6. The emergence of psycholinguistics as an independent area of ​​scientific knowledge

Lecture



The term "psycholinguistics" was first proposed by the American psychologist N. Pronko in 1946 (321). As a separate independent science, psycholinguistics took shape in 1953 as a result of an inter-university seminar organized by the Committee on Linguistics and Psychology of the Research Council for Social Sciences at Indiana State University (USA, Bloomington). The seminar was organized by two famous American psychologists - Charles Osgood and John Carroll and linguist, ethnographer and literary critic Thomas Sybeok. The book Psycholinguistics, published in 1954, summarized the main theoretical principles adopted during the seminar, as well as the main directions of experimental research based on these principles (322). The appearance of the book Psycholinguistics played the role of a peculiar stimulus for the development of numerous interdisciplinary psycholinguistic studies.

The history of the emergence and development of the science of psycholinguistics (PL) is presented in sufficient detail in the works of A.A. Leontiev (119, 133, etc.). On the basis of an in-depth analysis of this question, AA Leontiev outlined several successive stages in the development of psycholinguistics as a science, which he defined by the concept of psycholinguistic "generations". [68] The representatives of psycholinguistics of the first generation were C. Osgood, J. Carroll, T. Sibeok, F. Lounsbury and others, and the most prominent representatives of the submarines of the second generation were J. Miller, N. Chomsky (Chamsky) and D. Slobin. The third generation psycholinguistics, or, as the prominent American psychologist and psycholinguist J. Verch called it, the “new psycholinguistics”, was formed in the mid-1970s. XX century. She is associated in the USA with the names of Jerome Bruner and J. Verch; in France - Jacques Meler, Georges Noiset, Daniel Dubois; in Norway - with the name of a talented psycholinguist R. Rommetveit.

The modern period of development of psycholinguistics coincides with the development of cognitive sciences. Cognitive psychology is a field of psychology that studies how people receive information about the world, how this information is perceived and realized by a person, how it is stored in memory and transformed into knowledge; how this knowledge affects our attention and behavior (120, 133, 225). The cognitive approach in psycholinguistics is also in the desire to understand how a person perceives and analyzes information about the surrounding reality and how it organizes to make decisions or solve pressing problems.

Domestic psycholinguistics, in particular the Moscow Psycholinguistic School, focuses primarily on the characterization of the transformation processes of semantic information - the processes of speech production, its perception and understanding (semantic interpretation) are studied from different positions. In addition, much attention is paid to the analysis of the processes of formation and functioning of linguistic consciousness, which is understood as a system of images of reality that receive their linguistic reflection in human speech activity as a carrier of language and subject of speech activity. In Russia, a kind of center of psycholinguistic science is the sector of psycholinguistics and mass communication theory of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, founded by AA. Leontyev in 1958. Since 1974, he has been headed by the well-known domestic psycholinguist EF. Tarasov. Since the 80s last century, on the basis of this institution, all-Russian symposia on psycholinguistics are held regularly and thematic collections of scientific papers by leading Russian specialists are published.

In the 80s. The International Organization of Applied Psycholinguistics (International Society of Applied Psycholinguistics - abbreviated as ISAPL) was established with headquarters in Lisbon (Portugal). International symposia of psycholinguists with the participation of linguists and psychologists are held once every three years. The International Journal of Psycholinguistics, the International Journal of Human Communication, is published in Osaka, Japan.


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Psycholinguistics

Terms: Psycholinguistics