Psycholinguistics

1. History of psycholinguistics.

2. Methods of psycholinguistic research.

3. Main directions of research in psycholinguistics.

4. Psycholinguistic analysis of speech.

5. Speech disorders in mental illness.

History of psycholinguistics.

Studying psychological mechanisms speech activity W. von Humboldt and 19th century psychological scientists G. Steinthal, W. Wundt, A.A. Potebnya, I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay. This direction paved the way for the emergence of psycholinguistics.

Psycholinguistics emerged in the mid-20th century. It was first discussed as an independent science in 1953 at the International Seminar on Interdisciplinary Relations in the USA, held under the patronage of famous American scientists - psychologist Charles Osgood and anthropologist and ethnographer Thomas Sibeok. They called on scientists to explain the mechanisms of language functioning in the process of communication, to study the human factor in language, to comprehend the processes of speaking and understanding speech.

There are three directions in psycholinguistics: transformationist, associative and speech activity psycholinguistics.

In foreign psycholinguistics The associative and transformationist directions dominate.

The first psycholinguistic school was associative psycholinguistics, the founder of which was Charles Osgood. It is based on neobehaviorism - a doctrine according to which human behavior is considered as a system of reactions to stimuli coming from external environment. The object of analysis of associative psycholinguistics is the word, the subject is the cause-and-effect relationships between words in a person’s verbal memory. Analysis is the study of stimulus words and reactions with associative connections between them. The main method is an associative experiment.

Transformational psycholinguistics relies on the traditions of the school of speech and mental activity of George Miller and Noam Chomsky in the USA and psychological school Jean Piaget in France.

In America, Germany, England, Italy, transformationist psycholinguistics develops the ideas of Miller-Chomsky, which are based on the theory of generative grammar. According to this theory, thinking has innate grammatical knowledge, a limited system of rules that defines an infinite number of “correct” sentences and statements. With the help of this system of rules, the speaker constructs the “correct” statement, and the listener decodes it and tries to understand it. To understand the processes of speaking and understanding, N. Chomsky introduces the concepts of “linguistic competence” and “linguistic activity”. Linguistic competence is potential knowledge of a language; it is primary. Language activity is the process of realizing this ability; it is secondary. In the processes of speaking and understanding, the scientist distinguishes between surface and deep grammatical structures. Deep structures are reproduced or transformed into superficial ones.

George Miller gave a psychological explanation for the mechanisms of transformation of deep structures into surface ones. Transformationist psycholinguistics studies the process of language acquisition, that is, the acquisition of abstract grammatical structures and the rules for their transformation.

In France, transformational psycholinguistics is based on the theory of psychologist Jean Piaget. He argued that a child’s thinking in its development overcomes the non-operational and formal-operational stages. A child’s speech develops under the influence of two factors: a) communication with other people and b) the transformation of external dialogue into internal dialogue (communication with oneself). like this egocentric speech can be observed when a person talks with a conventional interlocutor, with domestic animals, with plants, inanimate objects. The goal of psycholinguistics is to study the process of speech formation in a child and the role of language in the development of intelligence and cognitive processes.

In domestic psycholinguistics dominates speech activity direction. Its origins were linguists and psychologists of the early 20th century: linguists Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, Lev Petrovich Yakubinsky, Evgeniy Dmitrievich Polivanov, psychologists Lev Semenovich Vygotsky and Alexey Nikolaevich Leontyev. The main postulates of Russian psycholinguistics were set out in the work of L.V. Shcherba “On the threefold aspect of linguistic phenomena and on experiment in linguistics.” These are provisions 1) on the priority study of the processes of speaking and understanding (perception), 2) on the importance of studying “negative” language material (children’s speech and speech pathology), 3) on the need to use experimental methods in linguistics.

The psychological basis of Russian psycholinguistics was the cultural-historical psychology of L.S. Vygotsky. He put forward two fundamental ideas: a) speech activity is a combination of motive, purpose and hierarchical structure of speech communication; b) at the center of speech activity is a person as a social being, since it is society that forms and regulates his speech-activity processes.

Teachings of L.S. Vygotsky removed psycholinguistics from the influence of behaviorism. It is devoid of those extremes that were inherent in foreign psycholinguistics. According to this theory, speech activity is part of human activity in general. Any activity is carried out with the help of a socially determined system of tools. The “tools” of intellectual activity are signs. Signs open up new, more advanced possibilities for a person that unconditioned and conditioned reflexes cannot provide.

Thinking is an active cognitive activity. Thinking can be interpreted in two ways: a) as a process of reflecting the external world in the form internal images, the process of transforming the material into the ideal; b) as an activity with missing objects. To carry out active cognitive activity with an absent object, a person needs a specific intermediary between the real object and its ideal analogue, image. Such an intermediary is a sign - a certain “object” capable of replacing the corresponding object in thought. The specificity of mental activity lies precisely in the fact that a person no longer operates with real objects, but with their symbolic substitutes.

The signs with the help of which thinking is carried out are divided into non-linguistic and linguistic. But in any case, thinking is a symbolic form of activity. In this regard, thinking can be non-linguistic and linguistic. Linguistic thinking is an activity with missing objects, based on linguistic signs. Linguistic signs are random, conventional, indifferent to objects, and have no genetic or meaningful connection with them. Therefore, the same object is denoted by different signs in different languages.

Interiorization in psychology (from the Latin Interior “internal” - the transition from outside to inside) is the process of transforming external practical actions into internal, mental ones. It is carried out using signs. The opposite process is exteriorization (from the Latin Exterior “external, external”). This is the transformation of mental, internal actions into external, practical ones.

Due to the fact that the focus of attention of Russian psycholinguistics was speech communication as an activity, it received a second name - "theory of speech activity".

