Piaget’s Early Theory of the Role of Language in Intellectual Development: A Comment on DeVries’s Account of Piaget’s Social Theory by Joe Becker and Maria Varelas In the March 1997 Educational Researcher, Rheta DeVries presented a thought-provoking account of the social factors in Piaget’s conceptualization of intellectual development, primarily in his early works. However, DeVries ignored the fact that in these early writings Piaget made language an integral part of his ideas on intellectual development. DeVries’s elision is unfortunate for two reasons. First, it raises an issue of validity: Are we justified in simply discarding the linguistic element of these writings? Second, DeVries missed the opportunity to show how Piaget’s early ideas on the role of language might be relevant to contemporary interest in socio-cultural aspects of development.
In an article in Educational Researcher DeVries (1997) sought to make the social aspect of Piaget’s ideas on intellectual development more widely known. Especially in work he published in the 1920’s through the 1940’s, Piaget emphasized the importance of social interaction to intellectual development, and DeVries drew heavily on these writings. However, DeVries did not address a major aspect of how Piaget considered social factors in this period: Reference to the very sources cited by DeVries indicates that, during the above-mentioned period, Piaget linked the role of social interaction in intellectual development to the role of language. As a first example, DeVries (1997, p. 7) cites the following remark by Piaget (1950/1995b, p. 94): “The isolated individual would never be capable of complete conservation and reversibility.” Conservation and reversibility are fundamental constructs in Piaget’s conception of logical thought. Therefore, the quotation supports DeVries’s argument that according to Piaget the development of logical thought is dependent on social interaction. However, reference to DeVries’s source shows that Piaget completed the sentence as follows: “and it is the exigencies of reciprocity which allow this double conquest, through the intermediary of a common language and a common scale of definitions” (p. 94, emphasis added). Thus, Piaget related the importance of social interaction for intellectual development to the role of language. As a second example, DeVries writes that Piaget “noted that the symbolism of individual images fluctuates too much to account for conservation, reversibility, and equilibrium leading to the necessity of the social factor” (p. 13). DeVries’s point is that Educational Researcher, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 22–23
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Piaget saw social interaction as the key to how we overcome the instability of the symbols we each individually construct. In the essay cited, Piaget (1945/1995a) does write about the fluctuation of the symbolism of individual images. However, Piaget also clearly considers that language plays a crucial role in overcoming this fluctuation: This point is missing from DeVries’s account. Here is the relevant passage from Piaget’s essay: Complete reversibility presupposes symbolism, because it is only by reference to the possible evocation of absent objects that the assimilation of things to action schemes and the accommodation of action schemes to things reach permanent equilibrium and thus constitute a reversible mechanism. The symbolism of individual images fluctuates far too much to lead to this result. Language is therefore necessary, and thus we come back to social factors. (Piaget, 1945/1995a, p.154, emphasis added)
Again, we find that Piaget tied the role of social interaction to the importance of language. That these references of Piaget to the role of language in intellectual development are by no means marginal is apparent from a consideration of Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood (Piaget, 1945/1962a), published in the same period. This book is considered by some to be significant because it develops Piaget’s ideas on pretend play. However, originally titled La Formation du Symbole Chez L’Enfant, the book presents the theory Piaget then held of the role of language in the development of conceptual and logical understandings. This theory provides an account of two developments of the semiotic function. The first is a development from the absence of representation to the generation of mental images that arise from perception and action, which Piaget considered to be strongly tied to experiential knowing. The second is a development from such mental images to arbitrary conventional signs, which Piaget considered to be less directly tied to experiential knowing. In this theory, the signifier is at first an internal image derived from perceptions and actions and resulting from extended accommodation. At this point, thought is still particular and individual. The development from the first signifiers to signifiers that support the development of logical thought arises from the “intervention of language.” The following passages (Piaget, 1945/1962a) illustrate this perspective: We have to attempt to determine the connection between the imitative image, ludic symbolism and representative intelligence, i.e., between cognitive representation and the representation of imitation and play. This very complex problem is still further compli-
cated by the intervention of language, collective verbal signs coming to interfere with the symbols we have already analyzed, in order to make possible the construction of concepts. (p. 214, emphasis added) It is moreover unnecessary to emphasize that this irreversible centration of the first conceptual representations is mainly expressed socially as egocentrism of thought, since a concept centered on typical elements corresponding to the “lived” experience of the individual and symbolized by an image rather than by language, could neither be a general notion nor be capable of being fully communicated. (p. 242, emphasis added)
