4. Relationship of speech (language) and memory

Memory, by definition, P.M. Veckera is the “reversibility of mental experience." [166] According to the "canonical" definitions of general psychology, memory is the imprinting, storage and reproduction of images-representations constituting the genetic and acquired experience of a person.

There are different types of memory. Among them, psychology most often distinguishes: (1) genetic memory; (2) “memory of the spirit” (A. Bergson); (3) memory of knowledge, situations, actions and events; (4) the memory of concepts (culture, laws, rules of social behavior, etc.); (5) memory for operations with the above structures (its purpose is to avoid “static” in mental activity); (6) figurative memory (different modality); (7) motor (motor) memory; (8) emotional; (9) selective memory of different types of activities: scientific, artistic, constructive; (10) the memory of a language (or more narrowly, the memory of units and elements of a language and the rules of their functioning; in a broader sense, the memory of using language as a means of speech and non-speech activity, etc.). Based on the above, the memory of the language [167] is just one of the types of memory in the system of mnemonic human activity.

There is no doubt that we capture some fragments of our experience in a language form: for example, poems, proverbs, sayings, wise sayings, formulas, rules, etc. However, our experience is stored, as already mentioned, not only in language, but also in figurative form. The main function of the language is to consolidate and express this experience.

It is very likely that the language is more often used in logical memory (or, by definition, a number of authors, verbal logic). This, however, does not prove that logical memory is a purely linguistic (or verbal-logical) essence.

There is an opinion that language is primarily associated with memory, rather than with other structural components (or components) of the psyche. [168] So, W. Chafe notes that for the most part life experience in speech statements is presented in the past tense. [169]

Indeed, as a rule, it is easier to remember what has a name, or rather, what is expressed in a language form. Memory, as is known, implies “semantic coding” (L. Vygotsky, 1934; A. R. Luria, 1973, 1975, etc.). And in it language plays an important role. The language is able to help - from the point of view of the individual - memorizing the most important thing in the thing, event, action, etc. For example, the so-called keywords contribute to memorizing, holding and updating values ​​(signs of the language) as meaningful categories and meanings as categories of individual .

Since personal experience is somehow necessary to transfer to others, the role of the language here is also enormous; it can be said that it is decisive.

In order to “remember” something, we often have to reduce information and, as already mentioned, select the most important thing in it. Therefore, we resort to language as one of the means of this type of intellectual activity.

Speech and language provide substantial assistance to sensory memory, in which information is usually held for a short time.

Both in the process of generation and in the perception of speech, we turn to memory - non-linguistic and linguistic. Without a memory of a language — an integral part of language ability, that is, a memory of units, elements of a language, and rules for their use — language, of course, cannot function.

Perhaps the most significant role of memory, and above all linguistic, in the perception and understanding of speech.

Memory is an active and constantly changing mental process. And here the meaning of language and speech (including internal speech) is very significant. First, remembered thoughts, emotions, feelings and other components of the psyche, correlating with language (or actualized in consciousness with its help), can “shrink”, “expand”, modify, integrate or transform. Secondly, with the help of signs of the language, we, as a rule, supplement our knowledge and acquire new ones.

Using language as a sign system, we memorize, preserve and reproduce, firstly, “linguistic meanings”, secondly, images-representations of different modalities, different degrees of generalization, their combinations and relationships, as well as our estimated characteristics of these images and their relationship. At the same time, it should be noted that both the images themselves and their functioning in the activity of the individual may not depend “directly” on the language.

It is clear that images-representations and their relations themselves “provoke”, if necessary, the socially-directed (or individual-need) use of language.

Consider, in particular, how speech (language) is included in the processes of memorization, preservation, reproduction and forgetting.

Memorization to a large extent (as compared with other mnestic processes) depends on the installation. It can be formed or supported only in speech by using signs of the language. For example, we say to ourselves: “This is important!”; “Well, remember!”, “Well, it's nonsense,” “Not worth the attention,” etc.

For memorization, understanding (comprehension) of the memorized is necessary. Speech and language contribute in every way to this memorization process. Thus, by means of language, we often clarify “new” (material, information, knowledge, etc.) or clarify known thoughts, concepts, actions, processes, etc.

Speech (as a language activity) is very widely used in teaching (training and education). Many social and scientific rules, laws, various kinds of texts, etc., are also learned with the help of language.

At the same time, we must understand well that not only and not so much words, sentences or texts are remembered, as the content behind them, which “initially” has not a linguistic, but a figurative form.

