TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS

AND PSYCHOLOGY
(Schools of Thought in SLA)
INTRODUCTION:

What trend in language research

bears an influential impact in
today’s language classrooms?
 STRUCTURALISM/BEHAVIORISM
❑Rigorous application of the scientific
principles
>>> only observable data
❑ No such things as spirit, mind,
meanings, or preconceptions
>>>fiction
>>>illegitimate domains of inquiry
 Leonard Bloomfield Charles Fries Edward Sapir

Task: describe human

Structuralists
languages by identifying their
structural characteristics
 STRUCTURALISM/BEHAVIORISM
• Speaker: the locus, not the cause of
verbal behavior
• Language could be dismantled into
units.
• Classical and operant conditioning,
rote verbal learning, instrumental
learning, discrimination learning, and
other empirical approaches
 RATIONALISM & COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

•Noam Chomsky’s Transformational-

Generative School
•Arriving at an explanatory level of
adequacy: a “ principled basis,
independent of any particular
language…”
•Early seeds: Saussure’s
parole (performance) and
langue (competence)
•Capitalized on distinction between
overtly observable language aspects
and hidden levels of meaning and
thought
• Cognitivists tried to discover psychological
principles of organization and functioning
• Employed tools of logic, reason, extrapolation,
and inference
• Far more interested in the question “why”
>>> reasons, genetic, environment, and
circumstances
>>>more profound insights
 CONSTRUCTIVISM
•All human beings construct their own
version of reality.
•Multiple contrasting ways of knowing
and describing are equally legitimate.
•Acknowledges that meaning is
constructed through active processes.
• Jean Piaget
• Individual cognitive development
>>>a relatively solitary act
• Biological timetables and stages of
development are basic.
• Social interactions only trigger
development at the right moment in
time.
• Lev Vygotsky
• Social interaction is foundational in
cognitive development.
• rejected the notion of predetermined
stages
• Studies of conversational discourse,
sociocultural factors, & interactionist
theories
• According to Piaget, language depends on thought for
its development (i.e. thought comes before language).
• For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially
separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at
around three years of age, producing verbal thought
(inner speech).
• For Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an
internalization of language. He placed more emphasis
on the role of language on cognitive development.
SUMMARY