Language as a Key Aspect of Cognitive Psychology - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages There has always been a number of misconceptions andmisunderstandings between representatives of different languages and cultures. Even more, all the people may sometimes find it difficult to understand certain dialects of their own language. People of different age, speaking one dialect, may sometimes misunderstand each other. In order to avoid these misunderstandings it is necessary to provide precise analysis of language features and levels of its structure and processing. Language is inextricably connected with cognitive processes. Such mental processes as thinking, reasoning, perceiving, attention, remembering, and decision making are being studied by cognitive psychology. Language may influence these mental processes, especially thinking. What a person is saying influences on what he or she is thinking, and vice versa. That is why language may be called one of the key aspects of cognitive psychology. Key words: language, levels of language structure and processing, mental processes, cognitive psychology.

Language as a Key Aspect of Cognitive Psychology It has always been difficult to define such social phenomenon as language. Each definition depends on the chosen approach. According to American Psychological Association, cognitive psychology investigates the way language correlates with consciousness of a person. It studies such mental processes as attention, language use, memory, and others. It is primarily concerned with how the mind creates meaning through language (Croft & Cruse, 2004). Thus, language may be defined as the main tool of communication and cognition. According to the principles of cognitive psychology, language exerts powerful impact over cognitive processes. It is difficult to overestimate the role of cognitive processes – that is what separates humans from animals. Therefore, lexicon of a person may be defined as mental dictionary. It is a wordstock, cataloguing all the words which may be found in a certain language. In other words, lexicon is the vocabulary of a language. It contains representation of words, familiar to people. It also includes the way these words are spelled and pronounced. Lexicon plays a key role in the process of language use. Each language possesses certain features – it is communicative, arbitrary, structured, generative, and dynamic. Its communicative properties enable people to communicate with one another. As far as the second feature is concerned, the correlation between language elements and their meanings is always arbitrary. In addition, this feature is also typical of symbols. The third feature, structure, defines symbol patterns as the non-arbitrary ones. Language structure may illustrate how complex language is. Language is also generative, since a person may use words (basic language units) in order to build an unlimited quantity of meanings. Language is dynamic because it changes on a constant basis. Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, states “it is changing constantly as new words are added and as the rules of grammar (slowly and subtly) change” (2007). There is one more essential feature of language – it is typical of humans only.

Animals possess their own communication systems, but they cannot use language. However, it is proven that some animals may understand human speech. It is possible to continue the list of language features. However, the ones mentioned above are the most crucial. There are four levels of language structure. Correspondingly, there are four levels of language processing. The first level is phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit or a sound used by people to form words. Although a phoneme does not have its own meaning, it may influence upon meanings of words. It would be a mistake to compare phonemes to alphabet letters, since these are individual sounds of speech. It is possible to find approximately 200 phonemes in all the world languages (there are 46 phonemes in English). The way each phoneme is produced depends on an individual (their age, sex, accent, and so on). That is why phonemes are sometimes also difficult to perceive. According to Willingham, these 46 English phonemes “are combined in various ways to produce all of the approximately 600,000 words in the English language” (2007). Thus, words are the second level of language structure. Each language has its own rules, defining how phonemes may be combined. Word may be defined as a language unit, composed by one or more morphemes. A language would not exist without words, since a word is the main carriers of a meaning. Words are used together in order to arrange sentences – grammatical units which enable individuals to construct their thoughts while speaking or writing. Sentences are usually used in order to express certain requests, statements, question, command, and so on. In the process of speech sentences are often preceded and followed by pauses. Phonemes exert influence over the way words are composed, while word order is usually crucial for sentence meaning. The group of sentences, connected together, may be called a text. Thus, the fourth level of language structure is texts. Sentences within one text are supposed to be logically connected, since one of the functions of a text is to help people share certain ideas. Thus, phonemes, words, sentences, and texts are the four levels of language structure and processing. Language units of each language level are used as a building material for the hierarchically higher one.

Phonemes are used in order to build words. Words make up sentences, while sentences are used to compose texts. Each text communicates certain ideas. All the language units are supposed to be composed and understood according to the rules of a certain language. It is very important to understand phonemes and words, the first language levels. Unless a person does it, he or she will not be able to understand and speak language at all. Cognitive psychology, the study of mental processes, analyses the way language is processed. Attention of cognitive psychology is focused on such mental processes as thinking, perception, remembering, learning, decision making, etc. Mental processes enable people to understand and use languages – it would be impossible without them. Those who fail to understand how the language structure works are unable to use language for communication. The way a person thinks, reasons, and makes decisions is individual. Successful communication between people depends on how similar their language concepts are. If a person’s pronunciation is incorrect, it is difficult for others to understand what this person is saying. If a person misunderstands the semantics of a language, he or she fails to communicate their thoughts and ideas. At the same time, an ability to understand the context of a foreign language and culture means that a person grows mentally. It is worthy to mention that language is also regarded to be developmentally special – “Language is developmentally special for instance because children can learn it differently from learning any other skills” (Willingham, 2007).

People are capable to start learning language from quite an early age. Stages of language development are similar worldwide. Even more, children tend to make the same mistake while learning languages. New words enrich almost all the languages every day. New levels of understanding become available for a person as his or her mind evolves. These processes are interdependent, since people acquire new experiences which are supposed to be expressed. Thus, language is used as a tool which helps people make their inner world visible to others. That is why cognitive psychology and language are so dependent on one another. The progress in cognitive psychology may help people realize all the benefits they may receive if they manage to understand languages. Thus, language may be called a cognitive process which separates humans from animals. Language possesses one more specific feature – it may influence cognitive processes, especially the way a person thinks. Language does not only influence thoughts, it predetermines them. What an individual says provokes different thoughts in their mind. At the same time, what a person thinks affects what they may say. Thus, language and thoughts are definitely intertwisted. That is one more reason why language may be regarded a crucial aspect of cognitive psychology. The way language is processed may be understood in terms of cognitive psychology only. ...Download file to see next pages Read More