Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 43, no.

5,
September–October 2005, pp. 65–81.
© 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1061–0405/2005 $9.50 + 0.00.

A.N. LEONTIEV

Lecture 38. Thinking and Speech

Examination of the most important of the forms of human thinking—

verbal, logical thinking—inevitably leads to the problem of thinking
and speech. Different movements and schools in psychology have con-
ceived this relationship in different ways. I have already mentioned that
adherents and proponents of “objective psychology”—very strikingly
expressed in behaviorism, have envisioned the relationship between think-
ing and speech as a replication of actual verbal reasoning or verbal judg-
ments in internal processes. The replication of speech in its internal
form—this is thinking. Such a replication is achieved based on the fact
that speech, originating in communication, is then directed primarily
not toward communicative tasks, but toward cognitive tasks. Its external
form can be dispensed with because it does not convey anything to any-
one. It carries out a cognitive function. Naturally, its external, pronounced,
audible side can die out, and then it will undergo certain other metamor-
phoses, changes on the side of a shortening, a certain simplification in
its structure—actually, the entire process consists of this.
When the solution to a problem is needed, a solution to some chal-
lenge that presents a particular difficulty, the opposite process emerges—
as if internal speech develops into external speech. A common technique

English translation © 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2000
A.A. Leontiev, D.A. Leontiev, and “Smysl.” “Lektsiia 38. Myshlenie i rech’,” in
Lektsii po obshchei psikhologii [Lectures on General Psychology], ed. D.A. Leontiev
and E.E. Sokolova (Moscow: Smysl, 2000), pp. 357–67.
Published based on a tape recording. There is a typewritten version of the text
with omissions. The date of the lecture is unknown.
Translated by Nora Favorov.

65
66 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

used by teachers with a confused pupil is to think out loud. This is the
advantage of written speech, because speech pronounced out loud is con-
structed successively, that is, sequentially, it flows and does not remain in
front of the speaker’s eyes; while written speech, being successive, that is,
going sequentially, is at the same time before us—it remains in view. One
can return to the previous page, raise one’s eyes two lines above, in a
word, it continues to be within the field of perception. Therefore, it is
better to write down a thinking or to say it out loud. But when a school
child is trying very hard to solve a problem—everyone knows this—often
this internal speech will simply come out as a whisper. He whispers. This
is easier. Here is an exemplary argument for this simple idea, that thinking
is a conversation with yourself, that is, a general verbal process, and what
we are talking about is a certain system, in this case a system of verbal
skills, where the speech process replaces a certain nonsymbolic, that is, a
nonlinguistic process. In short, for the behaviorist—the systematic and
strict early behaviorist—this is truly a system of skills, a system of learned
reactions that are then carried out without an external form of their ex-
pression, where the role of movement—of reactions—is carried out by
unseen, undetected micromovements, in some places inhibited in such a
way that there remain, evidently, their proprioceptive effects. You can
suppose anything at all here, and even study the movement of the speech
organs, because if you give a person a task and at the same time register
the movement of the speech organs, you will manage to precisely record
the hidden micromovements. For instance, the movement of the epig-
lottic cartilage. There are a multitude of studies of this sort, and as an
indicator of certain processes occurring during thinking, all of these
recordings, of course, have a certain meaning. I emphasize again—as
indicators, that is, as guides, as signs.
The opposite position (I will briefly repeat it, we have already gone
over it) is that thinking is a sui generis process, that is, it is in its own
class, emerging as a special process. As for speech, it is merely the shell
of the process. It is what thinking is clothed in so that it can be commu-
nicated, that is, so that it can be conveyed and so that it can take on
expanded forms. Speech is the clothing of thinking. No study of speech
processes will lead or will be capable of leading to the solution of the
problem of thinking.
This point of view, developed by the idealistic schools, has rarely, at
least in recent decades, appeared in its directly “exposed” form. Usually
 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2005 67