L.S. Vygotsky argued that consciousness is systemic and this systematicity is determined by a system of signs. The signs themselves are not innate, but acquired. The meaning of a sign is the point of intersection of social and mental, external and internal; it is not only the result of activity, but also the activity itself. This understanding of the sign allows us to explain the dynamics of language. The word has different meanings in and out of context, it varies, and new meanings appear. The dynamics of linguistic units are most obvious in the utterance - the elementary unit of speech activity. The utterance, like a drop of water, reflects the characteristics of speech activity as a whole. Therefore, the focus of the theory of speech activity is the utterance, or more precisely, its generation.

The variety of functions of language in society and the close nature of its connection with thinking and with human mental activity makes the interaction of linguistics with the corresponding social and psychological sciences very flexible. The connections between linguistics and psychology are especially close, which already in the 19th century caused the introduction psychological methods and ideas in linguistics. This is how the psychological direction in the science of language appeared. In the 50s of the 20th century, a new science bordering on linguistics was formed - psycholinguistics.

It arose in connection with the need to give theoretical understanding to a number of practical problems, for the solution of which a purely linguistic approach, associated primarily with text analysis, and not talking man, turned out to be insufficient. For example, in teaching native language, and especially - foreign language; in the field of speech education for preschool children and speech therapy; in problems of speech influence (especially in propaganda and media activities); in forensic psychology and criminology. In addition, psycholinguistics is necessary, for example, to recognize people by the characteristics of their speech, to solve problems of machine translation, speech input of information into a computer and, accordingly, this science is closely related to computer science.

It was these applied tasks that served as a direct impetus for the emergence of psycholinguistics and its separation into an independent scientific field.

I. Psycholinguistics as a science

Psycholinguistics should not be seen as part linguistics and part psychology. This is a complex science that belongs to linguistic disciplines, since it studies language, and to psychological disciplines, since it studies it in a certain aspect - as a mental phenomenon. And since language is a sign system that serves society, psycholinguistics is also included in the circle of disciplines that study social communications, including the design and transmission of knowledge.

1). Object of psycholinguistics

The object of psycholinguistics in its various schools and directions is defined differently. But almost all definitions present such characteristics as procedurality, subject, object and addressee of speech, purpose, motive or need, content of verbal communication, linguistic means.

Let us dwell on the definition of the object of psycholinguistics given by A.A. Leontyev:

« Object psycholinguistics... is always a set of speech events or speech situations"[Leontiev, 1999, 16].

This object of psycholinguistics coincides with the object of linguistics and other related “speech” sciences.

2). Subject of psycholinguistics.

Understanding of the subject of psycholinguistics has undergone an evolution: from its interpretation only as the relationship of the speaker and listener to the structure of the message, to its correlation with the three-member theory of speech activity (linguistic ability - speech activity - language).

Over time, both the understanding of speech activity and the interpretation of language itself have changed in science, which has given rise to a lot of different definitions of the subject of psycholinguistics.

"Reconcile" various points vision is capable, in our opinion, of the most modern definition given by A.A. Leontyev:

« Subject psycholinguistics is the relationship of personality with the structure and functions of speech activity, on the one hand, and language as the main “formative” of a person’s image of the world, on the other” [Leontyev, 1999, 19].

3). Methods of psycholinguistics.

Psycholinguistics primarily inherited its methods from psychology. First of all, these are experimental methods. In addition, psycholinguistics often uses the method of observation and introspection. The method of linguistic experiment “came” from general linguistics to psycholinguistics.

Experiment, Traditionally considered the most objective research method, it has its own specifics in psycholinguistics. In psycholinguistics, the share of direct experimental methods (when recorded changes directly reflect the phenomenon under study) is small. But so-called indirect methods are common, where conclusions are drawn indirectly, which reduces the effectiveness of the experiment.

Of the “direct” methods, the most often used is the “semantic scaling” method, in which the subject must place a certain object on a graduated scale, guided by his own ideas.

In addition, a variety of associative techniques are widely used in psycholinguistics.

When using both direct and indirect methods, the problem of interpreting the result arises. The most reliable results are obtained by using a combination or “battery” of techniques aimed at studying the same phenomenon. So, for example, L.V. Sakharny recommends “...using different experimental techniques and then comparing the data obtained” [Sakharny, 1989, 89].

Linguistic experiment, also used in psycholinguistics, was developed by L.V. Shcherba. To distinguish between linguistic and psycholinguistic experiments, it is necessary to determine which model is being tested. If this is a model of a language standard, then the experiment is linguistic. If the reliability of the model of language ability or speech activity is tested experimentally, then this is a psycholinguistic experiment.

Different from those described above formative experiment, in which not the functioning of a certain language ability is studied, but its formation.

It is noteworthy that there is some gap between psycholinguistic theories aimed at describing how we speak and understand speech, and the necessarily simplified attempts to experimentally test these theories, because a living language always turns out to be immeasurably more complex and does not fit into any strict universal framework.

4). The essence of psycholinguistics.

Thus, psycholinguistics is the science of the patterns of generation and perception of speech utterances. She studies the processes of speech production, as well as the perception and formation of speech in their correlation with the language system. Psycholinguistics is close to linguistics in its subject matter, and closer to psychology in its research methods.

Psycholinguistics, a branch of linguistics, studies language primarily as a phenomenon of the psyche. From the point of view of psycholinguistics, language exists to the extent that the inner world of the speaker and the listener, the writer and the reader exists. Therefore, psycholinguistics does not study “dead” languages ​​- such as Old Church Slavonic or Greek, where only texts are available to us, but not the mental worlds of their creators.

IN last years the point of view has become widespread according to which researchers consider it productive to consider psycholinguistics not as a science with its own subject and methods, but as special angle, which studies language, speech, communication and cognitive processes. This perspective has given rise to many research programs, heterogeneous in goals, theoretical premises and methods. These programs are primarily of an applied nature.

