The Inner Language According To Vygotsky
Inner language has been the object of study since the beginning of the history of philosophy. It was precisely one of the most important authors of Western psychology, Vygotsky, who entered it. The thinking of this author completely changed the conception of the human psyche. To do this, he focused on working with language, emphasizing the development of affects and the systemic understanding of the psyche.
Vygotsky was an author of great intellectual vitality. In addition to presenting his proposals, he tried to discuss the implications that these proposals could have. Thus, the debate that Vygotsky had with Piaget on egocentric language and other topics that we will name shortly is well known.
From ‘outer language’ to ‘inner language’
Vygotsky’s explanation of inner language is based on the existence of three different ways of expressing speech. The first is the external discourse or the social discourse, then we have the egocentric discourse or private discourse and finally we have the internal discourse.
Feigenbaum (1) refers to it:
It seems, then, that for Vygotsky inner speech is the experience of speaking to oneself in silence. This seems to be a language without sound, a subvocalized speech or, as he declares in his last work, a verbal thought (2).
The internal language for Vygotsky
The author defines internal language as a special training regarding its psychological nature. It is, for Vygotsky, a special form of verbal activity, with its own characteristics and which maintains a complex relationship with other forms of verbal activity.
Vygotsky expresses that it is not indifferent whether one speaks for himself or speaks for others. The internal language is the language directed to oneself, while the external language would be the one we use to direct others. It seems clear that this radical and fundamental difference between the functions of one and the other has consequences in the structural nature of both verbal functions.
It’s not just about vocalization. For Vygotsky, the presence or absence of vocalization does not explain the psychological nature of internal language. On the contrary, it explains the consequence that follows from that nature.
The internal language not only precedes the external, but is contrary to it. External language is the process of transforming thought into word, explains the author. Also its materialization and objectification. Internal language, for its part, is a process that goes from the outside in, a process of evaporation of language in thought.
The expressive dimension of inner language
The expressive dimension of language is also manifested in inner speech. However, as is logical, there is the same sender and receiver of the message. That is: the phenomenon maintains a monologue character.
Vygotsky emphasizes that inner language is more loaded with meaning. That is, it removes all aspects of consciousness associated with that idea, and that experience is not in itself a dialogue nature, but is holistic and total. This is related to one of the characteristics of inner language according to Vygotsky: being the same issuing and receiving subject, in inner language the subject is eliminated and the predicates are maintained, since the person knows the subject of his predicate. (3) .
In short, in Vygotsky’s perspective, inner speech is monological. In some way, the expressive dimension of inner speech constitutes a manifestation of the deepest states of consciousness. Thus, inner language arises in Vygotsky’s theory thanks to the interfunctional relationship between thought and language. In essence, most of our thoughts would take shape thanks to the joining of words, and that is the key aspect of inner language according to Vygotsky.