it was present or rather it found its expression in more complex repre-

sentations, the starting point of which consisted nonetheless in the con-
trast of an existent, particularly spiritual principle (expressing itself
primarily in thinking, as well as in other psychological processes), de-
termining the course of special processes that comprise a sort of techni-
cal aspect of this main internal, purely spiritual activity.
This thinking has a significant philosophical tradition and I will not
specially focus on it now because it takes research of thinking far beyond
the bounds of actual science, beyond the bounds of specific knowledge.
Vygotsky expressed criticism of both positions. In the context of re-
search into concepts, the meanings of words, their structure, their con-
struction, operations that are rolled into their meanings, he developed
another point of view, other positions that seem to me to the present day
to have a major significance.
As the main object of criticism, naturally, Vygotsky chose the posi-
tion that I repeated first today—the position that reduces thinkings, think-
ing to verbal processes. Reducing a thinking to a word. The last chapter
in his monograph Thinking and Speech [Myshlenie i rech’] is titled
“Thinking and Word” [Mysl’ i slovo].1 It is particularly important be-
cause it is the last thing written by him on the subject of thinking. Or
actually, the second to last.
This is how the book was written: when the book was already put
together, the large, concluding chapter was written, introducing some
essential corrections to the chapters that had been written previously
and much that was new. And, finally, the preface, the introductory chap-
ter, very short—this was the very last thing, and after that Lev Semenovich
Vygotsky died. And that brought an end to the history of the scientific
writings of Vygotsky. That preface—but since it was only a preface,
then I can say: it ended with the last chapter of Thinking and Speech. It
is the very last thing. If you should encounter this book, you must re-
member always that the center, the grand total, the summing up is in
that last chapter, “Thinking and Word.”
Vygotsky developed the point of view that speech and thinking, ver-
bal and thinking processes, word and thinking do not all correspond. He
made very serious arguments for this thesis. They form two groups: the
first—genetic arguments; the second—arguments of systematic analy-
sis. The source of the first is the study of development. The source of the
second is systematic analysis, analytical research.
68 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

I will try to condense the genetic arguments into two: the first can be
separated out very simply. It amounts to the idea that thinking and speech
have different genetic roots. This position was introduced in one of
Vygotsky’s early works. This work first appeared in a journal that is
now called Voprosy filosofii. Back then it was called Pod znamenem
marksizma. This article was actually called “The Genetic Roots of Think-
ing and Speech” [Geneticheskie korni myshleniia i rechi].2
What was asserted in this article? A certain, in my opinion, indisput-
able, tenet. The tenet consisted of the following: in the prehuman period
of history, that is in the period of “preparation” of man and human his-
tory, the line of development of communication, or verbal processes
(but it is better to be careful and say “preverbal processes”), and the
development of thinking (to avoid mixing up these concepts it is better
to say “precognitive” or “animal intellect”) were entirely independent
of one another. And in a certain sense, they were even in opposition to
one another, in antagonistic relationships to one another.
The point is that we do not know of objective reference speech in
animals; and even now, despite colossal efforts, a tremendous number
of works devoted to communication in animals, “animal speech,” as it is
sometimes stated. This speech, it seems, is completely unique. It is a
special sort of communication.
It is not referenced objectively. It may be prompted by objective con-
ditions, it may be a reaction to an object, but not to another animal of the
same species, let us say, if we are talking about communication and it
carries a signal function. But the point is that there is no object of utter-
ance. It is not identified, it is not articulated.
I am constantly following new findings regarding the connection be-
tween speech and communication, that is, about the sign-based, signal
communication in the world of animals, in more developed animals or
in animals that have particularly well-developed connections with one
another, practical communication in daily life. Among the first, the most
developed animals one must, of course, include anthropoid apes: chim-
panzees, extensively and intensively studied; the gorilla, the orangutan.
Among the second group one must include myrmecoids, so to speak.
That is, bees, ants. It also includes other species living in rather large
communities (ground squirrels), constantly engaging in communication,
in interaction with one another.
But I repeat, however thorough our studies might be, differences are
 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2005 69

