Psycholinguistics Essays (Examples)

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Essay
Psycholinguistics an Analysis of the
Pages: 8 Words: 2316

Likewise, Grenfell and Harris report that some studies have suggested that language is acquired through a universal natural order wherein language acquisition follows an identifiable sequence in the stages through which learners pass to achieve competence.
According to Levy and Schaeffer (2003), though, "It is a truism of research in developmental psycholinguistics that children's behavior looks quite different in different languages. Of course, it is expected that different developing languages will exhibit properties that are different simply because the languages themselves differ. But the errors look different too" (36). These authors emphasize that this general problem in the field has been the source of concern for some time now and the issue of why children make different types of errors in different languages remains unclear as well. For instance, Levy and Schaeffer ask, "hy should children subject to universal principles make a different kind of error, even when the error…...

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Works Cited

Aitchison, Jean. The Articulate Mammal: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London: Routledge, 1998.

Carpenter, Patricia A., Marcel Adam Just and Akira Miyake. (1995). "Language Comprehension: Sentence and Discourse Processing." Annual Review of Psychology 46, 91.

Danks, Joseph H. And Sam Glucksberg. Experimental Psycholinguistics: An Introduction.

Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1975.

Essay
Psycholinguistics Techniques and Strategies Psycholinguistics
Pages: 2 Words: 498


One of the strategies used by psycholinguists is focusing on sentence construction. This is also called statement analysis. This is where potential suspects are interviewed and their language use during the interview is later analyzed using a technique to see if they had been less than truthful. (Adams, 1996)

Workplace violence is another area which can get enormous help from the use of psycholinguists. Law enforcement officers often ask colleagues of a violent employee if the accused had ever used threatening language before committing an act of violence. In most cases, it has been discovered that violence in the workplace is not a sudden eruption. It takes place over a period of time as disgruntled employees get angrier every day and it finally culminates in a serious act of violence. But before the act occurs, the employee's language can provide sufficient clues to possible mental disturbance. The employee would say something…...

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Reference

Susan H. Adams, "Statement Analysis: What Do Suspects' Words Really Reveal?" FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, October 1996, 12-20.

Essay
Psycholinguistics and Threat Prediction Analyzing
Pages: 4 Words: 1160


Certainly, an incarceration, simple arrest, questioning, or data gathering on individuals such as wire taps would produce a plethora of data that could be used the statistical analysis of potential, real, or existing threats. Some individuals are under surveillance or incarceration for extended periods of time (such as gang leaders, Mafiosi, etc.) and would provide a huge quantity of analyzable data that could be fed to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCVAC) at Quantico, Virginia. Such data storage and analysis facilities feed data to law enforcement agencies such as the FI. The ureau is a major researcher into and user of psycholinguistic analysis and products. While much of law enforcement's criminal investigative analysis was designed for and works best in investigations of serial criminal acts (rapes, homicides, or arsons), a more systematic and scientific methodology of data analysis would allow more specific profiling in the case…...

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Before we go further, some more practical examples for theoretical examples will illustrate practical applications of threat analysis of speech and written communications. For instance, lexical Features, phonological features and syntactic features all figure very largely in police bomb threat analysis. In an article by Robert F. Tunkel, he cites an example of a bomb threat to a high school pep rally:

Studying the language of the threat plays a critical role in the second avenue of analysis, looking for evidence of commitment to the threat by the threatener. Statement analysis involves studying a subject's language, verbal or written, to detect indicators of deception; uncover hidden, disguised meanings or motivations; or discover areas of sensitivity to the subject. The use of first person active tense and unequivocal language signals a good indicator of commitment.The statement, "At the next pep rally, I will throw a homemade pipe bomb filled with black powder after I light the fuse," would carry more weight than "An upcoming pep rally may be disrupted by our group carrying some high explosives, like gunpowder." In the latter example, the subject uses the passive tense "be disrupted" and equivocation in the statement through the qualifiers "may" and "some." This language suggests a lack of commitment on the subject's part (Tunkel, 2002, p. 6).

