Lecture
Written speech and, in particular, one of its forms — writing — is a complex mental process that even now remains insufficiently studied, despite the great interest shown in this problem by researchers in various fields of scientific knowledge. This fact in itself serves as indirect evidence of the complexity of this mental process. Such problems of writing as its psychological content and structure, its genesis and its relationship to other HMF, written speech and its relation to oral speech, their interrelations, the place and role of writing in the mental sphere of a person, the role of writing and grammar in a person's mental activity, in particular in its development in children, the relation of writing to the brain, etc., all still require further study.
Writing has many distinctive features, one of which is its later appearance in the mental sphere of a person as compared with other HMF, both in the historical and in the ontogenetic aspect. This feature acquires special significance from a methodological standpoint, since it can serve as a weighty argument in favor of the reality of the psychological conceptions of L.S. Vygotsky and A.N. Leontiev concerning the sociogenesis of HMF, their formation during the course of life, the influence of the social forms of human life activity on the formation, course, and development of the higher forms of a person's mental sphere, the transition of HMF from an external form into an internal one, the conception of activity, and others.
This feature is of great interest in its psychological aspect, in terms of studying its role and place within the mental sphere, in the formation and interaction of HMF, and in terms of studying the cerebral bases of writing and the origin and paths of the formation of writing. The point is that writing appeared historically and ontogenetically much later than the other HMF, whose formation and development had already advanced considerably along this path, whereas writing was only beginning its formation, moreover on a voluntary basis and in the process of being taught. And here a number of questions arise — concerning the interaction of writing with other HMF, its contribution to a person's mental activity, and its cerebral bases (already occupied by other HMF). Writing, as a new HMF, connects to these analyzer systems, as it were parasitizing on them. It is therefore important to know which analyzer systems and HMF, acting together, underlie the formation of the psychological content of writing, its structure, and its cerebral and psychophysiological basis, and what the regularities of this interaction are. Does written speech only "take", or does it also "give", and what is this contribution to the development of a person's mental activity?
Concerning the significance of writing in a child's mental activity, L.S. Vygotsky wrote that "... writing calls into being the development of all those functions that in the child have not yet matured" (FOOTNOTE: Vygotsky L.S. Selected Psychological Studies. Moscow: Izd-vo LIN RSFSR, 1956. P. 277), and that teaching written speech forms in children the capacity for the voluntary operation of their own skills, and for the conscious and voluntary command of oral speech, which in turn is the most important condition for the formation of written speech itself. Without these two conditions — the development of oral speech and of voluntary, conscious behavior, and the operation of one's own actions — "... written speech is altogether impossible" (FOOTNOTE: Ibid., p. 269). Grammar and writing give the child the opportunity to rise to a higher stage in the development of speech and other HMF. It is for this reason that teaching writing is one of the most important subjects of school instruction in the elementary grades.
The history of the emergence of writing in humanity sheds some light on these and a number of other questions. In order to become what we know it as today, writing had to go through a long and complex history of development. History shows that, at the beginning of its development, writing was essentially an artificial memory of the human being. At a certain period in the development of society and social relations, of the development of agriculture and trade, a need arose in human beings, dictated by objective conditions, to remember something and to convey it to other people not directly, but after certain intervals of time, or over a great distance, and humanity worked out artificial means for this form of its activity, which served as symbols of certain information.
In ancient Peru, for example, in order to keep records and preserve information about the life of the state, "knot records", the so-called "quipu", were widely developed. It is important to note that the beginning of writing is connected with auxiliary, external means that carried a psychological function: at first these were notches on wood, later — drawings, knots, and so on, i.e., pictograms, which gradually, by way of simplification and generalization over a long period of time, turned into ideograms, which mark the beginning of writing proper. Ideogram writing was first created by the Assyrians, and it directly symbolized an idea. Later, ideograms were replaced by combinations of signs — letters, i.e., by syllabic writing (syllabary), created in Egypt. And only after a long history of the development of methods for recording thoughts, ideas, and information does alphabetic writing appear (from the first two Greek letters "alpha" and "beta"), in which one letter sign denotes one sound; this writing was created by the Greeks.
Thus, the history of the development of writing points to at least three moments important for understanding the psychological content of writing, its connection with other mental processes, and its structure. First, the fact of the mediation of writing by external signs or symbols» second, the gradual simplification and generalization of the symbols, and, third, the formation of writing from imagery to a connection with speech. We also see that, historically, writing developed independently of speech, and only after a long history of the transformation of symbols and their conversion into signs did writing come to be mediated by oral speech.
In many countries, present-day written speech has an alphabetic character, i.e., in it the sounds of speech are denoted by separate letters. It is true that this sound-letter correspondence does not hold in all present-day languages. For example, in English, French, Greek, and Turkish, the oral modality of speech differs from the written one, and several letters may denote only a single sound. This one fact alone speaks to the complex interrelations of oral and written speech even at the present stage in the development of writing; on the one hand, they are closely connected with one another, but their complex unity also includes substantial differences.
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