Applied Psycholinguistics: A Science at the crossroads of cognition and language

Abstract

Abstract: Applied Psycholinguistics is a science that engages many others: experimental psychology, cognitive and neurocognitive sciences, linguistics, psychology of language and literacy, and educational and remediation sciences. The present paper’s objective is to show Science is itself a changing combination of ever-changing sciences without close boundaries, which implies the necessity of crossing domains in both research and learning. After a reminder of several topics of relevance to applied psycholinguistics, which concern mental processing, how cognition relates to the brain and to language, and how cognition and language engendered literacy, I argue that research in the corresponding sciences needs to be opened to other dimensions, such as society, culture, and politics. Finally, I evoke the history of the ideas regarding the isolationism of individualized sciences vs. their unification, taking, as examples of the latter, the early Marxism, and the International Movement for the Unity of Science from the fourth decade of the 20th century.

Keywords: Applied Psycholinguistics; literacy as product of cognition and language; concept of Science; history of scientific ideas; permeability of science to culture and politics.