Lev vygotsky books and articles

Abstract

The seventh and last chapter of Vygotsky's Thinking and Speech (1934) is generally considered as his final word in psychology. It is a long chapter with a complex argumentative structure in which Vygotsky gives his view on the relationship between thinking and speech. Vygotsky's biographers have stated that the chapter was dictated in the final months of Vygotsky's life when his health was rapidly deteriorating. Although the chapter is famous, its structure has never been analyzed in any detail. In the present article we reveal its rhetorical structure and show how Vygotsky drew on many hitherto unrevealed sources to convince the reader of his viewpoint.

Keywords: authorship, egocentric speech, inner speech, linguistics, Vygotsky

1. INTRODUCTION

Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) was a Soviet psychologist who worked in the 1920s and early 1930s. He taught at various universities and higher institutes, worked with special‐needs children, published monographs and textbooks, and became a prominent figure in the Russian variant of pedology, the discipline of child studies. His fundamental claim was that human beings differ from other animals in that they acquire cultural means that radically restructure their behavior and cerebral organization. The most fundamental cultural means is language (speech in Vygotsky's terminology), which makes it possible to transcend the here and now and to solve problems on a theoretical plane. Because language and cultural tools differ per culture Vygotsky believed it possible to find cross‐cultural differences in intellectual development. More in general, he believed that instruction propels intellectual development into directions that would not be possible otherwise.

Vygotsky's ideas generated much research but shortly after his death this line of research came to a rather abrupt stop. The Soviet government issued a decree banning the discipline of pedology with which Vygotsky was intimately connected. Pedology fell into dis

Lev Vygotsky was a seminal and pioneering Russian psychologist best known for his sociocultural theory. He believed that learning is inherently a social process. He argued that social interaction is critical to children's learning—a continuous process profoundly influenced by culture.

According to Vygotsky, kids learn through meaningful social exchanges, where imitation, guided learning, and collaborative learning play prominent roles. His work offered essential insights into the dynamic interaction between individual development and the broader cultural context in which they live.

Vygotsky's groundbreaking work changed how we understand learning and development. His sociocultural theory emphasized the important role that social interaction plays in shaping cognitive development and learning. He also introduced important concepts like the zone of proximal development, highlighting the gap between what a person can do on their own and what they can do with guidance.

Vygotsky died young and much of his work was made inaccessible in his native Russia. As translations of his work have become available, his work has had an undeniable influence on psychology, education, and child development.

Lev Vygotsky's Early Life

Lev Vygotsky was born November 17, 1896, in Orsha, a city in the western Russian Empire. In 1917, he earned a law degree at Moscow State University, where he studied a range of topics including sociology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy.

His formal work in psychology began in 1924 at Moscow's Institute of Psychology. He completed a dissertation in 1925 on the psychology of art but was awarded his degree in absentia due to an acute tuberculosis relapse that left him incapacitated for a year.

Following his illness, Vygotsky began researching topics such as language, attention, and memory with the help of his students. Among these were Alexei Leontiev, the developmental psychologist