According to many well-known psycholinguists (A. R. Luria, A. A. Leontiev, I. N. Gorelov, and others), a person first of all remembers (“selects for memorization”) predicative expressions (for example, “a dog barks” " the grass is green "," it is good ";" two and two are four ", etc.) and only secondarily - the actual words, be they nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. [170] Perhaps this is due to the fact that when learning a language during ontogenesis, children isolate words from predicative expressions and assign (“recreate”) the lexicon with different paradigms (classes) of words.

Language is one of the means of preserving our knowledge (everyday and professional). At the same time, we specify that it is not the language itself that stores our knowledge; they are not stored in language, [171] but in images-representations of human memory; language (through the meaning of language signs, through the linguistic expression of concepts) ensures their preservation.

As mentioned earlier, knowledge is stored in the form of frames, semantic networks and the “semantic mechanism” of prediction. But in the mnemonic processes, the prediction mechanism works constantly. And here the participation of the language is great, because any statement in its content is predicative: “Ah!”, “Near”, “Table” (i.e. “This is the table”), “The table is big”; “Petya runs,” “Evening is coming,” and so on.

At the same time, we need to encode a certain part of our experience in a fairly “rigid” form. And here language also comes to the rescue. Fragments (components) of a person’s life experience turn out to be “welded” to certain signs of the language, with certain linguistic structures. This is especially evident in various kinds of automatism. For example: "The capital of our country is Moscow"; “My name is Vanya”, “Again - twenty-five!”, Etc.

Speech and language are indispensable (and at the same time rather actively) involved in the processes of reproduction. It is known that the reproduction of images of memory is intentional and unintentional; however, most often we resort to the language in the deliberate reproduction of the data of our memory.

Speech (and with the help of its language) in every possible way promotes recall. We call (actualize in inner speech) some parts of the object or its functional properties, it helps to remember the name of the object, and thanks to it the object itself. For example: “There are pans in it, pies are baked in it” - the oven. Remembering, we often begin to reason (make judgments) about things or phenomena, therefore, we also use speech and language.

The role of language increases in cases of so-called undefined recognition. In particular, the language is used in the recognition of objects by their description. This can occur in situations where the object or phenomenon is present, and in situations of their absence.

Language helps the formation ("structurization") of reproducible material. Most of the representations, as a rule, are reproduced not mechanically, but creatively: they are systematized, refined, reconstructed, etc. And here the very linguistic appearance of the speech utterance contributes to the formation of the reproducible — the structural-functional features of the language “include” the reproducible in certain semantic ( conceptual framework. An intellectual “spike” of images and signs occurs. At the same time, an object or a phenomenon changes depending on how we call it, which side (characteristic) we select. For example: the moon - selenium, the land of the dead, the mistress of women , etc .; or: face, face, physiognomy , etc .; laugh, laugh, grin, choke, giggle, etc.

Language (through speech) is not indifferent to the process of forgetting. What is learned, learned only with the help of a language without sufficient reliance on images, a domain-schema code derived from a language, non-language activity, is often forgotten much faster. Of course, insufficient comprehension of the material remembered with the help of a language leads to its rapid forgetting. The reasons for forgetting words, [172] as well as texts (rules, proverbs, poems, etc.) are numerous. This may be, for example, conscious or unconscious repression of some unpleasant or unnecessary for an individual objects, phenomena, events and, accordingly, their names, or their low importance, poor learning of the material, insufficient use of it in various social and everyday experience, “emotional changes , Diseases, age-related changes and much more.

Language corresponds with different types of memory. First of all, language is associated with semantic memory. There is a wide range of concepts closely related to the language, for example: “Twice two — four”, “a triangle is ...”, “Beauty is a blessing”, etc. At the same time, we must not forget that concepts themselves have not only significant but figurative and activity "components".

Language (through speech) is included in the so-called. event memory For example, we state: “The First Patriotic War in Russia was in 1812”, “A.A. Blok was born in St. Petersburg in 1880, ”etc.

Also closely related to language and emotional memory. Often we stencilly express our sthenic and asthenic emotions in linguistic form: “Oh!”, “Ah!”, “Well, well, well!”, “Oh, you are!”, Etc. (the same applies to kinetic and written speech) . Emotional memory manifests itself in linguistic connotations. For example, the word “idiot”, pronounced with different intonation (and in appropriate situations), can mean “mentally deficient” or “my dear lack of tricks” (perhaps, with high intelligence, but something is wrongly understood at the same time).

Of course, a figurative memory of different modalities correlates with language, for example, in cases when we verbally designate images of our sensations and perceptions or language helps to evoke ideas about these images (visual, auditory, tactile, etc.).

Through speech activity language is included in the motor memory. This is evidenced by speech installations and “self-installations” of the “Stop!”, “Forward!”, “Left!”, “Faster!”, “Higher!”, “Harder!”, “Relax!” Etc. types.