II. From the history of the emergence and development of psycholinguistics.

Actually, the term “psycholinguistics” has come into scientific use since 1954, after the collective work of the same name edited by C.E. was published in the USA. Osgood and T.A. Sebeoka. But ideas close to the problems of psycholinguistics arose and developed much earlier. It can be considered that the psycholinguistic perspective of the study of language and speech actually existed long before a group of American scientists coined the term “psycholinguistics.”

The forerunner of psycholinguistics A.A. Leontiev names the German philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, since it was to him that “the idea of ​​speech activity and the understanding of language as a connecting link between society (“the public”) and man belongs” [Leontiev, 1999, 26].

So, back in the 19th century. W. von Humboldt attributed the most important role to language in the “worldview”, i.e. in the subject’s structuring of information coming from the external environment. A similar approach is found in the works of the 19th century Russian philologist. A.A. Potebnya, including in his teaching about the “internal form” of the word. This concept itself acquires content only under the condition of its psychological interpretation.

The domestic tradition of the psycholinguistic approach to the phenomenon of language goes back to I.A. Baudouin-de-Courtenay (1845–1929), Russian and Polish linguist, founder of the Kazan school of linguistics. It was Baudouin who spoke of language as a “psycho-social essence”, and proposed linguistics to be included among the “psychological-sociological” sciences. Baudouin's students - V.A. Bogoroditsky and L.V. Shcherba regularly used experimental methods to study speech activity. Of course, Shcherba did not talk about psycholinguistics, because this term was established in Russian linguistics only after the appearance of A. A. Leontiev’s monograph with that title in 1967. However, it was in Shcherba’s famous article “ On the threefold aspect of linguistic phenomena and on experiment in linguistics" ideas central to modern psycholinguistics are already contained: an emphasis on the study of the real processes of speaking and listening; understanding alive colloquial speech as a special system and, finally, the special place given by Shcherba to linguistic experiment.

IN Soviet Russia The development of psycholinguistics proper began in the mid-60s of the twentieth century, primarily at the Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Moscow), work was also carried out in institutes in other cities of the country.

All-Union symposia on psycholinguistics were held every 2-3 years. Soviet psycholinguistics relied on the materialist psychology of L.S. Vygotsky’s school (primarily on the concept of activity) and on the linguistic heritage of L.V. Shcherba and his school, especially on his interpretation of active grammar.

Considering psycholinguistics as one of the subsidiary areas developed by A.N. Leontyev psychological theory activities, the Moscow psycholinguistic school for a long time called psycholinguistics “theory of speech activity,” using in parallel the term “psycholinguistics.”

Since the late 1970s, the problem field of psycholinguistics has developed under the influence of the state of affairs both within linguistics and in the sciences that over time have become related to linguistics - and thereby to psycholinguistics. This is primarily a complex of sciences about knowledge as such and about the nature and dynamics of cognitive processes.

For the majority of American and English-speaking psycholinguists (usually psychologists by education), the most influential science in the United States usually serves as the reference science of language linguistic theory– N. Chomsky’s generative grammar in its various variants. Accordingly, psycholinguistics in the American tradition focuses on attempts to test the extent to which psychological hypotheses based on Chomsky's ideas correspond to observed speech behavior. From these positions, some authors consider the child’s speech, others consider the role of language in social interactions, and still others consider the relationship between language and cognitive processes.

French psycholinguists tend to be followers of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Therefore, their primary area of ​​interest is the process of speech formation in a child and the role of language in the development of intelligence and cognitive processes.

Having developed on the basis of various areas of psychological linguistics, psycholinguistics has adopted his interest in man as a native speaker and the desire to consider language as a dynamic system of speech activity (speech behavior) of a person.

III. Psycholinguistics and linguistics

Linguistics(linguistics) is traditionally understood as the science of language as a means of communication. However, its subject, as a rule, is not clearly defined. It is obvious that the object of linguistics is speech activity (speech acts, speech reactions). But the linguist highlights in it that general, what is in the organization of any speech of any person in any situation, those means without which it is generally impossible to characterize internal structure speech flow. The subject of linguistics is the system of linguistic means used in verbal communication (communication).

As mentioned above, in its subject matter, psycholinguistics is extremely close to linguistics (linguistics).

The main trends in the development of modern linguistics are quite comparable with the trends in the development of psycholinguistics and boil down to the following.

Firstly, the very understanding of language has changed. If earlier the linguistic means themselves (phonetic, grammatical, lexical) were at the center of the linguist’s interests, now it is clearly realized that all these linguistic means are only formal operators with the help of which a person carries out the process of communication. But this very concept of meaning goes beyond communication - it is also the main cognitive (cognitive) unit that forms a person’s image of the world and, as such, is part of various kinds of cognitive schemes, standard images of typical cognitive situations, etc. Thus, meaning, which used to be one of many concepts of linguistics, is increasingly turning into its main, key concept.

Accordingly, psycholinguistics is increasingly turning into “psychosemantics” in the broad sense of the word.

Secondly, linguistics in recent decades has paid increasing attention to the study text .

And psycholinguistics is increasingly interested in texts, their specific structure, variation, and functional specialization.

Thus, it is obvious that psycholinguistics has the closest connections with general linguistics (general linguistics). In addition, she constantly interacts with sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics and applied linguistics, and in recent years especially with computational linguistics.

The extreme closeness of psycholinguistics and linguistics creates the problem of distinguishing between psycholinguistic and linguistic units. A linguistic unit is “an element of scientific-theoretical construction or linguistic modeling” [Akhmanova, 1966, 146]. Linguistic units are primarily invariants various models descriptions of language, they relate to language, language standard, norm.

