Psycholinguistics Case Study

2.1 Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics is the scientific discipline of people’s mental mechanism in using language. The purpose of this study is to arrive at logic theory of how language is produced and comprehended (Granham, 1985). Carrol (2008, p. 4) states that psycholinguistics is a psychological study of language. It combines the field of psychology and linguistics. The psychology deals with the brain processes involved in language use. The mental processes consist of language comprehension (ability to extract intended meaning from language), language production (ability to speak and write fluently) and language acquisition (language learning). Meanwhile, linguistic learns the origin, structure and use of language.

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According to Steinberg (1993, p. xi), those parts are first language, language and mind, and second language. First language is concerned with the acquisition of children. Second, language and mind are related to mental grammar and human brain, it is explain how important people’s mind in producing and understanding the language, even interpreting the meaning. Last, second language acquisition is concerned with ability to learn a second language. There are two important factors involved in second language acquisition, which are psychological and the social factors. The psychological factors consist of intellectual processing, memory and motor skills. Meanwhile, social factors deal with types of situation, setting, and interaction which influence the ability of learning a second language.

From explanations above, we can conclude that psycholinguistics is directly related to the relation between language and human mind. When someone try to produce or comprehend a language, the brain will also working to organize our thoughts about what we are going to say and respond to someone else. So, when there is damage in the brain, we cannot produce or comprehend

Sometimes people comprehend or think without producing word in a conversation. According to Harley (n.d., as cited in Harley, 2001, p.374), the processes of speech production fall into three broad area, namely conceptualization, formulation, and encoding. The first stage is conceptualization or message level process. In the process of conceptualization, the speakers comprehend an intention and select relevant information from memory (Harley, 2001, p. 374). This process involves human mind in conceptualizing that speaker wants to say. The second stage is formulation process. It involves translating this conceptual representation into a linguistic form (Harley, 2001, p.374). There are two major components of formulation, lexicalization and syntactic planning. According to Harley (2001, 375), in lexicalization people have to select what they want to say. Meanwhile, in syntactical planning, people have to put each words together to form a sentence. The final stage is encoding. This process involves turning words into sound. The sounds are produced in the correct sequence and specify how the muscles of articulation system should be moved (Harley, 2001,