Vygotsky Inner Speech
Introduction The origin and background of inner speech The idea of inner speech
dates backs to the time of Plato and has been in use till date, but emphasis will be
laid on Vygotsky s work. The phrase inner speech was initially used by Lev
Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, to describe a stage in language acquisition and
thought in his famous work Language and Thought. Vygotsky is said to believe that
speech began as a social medium and became internalized as inner speech, that is,
verbalised thought (Katherin, 2006, p. 17). Since the translation and introduction of
Vygotsky s Language and Thought to the English speaking world in 1962, it is
presumably one of the most important and influential books that draw on cognitive
science, and as well has become recognized as an exceptional groundwork of the
evolution and theory of inner speech. Although, Vygotsky s work has raised
arguments as to whom the credit of the genesis of inner speech is due, being that his
piece of work synthesized the ideas of other philosophers/ psychologists. In his
phenomenal piece of work on human mental development, Vygotsky, analyzed the
relationship between words and thoughts, and argues that only as children develop
does speech in its social origins become... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...
The first, A list of 10 monosyllabic words which are phonologically similar but not
semantically related (A list) was adapted from (LS) white, height, night, light tight,
write, might, quiet, bite, fight (p 30). The second list comprised of 10 words
which are semantically related (B list), similar in length, word class and frequency
with the phonologically related words, dear, sugar, savory, sweet, tasty, flavor,
honey, dessert, candy, treat . The level of frequency of the words were determined
with the use of corpus (COCA and BNC). There are slight variations in the level of
frequency of the B list words. Nevertheless, The lists were presented orally and