Psycholinguistic units are “speech actions and operations that are in hierarchical relationships with each other” [Leontyev, 1999, 56]. Psycholinguistic units are correlated with speech activity.

In addition, psycholinguistics considers a much larger number of interrelated factors in the development and functioning of language than “classical” general linguistics. And thus psycholinguistics, in comparison, significantly expands the subject of its research, which is the main difference between psycholinguistics and classical linguistics.

Conclusion

Psycholinguistics has not yet become a science with clearly defined boundaries, so it is hardly possible to give a comprehensive answer to the question of what aspects of language and speech this science studies and what methods it uses for this purpose.

To confirm this, it is enough to open any textbook on psycholinguistics. Unlike a textbook on linguistics, which will certainly talk about phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, etc., or a textbook on psychology, which will certainly cover problems of perception, memory and emotions, the content of a textbook on psycholinguistics is decisively determined by In what scientific and cultural tradition is this textbook written?

From the perspective of the European (including domestic) humanitarian tradition, we can characterize the sphere of interests of psycholinguistics by first describing an approach that is alien to the study of the psyche. This is an understanding of language as a “system of pure relations”, where language, for research purposes, is alienated from the psyche of the speaker.

Psycholinguistics, on the other hand, is initially focused on the study of the real processes of speaking and understanding, on “the person in language” (the expression of the French linguist E. Benveniste).

In the last three decades, especially in the last 10-15 years, interest in psycholinguistic issues has been growing noticeably in the “traditional” linguistic environment. It is no coincidence that since 1985, in the official nomenclature of linguistic specialties, approved by the Higher Attestation Commission, there has been a specialty defined as “general linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics.” Psycholinguistics is becoming an increasingly popular science among researchers.

Many linguists, having exhausted the possibilities of traditional approaches to language learning, look in psycholinguistics for answers to the questions that concern them.

Now many researchers (for example, A.A. Zalevskaya) write about the need for an integrated approach to the study of the patterns of functioning of the human language mechanism. When studying it, the researcher demonstrates the obvious advantages of going beyond linguistics and using the achievements of related sciences, in particular psycholinguistics.

Globalization of world cultural processes, mass migrations and expansion of areas of regular interpenetration different languages and cultures (multiculturalism), the emergence of global computer networks - these factors have given special weight to research into the processes and mechanisms of mastering a foreign language.

All of the above points have significantly expanded the understanding of areas of knowledge whose research interests intersect with psycholinguistics. This science is actively developing and is very promising.

Literature

1. Akhmanova O.S. Dictionary linguistic terms. M., “Sov. Encyclopedia", 1966.

2. Zalevskaya A.A. ABOUT An integrated approach to the study of the patterns of functioning of the human language mechanism // Server for distance learning in psycholinguistics www.csa.ru

3. Leontiev A.A. Fundamentals of psycholinguistics. M.: "Sense", 1999.

4. Leontyev A.A. Psycholinguistics and the problem of functional units of speech // Questions of the theory of language in modern foreign linguistics. M., 1961.

5. Leontiev A.A. Psycholinguistics. L., 1967.

6. Leontiev A.A. Language, speech, speech activity. M., 1969.

7. Sakharny L.V. Introduction to psycholinguistics: A course of lectures. - L.: Publishing house Leningr. Univ., 1989.

" Language is the clothing of thoughts" , as Samuel Johnson argued, thus legitimizing the inextricable relationship between language and psyche. Indeed, psycholinguistics is unique area human knowledge, studying the inner world of the person who speaks and listens- in other words, interacts through speech with the world around him.

How speech is born

The history of psycholinguistics does not go back many years: this area of ​​knowledge was born in the middle of the last century. However, its immediate creators had many predecessors. Among them we can mention the famous linguist Alexander von Humboldt, who believed that language structures information coming from outside in the individual’s head. He also contributed to psycholinguistics Noam Chomsky, engaged in the study of various linguistic patterns on the basis of which speech is born.

Much water has passed under the bridge since then. What does psycholinguistics study today? Firstly, today this area of ​​​​knowledge deals with the study of How does a child manage to acquire speech during the process of growing up?. Secondly, psycholinguistics is invested in study of innate language structures, allowing an individual to master certain linguistic structures.

And thirdly, one of the most discussed issues in psycholinguistics is the study of Why do people who speak different languages ​​think differently?. Subject of study in in this case is language picture the world of one or another representative of a certain ethnic group, for each of which language embodies a certain way of understanding reality.

House of Being

In addition, psycholinguistics is focused on the study of certain linguistic pathologies that arise in the process of speech acquisition. These pathologies include defects formed during personal development, which include brain lesions and disorders of various speech mechanisms.

It is important that psycholinguistics is currently considered not so much a science as a special a focal point through which speech, language, and communication can be explored. And this focus gave rise to many separate directions. It is not without reason that psycholinguistics as an applied method of self-knowledge is now successfully used both in psychology and pedagogy, as well as in linguistics and cybernetics.

It is worth noting that the better we master speech, the larger our vocabulary - the more productive we think, the more colorful we reflect. It is no coincidence that Martin Heidegger wrote in his time that language is the house of being- after all, it is in it that those very personal meanings are born that make each of us creator of the surrounding reality. And it is psycholinguistics that allows us to perceive each puzzle in a new way in the colorful mosaic of this reality.

