Lev Vygotsky's approach in the contemporary semiotic research of learning, meaning-making and inner speech

Doctoral theses defended at the University of Tartu, summary in Estonian

The given PhD thesis demonstrates an important role of contemporary culture in shaping human cognitive and psychological functions via signs and sign systems that it introduces. The study also shows the actuality and importance of Lev Vygotsky’s approach to the study of learning, meaning-making and inner speech in contemporary semiotic science. The first part of the PhD thesis studies the role of signs and sign systems of contemporary culture in learning, memorising and meaning-making. The study demonstrates that mastering the sign systems of the new media environment has an important educational, psychological and developmental value. Acquisition of diverse sign systems introduced by culture as individual cognitive tools allows young learners to use them for organising their own behaviour, accessing knowledge and maintaining a meaningful dialogue with/through culture. The use of Vygotsky and semiotics of culture approach to developing educational methodologies allows to establish a learning environment which can support the acquisition of signs and sign systems of contemporary digital culture as individual cognitive tools. The arguments are illustrated with the digital platform “Education on Screen” developed by the Transmedia Research group (UT). The second part studies inner speech as an example of using cultural sign systems, namely natural languages, for internal cognitive and psychological functions. The study discusses an important role of inner speech in diverse meaning-making processes. The study shows not only how inner speech is involved in the understanding of diverse phenomena of everyday life, but it also shows the involvement of inner speech in creative and artistic processes. The study argues an important role of the evolution of contemporary culture in the way individual inner speech can be manifested in culture via artistic texts and hypothesises the influence of contemporary digital culture on the structure and phenomenology of inner speech.