Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Literature I 42

2.3 The socio-hlstorical school in Soviet Psychology

2.3.1   Introduction

The socio-historlcal or socio-cultural tradition in Soviet psychology
(Vygotsky-Luria-Leonfev) and in particular Vygotsky's theories on
language and cognition have been taken as the main theoretical base, on
three grounds:

- they provide a solid foundation for understanding the nature of the
interaction between adults and children in the process of acquisition
of language and literacy; more recent studies confirm Vygotsky's
intuitions about the sociogenesis of communication and language, the
Importance of adults' interaction and the function of language and
literacy in cognitive development;

- they anticipated and still provide a theoretical background to recent
developments in linguistics and ethnography that focus on the
centrality of context for the interpretation of meaning in discourse;

- their pedagogical implications seem to respond to the problems of
underdeveloped countries more adequately than other, Western, theories.

2.3.2 Basic concepts

Tools and signs.

In Marx and Engel's historic materialist theory of social development, the
relationship between Man and nature is dialectical and reciprocal. Man
transforms nature by the use of tools, and the process of tool use

<<   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   >>

More intriguing information