Threat simulation theory plays a large role in law enforcement threat assessment of a potential criminal. In the Smith and Shuy article cited above "The exact words in spoken or

Essay
Education Psycholinguistics
Pages: 5 Words: 1661

Psycholinguistics gives a comprehensive and viable understanding of human language development. The most famous psycholinguist theorist, Noam Chomsky, has argued convincingly that human children develop language abilities according to a predetermined universal deep structure or grammar. The psycholinguistic approach provides invaluable tools for teaching children to read, write, and speak.
The development of language in the human child is certainly one the most astounding and impressive human accomplishments. A child must learn over ten new words each day, from the time they start speaking, in order to reach the average six-year-old vocabulary of 14,000 words (McConnell). Language allows humans to think and reason, and communicate with each other. It is an absolutely essential skill, not only in the complete development of the individual, but for the survival of the human species as a whole.

Psycholinguistics simply deals with the mental aspects of language acquisition, storage, production and comprehension. It has roots in…...

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Works Cited

Kess, Joseph F. (1992) Psycholinguistics: psychology, linguistics, and the study of natural language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Kolb, Bryan and Whishaw, I.Q. (1985).

Fundamentals of human neuropsychology, 2nd ed. New York: Freeman.

McConnell, James V. Understanding Human Behavior, 6th ed. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

Essay
Criminals Language From a Psycholinguistics Point-Of-View
Pages: 7 Words: 2000

Criminal Psycholinguistics as a Predictor and/or Indicator of Criminality (rewritten for grammar)
Language is used differently. Humans use it in many forms and in many means. As it represents someone's character, language helps everyone to perceive what kind of profile a person has. Thus, this brought the researcher to explore the psycholinguistics of criminals.

In this thesis, the researcher will focus mainly on the collective study in determining a criminal based on the language he is using, mainly in verbal form. This means that this study aims to see results of the verbal psycholinguistics or the speech of a suspected criminal.

The study will answer research questions regarding how criminals speak; how criminals use techniques in concealing their profiles; how criminals operate through telephone conversations; how criminals manage upon being caught and how criminals answer questions in police interrogations.

There have been studies that explain the generality of criminals by which leads the intelligence…...

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Works Cited

Bilz, Kenworthey. "Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice."

Journal of Criminal. Law and Criminology 96.1 (2005): 367+.

Qu€estia. Web. 16 Apr. 2010.

Casey-Owens, M. (1984). The anonymous letter-writer - a psychological profile? Journal of Forensic Sciences. 29. 816-819.

Essay
Psycholinguistic Tools for Analyzing Advertising Text
Pages: 5 Words: 1480

advert employed psycholinguistics in its aim to manipulate readers to buy the product. The 'Fairy Soap' advertisement was used and investigated for the use of concrete imagery -- a strategy of psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics says that concrete imagery not only forges associations but also makes imagery more vivid and helps reader comprehend and faster remember words. Analysis of the advert in terms of the concrete imagery used showed that all applied. Discussion sums up result and concludes that that readers can be more readily manipulated into buying the product -- unless they were aware that they are being deliberately manipulated by people who know how to make words sound psychologically appealing.
The Concrete Appeal of Soap

None of us wish to be manipulated, but unfortunately, advertisements -- the world of marketing -- uses techniques that indiscernibly manipulates us and influences us in certain way. People tend to think that is only certain…...

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References

SEMIOTICS AND IDEOLOGY

 http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcformalism.htm 

Larry Percy (1982), "Psycholinguistic Guidelines For Advertising Copy," in Advances in Consumer Research Volume 09, eds. Andrew Mitchell, Advances in Consumer Research Volume 09: Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 107-111

