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Thinking-And-Speech.Pdf Thinking and Speech. L. S. Vygotsky 1934 Author’s Preface This book deals with one of the most complex and difficult problems of experimental psychology, the problem of thinking and speech. To our knowledge, there has as yet been no systematic attempt to address this problem experimentally. An extended series of empirical studies is required. These studies must address issues such as the nature of concepts formed in experimental contexts, the nature of written speech, and the relationship of written speech to thinking. These studies are a necessary and important first step in resolving this general problem. Experimental research, however, must be supplemented with theoretical and critical analysis. First, we must analyse the empirical data which have been accumulated and attempt to assess their more general implications. Through an analysis of available information on phylogenesis and ontogenesis, we must attempt to identify the most useful point of departure for the resolution of the problem; we must attempt to develop a general theory of the genetic roots of thinking and speech. Second, to develop preliminary working hypotheses and contrast our own theoretical perspectives with those of others, we must conduct a critical analysis of the best contemporary theories of thinking and speech. In our view, current theories are in need of serious reassessment and improvement. Theoretical analysis is necessary in two other contexts. First, the problem of thinking and speech has been addressed by scholars in several closely related fields. We must compare these differing perspectives on various aspects of the problem. In this book, we have compared data on the psychology of speech with related work in linguistics. We have also compared our own data on concept formation with current educational theory on the development of concepts. In general, we found it most useful to address these problems in theoretical terms, without attempting a detailed analysis of empirical data. Thus, in describing our studies on the development of scientific concepts, we have presented a working hypothesis on the relationship of instruction and development. This hypothesis was developed in a separate work and is based on empirical data that we do not review in detail here. We also relied on a theoretical mode of analysis in our attempt to construct a theoretical perspective that would incorporate all our experimental data. The content and structure of our research have been varied and complex. Nonetheless, each task we have faced in our work has been subordinated to our general goal and connected to the work that preceded and followed it. Though we have broken the problem down into several components, it is our hope that our studies constitute a unified whole. All our work has focused on a single basic problem, on the genetic analysis of the relationship between thought and word. 39 40 Thinking and Speech This single basic task has defined the structure of our general research program and defines that of the present book as well. We begin this book with an attempt to formulate a clear statement of the problem and identify appropriate research methods. This is followed by a critical analysis of the two most powerful and complete contemporary theories of the development of speech and thinking, those advanced by Jean Piaget and William Stern. The purpose of this analysis was to contrast our statement of the problem and our research methods with more traditional perspectives and methodologies. Then, as a preface to the discussion of our experimental research, we were forced to address theoretical issues concerning the genetic roots of thinking and speech. This was necessary in order to identify a point of departure for research on the genesis of verbal thinking. Two empirical studies constitute the core of the book. The first is a study of the development of word meaning in childhood; the second a comparison of the nature and development of scientific and spontaneous concepts in ontogenesis. The final chapter represents an attempt to integrate our findings, to present the process of verbal thinking in a connected and unified form. In any innovative research effort, an attempt must be made to identify novel aspects of the research, since these require particularly careful analysis and experimental validation. If, for the moment, we ignore the new approach inherent in our statement of the problem and what is, in effect, a new research method, we can summarize the contributions of our research effort in the following way: (1) we have provided experimental evidence indicating that word meaning develops in childhood and identified the basic stages of this process; (2) we have identified the process involved in the development of scientific concepts and demonstrated how this process differs from the development of spontaneous concepts; (3) we have clarified the psychological nature of written speech as a distinct speech function and explored its relationship to thinking; and (4) we have made a contribution to the experimental study of inner speech and the relationship between inner speech and thinking. These represent contributions to the general theory of thinking and speech, contributions that derive from new experimental data and from the working hypotheses and theories that inevitably arose in the process of interpreting, explaining, and analysing these data. Of course, it is neither the right nor the obligation of the author to evaluate the significance or validity of these theories and data. We leave this task to our readers and critics. This book is the product of nearly ten years work. Many of the questions that emerged in the investigation were not apparent to us when we began. We were frequently forced to reconsider our positions during the investigation. Consequently, the results of a great deal of hard work had to be discarded. Much of the remainder had to be redone, restructured, redefined, or rewritten. Nevertheless, the overall direction of our research developed steadily, on a foundation that was basic to our work from the outset. In this book, we have attempted to make explicit much that remained implicit in previous work. Still, there is a great deal that we once believed to be correct that has been excluded from this book because it represented simple delusion on our part. Several sections of the book were taken from earlier works published in manuscript form as the basis for a university course (Chapter 5). Others were published as introductions to the works of the authors on which they focus (Chapter 2 and Chapter 4). The remaining chapters, and the book as a whole, are published here for the first time. We are only too aware of the limitations of this first step we have taken in developing a new approach to the study of the relationship between thinking and speech. In our view, our effort has been justified in that it has improved our understanding of the problem, demonstrated the importance of the problem to the whole of human psychology, and provided us with a new theory of the psychology of consciousness. This latter issue, however, is addressed only briefly in the concluding words of the book. The investigation is broken off at its threshold. Thinking and Speech. Vygotsky 1934 Chapter 1 The Problem and the Method of Investigation The first issue that must be faced in the analysis of thinking and speech concerns the relationship among the various mental functions, the relationship among the various forms of the activity of consciousness. This issue is fundamental to many problems in psychology. In the analysis of thinking and speech, the central problem is that of the relationship of thought to word. All other issues are secondary and logically subordinate; they cannot even be stated properly until this more basic issue has been resolved. Remarkably, the issue of the relationships among the various mental functions has remained almost entirely unexplored. In effect, it is a new problem for contemporary psychology. In contrast, the problem of thinking and speech is as old as psychology itself. However, the issue of the relationship of thought to word remains the most confused and least developed aspect of the problem. The atomistic and functional forms of analysis that dominated psychology during past decade led to the analysis of the mental functions in isolation from one another. Psychological methods and research strategies have developed and matured in accordance with this tendency to study separate, isolated, abstracted processes. The problem of the connections among the various mental functions ‒ the problem of their organization in the integrated structure of consciousness ‒ has not been included within the scope of the research. There is, of course, nothing novel in the notion that consciousness is a unified whole, that the separate functions are linked with one another in activity. Traditionally, however, the unified nature of consciousness ‒ the connections among the mental functions ‒ have simply been accepted as given. They have not been the object of empirical research. The reason for this becomes apparent only when we become aware of an important tacit assumption, an assumption that has become part of the foundation of psychological research. This assumption (one that was never clearly formulated and is entirely false) is that the links or connections among the mental functions are constant and unvarying, that the relationships between perception and attention, memory and perception, and thought and memory are unchanging. This assumption implies that the relationships among functions can be treated as constants and that these constants do not have to be considered in studies that focus on the functions themselves. As we mentioned earlier, the result has been that the 41 42 Thinking and Speech problem of interfunctional relationships has remained largely unexplored in modern psychology. Inevitably, this had a serious impact on the approach to the problem of thinking and speech.
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