One of the founders of Russian psycholinguistics, A. A. Leontyev, believed that psycholinguistics modern stage its development is organically included in the system of psychological sciences. If we understand psychology as “...a specific science about the generation, functioning and structure mental reflection reality, which mediates the lives of individuals” (123, p. 12), then language and speech activity participate both in the formation and functioning of this mental reflection itself, and in the process of mediation of people’s life activity by this reflection (119, p. 20). From here, according to A. A. Leontiev, follows the categorical and conceptual unity of psycholinguistics and various areas of psychology. The very concept of speech activity goes back to the general psychological interpretation of the structure and characteristics of activity in general - speech activity is considered as special case activity, as one of its types (along with labor, cognitive, play, etc.), which has its own qualitative specificity, but is subject to the general laws of formation, structure and functioning of any activity. This or that interpretation of personality is also directly reflected in psycholinguistics. But it is especially significant that through one of its basic concepts - the concept values ​​- psycholinguistics is most directly related to the problems of a person’s mental reflection of the world around him. At the same time, psycholinguistics, on the one hand, uses fundamental concepts and research results provided by various fields psychological science. On the other hand, psycholinguistics enriches subject areas psychology both theoretically (introducing new concepts and approaches, interpreting generally accepted concepts differently, more deeply, etc.) and in the applied direction, allowing one to solve practical problems that are inaccessible to other traditionally established psychological disciplines.

Psycholinguistics is most closely related to general psychology, especially with personality psychology and cognitive psychology. Since it is directly related to the study of communication activities, another psychological discipline very close to it is social Psychology And psychology of communication(including the theory of mass communication). Since the formation and development of language ability and speech activity is also included in the object of study of psycholinguistics, psycholinguistics is most closely related to developmental psychology (child and developmental psychology). Finally, it is closely related to ethnopsychology.

In its practical aspect, psycholinguistics is associated with various applied areas of psychology: educational psychology, special psychology(in particular, pathopsychology, medical psychology, neuropsychology), occupational psychology, including engineering, space and military psychology, with forensic and legal psychology, and finally, with recently established areas of psychology, such as political psychology, psychology of popular culture, psychology of advertising and propaganda. Exactly those applied tasks that social development set before psychology, and “served as a direct impetus for the emergence of psycholinguistics as an independent scientific field” (119, p. 21).

At the same time, it should be emphasized that the interpretation of psycholinguistics as a “psychological science” (in other words, as one, albeit very specific, branch of psychology) is not shared by all psycholinguistic scientists. A number of researchers quite definitely and categorically consider psycholinguistics as a completely independent and “self-sufficient” science (A. A. Zalevskaya, I. A. Zimnyaya, E. F. Tarasov, J. Miller, C. Osgood and others).

Psycholinguistics - a science that studies the psychological and linguistic aspects of human speech activity, social and psychological aspects of the use of language in the processes of speech communication and individual speech and mental activity.

The subject of research in psycholinguistics (PL) is primarily speech activity as a specifically human type of activity, its psychological content, structure, types (methods) in which it is carried out, forms in which it is realized, functions performed by it. As noted by the founder of the national school of psycholinguistics A.A. Leontiev, “the subject of psycholinguistics is speech activity as a whole and the laws of its complex modeling” (120, p. PO).

Another important subject of study of psycholinguistics is language as the main means implementation of speech and individual speech-thinking activity, functions of the main language signs in the processes of speech communication. “In psycholinguistics, the focus is constantly on the connection between the content, motive and form of speech activity and between the structure and elements of language used in a speech utterance” (PO, p. 16).

Finally, another main subject of DP research is human speech, viewed as implementation method speech activity (speech as a psychophysiological process of generating and perceiving speech utterances; various types and forms of speech communication).

The presence of not one, but several subjects of PL research is due to the specifics of this area of ​​​​scientific knowledge, the fact that psycholinguistics is a “synthetic”, complex science that arose on the basis of a peculiar and unique combination, partial merging of the two most ancient sciences of human civilization - psychology and the science of language (linguistics).

The identification of the psychophysiological process of generation and perception of speech as the main and independent subject of speech production is found in the works of a number of domestic and foreign researchers, and the most complete scientific basis This approach was obtained in the works of I.A. Zimnyaya (1984, 2001, etc.).

In one of his works of the last period, A.A. Leontyev points out that purpose psycholinguistics is “a consideration of the peculiarities of the mechanisms of speech generation and perception in connection with the functions of speech activity in society and with the development of personality” (132, p. 298). Due to this subject PL “is the structure of the processes of speech production and speech perception in their relationship with the structure of language” (131, p. 144). In turn, psycholinguistic research is aimed at analyzing a person’s linguistic ability in relation to speech activity, on the one hand, and to the language system, on the other (120, 133, etc.).

There is still no single, generally accepted definition of the subject of psycholinguistics research in domestic and foreign science; in different directions and schools of psycholinguistics it is defined differently. At the same time, some domestic researchers and many higher education teachers use a generalized definition of the subject of psycholinguistics proposed by A.A. Leontiev: “The subject of psycholinguistics is the relationship between personality and the structure and functions of speech activity, on the one hand, and language as the main “formative” of a person’s image of the world, on the other.”(133, p. 19).

The objects of psycholinguistics research are: Human How subject of speech activity And native speaker, process communication, communication in human society (the main means of implementation of which is speech activity), as well as the processes of speech formation and language acquisition in about n then no h e (during the individual development of a person). As A.A. points out. Leontiev, “the object of psycholinguistics is always a set of speech events or speech situations. This object is common to it with linguistics and other “speech” sciences” (133, p. 16). At the same time, the most important object of study of PL is the subject of speech activity - a person who uses this activity to master the surrounding reality (ideal and material).

Research methods psycholinguistics, as well as the methods of other speech sciences, can be divided into three large groups: general methodology; special(i.e. specifically scientific) methodology; special(specifically scientific) research methods.