As for short-term and long-term memory, the language corresponds with both of them, contributing to the encoding, preservation and retrieval from memory of the corresponding images-representations.

At the same time, in our speech practice we must not forget that long-term memorization (as well as short-term memorization ) can be carried out outside the active use of the language.

If memorization takes place with the participation of the language, then, as a rule, we prefer to memorize larger “units” of information compared to “small” ones. Here a peculiar hierarchy is observed: texts (more precisely, their semantic content) - sentences (their actual meaning) - words; or - words - letter combinations - letters , etc. At the same time, of course, you need to take into account the peculiarities of the situation in which the activity takes place, the purpose of the activity, and other factors that sometimes significantly change this hierarchy.

The memory of the language itself (language memory) appears as a very complex system of interacting operations: semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic. [173]

Special linguistic and psycholinguistic studies have established patterns in the memorization of certain linguistic structures. So, linguistic structures associated with meaningful personal experience (in particular, professional) are much better remembered; more frequency words, phrases and other units; t. n. “Automatism” (ordinal score, listing days of the week, proverbs, etc.); emotional (including abusive) expressions - so-called. "Emotional speech" by definition X. Jackson. Linguistic structures that are in a “favorable” speech (language) context are also remembered more easily (for example, the word “trolleybus” is better remembered within the lexical category “transport”: “tram, trolleybus, bus,” rather than in an isolated position or in “ unfavorable "context, for example, in the variant:" cucumber, trolleybus, shirt. "[174]

It is well known from psychological practice that every person has a selective ability to one or another type of memory. This also applies to language memory. In humans, it can be developed better or worse than other types of memory. In the first case, language material is faster and more extensively learned and actualized , mastering a foreign language is easier and faster, [175] more verbose and diverse associative series of lexemes or word forms are produced in speech utterances, etc.

From the point of view of the needs of speech therapy (special pedagogical) practice, it is necessary to draw the attention of correctional teachers to the following. For better memorization, retention and reproduction of language material, various mnemonic techniques are used. For example, in oral speech it is a reliance on the “semantic core”, i.e., the meaning, the logic of speech, the reliance on images-representations of a particular modality (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, etc.), the inclusion of words sentences and texts in personally significant situations for a person; the use of saturated emotional colors memorized (or the surrounding "background"); selection in the memorized text of keywords , etc.

In writing, for this purpose are used, in particular, various graphic tools. For example, various fonts, underscores, frame text, specific location of the given (most important in terms of meaning) parts of the text in relation to its other parts, etc.

Language memory, like other types of memory, also can and should be trained. There have been cases of phenomenal memorization of large volumes of read texts filed by hearing word series, etc. (A.R. Luria, 1968, R.S. Nemov, 2001, etc.).

Although language (the sign language system) and plays a significant role in the mechanisms of memory, it is only one of the means of its "customization" and implementation. One should not forget that it is practical activity, and not language, that “primarily” determines the memory of an individual (its volume, content and functionality). At the same time, as experience shows, it is rather difficult to remember, hold and reproduce informative material, large in volume and diverse in content, without speaking and without using language.

It should be emphasized that “pure” or relatively “pure” verbal memorization without reliance on an object (in the broad sense of the word) and practical activity sometimes turns out to be insufficient, which, in turn, can lead not only to a “narrowing” of the volume of the memorized material its forgetting, but even to its distortion. [176]

On the discrepancy between linguistic memory (memory that uses language) and non-linguistic memory, many circumstances of human life speak.

Thus, for example, a speech (language) form in which informative material “flows” is usually not mechanically reproduced in memory (with the exception of some special cases: verses, rules , etc.). It follows that there is no direct correspondence between the memory of the content (“semantic”) and the memory of a linguistic form; we first remember the content, not the form. [177]

О расхождении между этими двумя видами памяти свидетельствует также упоминавшийся ранее феномен «висения на кончике языка», когда нам известен предмет или же «понятийное поле», в которое этот предмет входит, но мы забыли его название (ситуация чеховской «Лошадиной фамилии»). О таком расхождении свидетельствуют и случаи речевой патологии – афазии, алалии и других расстройств. Например, ребенок с алалией (с сохранным интеллектом) не может назвать картинку «плащ», но дает следующее развернутое описание: «Чтобы платье не замочилось; ой, все забываю; от дождя прячется» (в предварительном испытании ребенок легко узнавал картинку с плащом).

Summarizing the above, it can be argued that language plays a very important (most likely decisive) role in memory processes, but not only it (“selectively”) determines these processes. Language acts primarily as one of the means for the implementation of mnestic processes.