always visible. A verbal response is a response of influence upon an

individual, influence (let us say) by the speaker. Do you understand?
Of course, at the sight of a threat, by virtue of action of the instinctive
or instinctive-imitative apparatus (I also agree with this correction), a
bird (an ordinary chicken, a hen) will gather up her chicks. But it can be
asked—is an indication of danger taking place? Do those cries signify,
do those vocal reactions denote “hawk” or “fox,” “wolf,” “dog,” “dan-
ger?” They are differentiated in terms of the behavior, in terms of the
situation, but not in terms of the objects. As some researchers put it, this is
why we immediately get certain promising “successes” in the study of
higher-order animals, and then a letdown at the end of the experiment.
A dog can learn an English word meaning “cup.” And when the ani-
mal experiences hunger he can pronounce this word, which is phoneti-
cally possible for him. However, it is still a matter of this expression,
and not its meaning, it is not object-related, there is no object-related
content.
I do not have the time to go over the factual material and show its true
meaning, which does not go beyond what I have said: that the signal func-
tion incorporated in animal communication with other animals or with
man, always represents a signal of some action learned or instinctive—it
makes no difference—but never carrying in itself an image of a thing, an
image of an object, whether material or ideal. This position remains
unshakable, despite publications that are occasionally almost hysteri-
cal, intense, exaggerated in relation to this question of facts. The facts
are true! But they allow, or actually demand an interpretation that is
completely different from an interpretation of them as analogies to the
essential nature of human speech, to language.
Please note, I have already introduced yet another nuance: speech is a
process carried out using language, that is, with the help of a system of
meanings—of that which carries in itself in an ideal generalization, in
an ideal form, a certain objective phenomenon: a material object, a pro-
cess or an immaterial object.
And the meaning of this is worked out not on an individual level, and
not on a species level, but on a level of historical experience that is then
acquired. To put it simply, human speech presumes a mastery of lan-
guage, that is, of those signals that are fixed, that are objectively refer-
enced and comprise this tool or means of communication. This is a
system of depicting, of displaying social practice established not in
70 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

the species-wide experience of instinctive behavior, not in a readymade

mechanism and passed on, not even through contamination, imitation
(such phenomena can be found in the animal world). Who does not know
that songbirds often sing songs that are not their own, if they are raised
in a different environment? There is contamination, imitation, and it is a
primitive mechanism, there is nothing surprising about it.
There is a special history of the development of communication in
the animal world, there is a special history of the development of
prespeech. To simplify, it could be said “of animal speech,” although I
would reserve the word “speech” for human speech, the one that uses
language. These are the genetic roots of human speech, but still not
human speech. The development of higher forms of behavior—forms
that we usually call intellectual behavior, reasonable behavior, to put it
another way, progress completely independently.
“Rational”—this is a very loud word. One always wants to write
“Rational” with a capital letter (this is not what we are talking about,
of course); therefore, I understand that in Soviet and Russian literature
a tradition of translation has taken shape: we usually speak without
translation—intellectual processes, intellectual behavior, as if desir-
ing to soften the term “rational” and desiring not to hurry to introduce
the term “reasonable.” However, there is a difference between these
terms. It has been established and become traditional, but whether or
not this traditional distinction is applicable to the given situation or not—
that is still the question, and not a very consequential one for psycholo-
gists. We say in a general way “intellectual” or “intellectual behavior.”
And, of course, you know that when they talk about the intellect, they
are always referring to the intellect of higher animals, and, rightly, they
study mostly anthropoid apes in this regard. There is the famous re-
search by Köhler that you know: reaching for fruit by indirect means,
using a stick, and moving objects to climb up in order to reach some-
thing hanging high, and so forth. Who does not know the research of
Köhler and other authors methodologically close to him? There was
even talk of manufacturing and preparing such tools: sticks were stuck
to sticks, they were lengthened, and other such things. It seemed that
our apes were not so separate, though morphophysiologically very close
to man—the higher-order animals, like chimpanzees. They were not sepa-
rated by much from higher mammals in general.
It appeared this way: between man and these apes in the area of
 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2005 71

intellect there was a small gulf, and between apes and any dog—a large
gulf in the level of capabilities. It turned out not to be that way at all.
What happened was that the study of the animal intellect was greatly
expanded in terms of the number of species covered in these types of
studies and they discovered very complex operations, multiphase op-
erations, and actions that indicate very complex organization, generally
comparable with what we call “intellect” in the human sense of the word.
They appeared smart.
After all, the observer who was not equipped with theories, not a
specialist, or a Gestaltist, not a behaviorist, not an adherent of another
school of psychology, was a little bothered by the circumstance that
apes, in general, were rather stupid, while dogs, for instance, were terri-
bly smart. And we attribute a very highly developed intellect to mon-
keys, rarely speaking about the intellect of dogs. However, the parameters
of the search were expanded, and some amazingly smart animals were
discovered, for instance, the raccoon.
You probably know that raccoons are the closest relatives to bears in
terms of zoological classifications. And they turned out to be unusually
smart, getting out of very complicated situations: untangling the chains
that held them, pivoting in the opposite direction (and the chain was
twisted around the post on purpose). Circuitous pathways—that is a
simple matter. It is a simple matter for dogs, too. Taking indirect actions
regarding a lure, toward a goal in the opposite direction—that is an ev-
eryday matter. And cats, who are completely untrainable, who are so
opposed to learning tricks that even now we do not have cats in the
circus (they are impossible to train); yet, they will always outplay you in
the sense that they have an amazing conditioned reflex, just not when
their master wants it, but when it is made necessary by circumstances;
that is, their conditioned reflexes are completely rational.* But let us put
this aside.
You, of course, know dolphins, who have achieved worldwide fame.
Everything imaginable has been written about dolphins, and is still be-
ing written about them. There are even descriptions of cases of training
dolphins that have a certain goal: to find out what dolphins think about
man. How they perceive and feel about man. For this a dolphin has to be

