Vygotsky on the development of written language

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 8, pg. 105 – The Prehistory of Written Language

Vygotsky discusses writing, referring to it as written language. He empahsises the cultural activity of writing, rather that the motor control required. He tracks through the history of  studies of writing development in children, starting with very young children around age three, and progressing to school age children around six. His major point is that writing develops from speech, and can be associated with gesture and drawing. He focusses on the thought processes behind writing, rather than the actual act of forming accurate readable letters and words, arguing that schools focus too much on the writing action, rather than the sharing of meaning behind writing.

As with much of his other work Vygotsky studies children developing writing skills. He starts off looking at gesture, play and drawing. He suggests that play is the beginnings of writing, because children are beginning to use symbolism. A child playing at running a post office, or being a parent, is using symbols to represent the parts of the game. As children develop further, figurative gestures during play become less and less prevalent until speech gradually predominates. Vygotsky concludes that symbolic representation in play is essentially an early form of speech, which leads to spoken language. The difference between different aged children lies in which mode meaning is represented in. Spoken language then leads to written language.

The paper is remarkable because Vygotsky approaches writing as a form of language, rather than a fine motor process. He shifts the focus to writing as a form of mediation and a social activity where symbols represent things.  Vygotsky’s approach strips away the surface layers of action to examine what is going on underneath. By formulating writing as a system of symbols to represent things, Vygotsky is able to link writing to play, and to speech. To me connection between all three activities is his key insight. Vygotsky goes on to suggest that writing begins as a second order process, where one writes down what they would say, with speech being a first order process. However over time writing becomes  a first order process. He suggests that writing becomes a more direct mediating tool with a kind of hardwire to the brain, despite being initially mediated by speech.

Vygotsky suggests speech becomes dominant, as children get older, however we know that gesture can be the primary mode for communication in adult interaction. Gesture is not a stepping-stone that falls away as speech takes over, but a communicative mode in itself. However the ideas about how a mode such as writing becomes a first order process over time is interesting. The whole concept of internalization is interesting.