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Linguistic Consciousness
and Some Questions of the
Relationship between Language
and Thought
P. Ia. Gal'perin
Published online: 08 Dec 2014.
To cite this article: P. Ia. Gal'perin (1992) Linguistic Consciousness and Some
Questions of the Relationship between Language and Thought, Journal of Russian &
East European Psychology, 30:4, 81-92
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p . 1 ~GAL’PERIN
.
81
82 P. IA. GAL‘PERIN
modal forms of the verb) require taking into account not only the
objective content of the intention but also the circumstances in
which it is to be communicated. Every natural language, each
with its set of formal means and with its own categories, requires
certain circumstances rather than others to be taken into account
in the particular case, and these differ from one language to
another. Thus, with regard to the “problem of the article,” the
English language requires that one specify whether it is a specific
object (table, glass) that is being considered and whether the
object is known to the addressee, but the gender of the object is
of no interest whatever. In the Russian language, on the other
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the signs of the language, and the ideas and concepts of the
objective content of the intention are especially clear when the
situation is more complicated than in cases of English articles
and modal and tense forms. For example, the cases in a Russian
declension are especially difficult for foreigners, for two reasons:
f i t , grammatically each case conveys quite a few different rela-
tions, which cannot be generalized; second-and this is most
important-many of these relations can be conveyed by only a
few grammatical cases. Which of them should be inserted in the
particular instance? There are no rules here; one must simply
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the fact that, with regard to content, they are only somewhat
different from the properties of the same object noted by scien-
tific thought. The main point is that in language, these properties
are organically fused with characteristics on a totally different
level, the level of social relations. This fusion of disparate prop-
erties, substantive and social, is inadmissible in the sciences that
study the objects themselves. But in language it is a principle,
because in speech, which is a special form of human action, of
reflection of nonlinguistic reality, they serve as a means for the
speaker to influence the listener. The distinctive feature of this
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experimentation, evolves).
In contrast to cognitive consciousness, linguistic conscious-
ness formed as a means for organizing joint activity, especially
work, through communication about things to create a definite
idea about them and thus to dispose listeners to act in a desired
direction. The merits of language (and, consequently, of linguis-
tic consciousness) are proven by the effectiveness of verbal com-
munication and by the degree of coincidence between the
addressee’s behavior and what the speaker expects from his com-
munication or message. Hence, linguistic consciousness strives
not for a full reflection of reality, but for a targeted set of means
of communication that, under specific, socially determined con-
ditions, gives a specific characterization to objects and thereby
ensures that they will be understood in the desired manner and
that the appropriate behavior will ensue. Hence, in every case in
which linguistic consciousness is applie&to nonlinguistic real-
ity-it is a closed, normative system, binding and unambiguous
for all. Any natural language is open to new tools of verbal
communication, new norms only to the extent that they improve
the ability to communicate and to direct people’s behavior with
the aid of speech.
Linguistic consciousness is one of the forms of social con-
sciousness; in that respect, it is nothing new. Mam pointed this
out in his well-known statement “Language is practical, real con-
sciousness existing for other people, and only to that extent exist-
ing for myself as well.”1 But linguistic consciousness is often
THE RElATlONSHlP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT 89
but either does not know or has imagined differently. The chan-
nels for understanding speech are not only sense organs and not
only, or indeed not so much, thought as the fact that the person
hearing a verbal message also experiences it subjectively, to-
gether with the speaker. For the speaker, the criterion of the
correctness of a selected structure of speech is whether the
addressee’s behavior conforms to the objective of the verbal
communication.
The source of the main error in the theory of linguistic relativ-
ity lies in the imprecise distinction between the two kinds of
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ence between the language being studied and the native (first)
language; and the native (first) language, by virtue of being the
principal object of differentiation, then ceases to be a competitor
of the foreign language and becomes the main support in its
study. If, on the other hand, linguistic consciousness is not sin-
gled out and, consequently, linguistic consciousness of the for-
eign and native languages is not systematically differentiated, the
formal structures of the two languages will be limited to the same
nonlinguistic objects. Then the W r begin to evoke associations
with the formal structures of both languages at the same time; and
their interference, to greater or lesser degree, becomes inevitable.
Of course, taking into account foreign-language consciousness
in this way requires a new method for teaching people to speak a
foreign language, specifically, a method that, from the very out-
set, would make it possible to effect a broad comparison of all
forms of the same category, to differentiate them from one an-
other and from the forms of the same category in other lan-
guages, and to learn them simultaneously. The “stage-by-stage
formation of mental actions and concepts,” which has been tried
and tested in practice in the teaching of a number of school
subjects, including teaching children to speak a foreign language,
offers such a possibility.
Note