*Cats are, in fact, trainable. A Russian artist, Yuri Kuklachev, trained cats and
even opened a cat theater for children in Moscow.—Eds.
72 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

taught human forms of communication, human language, human speech.

We wish these researchers success. I do not know, maybe dolphins truly
exhibited genius in deciding to stop living on land and go back into the
water? You know, I am sure that dolphins are land mammals who later,
for the second time, retraced their path and turned aquatic, that is, they
turned into water dwellers.
But here is what is remarkable! Köhler expressed this very well—he
could be called a classic, and in a sense he is the founder of research into
the intellect of anthropoid apes. This is what he said, “When an ape acts
with her hands, she is quiet. When she enters into direct communication
with other apes, instead of using a stick she throws it aside, because it is
not a matter of the stick, but a matter of communication.”* And here,
even some antagonistic relations can be detected. In short, if an animal
is occupied with something, there is no time to talk. When an animal is
communicating, this is taking place not within a situation and not for
the sake of solving a problem.
But what is happening with man? The appearance of man and the
formation of human society, or to put it another way, the emergence of
labor, and, consequently, the connections between man and man in a
social process of labor lead to an unusual event: crossing the lines in the
development of communication, that is, of verbal communication and
the development of cognition, that is, of intellect. Communication and
cognition are tied together in a knot. Now, they form unbreakable units.
I do not know whether it has been written down or printed somewhere in
Vygotsky, but he always liked to say, “a unit emerges, new and indivis-
ible.” Any attempt to dissolve this unit deprives it of its character just
like, for instance, water. It is not “H” and not “O,” but H2O. It is not
oxygen and hydrogen! It is water. This should be compared with a chemi-
cal compound, and not with a mechanical compound, not with the affix-
ing of one thing to another. This is a nonadditive formation resulting
from the summation or even hierarchization. It is an alloy.
Incidentally, I would like to introduce one small correction—one that
is completely immaterial in a certain context, but in the context of the
questions we are discussing it is unusually important. I have in mind the
correction to the famous fragment of F. Engels from Dialectics of Nature
called “On the Role of Labor in the Transformation of the Monkey.”

*No source is provided for this quotation in the original.—Eds.

 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2005 73

It discusses the emergence of speech in the process of labor. And the

Russian translator committed a small mistake. The translator put it
approximately as follows (I am quoting from memory): “In the process
of labor, the need to say something to one another appeared in people.”
So, what is the cause? Labor creates the need for speech and labor gen-
erates speech, and, consequently, language. This is not what Engels said.
He does not use the term “need”! In the original he writes (I am also
translating from memory, but emphasizing the difference): “In the pro-
cess of labor in people there emerged, appeared, something to say to one
another.”3 Do you see the difference?
So what was Engels’s thinking? It was that a subject of communica-
tion had arisen, about which one could say something. And then there
opens up a theory of the history of the origins of human speech, of its
first germ, that is based on understanding, and not on fantasy. And here
it is fitting—I already spoke of this briefly—to think about the role of a
labor movement as a signal for joint action, and then the alienation, the
separation of this labor movement from its work effect, and then the
performance by it of the function only of communication, of incitement.
But the kind of movement that we call a gesture is always objectively
referenced. A classic gesture is an indicative gesture. And when I show
“that over there,” what is this? A signal, a sign that is object-related or
not objective? It has to be recognized as object-related. An indication—
this is an objectively referenced signal. It is referenced because it is
indicative. There is just one turn that has to be assumed, one that occurs
no one knows how and no one knows when. The turn is that there is an
exchange of functions: between motor, gestural language and phonic,
vocal language. Sound, phonic, speech movement takes on a different
function. In the past they had an expressive function, that is, they func-
tioned to attract attention and directly signal, as I have described. They
take on (primarily, but not exclusively) an indicative function and a func-
tion of object generalization, of objective reference, and, to the contrary,
gestures take on primarily (not exclusively, but primarily) an expressive
function, conveying, just as a mimic movement a pantomime move-
ment, and so on.
I prefer to say, “careful here,” and now the gesture carries expressive-
ness, while “careful here” conveys a certain content, a certain system of
meaning. One can exclaim, “Ah!” and, of course, this will be expressive
speech. Of course, intonation carries an expressive function. Of course, it
can be the other way around and many gestures carry an objectively refer-
74 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

