Psycholinguistics

Editor: I’d like to see a nod in the direction of psycholinguistics.

Author: A mention made? Or a full-on discussion of language and psychology? I’ve often wondered myself what someone does behind a door marked “Psycholinguist.”

Editor: Don’t they carry out experiments to find out the role language plays in how brains remember memories, organize thoughts and retrieve information?

Author: Black box theory. Words go in, stuff happens inside the black box, words come out.

Editor: What else do they do?

Author: Language and identity, language acquisition…. People who study those areas might come up to you and say, “Hi, I’m Brian, I’m a psycholinguist.”

Editor: Doesn’t sound as though the field occupies as much territory as sociolinguistics.

Author: Technicians who probe the innards of black boxes often seem to have fewer academic colonialist ambitions.

Editor: How about those chaps who study handwriting and language use to identify crims

Author: Forensic linguists? Oh, they’re a whole other tribe. They're colonialists. They want to take over the law.
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