CONCEPTUALIZATION

Where does speaking come from? What triggers speech? The truth is we never thought ourselves

about how language is produced but some psycholinguist came up with a theory. The theory is that

basic linguistic concepts are formed as two parallel and similar modes of thought. The first one is

known as syntactic thinking, which produce the sequence of words which we normally think of

when we talk about how language is started. The second one is imagistic thinking which creates a

more holistic and visual mode of communication. The former is segmented and linear and creates

the strings of syllables, words, phrases, and sentences that together they make up speech.

Have you ever realized that every time we talk, our hands will move subconsciously? When we

speak, we tend to develop the gestures that we naturally use to punctuate and illustrate our

conversations. These actions itself are proof that syntactic thought and imagistic thought collaborate

together to conceptualize our conversation, by the way where speech utterances and ordinary

gestures seem to be tied and timed together in any conversation.

For example, try to imagine there are two persons, person A and person B. Person A asked,

“Where’s my bag?” and then person B will say, “There’s your bag!” (pointing to the bag). When B

hears A’s question, B’s syntactic thought might generate something that begins with the

demonstrative ‘there’ while simultaneously B’s imagistic thought might be of someone pointing

toward an object, which in this case, a bag. This is the evidence that these two modes are operating

together in the conceptualization stage, which is the simultaneous timing of the pointing gestures

with the stressed words.

Basically, the conceptualization stage is about how people think to give a response and how to react

to the conversation.
The truth is, no matter how appealing this theory might be, we cannot use this model entirely to

explain this first stage of production as some people have different modes of how they produce

speech. So, although we know very little about how speech is initiated at this first stage of

conceptualization, we have psycholinguistic evidence to help us understand the successive stages of

production which is in the next stage.

That is all I can say about the first stage of language production, the conceptualization stage. Thank

you.
SELF-MONITORING

In the stages of production, conceptualization and formulation stages are different with self-

monitoring stage but similar to the articulation stage which we just discussed just now. In this final

stage of self-monitoring, we have direct evidence of what happening when people compose speech.

Speakers not only produce speech and listen to one another when they are speaking, they also keep

listening to what they themselves are saying and if they catch something wrong, they are quick to

correct the mistake and then continue to converse. Like ourselves when we talk. We quickly tend to

correct our mistakes when we make mistakes like slips of the tongue.

All speakers and writers of any language, regardless of their degree of native fluency, they will still

commit linguistic blunders or mistakes. Mistakes like slips of the tongue, typos and misspellings are

mistakes normally made by us every day. Mistakes are the production problems; they are the

troubles you have with your linguistic printer which is by your hands and mouth, not by the original

software which is the brain. For example someone says, the last I knowed about it {I mean knew

about it}, he already left Malaysia. Another example, she was so drank {I mean drunk}, that we

decided to drive her home. See? When the speaker realized they made a mistake like “The last I

knowed about it, I mean knew about it”, they quickly corrected it.

Mistake is different from error. Errors on the other hand, are believed only made by the non-native

speakers. This is because the non-native speakers or the second language speakers make errors in

their speech without realizing it. Since they fail to notice the error, they will not immediately correct

it. For example, they say, “I have ate lunch” when they are supposed to say “I have eaten lunch”.

Even when we pointed out their error, they will still have difficulty in correcting it. It may be due to

their first language interference or they are still not fluent in the language itself.

Do you realize that when we talk, we tend to make ‘uhh’, ‘err’, or ‘umm’ when we are not sure

what to say next in our speech? For example, I think it costs about...uh…twenty-five ringgit. These
hesitations or when we say, ‘y’know, that thing. What is it again?’, these are not mistakes. They are

caused from the lack of fluency. The intrusive ‘uh’ in the example suggest that the

conceptualization phase is still in the process of selecting the information to appear at the end of the

sentence and so the speaker pauses in midway to allow the brain to progress for the last part of the

sentence, to finish it. Basically, we pause because we want to think first before giving a definite

answer or reply to the other person.

To sum it all up, self-monitoring stage assumes that people do not just communicate with others,

they communicate with themselves. They do not just listen to others, they listen to themselves. So

it’s like monitoring yourselves when you are speaking to make sure you are not making any

mistakes in your speech.

I hope the audiences understand what I am trying to say here. That is all from me, thank you.