasoning as part of social interaction. He experimented by making up words and seeing how long it took children to interpret their meaning from context, finding two distinct stages of language development, terms for things with real-world correlatives, and terms for their abstractions. Heavily influenced by Piaget, he disagreed with him on a number of points. While Piaget saw learning in the context of a child's environment, Vygotsky thought that cultural and social factors had a bigger impact on development, as language develops simultaneously with thought. Piaget's subjects were from upper-class Geneva, cosseted from work and crowds - highly unrepresentative of the unwashed proletarian masses. Perhaps related is his idea of a "Zone of Proximal Development" - those tasks that the child cannot accomplish alone but can manage if aided by a supervisor, which extends his sphere of capability beyond the Piagetian world. This book is a collection of essays from throughout Vygotsky's career and contains a biographical introduction. I don't know enough about developmental psychology or educational theory to evaluate it, but it was a dip into a fascinating topic.
Vygotsky, described as the "father of Soviet psychology", was born to middle-class Russian Jewish parents and torn between medicine and the humanities, compromising with psychology. His writing is replete with literary references - Goethe, Molière, Spinoza. Instead of gleaning psychological ideas from Marx's writings, he sought to establish the field from first principles by the lights of dialectical materialism. As a result he avoided both the psychoanalytical and behaviourist schools then popular in Western psychology - now mostly discredited - and his work has belatedly gained more respect in English translations.
Vygotsky sought to avoid the original sin of Cartesian dualism, analysing the development of skills and abstract reasoning as part of social interaction. He experimented by making up words and seeing how long it took children to interpret their meaning from context, finding two distinct stages of language development, terms for things with real-world correlatives, and terms for their abstractions. Heavily influenced by Piaget, he disagreed with him on a number of points. While Piaget saw learning in the context of a child's environment, Vygotsky thought that cultural and social factors had a bigger impact on development, as language develops simultaneously with thought. Piaget's subjects were from upper-class Geneva, cosseted from work and crowds - highly unrepresentative of the unwashed proletarian masses. Perhaps related is his idea of a "Zone of Proximal Development" - those tasks that the child cannot accomplish alone but can manage if aided by a supervisor, which extends his sphere of capability beyond the Piagetian world. This book is a collection of essays from throughout Vygotsky's career and contains a biographical introduction. I don't know enough about developmental psychology or educational theory to evaluate it, but it was a dip into a fascinating topic.
June 25, 2016
يبتدئ فيجوتسكي طرحه بنقد نظرية بياجيه وشترن قبل أن يفصل في نظريته حول الفكر والفكر اللفظي واللغة مركزًا على نمو هذه الجوانب لدى الأطفال وتطورها لديهم على وجه الخصوص وارتباطها ببعض الفروع اللغوية كدلالات الألفاظ وعلم الأصوات متناولًا إياها من عدة نواح كالذكاء ولغة الصم والتفريق بين لغة الإنسان والحيوانات معتمدًا في ذلك على دراسته التي أجراها على الأطفال بالإضافة لبعض الأمثلة الأدبية كأعمال دوستوفسكي وتولستوي.
عرف فيجوتسكي لدى البعض بأنه لا يراجع أعماله بشكل مفصل بعد كتابتها، ويتبين هذا في تكرار الأفكار في هذا الكتاب وعدم تسلسلها أحيانا.
الترجمة رائعة لولا اعتمادها أحيانا على التعريب بدل البدائل العربية كاستخدام مصطلح (السيمانطيقا) وغيره
لتحميل النسخة الالكترونية:
http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/bo...
عرف فيجوتسكي لدى البعض بأنه لا يراجع أعماله بشكل مفصل بعد كتابتها، ويتبين هذا في تكرار الأفكار في هذا الكتاب وعدم تسلسلها أحيانا.
الترجمة رائعة لولا اعتمادها أحيانا على التعريب بدل البدائل العربية كاستخدام مصطلح (السيمانطيقا) وغيره
لتحميل النسخة الالكترونية:
http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/bo...
July 14, 2008
This was one of the first books I read about linguistics. Little did I know when I first started reading it, Thought and Language, was to start a life-long passion for the subject. When I was teaching young children, every day was a chance to be in a linguistics lab This book is a wonderful way for anyone to start learning about theories of linguistics.
October 11, 2015
I could tell you that I am done reading this, but as an education student, I will never be done reading this. This is a foundational text, and deserves to be so.
November 20, 2023
Soviet Marxism inspired fine historico-cultural theories throughout the human sciences. Vgotsky’s is the most impressive.
