George Herbert Mead and the Psychology of Language Learning

Abstract

George Herbert Mead was an early-twentieth century American psychologist, who work on social psychology has been especially influential in sociology. Although Mead wrote a good deal on language, his work has had much less influence on linguistics and applied linguistics. Outlining key ideas from Mead’s work on the emergence of language and mind from social interaction in the environment, this paper makes a case for Mead to be considered among the foundational figures in the psychology of language learning. It argues that his work is especially worth reading as a source of ideas that might underpin an ecological view of the psychology of language learning.