Piaget’s central idea in these passages is that the arbitrary nature of the signifiers of a language facilitates a relative detachment of the concept from the lived experience to which it refers and that this relative detachment is necessary for the concept to become an instrument of logical reasoning. Piaget saw language as inherently a social factor partly because of the conventional nature of words (the arbitrariness of the link between a particular sound form and its referent), and it is just this conventional nature of words that Piaget saw as crucial for conceptual development. Although this theory about the role of language in intellectual development underlies the passages DeVries cites, her article reveals no inkling of it. The disappearance of Piaget’s views on the role of language from an account of his views on the importance of social interaction is unfortunate in two ways. First, Piaget’s views on the role of language changed. Thus he wrote, “It took me some time to see, it is true, that the roots of logical operation lie deeper than the linguistic connections, and that my early study of thinking was centered too much on its linguistic aspects” (Piaget, 1962b, p. 5), and “Some forty years ago, during my first studies, . . . I believed in the close relation between language and thought” (Piaget 1972/1973, p. 109). Piaget might not have been referring to the particular ideas about language that we have indicated. On one hand, if Piaget retained these ideas, they surely constitute an important component of Piaget’s conception of the role of social interaction on intellectual development. On the other hand, if he changed his mind on these ideas we need an analysis that explicitly examines the coherence of his early views on social factors once the linguistic thread is withdrawn. DeVries might contend that the withdrawal of the linguistic thread leaves Piaget with a coherent account of the role of social factors. However, she does not take up this point as a question for analysis in her paper. Instead, she simply ignores Piaget’s references to language in the earlier sources she cites. Second, Piaget’s early ideas on the role of language are especially relevant in the context of researchers’ contemporary interests in socio-cultural aspects of development. In this connection we offer two points. First, currently, researchers often turn to Vygotsky for help in theorizing the role of sociocultural factors, particularly language, on intellectual development. Through his early ideas on language, Piaget offers an avenue for extending Vygotsky’s approach to the interplay of conceptual and semiotic aspects in intellectual development. For example, Piaget offers the idea that the conventional terms of a language work to attenuate the links between schemes and the particular idiosyncratic experiences of
the individual, freeing the schemes to interact with each other to produce new schemes with new logical properties. Second, some contemporary work on the role of sociocultural factors in intellectual development has specifically drawn on Wittgenstein’s later thought (e.g., Chapman & Dixon, 1987). It may be productive to explore the relationship between Piaget’s early views and Wittgenstein’s later views or, indeed, the opposite directions in which the views of these two thinkers developed. In his early writing, Piaget showed a concern that people do not achieve the stable symbolism required for conceptual thought without the conventional signifiers of language. Piaget’s concern bears an interesting relation to Wittgenstein’s (1953) ideas concerning the impossibility of a private language. Piaget and Wittgenstein built on the same idea: Individuals cannot by themselves in isolation establish consistency in their use of symbols. Wittgenstein incorporated this idea into an argument for a social approach to thought and language, one in which mental entities are not emphasized, and may even be superfluous. In contrast, Piaget used this idea to argue that the formation of the mental structures underlying feelings of logical necessity requires social interaction using a conventional sign system. Contrasting such divergent uses of the same basic understanding of social aspects of intellectual development (the idea that individuals cannot by themselves establish consistency) may help us construct a more articulated network of the different possibilities for the relations between thought and language. REFERENCES
Chapman, M. & Dixon, R. A. (1987). Meaning and the growth of understanding: Wittgenstein's significance for developmental psychology. New York: Springer-Verlag. DeVries, R. (1997). Piaget’s social theory. Educational Researcher, 26(2), 4–17. Piaget, J. (1962a). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton. (Original work published 1945) Piaget, J. (1962b). Supplement to L. Vygotsky, Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Piaget, J. (1973). The child and reality: Problems of genetic psychology. New York: Viking. (Original work published 1972) Piaget, J. (1995a). Logical operations and social life. In L. Smith (Ed.). Sociological Studies (pp. 134–157). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1945) Piaget, J. (1995b). Explanation in sociology. In L. Smith (Ed.). Sociological Studies (pp. 30–96). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1950) Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. AUTHORS
JOE BECKER is an associate professor in the College of Education (M/C 147), University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60607;
[email protected]. His research interests include constructivist theory and mathematical cognition. MARIA VARELAS is an associate professor in the College of Education (M/C 147), University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 W. Harrison St. Chicago, Il 60607;
[email protected]. Her research interests include constructivist approaches to teaching and learning and science education. Manuscript received September 13, 2000 Accepted February 18, 2001
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