Psychology of Language
A Critical Introduction
- Michael A Forrester - University of Kent, UK
This comprehensive textbook brings together diverse themes on the psychology of language in an integrated way. Rather than covering only the formal-structural aspects of language, Forrester provides a broad view of the study of language across various perspectives, focusing throughout on interesting relationships between language and human psychological processes.
The book 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 author explores language by considering three themes: thinking - the cognitive processes of self-communication; talk - where the emphasis is on everyday conversational behaviour; and 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.
This is an interesting book which in my opinion is well written and informative. With an interest in Cognition I found aspects of the book particularly interesting and in general found the book was easy to follow. This book has particular sections which in my opinion will benefit my teaching practice as well as provide my students with a valuable and accurate source of information. I have recommended it.
I will reccomend this book, mainly the chapter on the conversation analysis and the aspects related to power relations in language.