enced function, but I repeat that this exchange occurs for the most part.
And now I would like to draw your attention to another tenet: mean-
ing that actually makes the “word”—not just a signal, but a “word” in
the true sense—is a vehicle of a reflected and generalized human prac-
tice. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that this must truly
demand not individual, but, without fail, collective creation. That is,
from the start, the product of society and not of the individual.
In this regard, it is very interesting to look at Marx’s article about
Wagner, about the first vocal meanings. Wagner was an economist. He
states that people should have been able to denote, not distinguishing
very much at first, something like “the good.” Here, there is something
else important: “for the benefit of”—this is something unchanging for
everyone and it is unchanging for me, true? And this defines the actual
constancy of meaning with which we are always dealing, and, therefore
that which we do not notice. And this can be contrasted with the com-
plete or almost complete inconstancy of the objective reference of the
voice signal if it should happen to occur in an animal.
You know (I will again cite a classic from memory) that if something
is not written in the program of instinctive behavior, animals cease to
regard food as food when they are full. The meaning changes. It is the
same for apes, of course; they take a stick, but they do not walk around
with it, not to mention preparing a supply of sticks. This meaning some-
how arises in a situation, so that it will not become established, but will
die out if it is not transformed into the experience of a species.
Here, of course, it is always possible to find something to make one
think. For instance, a squirrel collects a supply of nuts. Does this mean
that a nut carries the constant meaning of food? At one point I dis-
cussed this with the late Vladimir Aleksandrovich Vagner. He was a
very eminent Leningrad classical scholar of zoology or, you could say,
of biopsychology. His is a world-renowned name. Once I was at his
home in Leningrad. He had a squirrel, and it was probably for this rea-
son that we got into a conversation about food supplies. And Vladimir
Aleksandrovich said to me, “What remarkable things, these instincts
are. This squirrel has been living in my home since it was small, practi-
cally from birth, and has not lived through any seasons, always getting
enough food, regardless of the season. But, at some point in its ontoge-
netic development, it started to gather nuts under the rug, right here, and
every time, or from time to time, I would take these nuts away to feed it
 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2005 75

again. It gets these nuts all the time. And it never checks whether they
are there or not, and never resorts to its supplies.”
Do you see? This is a species-made, genetically conditioned mecha-
nism, which works idly when the conditions change. The mechanism
did not even die out, but, of course, there was nothing here to actively
make it die out. Instead there was this cozy spot under the rug, under the
corner of the rug. It also would have been possible to stick things in the
corner of the couch. Always in one spot, like a nest, even though this
nest fulfilled no function. I saw this squirrel. It was a cheerful creature.
Therefore, there are different genetic roots of thinking and speech
and there is a knot tying them together for the first time in the history of
man. It is left to researchers to determine precisely, to develop these
thinkings, and, perhaps, to find some indirect data that can shed light on
this process of synthesizing—now I can say—the merging into the unity
that Vygotsky calls meaning, having in mind that any word has mean-
ing, any sign has meaning. To say “word” or to say “meaning”—it is the
same thing.
The second argument is in ontogenetic development. The point is
still that one should not talk of different roots, but of divergence in the
development of speech and thinking, and of meanings and verbal forms
in the child. So, the internal side of meanings, the internal side of the
word develops in other ways, diverging from the external one.
How is this divergence expressed?
This is very simple to see. With what does the external speech of a
child start? The development of actual pronounced speech? With “mama.”
Or it could start with some other word. I once saw it begin with the word
“bakh.” That is not the point. It starts externally from one word of some
sort, and moves toward grammatically developed units, to utterances.
First toward simple sentences, then toward expansive sentences, sen-
tences that are as complexly expansive as you like: with complex subor-
dinates, with parenthetical phrases, subordinate clauses, and so on.
So, the external unit is the word. And in terms of the internal content?
That is the utterance, the thinking, if you like. This is something very
broad.
A classical example—I am intentionally taking it from the works of
observers who hold different positions—from W. Stern. He painstak-
ingly studied child development, in particular, the development of child
speech. He drew attention to the fact that the child approaches his mother
76 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