A Pictorial History of Fairy Soap Advertising

Essay
Pedagogic Grammar Written and Spoken
Pages: 13 Words: 3597

e. cursing, swearing) and not using discriminatory language or language that is "racist, sexist, ageist" (Caldwell, 2004) or so forth. The concept of 'communicative competence" (Caldwell, 2004) is described as grammar that "relates to the nature of language teaching" in an approach." (Caldwell, 2004) that is fairly universally advocated in L2 teaching." (Caldwell, 2004) the mistakes that are made may either be in "form" due to lack of knowledge or through use of irregular past tense forms implying that grammar should be descriptive or mistakes in 'use" or knowing when the present perfect or the simple past tense should be used implying that grammar should be descriptive.
It is suggested by Tomlin (1994, pp. 141-42) that teaching communicative language in inclusive of (1) systematic attention to functional and structural aspects; (2) Situational and contextualized use of language in class; (3) Teaching and Learning being made transparent through representational support; (4) Focus…...

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References

DeRolf, Judith D. (1995) English Communication Through Practical Experiences Kanto Gakuin Univeristy, Yokohama Japan 1995 March No. 24.

Brotoluzzi, Maria (2005) Blurring the Boundary Between Spoken and Written Language in EFL. Online available at http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Bortoluzzi-Boundary.htm.

Chou, Yen-Lin (nd) Promoting Learner's Speaking Ability by Socioaffective Strategies. Online available at  http://iteslj.org/Articles/Chou-Socioaffective.html .

Greenbaum, S. (1996) the Oxford English Grammar, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Essay
Chomsky Pinker vs Whorf's model
Pages: 4 Words: 1172

The Pinker vs. Sapir-Whorf debate is central to the study of linguistics and related areas like psycholinguistics and cognitive science. Most linguists can at least agree that humans have a “unique language capacity,” (Levinson 25). Yet the innate capacity to learn language is where the similarities between Pinker and Whorf end. Whereas Whorf radically transformed both cognitive science and linguistics by using empirical evidence to show how language shapes thought, Pinker has also been influential with a nativist, modular, and nativist understanding of human language development. Both theories have their strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis remains far more compelling, more substantiated by empirical evidence, and also more able to explain some of the complexities of language and culture. Even though children are not born speaking in full sentences, all children have the capacity for language development, the potential to learn verbal and written means of communication as well…...

Essay
Embedded Words There Have Been
Pages: 7 Words: 1901

90, pp 51-89
In this particular study, Salvarder studied the eye movements of a number of participants while they heard sentences and saw four pictured objects on a computer screen. The study concluded that, "our major finding, however, is that listeners can use the subphonemic acoustic cues often associated with the production of monosyllabic words, such as segmental lengthening, to bias their lexical interpretation of an utterance." (Salvarder 2003-page 82).

orks Cited

Andrews, Sally, Davis Colin, (1999) Interactive Activation Accounts of Morphological Decomposition: Finding the Trap in Mousetrap?, Brain and Language, Vol. 68, pp. 355-361

Bowers, Jeffrey S., Davis, Collin J. And Hanley, Derek a., (2004) Automatic Semantic Activation of Embedded ords: Is there a hat in that?, Journal of Memory and Language, Vol. 52, pp 131-143.

Culter, Anne, (1992) Phonological Cues to Open and Closed-Class ords in the Processing of Spoken Sentences, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Vol. 22, Issue 2, pp. 109-131

Cutler, Anne,…...

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Works Cited

Dumay, Nicolas, Content, Alain, and Frauenfelder, Uli H., Acoustic - Phoentic Cues to Word Boundary Location: Evidence From Word Spotting

Gow, David Jr., Gordon, Peter C., (1995) Lexical and Pre-lexical Influences on Word Segmentation: Evidence from Priming, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Vol. 21, Issue 2, pp. 344 -359

Isel, Frederic, Bacri, Nicole, (1999) Spoken-Word Recognition: the Access to Embedded Words, Brain and Language, Vol. 68, pp. 61-67

Norris, Dennis, Cutler, Anne, McQueen, James M. And Butterfield, Sally (2006) Phonological and Conceptual Activation in Speech Comprehension, Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 53, pp. 146-193

Essay
Threatening Language and Its Link
Pages: 3 Words: 963

For example law enforcement has been using what is called psycholinguistic theories to figure out levels of escalation and to determine criminal intent. Many theories exist and as we mentioned in our paper, there is a theory where sentence construction is carefully studied and analyzed to see how is meant by the threat. This is done with comparison to past communication between the aggressor and the target and other examples available in separate cases. For example if there exist four letters by the aggressor sent on various dates, law enforcement will study the language used in all four to see how and if the conflict has been escalating or if there is a sign of de-escalation. In a very recent case in Florida, a teenager sent threatening text messages to his former girlfriend' friend before coming to her school and almost beating her to death with spiked steel shoes.…...

