Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky, L. S. "Chapter 7: Thought and Word." Thought and Language. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1962. 210-257. Print.

Summary:

    The early part of this reading is brief biography and introduction to his theories and the major shifts throughout work. He challenged assumptions about methodology regarding language, finding that the scientific standards previously used needed to be abandoned (xxi-xxii). A major contribution was his theory that “speech and thinking are not interrelated” and defining that words must have meaning or else it “is an empty sound” (210, 212). Words can change in meaning (213). He spends a lot of time laying out the research he and his associates have done to show how inner speech develops differently and is not just what Muller termed “speech minus sound” (225). Vygotsky is addresses Piaget’s work on by pointing out how Piaget thought that a child’s egocentric speech represented the egocentric thoughts, but then shows how this is not the case (227, 228). Instead Vygotsky states “that the function of egocentric speech is similar to that of inner speech: It does not merely accompany the child’s activity; it serves mental orientation, conscious understanding,; it helps in overcoming difficulties; it is speech for oneself, intimately and usefully connected with the child’s thinking” ( 228). In this way he deepens the understanding of a process and the differences from thought development and speech.

Response:

“To understand another’s speech, it is not sufficient to understand this words—we must understand his thought. But even that is not enough—we must understand its motivation. No psychological analysis of an utterance is complete until that plane is reached” (253).

     This isn’t really anything that I’ve ever thought about before. How do my thoughts connect to the outside word and my use of language? I’m still not entirely certain. In some cases, like now, my thoughts are a literal practice space where I’m thinking about what I’m going to write and dictated them directly onto this space. Other times, I suppose they are less formulated, less grammatical, less language based. The quotation I put above is the one that made me start to imagine how difficult the process of really understanding another person is, how my thoughts become words, are heard, and then interpreted into thoughts for someone else. I find that the fact that we can do this process so quickly without having to consciously think too much about it in conversation to be a fascinating ability.

     This is also where Vygotsky introduces the idea of motivation. In a writing class once, I remember the teacher telling us that for the characters we create to be more real, they have to have motivation or want something. Trying to do that on a fictional scale was difficult enough, so it seems like it might be even harder for psychological analysis to be able to do that with utterances. How can motivations be known by the analyst when motivations might be unknown to the one who has them?

Connections/Questions:

     Similar to Vološinov, Vygotsky believes in a fluidity of words and their meanings. One word can have different meanings to different people, and meanings can change. He explains that “It is not merely the content of a word that changes, but the way in which reality is generalized and reflected in a word” (213). Additionally, Vygotsky points out that part of what makes research difficult is that researchers “argue about different things that they call by the same name” (224). This is similar to the idea that Vološinov discusses where by words are used in an arena and are shaped by the people who use them. It would seem that even researchers and authors studying language and theory are still working out how to talk about terms they have in common. Since both of these authors are writing at a time and place that makes it difficult to disseminate information, perhaps that is part of what made these divides in terminology happen then. It was also interesting that both men used the text from Dostoevsky of the drunks. Though I wasn’t sure if they had read one another’s work. Both would probably also agree about the importance of the social context on language, that it shapes language and then language shapes it. I would like to know more at the end of Vygotsky’s piece about motivation, as it clearly is important when trying to understand another person.

     What do modern linguists or studiers of language think of Vygotsky and Piaget? Have new studies been able to explain the relationship between thought and language in that more scientific way that Vygotsky wanted to get away from? Perhaps something with brain scans?