Linguistics

Thought and Language : A Mirror of One 's Rationality

Lev Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist who developed the genetic approach to the development of concepts in early childhood and youth Specifically , he identified the link between thought and the meaning of words . In his study , he traced the transition through a series of stages in human development , based on the development of a child 's social practice . He was able to develop an interest in this through his readings on linguistics , sociology , psychology , philosophy and the arts His student days at the

University of Moscow paved the way for his determination to show the relationship between thought and language

He is known for his work entitled Thought and Language . In this study he was able to develop a theory of language development which both anticipated Piaget 's genetic psychology - describing the development of language and logical thinking in young children in the course of their interactions with adults and the world around them - and the development of theoretical or conceptual knowledge in school-age children as their intuitive knowledge , acquired in their immediate life experiences , comes into active contact with socially transmitted knowledge of the teacher (Encyclopedia of Marxists , n .d . This finding made by Vygotsky was elaborated in his work

At the start of Thought and Language , Vygotsky hypothesized that thought and language is not interdependent from each other , rather , it is a manifestation of interfunctional relations . For him , speaking and thinking are not separate but they reinforce and complement each other (Kozulin , 1986 . Earlier studies concluded that both are separate function and the fault lies in their method of analysis according to Vygostky . Specifically , previous experiments and studies on thought and language analyzed each as psychological wholes wherein they were studied in isolation . This type of method ignores the unitary nature of the process (Kozulin , 1986 . In his own analysis , Vygotsky analyzed thought and language units wherein he retained all the basic properties of the whole . This led him to highlight the importance of word meaning

Word meaning , for Vygotsky , is a manifestation of the unification of thought and speech . A word does not refer to a single object but to a group or to a class of objects (Kozulin , 1986 . One cannot separate meaning from a word and thus , it belongs in the realm of language as much as in the realm of thought . Speech is a means of communication or social intercourse and at the same time it is an intentional way of expressing one 's thought to others . Hence , it cannot be taken independently from thought . For Vygotsky , true human communication presupposes a generalizing attitude (Kozulin , 1986 . Word meaning as a unit of both generalizing through and social interchange is essential in studying thought and language . From this , he related it to the situation or the development of a child 's social practice . The concept of causal-genetic was born . It pertains to the systematic study of the relations between the growth of the child 's...