VYGOTSKY AND

LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT

The Mozart of Psychology

Lev Semonovich Vygotsky was born in Western Russian on Nov
19, 1896 into a non-religious middle class Russian Jewish family.
1917-graduated from Moscow University with a degree in law
Worked in post-revolutionary Soviet Union to rebuild psychology
along Marxist lines
Completed 270 scientific articles, numerous lectures and 10
books based on a wide range of Marxist-based psychological
and teaching theories

 Worked on theories of cognitive development and

conducted researches and wrote during the same time as
Piaget (1920-30s)
His writings were banned in Soviet Union in 1936 and
became available only in West in 1960s
He is considered a seminal thinker in psychology and much
of his work is still discovered and explored today
He died of TB at the age of 38(1934)

Vygotskys theories
The major theme of Vygotsky's theoretical framework is that
social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of
cognition.

Vygotsky (1978) states : "Every function in the child's cultural

development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on
the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and
then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to
voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of
concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships
between individuals."

 the potential for cognitive development depends upon the zone

of proximal development (ZPD): a level of development

attained when children engage in social behavior. Full
development of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction.
The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or
peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.
Vygotsky's theory was an attempt to explain consciousness as

the end product of socialization.

Vygotsky and
Language development
Vygotsky believed that language develops from social
interactions, for communication purposes.

 According to Vygotsky (1962) language plays 2 critical roles in

cognitive development:
1. It is the main means by which adults transmit information
to children.
2. Language itself becomes a very powerful tool of intellectual
adaptation.

Stages of language development

Primitive Stage- characterised by the infant experimenting with
sound production.
The coos, ga-gas and babbles emitted have no purpose but to
explore the baby's sense of sound.
The lack of speech during this phase means no verbal thought
is taking place. This does not mean the baby has a lack of
thought, but rather a lack of relationship with her thoughts.

Naive Stage- begins when babies learn to speak

The baby speaks words without fully grasping their purpose and
meaning.
When an infant utters "doggy," he could mean "Where is my
doggy?" or "I want the doggy now."
Over time, the child uses slightly more complex phrases such as
"doggy now." These phrases lack an understanding of grammar or
structure. The infant determines meaning from the responses
others give to his phrases.

External Stage- the child starts to use objects to signify meaning and
words in the external stage. Toys and fingers are examples of what she
might use to express herself.
. Rhyming is also a device used in this phase to help solidify her
memory of objects and sounds
What Vygotsky calls private speech typifies this phase as well. This kind
of speech occurs when the child talks to herself while alone and when
interacting with others. Vygotsky calls this event the start of a child's
verbalisation of thought.

Ingrowth Stage- occurs when children start to internalise

many of the tasks he learnt during the previous phases. For
example, he will count in his head as opposed to using his
fingers to numerate.
A need to communicate with others people around him
improves his ability to internalise thought and actions.
Inner speech also shortens during this phase, called
predication. Thought sentences will lack a subject, because
that subject is already known to the child.

Important Factors in
Language
Development
According to Lev Vygotsky language acquisition involves
not only a child's exposure to words but also an

interdependent process of growth between thought and

language.

 Experience- Children acquire knowledge as a result of engaging

in social experiences. Through social and language interactions,
older and more experienced members of a community teach
younger and less experienced members the skills, values, and
knowledge needed to be productive members of that community

Signals- According to Vygotsky, words are signals. Rather than

engage children in a primary signal system, in which objects are
referred to merely as themselves, adults engage children in a
secondary signal system, in which words represent objects and
ideas.

 Cognition-A child's intellectual development is crucial

to his language development. By interacting with his
environment, a child develops the ability to develop
private, inner speech. Through the development of inner
speech, children straddle the divide between thought
and language, eventually being able to express their
thoughts coherently to others.

Types of speech
Vygotsky differentiates between three forms of speech:

social speech which is external communication used to

talk to others (typical from the age of two)

private speech (typical from the age of three) which is

directed to the self and serves an intellectual function
private speech goes underground, diminishing in audibility
as it takes on a self-regulating function and is transformed
into silent inner speech (typical from the age of seven).

 For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate

systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three
years of age. At this point speech and thought become
interdependent: thought becomes verbal, speech becomes
representational. When this happens, children's monologues
internalized to become inner speech. The internalization of
language is important as it drives cognitive development.

 "Inner speech is not the interior aspect of external speech it is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e. thought
connected with words. But while in external speech thought
is embodied in words, in inner speech words dies as they
bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent
thinking in pure meanings"(Vygotsky, 1962)
Vygotsky was the first psychologist to document the
importance of private speech.

 He considered private speech as the transition point

between social and inner speech, the moment in
development where language and thought unite to
constitute verbal thinking.
Thus private speech, in Vygotsky's view, was the earliest
manifestation of inner speech.
Private speech is typically defined, in contrast to social
speech, as speech addressed to the self (not to others) for
the purpose of self-regulation (rather than communication)

 Vygotsky proposed that private speech diminishes and

disappears with age not because it becomes socialized,
as Piaget suggested, but rather because it goes
underground to constitute inner speech or verbal
thought.
Vygotsky sees private speech as a means for children to
plan activities and strategies and therefore aid their
development.

 Vygotsky notes that private speech does not merely

accompany a childs activity but acts as a tool used by the
developing child to facilitate cognitive processes, such as
overcoming task obstacles, enhancing imagination,
thinking, and conscious awareness.

Children use private speech most often during intermediate

difficulty tasks because they are attempting to self-regulate
by verbally planning and organizing their thoughts .

Conclusion
Vygotsky argued that language development first takes place
on a social plane. The child observes the parents' behavior,
listens to the parents' speech, and tries to imitate. The parents
guide the child in his/her efforts, making corrections when
needed and providing greater challenges when appropriate.
As the child becomes more competent information becomes
internalized. Language is then represented in the mind as
thought or inner speech.

THANK YOU

SUBMITTED BY
MISS JYOTHI THOMAS
B.Ed ENGLISH
ST.JOHNS B.Ed COLLEGE
KAYAMKULAM