Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Second Language Learning Theories
Spring 2007
Week 9 - Answers
Johnson, Chapter 6: Fundamental Principles of Vygotsky`s Sociocultural Theory
1. What are the three major tenets of sociocultural theory and how do they work?
Vygotsky (1978,1986) mentions three mentions of sociocultural theory. They are, according to Johnson (2004: 105-108):
The developmental analysis of mental processes
The first and maybe the most important aspect of Vygotsky's sociocultural model is the actual method that he would use to study cognitive development. After reviewing several of the methods which were currently popular, including those of Piaget (1923/2002) he resolved to choose a what is called a dialectical method. Rather than focusing mostly on outcomes, a dialectical method focuses on the actual processes through which people learn. In this way the researcher needs to look both over a longer period of time (longitudinally) and at immediate reactions to specific types of input. In this method change is not seen is coming about as a result of some simple reaction but is rather the result of a set of complex reactions in which one piece of information (input) will be analyzed simultaneously lead to changes in many different conflicting systems. In creating this model he sites four particular levels of development or change.
Phylogenesis
Sociocultural history
Ontogenesis
Microgenesis
What is interesting about this is that Vygotsky sees these changes as coming about not only from the individuals themselves but from our own human development starting with the very origin of the species in what he terms phylogenesis. It is in the level of sociocultural history that the current knowledge base of the human species is traced back to a collective sociocultural history. This is an extremely interesting idea because it corresponds quite closely to newer ideas of evolution, and particular human evolution or the cognitive base of human evolution and linked to movement (Corballis 2002, Greenspan & Shanker 2004). This old model of Vygotsky is also substantiated by an independently formed theory called meme theory (Dawkins 1976, Augner 2002).
The basic idea underlying meme theory is that all human babies inherit from their parents, and of course the society at large, a wealth of information about how to function which passes down, in an almost evolutionary way. This information forms the basis of many of the `traits` we associate with the concept of humanity but are not encoded in our genetics. They are part of our collective knowledge of what it means to be human and as such affect or even determine our behavior in the same way genes determine the behavior of other animals. Information which the child needs to survive in human society is encoded in memes or `mental genes`. The idea is that we inherit these ideas like genes without ever knowing what it is that we have inherited. While meme theory is relatively new we can see that it bears a startling resemblance to the basic theories that Vygotsky had about change and particularly in the first two levels.
The last two levels in his chain of change are more intrapersonal. They relate to change within the individual based on experience with society which lead to the development of higher level functions. The third stage focuses on the individuals experiences within society at large and the final stage focuses more on internal changes to information. This, again, is strikingly similar to the wholly independent river model of Ratey (2002) in which all the information coming in from the cognitive system of perception is the fuel which makes up and develops all the other cognitive systems. We will cover this in more detail below.
The social origin of human mental processes
The basic idea here, as we will explore more detail later, is that cognitive development takes place in social contexts. That is, by engaging with the world itself people develop systems for cognition. Learning, therefore, is not based on the composition or content of the brain itself, although the brain does play a role in limiting what can occur, but rather is determined by the type of situations that learners find themselves in. This is not dissimilar to the idea of embodiment explored at length in Mark Johnson (1987).
The role of sign systems
In this tenet of Vygotsky`s model the basic idea is that sign systems, of which language is the most powerful, are essential in the development of higher mental functions. We need these sign systems to organize and arrange thoughts. As a quick aside it might help to mention here that we can liken higher level mental functions to writing as opposed to speaking. One of the stereotypical differences we made in the Teaching Writing class between speaking and writing is that speaking is often (but not always of course) generated as a response to some input. We often speak without overt planning or cognitive control. Writing is not like this. Writing usually (but of course not always) is the result of careful planning which creates change in the environment (inside the mind as well as in the world) and as a result is more reliant on these so-calledhigher mental functions.
2. What are higher mental functions and how are they supposed to come about?
For Vygotsky higher mental functions are basically one's related to cognition, that is thinking and learning. The development of these higher level functions occurs as a result of social interactions and may be divided into specific levels. At first higher level functions exist in the social plane and and then through a process called internalization will then enter a psychological plane. In short what we have is interpersonal movement to intrapersonal development. The movement from one level to the next, that is the process of internalization, is said to occur in three major steps; the initial stage, the other-regulated stage, and finally the self-regulated stage.
