Introduction to Psycholinguistics Sumarized by Tri Rina Budiwati

Definition

Psycholinguistics or Linguistics of Psychology: the study of the psychological and neurological factors that enable humans to acquire, use and understand language (wikipedia). on the other hand, Osgood and Sebeok defines that Psycholinguistics deals with directly with the processes of encoding and decoding as they relate states of message to states of communicators.

Meanwhile, Hartley called Psycholinguistics as the way to investigate the interrelation of language and mind in processing and producing utterances and in language acquisition.  Psycholinguistics has its roots in structural linguistics on the one hand, and in experimental and cognitive psychology on the other hand. But it is also closely related to a set of other disciplines, such as anthropology, medicine – in particular neurology – and phonetics.

Six Subjects of Research within Psycholinguistics

1. Production
2. Comprehension
3. Acquisition
4. Disorders
5. Language and Thought
6. Neurocognition

The Position of Psycholinguistics among other Disciplines

There is relationship (Intersection) between Psychology, Linguistics, Logics, and Philosophy. See the following utterance from psychology, linguistics, logics and philosophy:
“The fat boy,Ali, is sick”.

The History of Psycholinguistics

• In 1950, George Miller and Charles Osgood introduce the new science dealing with linguistics study and pschology.
• In 1951, a seminar was held in Cornell University by SSRC which presented 6 experts (psychologists & linguists).
• In 1953, John Caroll and friends held a seminar in Indiana Univ.
• In 1954, a book Psycholinguistics: A Survey of Theory and Research Problems was published and edited by Charles Osgood and Thomas Sebeok.

Some activities held by SSRC dealing with psycholinguistics study and seminar followed until Chomsky gave comments and influenced this field with his Universal Grammar.Then, International Journal of American Linguistics and The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology and other books appear.From year to year, psycholinguistics develops and it seems now that it emphasizes on language acquisition and language learning, and it tends to applied linguistics.