ABSTRACT
In the 1920s, Vygotsky made some interesting claims about the relationship between language and thought and between individuals and society. This chapter describes the basic principles underlying the Vygotskian framework. He describes that quite early in childhood we begin to use language as a psychological tool for organizing our individual thoughts, for reasoning, planning and reviewing our actions. He came to believe that in early childhood a fusion of language and thinking occurs which shapes the rest of our mental development. The child's thinking and communicating is a reflection of the social context in which the learning is taking place. Learning and development are two different processes that are complexly related to each other. Children begin to convey abstract concepts in a number of ways through language. They produce the formulaic chunks of language, expressions which sometimes convey abstract concepts. Learning language, therefore, is most appropriately considered as both social and cognitive.
