Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental aspects of language and speech. It is primarily concerned with how language is represented and processed in the brain.

It is a branch of study which combines the disciplines of psychology and linguistics. It is concerned with the relationship between the human mind and language as it examines the processes that occur in the brain while producing and perceiving both written and spoken discourse.

It asks two questions. One is, “What knowledge of the language is needed for us to use language?’ In a sense, we must know a language to use, but we are not always fully aware of this knowledge. The other primary psycholinguistic question is, “What cognitive processes are involved in the ordinary use of language? By 'ordinary use of language' we mean such things as understanding a lecture, reading a book, writing a letter, and holding a conversation. By 'cognitive processes,' we mean processes such as perception, memory, and thinking. Although we do few things as often or as easily as speaking and listening, we will find that considerable cognitive processing is going on during those activities." (David Carroll, 2008)

History of Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics as a separate branch of study emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s as a result of the Chomskyan revolution. Psycholinguists tend to consider their history as beginning with the Chomskyan ‘cognitive revolution’ of the late 1950s/1960s, the history of empirical psycholinguistics actually goes back to the end of the eighteenth century. This book tells the fascinating history of the doctors, pedagogues, linguists, and psychologists who created this discipline.

According to Willem Levelt (2013), Psycholinguistics has four historical roots, which, by the end of the nineteenth century, had merged. By then, the discipline, usually called the psychology of language, was established. The four roots continued into the twentieth century but in quite divergent frameworks.

The first root was comparative linguistics, which raised the issue of the psychological origins of language. The second root was the study of language in the brain. The third root was the diary approach to child development. The fourth root was the experimental laboratory approach to speech and language processing.

Primary Processes Investigated in Psycholinguistics

(a) Language Comprehension

Understanding what other people say and write (i.e., language comprehension) is more complicated than it might at first appear. Comprehending language involves a variety of capacities, skills, processes, knowledge, and dispositions that are used to derive meaning from spoken, written, and signed language. Comprehension is mainly thought to occur in the Wernicke’s area of the brain which is located in the left temporal lobe. Language comprehension is a complex process that occurs easily and effortlessly by humans. It develops along with the brain and can be enhanced with the use of gestures. Though it is unknown exactly how early comprehension is fully developed in children, gestures are undoubtedly useful for understanding the language around us.

(b) Language Production

Language production is the production of spoken or written language. It describes all of the stages between having a concept and translating that concept into linguistic form.

Stages of production:

The basic loop occurring in the creation of language consists of the following stages:

o Encode linguistic form into speech [motor system]

§ Encode message into linguistic form

§ Intended message

o Sound goes from speaker's mouth to hearer's ear [auditory system]

§ Speech is decoded into linguistic form

§ Linguistic form is decoded into the meaning

(c) Language Acquisition

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages. Language acquisition is just one strand of psycholinguistics which is all about how people learn to speak and the mental processes involved.

Central Themes in Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics investigates the knowledge of language needed for us to use language. There are two types of knowledge investigated in psycholinguistics. The implicit knowledge of language deals with the performance of something without awareness of full rules and the explicit knowledge of language deals with the processes of mechanisms in performing that thing.

Psycholinguistics explores the cognitive processes (perception, memory, thinking, and learning) are involved in the ordinary use of language? For example, how do we understand a lecture, read a book, hold a conversation?

The Task of Psycholinguist

According to William O'Grady, et al. (2001) the task of Psycholinguists is to study

• How word meaning, sentence meaning, and discourse meaning are computed and represented in the mind?

• How complex words and sentences are composed in speech and how they are broken down into their constituents in the acts of listening and reading?

Conclusion

In short, psycholinguists seek to understand how language is done. In general, it has revealed that many of the concepts employed in the analysis of sound structure, word structure, and sentence structure also play a role in language processing. However, an account of language processing also requires that we understand how these linguistic concepts interact with other aspects of human processing to enable language production and comprehension.