Vygotsky on Consciousness and the Application to Second Language Development

Document Type

Book Section

Publication Date

6-14-2018

Publication Title

The Routledge Handbook of Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Development

Publisher

Routledge

Publisher Location

New York

Edition

1

First page number:

75

Last page number:

88

Abstract

Although Vygotsky realized the critical importance of understanding consciousness as fundamental to all of psychology from the beginning of his career, it was not until his final stage of work that he began to articulate the interconnections of motive, emotions, personality and environment, imagination, and other concerns in addressing the unity of consciousness at the intrapersonal level. Language for Vygotsky is essential to the development of human consciousness, and in his final volume, Thinking and Speech, and as found in notes to himself (Vygotsky Family Archive), there is a consideration of his unit of word beyond conventional meaning (znachenie) to include sense (smysl) as he began to explore and objectify the interrelationship of thought, word, and image as connected to personhood. A second aspect of the chapter addresses four extensions of Vygotsky’s thinking on consciousness to second language development. The first concerns “inhabitance” of an L2 languaculture; the second, “instruction,” focuses on forms of mediation for advanced learners; the third “embodiment,” considers the unity of consciousness in relation to L2 development at this level; and the fourth addresses perezhivanie, or how a person experiences her/his environment.

Disciplines

Educational Psychology

Language

English

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