Language in Mind highlights the topics that capture the imagination of researchers and students alike, for example, deaf communities, poetry, jokes, misutterances, and Alzheimer’s disease. It would be a joy to teach using this book, writes Gwyneth Sutherlin

Sutherlin, Gwyneth

LSE Research Online

15/02/2015Book Review: Language in Mind: An Introduction toPsycholinguistics by Julie Sedivyblogs.lse.ac.uk /lsereviewofbooks/2015/02/15/book-review-language-in-mind-an-introduction-to-psycholinguistics-by-julie-sedivy/Language in Mind highlights the topics that capture the imagination of researchers and students alike, forexample, deaf communities, poetry, jokes, misutterances, and Alzheimer’s disease. It would be a joy to teach usingthis book, writes Gwyneth Sutherlin.Language in Mind: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. JulieSedivy. Sinauer Associates Inc.,U.S. 2014.Find this book:Taking the malapropism mantle from George Bush, Sarah Palin’s January2015 speech dissolved every known rule of the English language.Designed as an undergraduate textbook, Language in Mind: anintroduction to psycholinguistics is an essential handbook for navigatingthe sea of text, images, and sound that comprise our communicationenvironment. It examines questions such as: how do we understandlanguage and judge it to be funny or offensive? The fast-growing field ofpsycholinguistics, which combines insights from psychology andlinguistics, provides tools to do just that—understand how language works.Writer and University of Calgary adjunct professor in psychology andlinguistics, Julie Sedivy seamlessly joins these two fields in Language inMind: a field that Sedivy describes as, “The psychology of language; the study of the psychological andneurobiological factors involved in the perception, production, and acquisition of language” (p.5). Outlined in a highlyteachable map that connects research from anthropology, neurobiology, cognitive psychology, and linguistics, it ishard to imagine these topics not being taught concurrently after encountering this book. Language in Mind is brokeninto twelve chapters with accompanying web material. It begins with broad questions such as ‘What is language?’and ‘Is language innately human?’, then moves in a methodical, richly interdisciplinary route to investigate thesecore questions.Sedivy describes herself as having an “incurable infatuation with language”, which is energetically transmittedthrough Language in Mind, instantiating psycholinguistics as a course that many universities will now want to offer.Previously, Sedivy has written about practical matters such as the language of political campaigns and thepsychology of commercials for the LanguageLog and the Psychology Today blog, which shares the title of her firstbook Sold on Language. The growing interest in brain research and the increased data mining of language onlinemake the field of psycholinguistics ever more relevant, if not yet well understood.More than an instructive primer for psychology and language studies, this book challenges readers to criticallyexamine how they know what they know. For instance, theories about the earth have ranged from flat to spherical tooblate spheroid to pear-shaped. “If you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earthis flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together”,  writes Sedivy quoting Isaac Asimov’s “TheRelativity of Wrong” (p. 2-3). The most attractive aspect of this book is the framework of criticality. Readers areurged to evaluate scientists’ methods as well as pursue their own questions.In Chapter 2, ‘Origins of Human Language’, Sedivy introduces the question most commonly associated with the1/3study of language: is there specific language DNA or is it a capacity emerging from the sum of human’s well-developed cognitive abilities? By diving into a topic that will be familiar to students and at the same time highlightsthe strong level of disagreement within the field, Sedivy sets the tone for exploring subsequent topics — a tonewhich compels the reader to decide for themselves how they know what they know. Underscoring the tensions thatexist within the discipline, the chapter ends by listing core questions that continue to perplex and intrigueresearchers, such as, “How are the various components of language learned, and why do children seem to learnthem better than adults?”Aimed at undergraduates, there is a secondary aim of converting ‘armchair linguists’ who are prone to make casualassertions such as “texting makes kids illiterate” and “some languages are more logical/expressive/romantic thanothers” (p.5). Sedivy coaxes readers out of comfortable assumptions to more critical engagement.The value of psycholinguistics is most evident in chapters 10-12. In Chapter 10, ‘Discourse and Inference’, Sedivydescribes ‘mental models’, the ambiguity of pronouns, event memory, and conceptualization. Topics are presentedwith real-world context. For instance, in discussing how ambiguity is resolved by a listener, readers are asked toimagine the exchange between a pilot and air traffic controller or operating surgeon and nurse. Demonstrating thebook’s interdisciplinary heft, Sedivy pulls from previous chapters on brain processes, memory, and linguisticterminology to get at the heart of the mechanisms behind each communicative act. This approach far surpasses themurky insights made via fMRI studies or the static sentence diagrams associated with linguistics. Through bonussections, Language in Mind highlights the topics that capture the imagination of researchers and students alike, forexample, deaf communities, poetry, jokes, misutterances, and Alzheimer’s disease.While Sedivy admits in Chapter 12: Language Diversity that the book relies largely on English language examples, itsurpasses most other texts at this level by including several non-European languages. Disappointingly, the onlineresources make limited use of audio or video, missing an opportunity to share predominately oral languages or thosewith unfamiliar scripts. In light of the global nature of communications, this aspect of the book could be improved.Even as an introductory textbook, Language in Mind prepares students to engage with debates framed by whatWittgenstein described as, “the limits of my language are the limits of my world” (p.474). In Chapter 12 ‘LanguageDiversity’, Sedivy asks, “Do words reflect culturally important concepts?” (p. 493), a question that has enormousrelevance for culturally framed conflict. This chapter opens by describing the vast variety of languages, the primaryresearch aimed at charting the similarities, and the subsequent gaps or questions left about how the nearly 7000living languages differ in substantial ways. The chapter invites readers to consider how learning or knowing anotherlanguage can substantively change ‘the limits of [our] world’. For instance, unlike English, Turkish obliges itsspeakers to indicate if the speaker was present or is passing along second hand evidence; Japanese uses markersfor the shape and type of object described incorporating an entire category of grammar for which English has noparallel.Overall, the daunting complexities of brain and communication research are approached in a clear and interactivemanner. Sedivy encourages readers to critically assess the experimental methods that produced our currentknowledge, pushing students to devise their own methods to test hypotheses as well as providing model after modelof how to determine the parameters and limitations of an experiment. It would be a joy to teach using this book.Gwyneth Sutherlin has a Ph.D. in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford. Her research examines theimpact of cultural bias in ICT design on identity, participation, and information access. She writes and speaksfrequently about the political implications surrounding the invisible dimension of cultural translation. Her researchdraws from experiences working as an intercultural mediator as well as directing projects which use ICT to promotepeace and democracy in Burma, Kenya, DRCongo, Haiti, and Morocco. Gwyneth has a degree in political sciencefrom Indiana University and speaks seven languages. See her blog, theseem.blogspot.co.uk.Copyright 2013 LSE Review of Books2/33/3

Book review: language in mind: an introduction to psycholinguistics by Julie Sedivy

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