The role of language and social contexts in the development of cognition and shaping knowledge

Ljubica Marjanovič Umek

Summary:  This article deals with knowledge as recognized by Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and his disciples and contemporaries. This involves the concept of emerging knowledge and knowledge that is shaped both through experience and through information and understanding, through a child’s own activity and in the teaching process. Of particular interest is the role of language; as Halliday states, this makes it possible for experience to become knowledge and, according to Kress, language as a semiotic solvent enables the transfer of experience to the representational level. This involves children’s language as an important indicator of academic success and a linguistic code in which children participate in the preschool and school environment. Alongside all of this, there is also interest in the integration of individual elements of sociocultural theory into Slovenian preschools and schools.