General methodology is philosophy, understood as worldview, as some kind of general path the movement of thought towards scientific truth and, accordingly, as a general “style of thinking”. Every researcher in any field scientific knowledge necessarily chooses one or another philosophical concept (materialistic or idealistic; mechanistic or dialectical; sensualist, pragmatic, positivist, personalistic, etc.). The authors of this manual sought to consider scientific facts psycholinguistics in the structure of dialectical philosophy. This, in particular, is expressed in the fact that speech activity is considered taking into account its characteristic diverse and changing internal connections (for example, the diverse connections of all operations of speech activity - semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic - on all levels of generation and perception of speech) and external connections, i.e. connections of speech activity with the social, speech and non-speech environment, etc. At the same time, we proceeded from the fact that philosophy (a belief system, worldview) itself does not directly reveal facts (and laws) of a specific science, in our case psycholinguistics, but in a certain way pushes towards this.

Special methodology constitute the laws of science, its theory, hypotheses, scientific concepts, axioms and concepts, methodological principles, etc.

Let's look at the main principles psycholinguistics.

First principle(or the leading conceptual position) on which psycholinguistics relies is the presence of an organic connection between speech activity and non-speech activity; conditionality (determinism) of the first type of activity by the needs and goals of life and activity (primarily social) of a person and human society as a whole.

The place of speech activity in the system of human activity

Second the fundamental methodological principle of psycholinguistics is recognition as complex functional organization speech activity as its main property.

Speech - functional system, i.e. goal-oriented, aimed at achieving a certain result. This system diverse and unstable. It (on a temporary and permanent basis) combines certain characteristics of its constituent operations (semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic) to achieve specific the goals of one or another (speech or non-speech) activity that is performed in specific situation speech communication (7). The nature of these temporary associations depends on many external and internal conditions: from the nature and goals of the activity being carried out, the situation in which the activity takes place, from the personal characteristics of the speaker (the individual receiving the speech), his knowledge of the culture (in the broad sense of the word), from the linguistic context, etc. For example, in some cases we we use oral speech, and in others - written; V different situations speech communication we speak extensively or extremely succinctly (“collapsed”), we use literary language or “slang” version (for example, youth, professional), etc. Thus, the content (meaning, meaning) and form of speech activity are largely determined by non-speech activity and the conditions in which non-speech and speech activities are performed.

PC. Anokhin, an outstanding Russian physiologist, philosopher and psychologist, proposed universal scheme functional system (with the highlighting of structure-forming “blocks”):

Universal scheme of activity as a functional system (according to P.K. Anokhin)

The third principle is integrity speech activity.

It finds its expression in the combination of all or a number of forms (and subforms) of speech in speech processes. The integrity of speech activity is also manifested in the mandatory interaction of all its constituent operations (semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic), all stages and levels of the speech process. In other words, a variety of horizontal and vertical, straight and feedbacks“permeate” the processes of generation and perception of speech, the entire internal structure of language as the main means of speech activity.

The fourth principle is the defining meaning of “speech semantics”: conditionality, “subordination” of all components of speech activity to the meaning and meaning of the products and results of this activity. Speech activity is aimed at extracting (when perceiving speech) or creating and transmitting (when generating speech) the meanings of language signs (i.e., generally significant contents) and meanings (personal, individual meanings).

Fifth principle - inextricable connection between speech activity and personality.

This connection is diverse, complex and rather ambiguous. When characterizing it, it is necessary to take into account what level of personality organization (the so-called “highest” - worldview, ideals, social orientation, etc.; “middle” - character, characteristics of mental processes, etc., “lower” - emotions, temperament, etc.) and which component of this level comes into contact with a certain component of speech (for example, lexical, phonetic, etc.). Therefore, some components of one or another level of personality may correlate with some components of speech, while others may not.

Let us pay attention to only one extremely important characteristic of a person for understanding speech activity - his activity. Both the process of generating speech and the process of its perception can take place and acquire the corresponding characteristics only with the (mental, intellectual) activity of the individual. For example, the degree of activity (involvement) of a person in the process of perception largely determines the completeness and depth of perception. At the same time, in response to the incoming message, the listener actively puts forward hypotheses related to all semantic and linguistic operations - semantic, syntactic, lexical, etc., and only under this condition, i.e. active production“speech” operations, the process of perception proceeds in a normative version. Otherwise, it is simply absent or becomes “reduced”.

The sixth principle is genetic. In particular, it manifests itself in the fact that at different age periods a person masters in different forms speech (first oral and “kinetic”, then written) and various operations of speech activity (first “primitive”, then complex), the characteristics of which change throughout a person’s life (cf.: the speech of a one-year-old and a three-year-old child, who has already formed the basic “core” of the language system; speech of a teenager and an adult, etc.). Of course, the principle of development (dynamics) is realized in the processes of generation and perception of speech formed in ontogenesis.

Research methods.

There are 4 groups of research methods used in psycholinguistics: organizational, empirical, processing, interpretive.

Using the methods of the first group, a psycholinguistic study of the patterns of formation and implementation of speech activity is organized. These include:

(A) Comparative method, the essence of which is to compare different groups of subjects or different (but “comparable”) aspects of speech activity. For example, groups of people with normal and pathological speech (aphasia, alalia, dysarthria, dysgraphia, etc.) are compared. The method is very popular, and with its help a lot of valuable information has been obtained about the processes of speech production and perception. For example, the study of aphasia made it possible to talk about speech as a multi-stage and multi-operational process (F. Gall - early XIX c., X. Jackson – 60-80s. XIX century, A. Kussmaul - 70-90s. XIX century, A. Pik – early XX century. etc.), about the functional nature of speech and the existence of different levels of its organization (X. Jackson), about the reality and autonomy of various operations in the speech process, in particular, semantic, syntactic, lexical operations, etc.

Groups of subjects of a different kind can be compared: for example, children and adults, “native speakers” of different languages, people who have and have not yet mastered literacy, etc.