May 30, 2016
Cuando estaba haciendo el profesorado en Ciencias Físicas, me tocó leer este libro como parte de una materia de psicología del aprendizaje. Siendo una persona proveniente de las ciencias fácticas no pensaba que las ciencias sociales tuvieran mucho que decirme, y de hecho la mayoría de los textos obligatorios escritos por los teóricos de las Ciencias de la Educación eran una suma de obviedades repetidas hasta el hartazgo, simplemente tomando un párrafo y parafraseando para decir lo mismo una y otra vez. Los estudiantes de Exactas solíamos bromear diciendo que podríamos haber resumido 200 páginas con 2 ecuaciones.
Como yo ya daba clases de facto toda esa teoría tampoco resultaba de alguna utilidad en el aula.
Pero una notable excepción fue este libro, junto con algunos textos de Piaget y quizás los de la Educación para la Comprensión que fueron notablemente útiles en mi área de enseñanza.
El enfoque de Vygotsky sobre cómo comprendemos, y el papel del lenguaje, me abrió un nuevo abanico de ideas para comprender cómo aprenden los alumnos; y me fue muy útil luego al trabajar en un colegio bilingüe, donde los alumnos aprenden ciencias en una lengua que no es su lengua materna. El concepto de Zona de Desarrollo Próximo es muy trasladable a la experiencia de enseñanza y aprendizaje así como la autoreflexión que podemos hacer sobre el proceso de internalización.
Al principio se me hizo un poco pesado y difícil de leer dada mi falta de entrenamiento en ciencias sociales, pero rápidamente empecé a notar que era un texto excelente (si no el mejor que he leído sobre ciencias cognitivas) que recomiendo a todos los educadores, interesados en el lenguaje y la interacción social, psicólogos.
Como yo ya daba clases de facto toda esa teoría tampoco resultaba de alguna utilidad en el aula.
Pero una notable excepción fue este libro, junto con algunos textos de Piaget y quizás los de la Educación para la Comprensión que fueron notablemente útiles en mi área de enseñanza.
El enfoque de Vygotsky sobre cómo comprendemos, y el papel del lenguaje, me abrió un nuevo abanico de ideas para comprender cómo aprenden los alumnos; y me fue muy útil luego al trabajar en un colegio bilingüe, donde los alumnos aprenden ciencias en una lengua que no es su lengua materna. El concepto de Zona de Desarrollo Próximo es muy trasladable a la experiencia de enseñanza y aprendizaje así como la autoreflexión que podemos hacer sobre el proceso de internalización.
Al principio se me hizo un poco pesado y difícil de leer dada mi falta de entrenamiento en ciencias sociales, pero rápidamente empecé a notar que era un texto excelente (si no el mejor que he leído sobre ciencias cognitivas) que recomiendo a todos los educadores, interesados en el lenguaje y la interacción social, psicólogos.
July 5, 2019
كتاب مفصل عن علاقة التفكير باللغة والكلام، كتاب عبقري.
September 30, 2022
"If language is as old as consciousness itself, and if language is a practical consciousness-for-others and, consequently, consciousness-for-myself, then not only one particular thought but all consciousness is connected with the development of the word. The word is a thing in our consciousness, as Ludwig Feuerbach put it, that is absolutely impossible for one person, but that becomes a reality for two. The word is a direct expression of the historical nature of human consciousness
Consciousness is reflected in a word as the sun in a drop of water. A word relates to consciousness as a living cell relates to a whole organism, as an atom relates to the universe. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness."
Through using a methodology directed by the lens of dialectical materialism, Vygotsky carves out an irrepressible foundation for modern psychology, linguistics, and pedagogy. There are also multitudes of philosophical implications arisen from Vygotsky's findings, in ontology, epistemology, and species-being.
This is not vulgar, mechanical application of idealized "proletarian values" on explanatory principles of developmental psychology, but rather an approach to facts and history on par with the revolutions in science kicked off by Darwin in biology or Marx in political economy.
Consciousness is reflected in a word as the sun in a drop of water. A word relates to consciousness as a living cell relates to a whole organism, as an atom relates to the universe. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness."
Through using a methodology directed by the lens of dialectical materialism, Vygotsky carves out an irrepressible foundation for modern psychology, linguistics, and pedagogy. There are also multitudes of philosophical implications arisen from Vygotsky's findings, in ontology, epistemology, and species-being.
This is not vulgar, mechanical application of idealized "proletarian values" on explanatory principles of developmental psychology, but rather an approach to facts and history on par with the revolutions in science kicked off by Darwin in biology or Marx in political economy.
October 25, 2022
Too much literature and philosophy for my taste.
December 9, 2023
Έχω ξεχάσει τη λέξη
Που ήθελα να πω,
Και ασώματη επιστρέφει ἡ σκέψη
Στα μεγαλόπρεπα δώματα των ήσκιων.
Που ήθελα να πω,
Και ασώματη επιστρέφει ἡ σκέψη
Στα μεγαλόπρεπα δώματα των ήσκιων.
