PAPER OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

(Language Use and Language Knowledge)

LECTURER:

 DR. SHOLIHATUL HAMIDAH DAULAY, M.HUM

 DR. MUHAMMAD DALIMUNTHE, M.HUM.

Compiled
By:

 Lena Marliana Harahap

(0333213021)

TBI MAGISTER’S PROGRAM

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHERS TRAINING
STATE ISLAMIC OF UNIVERSITY
NORTH SUMATERA
ACADEMIC YEAR 2021/2022
 FOREWORD

First of all lets us say Thank to our God Allah SWT, who had given us His mercy and

blessing enable the researcher completed the work in the form of paper which entitled

“Language Use and Language Knowledge, and then Sholawat and Salam to our Prophet

Muhammad SAW, who had guided us from the foolish into a good character.

The author sincerely hope that paper will be useful in order to increase our knowledge

as well as our insights of Language Problem on Psycholinguistics. The author is fully aware

that in this paper here are shortcomings and far from perfect words. Therefore, the author

accept criticism and suggestions for the improvement of the research proposal we have made

in the future, given that nothing is perfect without constructive suggestions. Hopefully this

paper will be understandable to anyone who reads it. Once this paper has been prepared, it

may be useful to us or to those who read it. Before doing this, the author apologizes if many

misspellings are less favorable and asks readers for constructive criticism and suggestions for

improving this article in the future. Thank you!

Medan, 2nd October 2021

Lena Marliana Harahap

 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

Psycholinguistics or linguistic psychology is the study of the interrelation between

linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is primarily concerned with the

mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind and brain, these are

the psychological and neurobiological factors that allow human beings to acquire, use,

understand and produce languages.

Psycholinguistics deals with the cognitive skills and processes necessary to generate

the grammatical constructions of language. It is also about the perception of these

constructions by a listener. The first forays into psycholinguistics took place in the

philosophical and educational fields, mainly due to its location in departments other than

applied science (for example, related data on the functioning of the human brain). Modern

research uses biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information science to

study how the brain processes language rather than the familiar processes of social science,

human development, communication theories, and child development. There are several sub-

disciplines that use non-invasive techniques to study the neurological functioning of the

brain. For example: neurolinguistics has become a specialty in its own right; and

developmental psycholinguistics, as a branch of psycholinguistics, deals with children's

language skills.

Language is used in our daily life. If psychology is a science of behavior, the

scientific study of the use of language must be one of the central themes, because the use of

language is ubiquitous. Each human group has a language; Human babies (other than those

with unfortunate disabilities) learn at least one language without being specifically taught.
Even when children who do not have much language at first are brought together, they can

begin to develop and use their own language.

CHAPTER II
THEORITICAL LITERATURE

Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field made up of researchers from diverse

backgrounds, including psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, language pathology, and

discourse analysis. Psycholinguists examine people's acquisition and use of language

according to the following focal points:

 Language acquisition: How do children acquire the language?

 Language Comprehension: How Do People Understand the Language?

 Language production: How do people produce the language?

 Second language acquisition: How do people who already speak a language acquire

another?

A researcher interested in speech understanding can examine word recognition while

reading to examine the processes involved in extracting orthographic, morphological,

phonological, and semantic information from patterns in printed text. A researcher interested

in language production could examine how words are prepared to be spoken at the conceptual

or semantic level (this refers to connotation and can possibly be explored through the

conceptual framework of semantic differential). Developmental psychologists study the

ability of infants and children to learn and process language.

Psycholinguistics further subdivides its studies according to the various components

that make up human language. Areas related to linguistics include:

  Phonetics and phonology are the study of the sounds of speech. In psycholinguistics,

research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these sounds.

 Morphology is the study of word structures, especially between related words (such

as dog and dog), and rule-based word formation (such as plural formation).

 Syntax is the study of combining words in sentences.

 Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. If syntax is the formal

structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.

 Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.

So the use of language is a collaborative activity, but how do we coordinate our use of

language in a conversational setting? Of course we speak in small groups. The number of

people participating in a conversation at the same time rarely exceeds four. By some accounts

(eg, Dunbar, Duncan, & Nettle, 1995; James, 1953), more than 90 percent of conversations

take place in a group of four or fewer people. Certainly, coordinating a conversation between

four is not as difficult as coordinating a conversation between ten. But even with just four

people, when you think about it, daily conversation is an almost miraculous feat. We usually

carry on a conversation by rapidly exchanging words and expressions in real time in a noisy

environment. Think about your morning conversation at home, at a bus stop, in a mall.

1. Psychological Consequences of Language Use

What are the psychological consequences of using language? When people use

language to describe an experience, their thoughts and feelings are deeply shaped by the

linguistic representation they produced, rather than the original experience itself (Holtgraves

& Kashima, 2008). For example, Halberstadt (2003) showed a picture of a person displaying

an ambiguous emotion and examined how people rated the displayed emotion. When people
verbally explained why the target person was expressing a certain emotion, they tended to

remember that the person felt that emotion more intensely than when they simply named it.

