Piaget’s Early Theory of the Role of Language
in Intellectual Development: A Comment
on DeVries’s Account of Piaget’s Social Theory
by Joe Becker and Maria Varelas
In the March 1997 Educational Researcher, Rheta DeVries presented
a thought-provoking account of the social factors in Piaget’s con-
ceptualization of intellectual development, primarily in his early
works. However, DeVries ignored the fact that in these early writ-
ings Piaget made language an integral part of his ideas on intellectual
development. DeVries’s elision is unfortunate for two reasons. First,
it raises an issue of validity: Are we justified in simply discarding the
linguistic element of these writings? Second, DeVries missed the op-
portunity to show how Piaget’s early ideas on the role of language
might be relevant to contemporary interest in socio-cultural aspects
of development.
In an article in Educational Researcher DeVries (1997) sought to
make the social aspect of Piaget’s ideas on intellectual development
more widely known. Especially in work he published in the 1920’s
through the 1940’s, Piaget emphasized the importance of social in-
teraction to intellectual development, and DeVries drew heavily
on these writings. However, DeVries did not address a major as-
pect of how Piaget considered social factors in this period: Refer-
ence to the very sources cited by DeVries indicates that, during the
above-mentioned period, Piaget linked the role of social interac-
tion in intellectual development to the role of language.
As a first example, DeVries (1997, p. 7) cites the following re-
mark by Piaget (1950/1995b, p. 94): “The isolated individual
would never be capable of complete conservation and reversibil-
ity.” Conservation and reversibility are fundamental constructs
in Piaget’s conception of logical thought. Therefore, the quota-
tion supports DeVries’s argument that according to Piaget the
development of logical thought is dependent on social inter-
action. However, reference to DeVries’s source shows that Piaget
completed the sentence as follows: “and it is the exigencies of rec-
iprocity which allow this double conquest, through the intermedi-
ary of a common language and a common scale of definitions” (p. 94,
emphasis added). Thus, Piaget related the importance of social
interaction for intellectual development to the role of language.
As a second example, DeVries writes that Piaget “noted that
the symbolism of individual images fluctuates too much to ac-
count for conservation, reversibility, and equilibrium leading to
the necessity of the social factor” (p. 13). DeVries’s point is that
Educational Researcher, Vol. 30, No. 6, pp. 22–23
22 EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER
Piaget saw social interaction as the key to how we overcome the
instability of the symbols we each individually construct. In the
essay cited, Piaget (1945/1995a) does write about the fluctuation
of the symbolism of individual images. However, Piaget also
clearly considers that language plays a crucial role in overcoming
this fluctuation: This point is missing from DeVries’s account.
Here is the relevant passage from Piaget’s essay:
Complete reversibility presupposes symbolism, because it is only
by reference to the possible evocation of absent objects that the as-
similation of things to action schemes and the accommodation of
action schemes to things reach permanent equilibrium and thus
constitute a reversible mechanism. The symbolism of individual
images fluctuates far too much to lead to this result. Language is
therefore necessary, and thus we come back to social factors. (Piaget,
1945/1995a, p.154, emphasis added)
Again, we find that Piaget tied the role of social interaction to the
importance of language.
That these references of Piaget to the role of language in intel-
lectual development are by no means marginal is apparent from
a consideration of Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood
(Piaget, 1945/1962a), published in the same period. This book is
considered by some to be significant because it develops Piaget’s
ideas on pretend play. However, originally titled La Formation
du Symbole Chez L’Enfant, the book presents the theory Piaget
then held of the role of language in the development of concep-
tual and logical understandings. This theory provides an account
of two developments of the semiotic function. The first is a de-
velopment from the absence of representation to the generation
of mental images that arise from perception and action, which
Piaget considered to be strongly tied to experiential knowing.
The second is a development from such mental images to arbi-
trary conventional signs, which Piaget considered to be less di-
rectly tied to experiential knowing. In this theory, the signifier is
at first an internal image derived from perceptions and actions
and resulting from extended accommodation. At this point,
thought is still particular and individual. The development from
the first signifiers to signifiers that support the development of log-
ical thought arises from the “intervention of language.” The fol-
lowing passages (Piaget, 1945/1962a) illustrate this perspective:
We have to attempt to determine the connection between the im-
itative image, ludic symbolism and representative intelligence, i.e.,
between cognitive representation and the representation of imita-
tion and play. This very complex problem is still further compli-
 cated by the intervention of language, collective verbal signs coming
to interfere with the symbols we have already analyzed, in order to
make possible the construction of concepts. (p. 214, emphasis added)
It is moreover unnecessary to emphasize that this irreversible cen-
tration of the first conceptual representations is mainly expressed
socially as egocentrism of thought, since a concept centered on typ-
ical elements corresponding to the “lived” experience of the individual
and symbolized by an image rather than by language, could neither be
a general notion nor be capable of being fully communicated. (p. 242,
emphasis added)
Piaget’s central idea in these passages is that the arbitrary na-
ture of the signifiers of a language facilitates a relative detachment
of the concept from the lived experience to which it refers and
that this relative detachment is necessary for the concept to be-
come an instrument of logical reasoning.