March 6, 2011
How does one rank theory/research? This is a question I've been struggling with. While this is my least favorite form of reading, it is essential. Vygotsky's findings and theories are as relevant today as they were in 1934 when this text was first published. If only those making decisions about American public education would pick up this Russian psychologist and read his work... I appreciated that Vygotsky took the various psychological schools, gave a brief history, and then explained their short-comings as he saw it. I really appreciated that he took Piaget's theory of development and explained the short-comings according to his scientific research. I really liked the examination of language and thought both in relation to how pre-school children develop and how we can use that information in the classroom. Ultimately, for me, what was most useful was the information about ZPD. The text could have been about 100 pages shorter if he didn't spend so much repeating himself, but then again, that's academic writing for you.
September 20, 2015
Vygotsky deconstructs Piaget, shows knowledge about Montessori and presents us with theories that took too long to solidify in the western world.
The last chapter goes from Tolstoi, to Gogol, to Dostoievsky... Brilliant from a linguistic pov.
The last chapter goes from Tolstoi, to Gogol, to Dostoievsky... Brilliant from a linguistic pov.
September 18, 2011
Dense. Hard to read. But, the theory behind it seems good. I'll definitely have to re-read after I learn more about psychology.
May 31, 2020
I came back to this after attempting it over a decade earlier, and though it's still a bit of a challenge it's well worth it. Vygotsky's perspective is truly distinct, even in his era and area (the Soviet Union in the 20's and 30's) and the approach he developed clearly demonstrates the influence of a particularly Soviet socialist approach to psychology: such perceptive observations on the fundamental role of others in shaping supposedly individual actions in thought and speech could only have come from a society undergoing a revolutionary upheaval, in my view.
This is a really fascinating work that synthesises not just social, political and psychological themes without weakening any component, but also uses artistic and literary themes to give his psychology direction, relevance and insight. In this work Vygotsky cites Tolstoy, Goethe and Stanislavsky as much as his own experimental research, drawing on the work done in the arts to understand human behaviour as much as the work done in science. It shows a real humility and willingness to employ every angle to investigate an issue, and a surrendering of the scientific monopoly on access to the truth. This is a viewpoint you don't really get today in psychology, and it makes the work all the more interesting and valuable.
That said it's a tough nut to crack. Part of what makes it so is Vygotsky's writing, which is allusive and makes its meaning clear on the scale of pages and chapters, rather than sentences and paragraphs. You'll be having to chew on it a lot before you can digest it, so it benefits from being read in large quantities. The author was very seriously interested in the psychological capacity to abstract from current circumstances with acts of thought and symbolism, and this is reflected in his discussions of thought and speaking which can themselves be abstract. This isn't to say Vygotsky doesn't reference his scientific work and experimentation, just that he isn't guided purely empirically. He has confidence in his theory and it makes a refreshing change from more modern western psychological writing.
The other issue making the work difficult is revealed in Yasnitsky's Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies. From a western perspective, Thought and Language is one of the most widely-read works of Vygotsky, but contributors to Yasnitsky's collection show not only that Vygotsky and his contemporaries felt their most important work was in other texts, but that Thought and Language itself is made of several different texts, lectures and articles stitched together across a profound crisis in Vygotsky's thinking and published after he died. The book isn't obviously incoherent but I think it contributes to the abstrusity, and encourages psychologists to take what they can find from the book, rather than the complex whole he was attempting to develop.
This is a really fascinating work that synthesises not just social, political and psychological themes without weakening any component, but also uses artistic and literary themes to give his psychology direction, relevance and insight. In this work Vygotsky cites Tolstoy, Goethe and Stanislavsky as much as his own experimental research, drawing on the work done in the arts to understand human behaviour as much as the work done in science. It shows a real humility and willingness to employ every angle to investigate an issue, and a surrendering of the scientific monopoly on access to the truth. This is a viewpoint you don't really get today in psychology, and it makes the work all the more interesting and valuable.
That said it's a tough nut to crack. Part of what makes it so is Vygotsky's writing, which is allusive and makes its meaning clear on the scale of pages and chapters, rather than sentences and paragraphs. You'll be having to chew on it a lot before you can digest it, so it benefits from being read in large quantities. The author was very seriously interested in the psychological capacity to abstract from current circumstances with acts of thought and symbolism, and this is reflected in his discussions of thought and speaking which can themselves be abstract. This isn't to say Vygotsky doesn't reference his scientific work and experimentation, just that he isn't guided purely empirically. He has confidence in his theory and it makes a refreshing change from more modern western psychological writing.