TO comparative The method of “transverse” sections also applies. In this case, a phenomenon is studied in individuals of different ages. For example, the ability to compose detailed coherent statements in children two and a half, three and three and a half years old; or the writing characteristics of students in the first and second half of the year, etc. The comparative method was brilliantly applied by L.S. Vygotsky to study the patterns of formation of external “egocentric” and inner speech during the ontogenetic development of the child.

(b) Longitudinal(longitudinal) method. These are “longitudinal”, usually long-term observations of the development of one or another component of speech activity in a certain person or group of people. Most often, the longitudinal method is used in studies of language acquisition by children.

(V) Complex method - This is interdisciplinary research. An example is a study of the process of memorizing sentences various designs V different conditions speech perception (in the presence of any psychological “noise”, “interference” and in normal conditions) in combination with the use of EEG and myography.

Empirical methods include:

– Objective observation. Thus, the study of slips of the tongue, “mishearings,” “misprints,” or “seditious notes” makes it possible to identify many specific properties of speech processes, as well as cases of speech behavior of the subjects that interest researchers. In particular, using this method, it was found that the program for constructing speech utterances is usually built not “element by element”, but by whole large “blocks”, since in the above errors subsequent elements often take the place of the previous ones. For example: “Tomatoes must be washed” (next: “to eat”); or “The juice was delicious, sour" (right: "delicious").

– Introspection. As an example, we can cite A. Einstein’s famous observation of the process of his theoretical thinking, in which, according to the scientist, there are no words; he finds it difficult to find words to describe an already completed thought process.

Empirical methods also include conversation, survey, questionnaires, tests and a number of others.

– Experiment. This includes various types of laboratory, natural, psychological, pedagogical and other experiments. For example, a well-known experiment that showed the important role of attitude in speech perception. Different groups of subjects were asked to listen to the same inarticulate statements and non-speech noises recorded on magnetic tape. The subjects had to decipher these noisy recordings, that is, determine the content of speech (although there was no content in the recordings). Before listening, some subjects were told that the sermon of a priest (pastor) was recorded, others were told that the coach’s instructions to basketball players during a break in a match were recorded, etc. It turned out that, despite the identicalness and meaninglessness of the recording, the subjects deciphered it and deciphered it in full accordance with the “semantic” attitude given to him (129, 317).

– Methods processing. It's varied statistical methods, a method for describing the obtained research data.

A special place in psycholinguistics is occupied by interpretive methods (in particular, due to the still insufficient development of experimental research methods).

A scientific fact, taken by itself, not included in a certain system of knowledge (scientific hypothesis, theory), means little. For example, if we established that the phrase “The cat catches the mouse” consists of the sequence of phonemes /k//o//t//l//o//v"// i//t//m//m bi// s/, this does not mean that the perception (recognition) of this phrase (as well as all others) by the listener occurs phonemically. In fact, it is structured in a fundamentally different way: large segments of speech (words and entire phrases) are distinguished in the perceived sound stream, all language operations are involved in the process of perception - syntactic, lexical, morphological, morphological-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic), various pragmatic factors (knowledge, attitude to speech perception, etc.), as well as heuristic operations (predicting possible fragments of a phrase or the entire speech utterance as a whole). I would like to once again draw attention to the fundamental principle scientific research: in order to correctly interpret and understand certain facts, they must be considered in a system of scientific ideas. The choice of one or another conceptual system of scientific views in psycholinguistics is often still a personal choice of the researcher.

The connections between psycholinguistics (as a theory of speech activity) and other sciences are diverse, since speech activity is directly related to all types of non-speech human activity, and man, like his diverse and multifaceted activities, is the object of many sciences. Let us note the most significant and frequently implemented connections in practice. Psycholinguistics is “organically”, inextricably linked:

With a philosophy that contributes to the overall direction of the research;

With psychology (general, developmental, social, special psychology and many other areas). No data practical psychology psycholinguistics, as some researchers believe (A.A. Leontiev, L.V. Sakharny, R.M. Frumkina, etc.), cannot be a sufficiently wealthy science;

With linguistics (general linguistics, philosophy of language, grammar of a particular language, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics and other branches of linguistics).

With semiotics - the science of the signs of language and their meaning (the language of interest to us as a means of implementing RD is precisely an integral sign system);

With logic (in this case, the researcher of psycholinguistic problems most often chooses for himself one or another logic for conducting scientific research);

With sociology. Mention should be made here, in particular, of the study within the framework of psycholinguistics of relationships that are very significant for the individual: speech activity - different levels socialization of the individual (personal, group, global, etc.);

With medicine, mainly with neurology, which contributed greatly to the study of pathology and speech norms, as well as with psychiatry, otorhinolaryngology and a number of other medical sciences, with speech pathology, speech therapy and other sciences of the speech pathology circle, which provide a lot of valuable data for understanding the processes of speech generation and perception;

With some technical sciences (in particular, with those that make possible hardware and computer support for studies of speech activity and linguistic signs); with acoustics and psychoacoustics, etc.

§ 2. Psycholinguistics as a psychological science

One of the founders of Russian psycholinguistics, A.A. Leontiev believes that psycholinguistics at the present stage of its development is organically included in the system of psychological sciences. If we understand psychology as “... a specific science about the generation, functioning and structure of the mental reflection of reality, which mediates the lives of individuals” (137, p. 12), then language and speech activity are involved in the formation and functioning of this mental reflection itself, and in the process of mediating this reflection of people’s life activity (133, p. 20). Hence, according to A.A. Leontiev, a categorical and conceptual unity of psycholinguistics and various areas of psychology follows. The concept itself speech activity goes back to the general psychological interpretation of the structure and characteristics of activity in general - speech activity is considered as a special case of activity, as one of its types (along with labor, cognitive, play, etc.), which has its own qualitative specificity, but is subject to the general laws of formation, structure and the functioning of any activity. This or that interpretation of personality is also directly reflected in psycholinguistics. But it is especially significant that through one of its basic concepts - the concept values ​​- psycholinguistics is most directly related to the problems of a person’s mental reflection of the world around him. At the same time, psycholinguistics, on the one hand, uses fundamental concepts and research results provided by various fields of psychological science; on the other hand, PL enriches the subject areas of psychology both theoretically (by introducing new concepts and approaches, interpreting generally accepted concepts differently, more deeply, etc.) and in the applied direction, allowing one to solve practical problems that are inaccessible to other, traditionally established psychological disciplines.