Piaget saw language as inherently a social factor partly because
of the conventional nature of words (the arbitrariness of the link
between a particular sound form and its referent), and it is just this
conventional nature of words that Piaget saw as crucial for con-
ceptual development. Although this theory about the role of lan-
guage in intellectual development underlies the passages DeVries
cites, her article reveals no inkling of it.
The disappearance of Piaget’s views on the role of language
from an account of his views on the importance of social interac-
tion is unfortunate in two ways. First, Piaget’s views on the role
of language changed. Thus he wrote, “It took me some time to
see, it is true, that the roots of logical operation lie deeper than the
linguistic connections, and that my early study of thinking was
centered too much on its linguistic aspects” (Piaget, 1962b, p. 5),
and “Some forty years ago, during my first studies, . . . I believed
in the close relation between language and thought” (Piaget
1972/1973, p. 109). Piaget might not have been referring to the
particular ideas about language that we have indicated. On one
hand, if Piaget retained these ideas, they surely constitute an im-
portant component of Piaget’s conception of the role of social in-
teraction on intellectual development. On the other hand, if he
changed his mind on these ideas we need an analysis that explic-
itly examines the coherence of his early views on social factors
once the linguistic thread is withdrawn. DeVries might contend
that the withdrawal of the linguistic thread leaves Piaget with a
coherent account of the role of social factors. However, she does
not take up this point as a question for analysis in her paper. In-
stead, she simply ignores Piaget’s references to language in the
earlier sources she cites.
Second, Piaget’s early ideas on the role of language are especially
relevant in the context of researchers’ contemporary interests in
socio-cultural aspects of development. In this connection we offer
two points. First, currently, researchers often turn to Vygotsky for
help in theorizing the role of sociocultural factors, particularly
language, on intellectual development. Through his early ideas
on language, Piaget offers an avenue for extending Vygotsky’s
approach to the interplay of conceptual and semiotic aspects in
intellectual development. For example, Piaget offers the idea that
the conventional terms of a language work to attenuate the links
between schemes and the particular idiosyncratic experiences of
the individual, freeing the schemes to interact with each other to
produce new schemes with new logical properties. Second, some
contemporary work on the role of sociocultural factors in intel-
lectual development has specifically drawn on Wittgenstein’s
later thought (e.g., Chapman & Dixon, 1987). It may be pro-
ductive to explore the relationship between Piaget’s early views
and Wittgenstein’s later views or, indeed, the opposite directions
in which the views of these two thinkers developed. In his early
writing, Piaget showed a concern that people do not achieve the
stable symbolism required for conceptual thought without the
conventional signifiers of language. Piaget’s concern bears an in-
teresting relation to Wittgenstein’s (1953) ideas concerning the
impossibility of a private language. Piaget and Wittgenstein built
on the same idea: Individuals cannot by themselves in isolation
establish consistency in their use of symbols. Wittgenstein incor-
porated this idea into an argument for a social approach to thought
and language, one in which mental entities are not emphasized, and
may even be superfluous. In contrast, Piaget used this idea to argue
that the formation of the mental structures underlying feelings of
logical necessity requires social interaction using a conventional sign
system. Contrasting such divergent uses of the same basic under-
standing of social aspects of intellectual development (the idea that
individuals cannot by themselves establish consistency) may help
us construct a more articulated network of the different possibili-
ties for the relations between thought and language.
REFERENCES
Chapman, M. & Dixon, R. A. (1987). Meaning and the growth of
understanding: Wittgenstein's significance for developmental psychology.
New York: Springer-Verlag.
DeVries, R. (1997). Piaget’s social theory. Educational Researcher, 26(2),
4–17.
Piaget, J. (1962a). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. New York:
Norton. (Original work published 1945)
Piaget, J. (1962b). Supplement to L. Vygotsky, Thought and language.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Piaget, J. (1973). The child and reality: Problems of genetic psychology.
New York: Viking. (Original work published 1972)
Piaget, J. (1995a). Logical operations and social life. In L. Smith (Ed.).
Sociological Studies (pp. 134–157). London: Routledge. (Original
work published 1945)
Piaget, J. (1995b). Explanation in sociology. In L. Smith (Ed.). Socio-
logical Studies (pp. 30–96). London: Routledge. (Original work pub-
lished 1950)
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
AUTHORS
JOE BECKER is an associate professor in the College of Education (M/C
147), University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 W. Harrison St., Chicago,
IL 60607; joe@uic.edu. His research interests include constructivist the-
ory and mathematical cognition.
MARIA VARELAS is an associate professor in the College of Education
(M/C 147), University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, Il 60607; mvarelas@uic.edu. Her research interests include
constructivist approaches to teaching and learning and science education.
Manuscript received September 13, 2000
Accepted February 18, 2001
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2001 23