A Review of the Language-Thought Debate: Multivariant Perspectives

Abstract

In recent times, there has been a growing interest in analyzing the relationship between  language and thought from a variety of points of view to explore whether language comes before  thought or thought precedes language. Accordingly, the present paper attempts at mulling over the  current debates on this issue, including Chomsky's (1975, 1983) Independent Theory, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (1956), Piaget's Cognitive Determinism (1952, as cited in, Chaput, 2001),  Vygotsky's (1978, 1986) Theory of Interchanging Roles, O'brien and Opie's (2002) Radical  Connectionism, and Slobin's (1987, 1991, 2003) Thinking for Speaking Hypothesis, which recently  have received a great amount of attention, among other positions. Then the pedagogical  implications of the Thinking for Speaking Hypothesis for Second Language Acquisition (SLA) are presented.