So the construction of a linguistic representation of another person's emotion has

obviously influenced the speaker's memory of that person's emotion. Furthermore, the

linguistic labeling of one's own emotional experience appears to alter the speaker's neural

processes. When people marked negative images with language, the amygdala, a brain

structure that is critically involved in the processing of negative emotions such as fear, was

less activated than when they were not given the opportunity to name it (Lieberman et al. .,

2007). Possibly due to these effects of verbalizing emotional experiences, verbal

reconstructions of negative life events can have therapeutic effects on those who experience

traumatic experiences (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999). Lyubomirsky, Sousa, and Dickerhoof

(2006) found that writing and talking about past negative events improves people's

psychological well-being, but just thinking about it makes it worse. There are many other

examples of the effects of language use on memory and decision making (Holtgraves &

Kashima, 2008).

2. What does the Speaker of a Language Know?

The question of tacit linguistic knowledge has come up in connection with two

separate issues in the philosophy of language. It first arose in the 1960s in connection with

Noam Chomsky’s claim that every speaker of a natural language knows both the grammar of

the language she speaks (English, Arabic, and so on) as well as the universal grammar which

specifies linguistic universals, or grammatical properties of all natural languages. Chomsky’s

claims drew the attention of philosophers not simply because of his claims of tacit linguistic

knowledge, but because he claimed that knowledge of the universal grammar was innate to
human beings. This claim, inasmuch as it seemed to revive certain key principles of 17th

Century Rationalism, quickly attracted critical attention from the philosophical world.

According to Chomsky’s view (at least as it was once expressed) human beings are

born knowing the principles of universal grammar and, by deploying those principles in an

environment of, say, English speakers, they come to learn the grammar of English. Knowing

the grammar of English, Chomsky further claimed, is necessary for being able to read, write,

speak, and understand English. Since Chomsky’s concern was primarily with the syntactic

rules and principles of a language, the debate surrounding Chomsky’s nativism became a

debate about whether or not speakers have syntactical (or, as it is frequently called,

grammatical) knowledge of their language. In the context of this debate, philosophers have

found it appropriate to consider three separate knowledge claims:

a) That the speakers of a language know the grammatical properties of the individual

expressions in their language.

b) That the speakers of a language know the special grammar rules of a natural language.

c) That speakers of a language know the principles of universal grammar.

Most of our discussion here focuses on (a) and (b), although we briefly mention

statement (c). One of the central questions of this debate revolves around the fact that the

grammatical rules of any natural language are abstract, technical and complex and, as such,

they are formulated in concepts that the average speaker does not have. Due to these

characteristics of grammar rules, many philosophers are reluctant to attribute their knowledge

to speakers. Second, there was the question of tacit linguistic knowledge in the context of the

semantics of truth, which was inspired by the work of Donald Davidson.

 3. Why do we Think that Speakers of a Language have Knowledge about their
Language?
It is clear that the linguistic knowledge of speakers, when they have it, is a strange

kind of knowledge. That is, such knowledge differs significantly from ordinary everyday

knowledge. Although a complete analysis of the conditions of knowledge is beyond the scope

of this article, Stich establishes some relevant characteristics of ordinary knowledge.

However, given the knowledge of the grammatical basis of your language by the language

user’ knowledge of the grammatical principles of their language.

It can be helpful to think about the language itself and put aside the question of the

language skills of the speaker. What allows the construction of novel sentences in English,

sentences that have never been constructed before? Surely it is the fact that English is

compositional: sentences are made up of words to put it simply. A finite collection of words

can be arranged in an infinite number of ways, creating the infinite potential of English

sentences. So, this compositionality is related to the structure of the language skills of the

speakers: their ability to understand (which, according to the Behavioral Rationalization

argument, is to have a semantic belief) a potential infinity of sentences is based on their

knowledge of the axioms of meaning theory.

 CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION

Psycholinguistics deals with the cognitive skills and processes necessary to generate

the grammatical constructions of language. It is also about the perception of these

constructions by a listener. The first forays into psycholinguistics took place in the

philosophical and pedagogical field, mainly due to its location in fields other than applied

science (for example, related data on the functioning of the human brain). Modern research

uses biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information science to study

how the brain processes language rather than the familiar processes of social science, human

development, communication theories, and child development. There are several sub-

disciplines that use non-invasive techniques to study the neurological functions of the brain.

For example: neurolinguistics has become a specialty in its own right; and developmental

psycholinguistics, as a branch of psycholinguistics, deals with children's language skills.

Language and the use of language are an essential element of human psychology.

Language is a crucial tool that allows us to maintain the way of existence that we have. Can

you imagine an international in which machines are built, farms are operated and objects and

victims are transported to our families without language? Is it feasible for us to issue legal

guidelines and regulations, negotiate contracts, enact agreements, and resolve disputes

without talking? Much of today's human civilization would not be viable without the human

capacity to expand and use language. Like the Tower of Babel, language can divide

humanity, and yet the core of humanity lies in the innate ability to use language. If we are

able to use them correctly, it is an effort before we are in this globalized international.
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