ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of language, particularly spoken language and communication, in young children’s thinking and understanding. It looks at the curious, inquiring minds of young children, and at their efforts to make sense of their world, through talking, questioning, playing and interacting with others in the contexts of home and early childhood settings. Language, for L. Vygotsky, serves as the primary vehicle for both cultural transmission, and thought and self-regulation. He outlines a dynamic relationship between thought and language, and believes that ‘thought is not merely expressed in words, it comes into existence through them’. For the great majority of children, communication and language begin in the home, with other family members. G. Wells suggests that young children’s conversation is generally purposeful and goal-directed. Characteristic of B. Tizard and M. Hughes’ passages of intellectual search were children’s awareness of, and interest in, other people’s viewpoints, including the use of inference, and the application of ‘rigorous logic’.
