This comprehensive textbook brings together diverse themes on the psychology of language in an accessible and integrated way. Rather than covering only the formal-structural aspects of language, Michael A Forrester provides a broad view of the study of language across various perspectives, focusing throughout on interesting relationships between language and human psychological processes.
Psychology of Language provides a clear introduction to key topics from language structure and processing, semantics and cognitive science, to conversation analysis, reading and writing, power relations in communication and postmodern psychology.
The book explores language by considering three themes:
· Thinking - the cognitive processes of self-communication.
· Talk - where the emphasis is on everyday conversational behaviour.
· Text - including the study of reading and writing.
A coherent framework is developed by looking at topics which link the themes together, clearly demonstrating the relationship between language and communication processes. The text will be invaluable to students on all courses addressing psychology and language, particularly in areas such as cognitive and social psychology and psycholinguistics.