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Ratley tells Treacy he's to blame for her comment because of his remark about her father, who she claims is dead. Treacy says, "See, I didn't know ur father was dead. u knowingly took a shot at my deceased brother. Today, you die, [deletion]!" ]

These are the cases where law enforcement used psycholinguistics to determine criminal intent and premeditation involved. They found that text messages escalates into violence but no premeditated intent was involved and the teenager simply snapped because he was deeply disturbed by the suicide incident of his brother last year.

 http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37312533/ns/today-today_people/

Essay
Cultural Intonation Cultural Differences in
Pages: 12 Words: 3430

2009). Othe studies had peviously concluded that English infants developed a pefeence fo tochaic wods, the dominant stess constuct of English wods, ove iambic stess pattens within the fist yea of life (Hohle et al. 2009). A compaison of Geman and Fecnh infants in fou distinct expeiments confims and even naows down the timefame in which this diffeentiation of pefeence occus, and also shows (though the Fench language expeiments) that the ability to distinguish the two opposing stess pattens does not necessaily esult in the development of pefeence, if the taget language itself lacks a dominant stess stuctue (Hohle et al. 2009). Even at six months, a specific language begins to mediate peception.
An ealie study suggests that the timing of stess and intonation pefeence development is even soone than six months. While citing evidence suggesting that language-independent phonetic contasts and melodic vaiations ae ecognized within the fist fou months…...

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references during the first half year of life: Evidence from German and French infants." Infant behavior and development 32(3), pp. 262-74.

Laroche, M.; Pons, F. & Richard, M. (2009). "The role of language in ethnic identity measurement: A multitrait-multimethod approach to construct validation." Journal of social psychology 149(4), pp. 513-40.

Nguyen, T.; Ingrahm, C. & Pensalfini, J. (2008). "Prosodic transfer in Vietnamese acquisition of English contrastive stress patterns." Journal of phonetics 36(1), pp. 158.

Turk, a. & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2007). "Multiple targets of phrase-final lengthening in American English words." Journal of phonetics 35(4), pp. 445-72.

Wyatt, J. (2007). "Skinner 1, Chomsky 0." Behavior analysis digest 19(4), pp. 13-4.

Essay
Language Impairment Phonological Memory Deficits
Pages: 5 Words: 1733

The focus of academics continues to focus on finding a cause and on developing reliable interventions for children suffering from this condition. It is important to begin intervention as early as possible so that incorrect speech patterns do not become ingrained. In addition, it is important to make certain that other learning complications do not develop as a result of SLI.
The research conducted by ice, Wexler, & Cleave (1995) helped to draw attention to SLI as being different from other language deficiencies. Their work helped to identify and define SLI as its own subset of language delay symptoms. This important step led the way for research that explored causality and intervention. SLI is typically associated with deficiencies in verbal skills. However, research into non-verbal skills was also suggested by these and other study results. This avenue will help to further define and distinguish SLI from other language delays.

eferences

Bishop, D.,…...

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References

Bishop, D., Bright, P. & James, C. et al. (2000). Grammatical SLI: a distinct subtype of developmental language impairment? Applied Psycholinguistics. 21-92): 159-181.

O'Brien, E., Zhang, X., & Nishimura, C. et al. (2003). Association of specific language impairment (SLI) to the region of 7q31. American Journal of Human Genetics. 72 (6): 1536-1543.

