Introduction: Acknowledging Language in the Cultural-Historical Framework

Cultural-historical psychology as it was developed in the 1930s by L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leont’ev, and A.R. Luria addresses the psychological development and dy’namics of the societal individual. This approach understands the individual mind and psyche in relation to forms of social activity in common practices. As proposed by the theory of activity (e.g. Leont’ev 1978), human activity typically employs mediational means in order to reach the goal of an actual action. Within a complex system of actions and means we can discern one specific means pertaining to an outstanding activity pervasive in human societies: the language activity. The verbal symbol is the specific mediational means for diverse communicative and sociopsychological activities. Cultural-historical psycholinguistics focuses specifically on language activity in its relationship to social or interpsychological as well to indi’vidual or intrapsychological processes. Hence cultural-historical psycholinguistics is interested in the “work of language”, in its power for social as well as individual development and dynamics, such as for instance in language acquisition, in dialogic exchanges, in writing and reading, and in problem solving via talking. The basic starting point of cultural’historical psycholinguistics is language activity. 1 It is worth noting that an explicit focus on language in the framework of activity theory is rare, and language is foremost addressed within pedagogical theories. Moreover, psycholinguistics (as founded in the 1950s in the USA) is traditionally a cognitive science (Knobloch 2003; Rehkämper 2003) in which language is seen as an object of cognitive processing. The prevailing method of investigation in this ap’proach is the experiment in which language is removed from social contexts. In contrast, cultural-historical psycholinguistics understands language as means of communicative and psychological processes; it highlights its social nature and formative power. Hence, the individual is not treated as isolated, self-contained cognition, but as a socially organized, that is, as a related and positioned individual involved in a diversity of activities (see also O’Connell & Kowal 2003). These activities are situated,