1. The subject of psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics is a science that studies the psychological and linguistic aspects of human speech activity, the social and psychological aspects of using language in the processes of speech communication and individual speech-thinking activity.

The subject of the study of psycholinguistics (PL) is primarily speech activity as a specifically human type of activity, its psychological content, structure, types (methods) in which it is carried out, forms in which it is implemented, functions performed by it. As the founder of the national school of psycholinguistics, A.A. Leontiev, "the subject of psycholinguistics is speech activity as a whole and the laws of its integrated modeling" (120, p. ON).

Another major subject of study in psycholinguistics is language as the main means of speech and individual speech and thought activity, the function of the basic signs of language in the processes of speech communication. “In psycholinguistics, the focus is constantly on the relationship between the content, motive and form of speech activity and between the structure and elements of the language used in the utterance” (PO, p. 16).

Finally, another main subject of the PL study is human speech, regarded as a way to implement speech activity (speech as the psychophysiological process of generating and perceiving speech statements; various types and forms of speech communication). [2]

The presence of not one but several subjects of the PL study is due to the specifics of this field of scientific knowledge, the fact that psycholinguistics is a “synthetic”, complex science that emerged from a unique and unique association, a partial merger of the two oldest sciences of human civilization - psychology and the science of language (linguistics).

The selection of the psychophysiological process of speech generation and perception as the main and independent subject of submarines is found in the works of a number of domestic and foreign researchers, and this approach was most thoroughly substantiated in the works of I.A. Zimnyaya (1984, 2001, etc.).

In one of his recent works, A.A. Leontyev points out that the goal of psycholinguistics is “to consider the peculiarities of the work of the mechanisms for generating and perceiving speech in connection with the functions of speech activity in society and with the development of personality” (132, p. 298). In this regard, the subject of the submarine "is the structure of the processes of speech production and speech perception in their relationship with the structure of the language" (131, p. 144). In turn, psycholinguistic studies are aimed at analyzing a person’s linguistic ability in relation to speech activity, on the one hand, and to the language system, on the other (120, 133, etc.).

There is still no one generally accepted definition of the subject of psycholinguistics research in domestic and foreign science; in different directions and schools of psycholinguistics it is defined differently. At the same time, some Russian researchers and many high school teachers use the generalized definition of the subject of psycholinguistics, proposed by AA Leontiev: “The subject of psycholinguistics is the relationship of personality with the structure and functions of speech activity, on the one hand, and the language as the main“ forming ”image of the human world - with the other ” (133, p. 19).

The object of the study of psycholinguistics are: a person as a subject of speech activity and a native speaker, the process of communication, communication in human society (the main means of which speech activity acts), as well as the processes of formation of speech and mastering of language in nogens (during individual human development). As indicated by A.A. Leontiev, “the object of psycholinguistics is always a set of speech events or speech situations. This object is common to it with linguistics and other “speech-speaking” sciences ”(133, p. 16). In this case, the most important object of the study of the DP is the subject of speech activity - a person who uses this activity to master the surrounding reality (ideal and material).

The methods of research in psycholinguistics, as well as the methods of other speech sciences, can be divided into three large groups: general methodology; special (i.e., specifically scientific) methodology; special (specifically scientific) research methods.

A common methodology is philosophy, understood as a world view, as a kind of common way of movement of thought to scientific truth and, accordingly, as a common "style of thinking". [3] Each researcher in any field of scientific knowledge must choose one or another philosophical concept (materialistic or idealistic; mechanistic or dialectical; sensationalistic, pragmatic, positivistic, personalistic, etc.). The authors of this manual sought to consider the scientific facts of psycholinguistics in the structure of dialectical philosophy. This, in particular, is expressed in the fact that speech activity is considered taking into account its diverse and changing internal connections (for example, the diverse connections of all operations of speech activity - semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic - all levels of speech generation and perception) and external relations, i.e., connections of speech activity with the social, speech and non-speech environment, etc. At the same time, we proceeded from the fact that philosophy (the system of views, m Ivea vision itself does not directly reveal the facts (and laws) of a particular science, in our case psycholinguistics, but in a certain way moves towards this.

The special methodology consists of the laws of science, its theory, hypotheses, scientific concepts, axioms and concepts, methodological principles, etc.

Consider the basic principles of psycholinguistics.

The first principle (or the leading conceptual position), on which psycholinguistics is based, is the organic connection between speech activity and non-speech activity; conditionality (determinism) of the first type of activity by the needs and goals of life and activity (primarily social) of a person and human society as a whole.

Place of speech activity in the system of human activity

The second fundamental methodological principle of psycholinguistics is the recognition as a complex functional organization of speech activity as its main feature.