Rice, M., Wexler, K., & Cleave, P. (1995). Specific Language Impairment as a Period of Extended Optional Infinitive. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. 38: 850-863.

Sajanrimi, N., Suhonen, E., & Kontu, E. (2008). Verbal and non-verbal development in SLI children after early intervention. Early Child Development and Care. 02 May 2008. Abstract.

Essay
Scientific Theory in Scientific Investigation
Pages: 8 Words: 2513

Once again, time is an indicator. When a significant amount of evidence for a theory is readily available, the theory tends to be older and concomitantly more accepted by the scientific community. If there are significant gaps in the evidence, the theory can benefit from further investigation.
The same is true of the complexity level of the theory is not very high. More components can then be added by further investigation.

A theory can also be evaluated according to its ability to serve as an indicator of future phenomena. This makes a theory applicable to further scientific investigation, and furthermore also allow for further development in the theory itself. If the theory is for example a consistently accurate predictor of future events or phenomena, it can be viewed as valid. If it however proves inaccurate in one or some of its predictions, further evidence and modifications will be necessary.

Furthermore, theories can…...

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Sources

BBC. Science and Nature: What is psychology? Oct, 2008.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/psychology/what_is_psychology.shtml 

Carter, J. Stein. The Scientific Method. Nov. 4, 2004. http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Courses/bio104/sci_meth.htm

Theory Evaluation. 2008.  http://arti.vub.ac.be/memos/AI-Memo-93-07/subsubsectionstar4_2_3.html 

Wilson, Jerry. Scientific Laws, Hypotheses, and Theories. 2007.  http://www.wilstar.com/theories.htm

Essay
Slips if IT's Not One
Pages: 15 Words: 5007

(apaport 1942: 149)
It is important here to have some framework with which to discuss parapraxes

Aitchison, as a psycholinguist blends both the disciplines of psychology and linguistics to give a more balanced view overall. She proposes first two broad definitions for type of parapraxis. (1998: 244) the first is when a wrong item or word is unintentionally chosen, these are generally referred to as slips of the tongue and an example would be, "Did you remember to buy some toothache?" eplacing the word toothpaste, which was intended, with toothache, which was unintended. She also refers to these more properly as slips of the brain. Secondly there is a classification of errors that are due to the faulty assemblages of the language within the statement. The word choice is usually correct but the grammatical assemblage of the statement is not. Here is an example she uses of this:, "Someone's been writening…...

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References

Aitchison, Jean. 1998. The Articulate Mammal: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London: Routledge.

Bear, Gordon. 1992. 'A Freudian Slip?.' Teaching of Psychology 19:174-175.

Coles, Robert (2000) Darwin, freud, and adam phillips. Raritan 19 (4), p1

De Chumaceiro, Cora L. D'az. 1997. 'Serendipity and Its Analogues in Runco's Problem Finding, Problem Solving, and Creativity.' Creativity Research Journal 10:87-89.

Essay
Ape Speech Research Has Been
Pages: 18 Words: 5500


Another theorist with a different view is Chomsky (1988). Chomsky sees the acquisition of language as a process of input-output, what he calls a Cartesian view of language acquisition and language structure. He states: "We have an organism of which we know nothing. We know, or we can discover, what kind of data is available to it, and the first question we must try to answer is: what kind of mental structure does the organism develop when that evidence is presented to it?" (Chomsky, 1988, p. 102). Once we find an answer to this question, we can ask what sorts of processes have intervened leading form the data available to the knowledge that resulted. Chomsky explains:

The input-output situation is this: a child who initially does not have knowledge of a language constructs for himself knowledge of a language on the basis of a certain amount of data; the input is…...

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References

Aitchison, J. (1998). The articulate mammal: An introduction to psycholinguistics. London:Routledge.

Appel, A. (2005) 'Dinner conversation' proof of ape speech? National Geographic News.

Brown, G. (1958). Words and things. New York: The Free Press.

Brain circuitry involved in language reveals differences in man, non-human primates (2001, September 5). Science Daily. Retrieved December 12, 2006 at  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/09/010905071926.html .

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