and high degree of cognitive sophistication.) In which case the claim of
natural-language-involvement can be conWned to just those types of
thought which are distinctive of us.
In fact we can distinguish at least four diVerent strengths of cognitive
conception of language – that is, four diVerent grades of potential in-
volvement of natural language in cognition – ordered from the weakest to
the strongest (but all weaker than the universal conceptual claims rejected
above):
1 Language is used to scaVold and enhance some kinds of thinking –
verbally learned instructions can be repeated aloud or sub-vocally by
those acquiring new skills (Vygotsky, 1934–86); signs and text (whether
in sub-vocal ‘inner speech’ or publicly produced) can be used to oV-load
the demands on memory, and to provide objects of further leisured
reXection (Clark, 1998); and new forms of symbolism (such as the
decimal numbering system) can reduce the computational demands on
certain forms of thought. Almost everyone will sign up to this role for
language in thought, to a greater or lesser degree.
2 Language is the vehicle forconsciousthought, at least in its proposi-
tional, or fully conceptual (as opposed to visual-image-based or audi-
tory-image-based) guises (Carruthers, 1996c, thesis NNw, and 1998b).
This view can allow that thought as such is conducted in sentences of
Mentalese. But when thoughts are tokened consciously – in such a way,
that is, for them to be reXexively available to further, higher-order,
thought (see chapter 9) – they are so by virtue of receiving expression in
an imaged natural language sentence. Such imaged sentences can count
as constitutive of conscious thinking provided that the further eVects
within cognition, distinctive of such thoughts, depend upon the occur-
rence of the imaged sentence in question.
3 Language is the vehicle for explicit (that is, promiscuous)
propositional/conceptual thought, serving as thelingua francaunder-
pinning interactions between a number of quasi-modular central sys-
tems (Mithen, 1996; Carruthers, 1996c, thesis NNs, and 1998a). On this
account, imaged sentences of inner speech would be just the conscious
variety of a more general phenomenon; for non-conscious thought, too,
could be carried by natural language representations, perhaps sentences
of Chomsky’s ‘Logical Form’ or LF. Despite natural language retaining
the status of an input/output module, some sort of evolutionary story
can be told about how it came to underpin and make possible promis-
cuously available conceptual thinking.
4 Language is what creates and makes possible the concept-wielding
mind, transforming the parallel-process architecture of the brain into a
The place of natural language in thought 211