Psycholinguistics is most closely related to general psychology, particularly with personality psychology and cognitive psychology. Since it is directly related to the study of communication activities, another psychological discipline very close to it is social psychology and psychology of communication(including the theory of mass communication). Since the formation and development of language ability and speech activity is also included in the object of study of psycholinguistics, PL is most closely related to developmental psychology (child and developmental psychology). Finally, it is closely related to ethnopsychology.

In its practical aspect, psycholinguistics is associated with various applied areas of psychology: educational psychology, special psychology (in particular, pathopsychology, medical psychology, neuropsychology), occupational psychology, including engineering, space and military psychology, forensic and legal psychology, and finally, recently established areas of psychology, such as political psychology, psychology of mass culture, psychology of advertising and propaganda. It was these applied tasks that social development posed to psychology that “served as a direct impetus for the emergence of psycholinguistics as an independent scientific field” (133, p. 21).

§ 3. Relationships between psycholinguistics and linguistics

In addition to psychology, psycholinguistics (and within its framework, the theory of speech activity) is closely connected with the second science that forms it - linguistics.

Linguistics (linguistics) is traditionally understood as the science of language - the main means of communication, social communication. At the same time, its subject, as a rule, is not clearly defined (133, p. 21). It is obvious that the object of linguistics is also speech activity (speech acts, speech reactions). But the linguist identifies in it what is common in the organization any speeches any person in any situations, that is, those means without which it is generally impossible to imagine the internal structure of a speech act. The subject of linguistics is system of linguistic means, used in speech communication (communication). At the same time, in general linguistics the emphasis is placed on the systematic nature of these means, which characterize the structure of any language, and in applied linguistics - on the individual specificity of a particular language (Russian, German, Chinese, etc.).

The main trends in the development of modern linguistics come down to the following.

First of all, the very interpretation of the concept of “language” has changed. If earlier the linguistic means themselves (i.e., sound, grammatical, lexical) were at the center of the linguist’s interests, now it has become obvious that all these linguistic means are “formal operators” with the help of which a person carries out the process of communication, applying them to system values signs of language and receiving a meaningful and holistic text (message). But this very concept of meaning goes beyond verbal communication: it acts as the main cognitive (cognitive) unit that forms a person’s figurative perception of the world and, as such, is part of various types of cognitive schemes, standard images, typical cognitive situations etc. Thus, meaning, which was previously one of many concepts of linguistics, is increasingly turning into its main, key concept (1, 165, etc.).

Another important subject of study in modern linguistics is the “nature” of text - the basic and universal unit of speech communication. And psycholinguistics is increasingly interested in texts, their specific structure, variability, and functional specialization.

As A.A. points out. Leontiev, psycholinguistics has the closest connections with general linguistics (general linguistics). In addition, she constantly interacts with sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics and applied linguistics, especially with that part of it that deals with issues of computational linguistics.

Thus, psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge about the laws of formation in ontogenesis and the formed processes of speech activity in the system various types human life activity.

In this manual, the subjects for coverage are those problems and aspects of modern psycholinguistics (both theoretical and applied), which, in our opinion, are of decisive importance for the professional training of a special education teacher (primarily a speech therapist). The sections of psycholinguistics that we have chosen for consideration contain the theoretical and subject-methodological knowledge that forms the basis for the training of a specialist involved in the formation and correction of the speech of children and adults in conditions of general and speech dysontogenesis.

To familiarize yourself with the content of those sections of psycholinguistics that are not of decisive importance for the “subject” professional training of a teacher-defectologist, but perform a more general cognitive function, expanding and complementing the knowledge acquired by students while studying academic disciplines“Human Psychology” and “General Linguistics” (for example: ethnopsycholinguistics, psychopoetics, psycholinguistics in engineering psychology, etc.), we refer our readers to the educational and popular scientific literature of domestic specialists, published in the last decade, and above all to works of A.A. Leontyev (131, 133, 194, 236, etc.).

Psycholinguistics - The science is relatively young, just recently (2003) it turned fifty years old. For science, this is almost an “infancy” age, the most initial period formation and development. However, despite such a “young age” and the “growing pains” inevitable for this period of development of any science, psycholinguistics at the beginning of the new millennium is already a fairly established field of scientific knowledge. This is determined by two main factors.

Firstly, by the fact that the basis of this new science was formed by two ancient areas of scientific knowledge, which transferred to it their achievements in the most important areas of research. Thus, from psychology to psycholinguistics (of course, in a transformed form) the following sections were included: human psychology, How psychology of speech, psychology of communication, partially - developmental, educational and social psychology, as well as fundamental theoretical concepts: theory of activity, theory of sign and symbolic activity, theory of communication and others. From linguistics, psycholinguistics uses the “arsenal” of scientific knowledge of structural linguistics, general linguistics, practical linguistics (theory and methodology of teaching native and foreign languages), semiotics and (almost in in full) text linguistics.

Secondly, psycholinguistics, before its emergence and establishment as an independent field of scientific knowledge, has its own rather long and eventful prehistory.