ABSTRACT
Lev Vygotsky was a psychologist who highlighted the study of language. This chapter discusses the misrepresentation of Vygotsky's psychology and his Marxist fundaments. It highlights main point in the theorization of Vygotsky and Luria is the relation that they establish between language and the activities developed by primitive society. The chapter intends to demonstrate that Shotter affirms's interpretation of Vygotsky's conception of language is misplaced. Disregard for the category of 'work' in Vygotsky's psychology is one of the main factors that led to the constructionists' idealistic interpretation of language. One of the many criticisms of social constructionism focuses on its relativism. In Vygotsky's historical-cultural psychology, language, as a genuinely human cultural instrument, has a central role in the development of consciousness and genuinely human psychological functions. Gergen makes the constructionist emphasis clear in terms of language and discursive activity. In Shotter's interpretation, Whorf verifies that conceptions of 'time' and 'space', for example, are conditioned by the structure of private languages.