and pronounces just one word that means so much, in this case “make
me a hat out of paper.” This is the internal meaning of one word. A
developed internal aspect and an external aspect compressed into one
word. There simply are no other words, no other options. So, this is a
global, undifferentiated, we shall say, thinking, that is to say, content,
meaning, and the vehicle for it is something small, one word.
And here is a sentence. As I mentioned, I observed “bakh” as a first
word—the circumstances are of no importance, but it also had a marvel-
ously developed meaning. It appeared in a situation when a teeny-tiny
child, a child younger than age one year (first words sometimes occur
after one year, but usually before), where cubes were being placed one
on top of the other, the cardboard cubes, he, with the greatest satisfac-
tion, destroyed this pyramid, hitting a middle or a lower block. So, what
did this word “bakh” mean? A repetition of this story. In other words, he
has to build this pyramid again (he is not able to), and he will joyfully
destroy it. This is how the word “bakh” appeared before my very eyes.
Then, of course, these words recede. They die off. Speech begins to
be articulate. Thinking is at first global. And now it begins to articulate
in keeping with the articulation of speech. From being global, total, in-
tegral, it begins to develop, to be analyzed, to separate.
Now we have returned to the fact that this articulation of thinking
occurs through the mechanism of the articulation of speech. We have
approached it from the other side, but have arrived at the same position.
It turns out that the development of speech generates development,
articulation of this content that we call thinking, thinking.
But this is not the way it is, comrades. Certainly, the process truly
goes in that direction: from global thinking that is very rich in content to
something like its fragmentation. At the same time, there is a consolida-
tion of fragmented elements of speech, words, into complex formations,
into sentences. However, the point is that speech is not what constructs
thinking. And the essential fact is this: the grammar of developing child
speech precedes the articulation of thinking. It comes before logic (again
divergence), and does not express it. Here, logic has its own develop-
ment. But the line of speech and thinking does not coincide.
Vygotsky, whom I cite yet again, and not for the first time, showed
this very simply. His little daughter (this was the beginning of her pre-
school years) liked to do what she called “drawing,” that is, to put it
simply, to scrawl all over clean pieces of paper. We were once sitting
together at his home when she came in, and, addressing Lev Semenovich,
 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2005 77

said, “Give me a piece of paper.” Then Vygotsky in turn asked her, “In
what sense should I give you paper?” His daughter had no trouble with
this and did not ask what it meant. She said very fluently and without
hesitation, “In the white sense, Papa!”
Do you understand what is happening here? Of course, we can con-
duct a conversation with a preschooler using complex grammar, using
complex segmentation, and what is most interesting, our preschooler
will eagerly keep up this conversation. Only one thing is needed—to
preserve the commonality of the objective reference, because otherwise
there will be no communication. That is, something must be kept in
mind. It can be all sorts of things, but it has to be something that, at least,
appears to be common. Then there will be a conversation.
And the logic and grammar of speech will be found in divergent rela-
tions. They will not coincide and follow one after the other. Here the
relationship is much more complex. I said that “grammar comes before
logic.” And I would have just as much justification in saying (which
Vygotsky, incidentally, does not say), that in a certain sense, logic comes
before grammar. These simply are not identical paths, not the same lines
of development, diverging, that is, going separate ways. I use the term
“diverging” because when the process of their formation is finished,
then, time and again, we see awful and diverging results.
Do you understand what a “windbag” is? If it is not clear to you, then
I will give you a scientific example, completely academic.
Among mentally retarded children, that is, oligophrenic children on
the level of indisputable debility, not subject to the slightest doubt (not
pedagogically neglected, but retarded children—their mental develop-
ment has been retarded as a result of biological, usually organic reasons,
that is, we know the etiology, the origin of the given debility)—so, among
retarded children, time and again, relatively often encountered case is
seen: children who are exceptionally verbal. They have an extraordinar-
ily high verbal development. Moreover, they have a perfectly developed
grammar, not just a lexicon. In essence, their speech is empty, there is
not much to it, that is, I would say there is little sense there, but there is
a lot of the speech itself: both external speech and the preliminary inter-
nal speech that prepares it. And there is a historical fact, an example. As
an aid to your memory I sometimes give anecdotal cases. However, this
is not an anecdote, but a historical fact. A rather well-known psycholo-
gist by the name of Leon Dugas lived and was active during the first
quarter of our century (incidentally, he wrote a rather good book about
78 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

