2. Psycholinguistics as a psychological science

One of the founders of the national 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 of the generation, functioning and structure of the mental reflection of reality that mediates the life of individuals" (137, p. 12), then language and speech activity are also involved in the formation and functioning of this mental reflection itself, and in the process of mediating this reflection of human activity (133, p. 20). Hence, according to A.A. Leontiev, follows categorical and conceptual unity of psycholinguistics and various areas of psychology. The 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 a special case of activity, as one of its types (along with labor, cognitive, play, etc.), having its own specific features, but subject to the general patterns of formation, structure and functioning of any activity. One or another interpretation of a person is also directly reflected in psycholinguistics. But it is especially significant that, through one of its basic concepts - the concept of meaning - psycholinguistics is most directly related to the problems of a person’s mental reflection of the world around. 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, the submarine enriches the subject areas of psychology both in theoretical terms (introducing new concepts and approaches, in a different way, more deeply interpreting common concepts, etc.), and in the applied direction, allowing to solve practical problems that are inaccessible to others, traditionally established psychological disciplines.

Psycholinguistics is most closely associated with general psychology, especially with personality psychology and cognitive psychology. Since it is directly related to the study of the activities of communication, another very close to her psychological discipline 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, the SP is closely connected with the developmental psychology (child and age psychology). Finally, it is closely connected with ethnopsychology.

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