This textbook examines themes in the psychology of language. Rather th an covering only the formal-structural aspects of language, it provides a broad view of the study of language across the various perspectives, focusing on relationships between language and human psychological processes. This book provides an introduction to key topics from language structure and processing, semantics and cognitive science, to conversational analysis, reading and writing, power relations in communication and postmodern psychology. It 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 framework is developed by looking at key topics which link the themes together, providing an understanding of the relationship between language and communication processes. This text should be valuable to students on all courses addressing psychology and language, and particularly in such areas as cognitive and social psychology and psycholinguistics.