memory). At this time in France progressive forces (the university, the

progressive intelligentsia) were struggling against classical state exami-
nations, which, for simplicity, we will call “education certificate exami-
nations,” and here it was a matter of baccalaureate examinations.
Opponents of these education certificate examinations felt that what
was required to pass these examinations were formalistic [elements], di-
vorced from real knowledge, and on this basis they asserted that the ex-
amination did not work and one could acquire a bachelor’s degree without
demonstrating any hard knowledge. Dugas was among those supporting
this critical position, and so he made a bet that he would take a qualified,
verified, that is, a completely certified case of retardation and would pre-
pare this retarded person to take the baccalaureate examinations. I will not
say much about this, but will briefly describe the result—he won the bet.
The high council gave the retarded person a passing grade. It is true that
this particular retarded person, in addition to excellent speech and excel-
lent grammar, had a very good memory. This is a common combination.
So, in the history examination he was able to cite pages from a history
textbook from memory, which absolutely delighted the professors. Inci-
dentally, in the French system, education certificate examinations are given
not in school, but in university commissions independent of the school.
So, this also serves as a test of the school, and it is objective, since it is all
the same to me what school a person has come from to take the exam, and
I myself belong to a special organization, something like the educational
districts in prerevolutionary Russia, made up of ordinary university teach-
ers and not schoolteachers. The conclusion to be drawn from these argu-
ments, or actually from this fact: the different genetic roots and a certain
divergence or even parallelism, a nonidenticalness in the development of
speech and meanings, of thinkings, of the thinking process itself leads to
a problem in analytic research—how are thinking and speech connected
to one another in reality?
This is the most critical problem of our time. It has become more
critical as a result of “imitation” of human thinking. I am referring to
logical decision-making devices. “Imitation” here not in the sense of
imitation, but more like replication perhaps. This is a remarkably criti-
cal problem that has gone through two phases. The first phase was ten
years ago, that was at the beginning of the 1960s—this was the belief
phase, the optimism phase. Then, there was a new phase—the phase of
unbelief, the phase of pessimism. I am told that there will probably be a
 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2005 79

third phase, and that time will remove the first two, and that there will
be a negation of negation, and a victory of machine intellect in all im-
portant fields. There is only one thing I can say to this, something I have
always said: I am prepared to cut any part of the course, but not the prob-
lem of creative thinking. We are going to have a conversation about this in
order to look carefully and calmly at how matters stand in reality. What
can we psychologists predict, as well as theoreticians? And for now, I
would like to move on to arguments of a second sort, and, at the same
time, to conclusions that have been reached within the bounds of Vygotsky’s
work.
What we know about the process of development of child speech
shows that the process of development of child speech cannot be re-
duced to the development of external speech, to the deprivation of this
external speech of its vocal expression, to a specific abbreviation, to a
transition at the same time to internal speech, the automatization of this
(of internal speech), and to the appearance on this basis of an effect,
something like the insight effect. Automatization is abbreviation. A com-
prehensive process is taking place in me, and being comprehensive, it is
now abridged, and, moreover, it is flowing automatically. I have an illu-
sory experience, an “aha reaction.” I see a solution! A solution dawns on
me! I find a solution! But, the thinking, my thinking, preserves its ver-
bal character. Actually, thinking here does not lead directly to speech,
but to internal speech or to some stage of abridgement of internal speech.
It most likely leads to the latter. And this all is very impressive from the
perspective of the overall idea that development of internal mental pro-
cesses takes place through interiorization, that is, there is a movement
from external objective action (it is sometimes called material action, or
even materialized—the word here is not important) to internal, intelli-
gent action. The accompanying automatization, the abbreviation and gen-
eralization leads to the internal distinctiveness that we discover at the
very last point of development of internal speech, while moving from
“without” to “within.” I spoke last time about certain features of these
abbreviations. You recall the abbreviation of the phasic aspect, of the
articulatory, of the grammatical aspect. This is the way it all is.
However, Vygotsky’s thinking is that internal speech at any stage of
its formation, while it may be internal, remains a speech process. This is
the process by means of which thinking is carried out. So, does this
mean that thinking preexists? Vygotsky had an exquisite answer to this.
80 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

