ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Vygotsky’s account of the process of internalization of private speech will be analyzed critically, both theoretically and empirically. First, I present an outline of Vygotsky’s view of the relationship between private speech and inner speech. According to Vygotsky, the main structural feature of private speech is its abbreviated character, revealing the transitional position of private speech between social and inner speech. Vygotsky (1934/1986) assumed that between 3 and 7 years of age, children’s private speech utterances show a progressive tendency toward abbreviation, “namely: omitting the subject of a sentence and all words connected with it, while preserving the predicate” (p. 236). For example, a child may say during puzzle solving, “Fits”, instead of “This piece fits here.” Second, empirical data that are relevant to the abbreviation hypothesis will be presented. Finally, these empirical results will be discussed in light of Vygotsky’s theoretical framework. The phenomenon of abbreviation will be considered in relation to the social origins of private speech. Three interrelated points are of interest in this respect: (1) the ability of young children to use abbreviated social speech in a task setting; (2) the necessity to specify the type of activity one is referring to when discussing private speech; and (3) the image of internalization that is evoked by conceptualizing private speech as a form of speech that gradually changes with respect to structure, before being transformed to inner speech.
