Topic > Cognitive Psychology Essay: The Importance of Language in Everyday Life

IndexKey Aspects of LanguageLanguage ProductionTheories of Word RecognitionConclusionReferencesLanguage was developed over many years to allow humans to exchange information and communicate with other beings living. The cognitive functions of the brain allow us to do this because we can think about what we are going to say and how we say it. This essay will discuss the processes and theories involved in language and how they contribute to our daily lives. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayKey Aspects of LanguageThere are six main key aspects of language: These influence how we think and how we perceive the world. Pragmatics is the way we use language: the meaning of words and statements can be different depending on the context in which they are said or used. Semantics is the meaning of words: the definition of words may be the same, but the meaning varies. Syntax is the arrangement of grammatical words and sentences. Spelling is the punctuation used and the spelling of words. Phonology is the organization of sounds in a language and their meanings, and finally, morphology is the meaning of words in a language. These aspects are important when studying language as they allow us to understand words, sounds and help us produce words. Therefore, these aspects are important when understanding language as they allow us to create meaningful communications with others, especially within the workplace as we are able to understand what colleagues mean when they speak to us. Speech Production Speech production is the process of processing thoughts into words. Dell (1986); Dell, Oppenheim, and Kittredge (2008) take a theoretical approach. Dell's widespread activation theory argues that there are four levels of speech production: semantic, syntactic, morphological, and phonological. Dell's theory holds that when we plan and produce speech, we activate these features in parallel. The theory predicts that linguistic errors occur when the information we mean to say is not as strongly activated. However, the way the theory goes that we avoid errors is that we have something called a "syntactic traffic policeman" monitoring our networks and our intentions. The evidence behind this theory focuses on aphasics who were asked to name pictures and videos of objects: some made errors that fell into the same syntactic category, however, others made random errors that were irrelevant to what the picture or the video they showed. This dissociation between the groups suggests that one group had difficulty with their “traffic policeman” and the other group did not. However, the widespread activation theory has limitations as Glaser (1992) argues that the theory predicts the wrong amount of errors that actually occur since many words can be activated at the same time and the facilitation effect does not always occur – which it is not explained by the Activation and Diffusion Theory, both should spread simultaneously and should facilitate but they don't. This theory can also explain the lexical bias effect, which is when we speak badly and say the wrong word. This is because the activation extends to incorrect sounding words. Therefore, there is activation at the phonological level because the words sound similar. Overall, this theory can be accepted in the "real world" as it discusses linguistic errors –.