The other issue making the work difficult is revealed in Yasnitsky's Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies. From a western perspective, Thought and Language is one of the most widely-read works of Vygotsky, but contributors to Yasnitsky's collection show not only that Vygotsky and his contemporaries felt their most important work was in other texts, but that Thought and Language itself is made of several different texts, lectures and articles stitched together across a profound crisis in Vygotsky's thinking and published after he died. The book isn't obviously incoherent but I think it contributes to the abstrusity, and encourages psychologists to take what they can find from the book, rather than the complex whole he was attempting to develop.
June 18, 2020
Trata-se de uma obra prima de revisão, questionamento e investigação acerca do desenvolvimento do pensamento e da linguagem no indivíduo. Vygotsky elabora desde comparativos com estudos de chimpanzés até relações com literatos (Tolstoy e Dostoyevsky) para ponderar sobre as nuances desses dois elementos que dão nome à obra. Os capítulos 6 e 7 são os mais assertivos (embora fiquem deslocados se o leitor não acessar os capítulos anteriores, principalmente devido às desconstruções de teóricos como Piaget). Há nesses capítulos a aproximação com o futuro conceito de ZPD (Zona de Desenvolvimento Proximal) elaborado por ele, e também argumentação acerca da importância da mediação, bem como a discussão sobre a inadequação dos "testes padronizados", que não abarcam o que o aprendiz consegue fazer "com ajuda" (Cap. 6). O último capítulo retoma todo o percurso, as formas de elocução (egocêntrica, interior) e a motivação volitiva-afetiva do pensamento, que não deve ser esquecida para a compreensão do discurso de outrem. Belíssima frase de conclusão: "Cada palavra é um microcosmos da consciência humana".
March 18, 2019
Un estudio muy interesante que viene a actualizar y confrontar las teorías existentes hasta el momento sobre el pensamiento, el lenguaje, su formación, la evolución de los significados de las palabras, el habla egoísta, el habla interna...
Evidentemente no es una novela, y el formato "estudio científico" no lo hace nada amigable al lector, pero el tema me parece tan interesante que le doy 5 estrellas aunque sea un libro muy de nicho.
Además teniendo hijos viene genial para ver cómo va evolucionando su cabecita jejeje
Evidentemente no es una novela, y el formato "estudio científico" no lo hace nada amigable al lector, pero el tema me parece tan interesante que le doy 5 estrellas aunque sea un libro muy de nicho.
Además teniendo hijos viene genial para ver cómo va evolucionando su cabecita jejeje
March 1, 2021
"Consciousness is reflected in a word as the sun in a drop of water. A word relates to consciousness as a living cell relates to a whole organism, as an atom relates to the universe. A word is a microcosm of human consciousness."
I have no words left to explain what a beautiful book this was. Reading Vygotsky is a treat. I'll need some time to write all that I'm thinking and all that I've learnt from this book.
I have no words left to explain what a beautiful book this was. Reading Vygotsky is a treat. I'll need some time to write all that I'm thinking and all that I've learnt from this book.
April 26, 2023
Leer ya directamente éste clásico y tener la fortuna de un ejemplar que cuente con los comentarios posteriores de Piaget simplemente me hizo recordar porqué decidí la psicología y sigo aún en éste camino. Cómo le dije a un colega, es un Kant para los psicólogos, que mira no solo el desarrollo del intelecto en aspectos filogenéticos y ontogénicos, sino que los atraviesa por la cultura y la historia.
June 23, 2020
While Vygotsky’s thoughts about language and thought are incredible contributions to the fields of psychology and education, it feels like he glories in the disproving of other theorists, particularly Piaget. It seems that Vygotsky took nearly 300 pages to say what might have been expressed in around 100.
April 5, 2022
Fascinating stuff- especially revealing on motivation > egocentric speech > inner speech > vocal speech, the transition from child to adult speech, the critiques of Piaget, etc. The fact that speech isn't just vocalized thought, that the two systems evolved independently from one another but interact. A couple of the middle chapters are tough going but well worth the effort.
December 28, 2016
Stile di scrittura logico e lineare. Ho amato particolarmente gli esempi soprattutto quelli tratti dai libri e romanzi russi più famosi. La parte più interessante: la settima, in risposta agli studi di Piaget sul linguaggio egocentrico
October 24, 2017
Obra esencial para quienes ahondan en la psicología genética.Junto con Jean Piaget es uno de losgrandes pensadores en esta materia. Por otra parte establece la relación entre el desarrollo de la inteligencia y el entorno cultural y social.
March 30, 2020
This is up there as one of those must read early childhood education books. I'm not going to get into it here other just say, do yourself a favour. It's not long and bulky, it's short and sharp. If you take early childhood education seriously, you should read this book.
March 6, 2024
Great understanding of Vygotsky's theory about inner speech and how it develops in a child. He did not specifically say "Theory of Mind" but this definitely ties into that and it will be helpful for my studies!
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