THE SUBJECT MATTER OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS. Pereverzeva Mariya 1 A
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.
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.
A. A. Leontyev (Russian psychologist and linguist, Doctor of Psychology and Philology), 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.
Скачать презентацию THE SUBJECT MATTER OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS Pereverzeva Mariya 1
psecholinguistics.pptx