Lecture 14: the subject matter of psycholinguistics

For many years language was approached as just a system, outside the processes of its acquisition and use. Nowadays it has become quite popular to study language in action, taking into account the human factor. There has been a great interest in the analysis of different parameters of the communicative speech situation, like time place and social environment. It is evident that when we speak, we are influenced by everything around us as well as by our own inner selves. It would be very easy to analyze texts, if people spoke like computers, following the principle of formal logic and that of economy. Luckily, it is not so. If we were absolutely logical, trying to relate to others, our speech would be very dull and lifeless.

Psycholinguistics is one of several linguistic disciplines which focus on the relationship between language structures and the one who uses them It stands on the borderline between Psychology and Linguistics. The subject matter of Psychology is the nature and function of the human soul. The term itself is derived from the two Greek words “psyche” which means “soul” and “logos” which stands for “science”. There are three aspects in the human soul: “mind”, “will” and “emotions”, and all of them are studied by Psychology. The subject matter of Psycholinguistics is, of course, narrower. It is not concerned with human soul as it is. Its scope of interest is human ability to use language.

On the other hand, Psycholinguistics is not a completely independent discipline, it is a branch of General Linguistics.

Psycholinguistics can be briefly defined as a branch of language science studying speech behavior of man. B.Skinner, a famous American psychologist, suggests that language is a part of a more encompassing human behavior.

Psycholinguistics was officially recognized as a discipline, as a branch of linguistics in 1953, in the city of Bloomington, USA. It was based on the principles of the “theory of information”. The key terms that were used were “ sender ”, “ channel ” and “ recipient ”. The importance of using the channel effectively was underlined. The channel is described in terms of “effectiveness” and “reliability”. The effectiveness of the channel is related to the number of the bites of information that can be conveyed for a certain time unit. It means that the more information is conveyed for, let us say, an hour or a minute the more effective the channel is.

The reliability of the channel can be defined as the answer to the question “Is there any difference between what was sent and what was received?” To increase the reliability the speaker may want to speak slower, repeating the same over and over again, which, of course, will decrease the effectiveness of the channel. It has been proved for example that the study material covered by an average half-an-hour lecture could be successfully presented for just twenty minutes, if the teacher were after the efficiency of the channel only. However, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the students to receive pure semiological (or logical) information, not dissolved by any flashbacks or jokes. Normal speech is half-reliable and half-effective.

In 1954 a book by Ch. Osgood and L. Sebeok was published. The title of it was “Psycholinguistics: A study of Theory and Research Problems” and it gave birth to psycholinguistics as an independent discipline. Psycholinguistics is defined as “a science which provides for the use of linguistic analysis of grammar to identify the mental and behavioral processes which underlie language acquisition and development”. Ch. Osgood suggested a three-level model of the derivation of the utterance. The speaker (sender) realizes his communicative intention step by step, level by level, choosing one of the possible phonetic, lexical and morphological variants. According to P.L. Newcomer and D.D. Hannill, psycholinguistics is the study of the mental processes which underlie the acquisition and use of language.

A.A. Leontyev, defines the subject matter of psycholinguistics as the relationship between language system and linguistic competence. What is meant, scholars no longer focus on language as a system, but they also analyze the person’s ability to use the linguistic units and structures more effectively.

PSYCHOLINGUISTIC FACTORS

 

Psycholinguistics focuses on the speaking individual. Therefore,

I. the human factor is extremely important in defining psycholinguistics as an independent discipline. It is not the product of speaking, that is of greatest importance, it is also the speaking person, with all of its strengths, weaknesses, creative abilities and disturbances. It is interesting to study the differences between women’s and men’s speech, for example. Men and women are sure to speak differently, because their personalities are not the same. Children’s speech is something to be studied too. It can hardly be denied that teenagers speak somewhat differently from senior adults. The speaker’s personality type as well as his current emotional state can’t but affect the choice of language structures.

II. Another thing is the situation factor. If we look at any text more or less carefully, we will see that all the parameters of the communicative speech situations are somehow reflected in it. We can basically determine where and when this or that conversation takes place.

III. Experimental factor is important too. The experiment is generally recognized as the leading method of psychology. The experiment helps to create an artificial situation, allowing the speaker to resort to special linguistic devices, those that are of special interest to the scholar. On the other hand, the experimental situation may cause the speaker to exercise certain linguistic abilities, so that the scholar may determine whether the latter are well developed, underdeveloped or impaired. Tests are extremely popular in psycholinguistic studies.

IV. The abnormal factor

Linguistics has always been a normocentric discipline. It means that linguists have analyzed “correct” texts only. It has never been clear what is to be done with “wrong” texts. Stories derived by illiterate people, foreigners or mentally sick individuals were merely defined as “incorrect’ and, therefore, not considered worth studying at all. However, those texts do exist, so something must be done with them. The term “wrong” is not a very lucky one, because it adds nothing to the understanding of what those texts are actually like and what are the mechanisms that bring them into being. It was the Russian academician L.V. Scherba that suggested the term “negative speech material”, including everything that does not meet the existing norms and standards. Here are some genres or types of the text that L.V. Scherba considers negative:

1. Children’s speech; 2. Mistakes in adults’ speech; 3. Foreigners’ speech; 4. Speech in stress situations; 5. Speech disturbances

Without any doubt all those phenomena are worth studying too.