He answered with the Latin formula: “No, internal speech is thinking

only in statu nascendi, that is, in the course of appearing, of being com-
pleted.” This captures the difficulty of thinking, the difficulty of the tran-
sition from globality to differentiation, to a sort of new life: first in internal
speech and then in transformation, in a move from internal speech to
external expression and complete articulation.
The image to which Vygotsky turned was the image of “a cloud pour-
ing out a rain of words,” as he would say. Just because we see rain does
not mean that there is no cloud. There must be something that comes
pouring out, and this something is by no means a secret wellspring.
There exists something that, again metaphorically, is called “wind,” that
is, the movement that “blows the clouds,” which at times “pour out”
their “rain of words.” This thinking is self-fulfilling. So, from the very
start it is false to pose the question of the correspondence of two things:
one thing is thinking and the other thing is speech; one thing is thinking
and the other is the word. It is a connection, the transition from one set
of processes to the other. This transition itself is the process. This is not
very easy to understand in terms of formal-logical, metaphorical think-
ing. We will deal here with some transformations, if we are going to
speak the language of logic, of Marxist systems analysis. I stress the
first word, because now they call anything “systems” analysis. It can be
system-structural, it can be structural, it can simply be systems. It goes
back to old neopositivism. It goes back to the most modern neopositivism.
Everything is intertwined now. We have to ask everyone, “What is it that
you mean,” “What systems are you talking about?” After all, there are
systems that are frames: some points are marked in space, they are joined
by using hard, physical things, and a system appears. A hard system, not
mobile, deprived of mobility, deprived of contradictions.
But the system we are talking about here is a mobile system! A sys-
tem cannot lack internal movement, otherwise we would have to recog-
nize, truly, a divine principle, a spiritual principle to initiate action. In
itself, it must comprise this movement. This is the only way to under-
stand development. And we are dealing with the development of think-
ing, with the development of speech, with the unity of this process.
And what is unity? What is it—can we say that the cigarettes and the
pack are a unity? Can we say there is a unity of this side where it is written
“Krasnopresnenskie” and this side where it is written “Cigarettes”? Is that
unity? It is simply one and the same thing that we are looking at from this
 SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2005 81

side and from that side. And, respectively, this side differs from that side.
They are different because they are objectively, respectively different. Is
this really unity? Think what you were taught in philosophy. What is unity?
Unity is contradictory, is it not? Mutual penetration, transition! This is a
dramatic process! This is first and foremost a process! The unity of pro-
ductive forces and productive relationships—my god! What contradic-
tions, what transitions, what exchanges of place, clashes! Movement! As
soon as the process stopped, everything was over. You left your positions.
Now I will sum up Vygotsky’s idea. Here, there is a constant connec-
tion that is not a connection between things, but a switch from one set of
processes to another. On what basis are these transitions built? What is
directing and regulating them? The answer is very simple: the affective,
emotional, if you like, aspect of relations (more carefully), taking shape
in man toward the world, toward reality. Thinking is incapable of being
an indifferent process!
Remember the very rigorous thinkings of very rigorous analysts and
researchers! Without human feelings and emotions there will never ex-
ist and there cannot be a search for truth. This is directly related to sci-
ence, even to calm, abstract cognition! Here, we have that which thinks
(I want to finish effectively)—that is personality!
I am answering a question that was just asked of me: in what material
do signs exist, that is, what serves as their “base,” as their substrate?
Everything can serve as a substrate. Do you understand?

Notes

1. L.S. Vygotskii [Vygotsky], Sobr. soch. v 6 t. [Collected Works in 6 Vols.]

(Moscow, 1982), vol. 2, pp. 295–361.
2. Ibid., pp. 89–118.
3. F. Engels, Anteil der Arbeit an der Menschwerdung des Affen (Berlin, 1957), p. 8.

To order reprints, call 1-800-352-2210; outside the United States, call 717-632-3535.