Speech is a functional system, i.e., purposeful, aimed at achieving a certain result. [4] This system is diverse and unstable. It (on a temporary and permanent basis) combines certain characteristics of its operations (semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic) to achieve the specific goal of a particular (verbal or non-verbal) activity that is performed in specific situation of speech communication (7). The nature of these temporary associations depends on a lot of external and internal conditions: on the nature and goals of the activity, the situation in which the activity takes place, on the personality of the speaker (perceiver), his knowledge of culture (in the broad sense of the word), on language context, etc. For example, in some cases we use oral speech, and in others - written; in different situations of speech communication we speak extensively or extremely succinctly (“collapsed”), use a literary language or “slang” version (for example, youth, professional), etc. Thus, the content (meaning, meaning) and form of speech activity in largely determined by non-speech activities and the conditions in which non-speech and speech activities are performed.

PC. Anokhin, an eminent domestic physiologist, philosopher, and psychologist, proposed a universal scheme of a functional system (with the release of the structural-forming "blocks"):

Universal scheme of activity as a functional system (according to P. K. Anokhin)

The third principle is the integrity of speech activity.

It finds its expression in the combination of all or a number of forms (and subforms) of speech in speech processes. Integrity of speech activity is also manifested in the mandatory interaction of all its constituent operations (semantic, syntactic, lexical, morphological, morpho-syntactic, phonemic and phonetic), all stages and levels of the speech process. In other words, a variety of horizontal and vertical, direct and feedback links “permeate” the processes of speech generation and perception, the entire internal structure of the language as the main means of speech activity.

The fourth principle is the determining meaning of the “semantics of speech”: conditionality, “subordination” of all components of speech activity to the meaning and meaning of the products and results of this activity. Speech activity is aimed at extracting (at speech perception) or creating and transmitting (at speech generation) the meanings of signs of a language (i.e., generally significant contents) and meanings (personal, individual meanings).

The fifth principle is the inextricable connection between speech activity and personality.

This connection is diverse, complex and rather ambiguous. When characterizing it, it is necessary to take into account which level of organization of the individual (the so-called “highest” - worldview, ideals, social orientation, etc.; “medium” - character, features of mental processes, etc., “lower” - emotions, temperament, etc.) and what component of this level come into contact with a certain component of speech (for example, lexical, phonetic, etc.). Therefore, some components of a particular level of personality can be correlated with some components of speech, while others are not.

Let us pay attention to only one characteristic of personality, which is extremely important for understanding speech activity, is its activity. Both the process of speech generation and the process of its perception can take place and acquire corresponding characteristics only with (mental, intellectual) personality activity. For example, the degree of activity (involvement) of a person in the process of perception largely determines the completeness and depth of perception. At the same time, to the incoming message, the listener actively puts forward hypotheses relating to all semantic and linguistic operations - semantic, syntactic, lexical, etc., and only under this condition, i.e., the active production of “speech” operations, does the process of perception proceed in a normative option. Otherwise, it is simply absent or becomes “reduced”.

The sixth principle is genetic. It, in particular, is manifested in the fact that at different age periods a person masters various forms of speech (first oral and “kinetic”, then written) and various operations of speech activity (first “primitive”, then complex), whose characteristics vary in the course of a person’s life (cf. a one-year-old and three-year-old child who has already formed the main “core” of the language system; the speech of a teenager and an adult, etc.). Of course, the principle of development (dynamics) is realized in the processes of speech generation and perception formed in ontogenesis.

Research methods.

There are 4 groups of research methods used in psycholinguistics: organizational, empirical, processing, and interpretative. [5]

Using the methods of the first group, a psycholinguistic study of the laws governing the formation and implementation of speech activity is organized. These include:

(a) Comparative method, the essence of which is to compare different groups of subjects or different (but "compatible") sides of speech activity. For example, groups of people are compared with the norm and pathology of speech (aphasia, alalia, dysarthria, dysgraphia, etc.). [6] The method is very popular, and with its help a lot of valuable information about the processes of generation and perception of speech was obtained. [7] For example, the study of aphasia allowed us to talk about speech as a multi-step and multi-process (F. Gall - the beginning of the XIX century., X. Jackson - the 60-80s. XIX century., A. Kussmaul - 70-90s. XIX v., A. Peak - the beginning of the XX century, etc.), on the functional nature of speech and the existence of different levels of its organization (X. Jackson), on the reality and autonomy of various operations in the speech process, in particular, semantic, syntactic, lexical operations and others. [8]

Groups of subjects of a different kind can be compared: for example, children and adults, “carriers” of different languages, people who have mastered and have not yet mastered literacy, etc.

The comparative method also includes “cross-section” cuts. In this case, any phenomenon is investigated in individuals of different ages. For example, the ability to make detailed coherent statements in children of two and a half, three and three and a half years; or especially the writing of students in the first and second half of the year, etc. The comparative method was brilliantly applied by LS Vygotsky to study the patterns of formation of external "egocentric" and internal speech during the ontogenetic development of the child.

