5. L.S. Vygotsky as one of the founders of psycholinguistics

Lecture



The works of Lev Vygotsky, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, were of paramount importance in creating the theoretical and methodological foundations of psycholinguistics. L.S. Vygotsky - the creator of the national psychological school, to which A.N. Leontyev, A.R. Luria, A.N. Sokolov, P.Ya. Halperin, D.B. Elkonin, L.I. Bozovic, A.V. Zaporozhets and others. Among the scientists who are continuators of the traditions of this school, it is necessary to mention AB. Petrovsky, V.V. Davydova, N.I. Zhinkina, V.P. Zinchenko, AA. Leontiev. L. S. Vygotsky and his school had an enormous influence not only on the domestic, but also on the world psychological and pedagogical science.

L.S. Vygotsky attributed himself to the representatives of the materialist trend in psychology. He was much engaged in studying the phenomenon of human speech activity, and his psychological approach to speech was not just a peculiar result and generalization of all previous research in this direction, but also the first attempt to build a general psycholinguistic theory. Take, for example, the entered LS. Vygotsky in science distinguishes between "analysis by elements" and "analysis by units." This scientific concept was the basis of both numerous models of speech generation and perception, created in different schools of psycholinguistics, and the basis for the classification of language signs and so-called psycholinguistic units, singled out as structural components of speech activity.

According to A.A. Leontyev, “the main thing that LS does. Vygotsky is a forerunner and founder of modern psycholinguistics, this is his interpretation of the internal psychological organization of the process of generating (producing) speech as a sequence of interrelated phases of activity ”(133, p. 49). One of the key provisions of the concept of L. S. Vygotsky on the relationship between the processes of thinking and speech is: “The central idea can be expressed in a general formula: the relation of thought to word is first and foremost not a thing, but a process, this relation is a movement from thought to word and back - from word to thought ... This flow of thought is accomplished as an internal movement through a number of plans ... Therefore, the primary task of analysis, wishing to study the relation of thought to word as movement from thought to word, is the study of those phases that make up it's moving e distinction series of plans, through which the idea is embodied in a word "(45, p. 305). The first link in speech generation is her motivation. According to L.S. Vygotsky, one should not identify the motives proper and the “attitudes of speech”, that is, the fixed “relations between motive and speech”. It is the latter that is the “vague desire”, “the feeling of the task”, “intention” (44, p. 163). The second phase of speech generation is a thought that roughly corresponds to the current concept of speech intention. The third phase is the mediation of thought in the inner word, which in modern psycholinguistics corresponds to the process of internal programming of speech utterance. The fourth phase is the mediation of thought in the meanings of external words, or the realization of the internal program of a speech message. Finally, the last, fifth phase is the mediation of thought in words, or the acoustic-articulatory realization of speech (including the phonation process). All psycholinguistic models of speech-generating, developed in the domestic psycholinguistics of the 60-80-ies. last century, constitute a concretization and further justification of the concept proposed by L.S. Vygotsky (95, 119, 134, 146, etc.).

According to A.A. Leontyeva, L.S. Vygotsky "managed to predict the further development of the psychology of speech and psycholinguistics for many decades to come" (133, p. 50).

Scientific ideas L.S. Vygotsky, associated with the study of speech as the most important type of human activity, with the definition of multilateral relations of thought and speech processes were developed in the writings of his students and associates - A. R. Luria, A. N. Leontyev et al.

Alexander Romanovich Luria made (within the psychology of speech and neurolinguistics) a fundamental contribution to the diagnosis, research and restoration of various types of aphasia - speech disorders of central brain origin, associated with the organic lesion of the so-called “speech zones” of the cerebral cortex, responsible for the implementation of speech activity . In this case, A.R. Luria relied on the advanced LS Vygotsky's concept of the systemic localization of mental functions in the cerebral cortex, according to which speech (and any other) activity is physiologically determined by the interaction of various parts of the cerebral cortex, and the destruction of one of them can be compensated for by incorporating other areas into a single system. A.R. Luria was the first to analyze aphasic disorders as violations of speech operations. In his book "Traumatic Aphasia", published in 1947, AR. Luria, in essence, proposed the first psycholinguistic concept of aphasia, including in it the hypothesis of an “internal scheme of utterance,” which unfolds into external speech (10, p. 57). In the future, the general psychological concept of speech (as a higher mental function) was outlined by the AR. Luria in the scientific works that have become “classics” of the domestic psychological literature: “Fundamentals of Neuropsychology” (1973), “Basic Problems of Neurolinguistics” (1975), “Speech and Thinking” (1975). A.R. Luria proposed for the field of scientific knowledge at the junction of linguistics, pathopsychology and neurology a new term “neurolinguistics” (first used in Russian in 1968 [143]), which quickly gained recognition throughout the scientific world. "Neuro-linguistic direction" in the domestic psycholinguistics and aphasiology continues to actively develop students and followers of the AR. Luria (T.V. Akhutina, T.N. Ushakova, T.G. Wiesel, and others). The peculiar result of the multifaceted and fruitful scientific activity of A.R. Luria (numbering nearly five decades) is his book Language and Consciousness (148), devoted to the study of human speech activity, the basics of its cerebral organization, the key problem of the psychology of speech - the relationship between speech and thinking. Despite the fact that this monograph is a comprehensive study of speech processes mainly from the standpoint of the psychology of speech, neuropsychology and neuro-linguistics, it is still used as one of the main educational and methodological manuals on psycholinguistics.

The most prominent representative of the national psychological school, Aleksey Nikolayevich Leontyev, consistently developed the psychological concept of speech activity in a different direction, introducing into the psychological science (in the mid 30s of the 20th century) a detailed theoretical idea of ​​the structure and units of activity. An. Leontiev is rightly considered (along with S. Rubinstein and P. Ya. Halperin) one of the creators of the modern psychological theory of activity. In the works of A.N. Leontiev and AR. Luria 40-50s. last century, the term "speech activity" is repeatedly used and some features of its structure are indicated. However, a detailed analysis of speech activity from the point of view of the general psychological theory of activity was carried out in the late 60s. last century AA Leontiev, his students and followers, united in the Moscow psycholinguistic school (TV Ryabova-Akhutina, I.N. Gorelov, EF Tarasov, etc.).

Other prominent Russian psychologists and linguists also had a great influence on the development of psycholinguistics, especially in Russia (S.L. Rubinstein, B.G. Ananyev, D.N. Uznadze, L.V. Shcherba, AV. Artemov, M. M. Bakhtin and others.)


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Psycholinguistics

Terms: Psycholinguistics