What this all comes down to is patternization. Looking at this we can see it is not unlike the probalistic model we studied/read about two weeks ago. The basic idea is that the child is confronted with events in society. This is not a small number of events, the number of event sis impossibly huge. At some point the child begins to make some sense of these events through patterning. With intervening help from others the child, over time and with repetition of the same or similar events, begins to reassess these patterns and find more meaning in the patterns. And then finally inside their brain they associate these new patterns with pre-existing patterns. This is basically how the process of internalization is said to take place. This idea, while highly controversial and absolutely untestable at the time Vygotsky developed it, has now been quite soundly substantiated by recent research into neurology and neuronal learning (Deacon, 1997).
3. What is the role that language is supposed to play in the development of higher level mental (cognitive) functions?
Language in Sociocultural Theory plays the role of not only communicating thoughts but also organizing them (remember Levelt, 1989). Speech works as a mediator between the interpersonal and the intrapersonal levels. Through a developing awareness of the world and how it works based on social interactions the child develops a distinction between speech used for others (pure speech) and speech used for oneself (inner speech). It is the latter which develops with what Vygotsky calls egocentric speech. For this development to ensue, children need to move from reliance on others to reliance on themselves. In short they need to start making some of their own decisions and not merely be reactive. It is through this experience with the world in social settings that they are able to identify patterns which allow them ultimately to decontextualize certain concepts from the world and make their own abstract concepts about the world.
In looking how language develops it helps to look at the development of lexis as words are closely related to concepts and signs. Words, in social constructivist theory, have two main elements. They have their meaning and their sense (This is an old distinction, Bedeutung versus Sinn, which can be traced back to the work of Frege (1892) and has continued into modern semantics under the English terms `reference` and `sense` (Saeed, 1997). Meaning for Vygotsky is the relatively fixed semantic code that a word has. Meaning is decontextualized and is the same in all contexts, similar to a dictionary-like definition. (Be careful of remembering that a single form, bank for example, can have more than one meaning and will therefore be considered as separate words). The sense of a word is a conglomeration of all the instances in which a person has encountered the word. In short it is alike a prototype and is developed in much the same way prototypes are developed. It is context dependent when one looks at each of the instances, but taken together is abstract and enormous. It is from the sense that the meaning is created (culled out). This is important when we think of language as an intermediary of thought because when we think it is not the meaning of a word that we access and use but the collective sense of the word.
For Vygotsky there are many parallel developments which allow for the development of speech as a cognitive tool. The basic idea is that egocentric speech will eventually turn into inner speech and it is this inner speech which relates to cognition.
4. What is inner speech and why is it important?
According to Vygotsky inner speech has many specific characteristics.
Psychological predicativity
Reduced phonetics
Use of word senses
Agglutination
Inner speech is important because it is the nature of inner speech which allows language to function as a type of cognition. The most important thing we can say about the nature of inner speech is that it is efficient. It uses the structure of the brain in order to get as much information as quickly as possible. Before accepting the idea of inner speech as a psychological reality it must first be acknowledged that language itself is a highly redundant and often inefficient system. In his estimation of inner speech, Vygotsky has tried to focus on aspects of cognition which, while tied to language forms, manages to cut out the redundancy of natural language. In this model of inner speech we can see how many different sensations all come flooding in at the same time. Still in inner speech it is not the meaning of a word which is present, but all the difference senses. Thus, in inner speech we have all sorts of personalized knowledge available to us which is simply not available in regular speech in part due to processing constraints as the brain gets bogged down trying to account for aspects of natural language like pronunciation. Through the process of agglutination specific chosen aspects of all these difference senses are added together to form a kind of layer cake of knowledge. It is this configuration which differs thought from language.
5. What is activity theory and how does it work?
Activity theory is a theory developed by one of Vygotsky`s students. It is similar to sociocultural theory but places more emphasis not on language and culture but on tools as a way of explaining cognitive development. The effect of tools is seen as working in activities, the development and treatment of which occurs in three stages, motive, goal, and operation.
References
Augner, R. (2002). The electric meme: A new theory of how we think. New York: The Free Press.
Corballis, M. (2002). From hand to mouth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Deacon, T. (1997). The symbolic species. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Greenspan, S. And S. Shanker. (2004). The first idea: How symbols, language, and intelligence evolved form our primate ancestors to modern humans. Cambridge, MA.: Da Capo Press.
Johnson, Mark. (1987). The body in the mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Johnson, Marysia. (2004). A philosophy of second language acquisition. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Levelt. P. (1989) Speaking. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
Piaget, J. (1923/2002). The language and thought of the child (3rd Edition). (Translated by M. And R. Gabain). London: Routledge.
Ratey, J. (2002). A user`s guide to the brain. Vintage Books.
Saeed, J. (1997). Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. (Edited by M. Cole, V, John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman). Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press
Vygotsky. L. (1986/1934). Thought and language. (Translated by A. Kozulin). Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.