(b) Longitudinal (longitudinal) method. [9] These are “longitudinal”, as a rule, long-term observations of the development of a particular component of speech activity in a certain person or group of persons. Most often, the longitudinal method is used in studies of language learning by children. [10]

(c) Complex method is interdisciplinary research. An example is the study of the process of memorizing sentences of various structures in different conditions of speech perception (in the presence of some psychological “noise”, “interference” and under normal conditions) in combination with EEG and myography.

Empirical methods include:

- Objective observation. Thus, the study of reservations, "tricks", "mispieces" or "stonecrop" allows to reveal many specific properties of speech processes, as well as cases of speech behavior of the subjects that are of interest to researchers. In particular, using this method, it was found that the program for constructing speech statements is usually not built "elementwise", but in whole large "blocks", since in the above errors the subsequent elements often take the place of the preceding ones. For example: “Tomatoes should be washed washed” (next: “is”); or “Juice was tasty, sour” (right: “tasty”).

- Self - observation. As an example, A. Einstein’s well-known observation of the process of his theoretical thinking, in which, according to the scientist, there are no words; words are hardly searched for by him to describe an already completed thought process. [11]

Conversation, questionnaires, questionnaires, tests, and a number of others also belong to empirical methods. [12]

- Experiment. These include various types of laboratory, natural, psychological, pedagogical and other experiments. For example, a well-known experiment that showed the important role of attitudes in speech perception. Different groups of subjects were asked to listen to the same tape-recorded, inarticulate utterances and non-verbal noises. The subjects had to decipher these noisy records, that is, to determine the content of the speech (although there was no content in the records). One subject, before listening, said that a priest’s (pastor’s) sermon was recorded, another что that the coach’s instructions were written to basketball players during the half-time match, etc. It turned out that, despite the sameness and meaninglessness of the recording, the subjects deciphered it and decoded it fully with this “semantic” installation (129, 317).

- Processing methods . This is a variety of statistical methods, a method of describing the research data obtained.

Interpretation methods occupy a special place in psycholinguistics (in particular, due to the insufficient development of experimental research methods).

A scientific fact, taken by itself, not included in a certain system of knowledge (scientific hypothesis, theory), means little. For example, if we have established that the phrase “Cat catches a mouse” consists of a sequence of phonemes / k // o // t // l // o // v '// i // t // m // m bi // s /, this does not mean that the listener’s perception (recognition) of this phrase (as well as all others) is ponephonic. In fact, it is built in a fundamentally different way: large segments of speech (words and whole phrases) are distinguished in the perceived audio stream, all language operations are involved in the perception process - syntactic, lexical, morphological, morphological-syntactic, phonematic and phonetic), various pragmatic factors ( knowledge, attitudes to speech perception, etc.), as well as heuristic operations (prediction of possible fragments of a phrase or of the entire speech statement as a whole).I would like to once again draw attention to the fundamental principle of scientific research: in order to correctly interpret and understand certain facts, they must be considered in the system of scientific ideas. The choice of a conceptual system of scientific views in psycholinguistics is often still a personal choice of the researcher.

The connections of psycholinguistics (as theories of speech activity) with other sciences are diverse, since speech activity is directly connected with all types of non-speech activity of a person, and a person, like his diverse and many-sided activity, is an object of very many sciences. Note the most significant and often carried out in practice communication. Psycholinguistics "organically" is inextricably linked:

• with a philosophy that contributes to the general direction of research;

• с психологией (общей, возрастной, социальной, специальной психологией и многими другими ее областями). Без данных практической психологии психолингвистика, как считают некоторые исследователи (А.А. Леонтьев, Л.В. Сахарный, PM Фрумкина и др.), не может быть достаточно состоятельной наукой;

• с лингвистикой (общим языкознанием, философией языка, грамматикой определенного языка, социолингвистикой, этнолингвистикой и др. разделами лингвистики).

• с семиотикой – наукой о знаках языка и их значении (интересующий нас язык как средство осуществления РД как раз и представляет собой целостную знаковую систему);

• с логикой (при этом исследователь проблем психолингвистики чаще всего сам избирает для себя ту или иную логику проведения научного исследования);

• с социологией. Здесь следует упомянуть, в частности, изучение в рамках психолингвистики очень значимых для личности отношений: речевая деятельность – разные уровни социализации личности (персональный, групповой, глобальный и др.);

• с медициной, преимущественно с неврологией, которая немало способствовала изучению патологии и норм речи, а также с психиатрией, оториноларингологией и рядом других медицинских наук, с логопатологией, логопедией и другими науками логопатологического круга, поставляющими много ценных данных для понимания процессов порождения и восприятия речи;

• с некоторыми техническими науками (в частности, с теми, которые делают возможным аппаратное и компьютерное обеспечение исследований речевой деятельности и языковых знаков); с акустикой и психоакустикой и др.