BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS LANGUAGE.

Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary study of language development, language in relation to human mind, language in thought, etc. Therefore the analysis of different language units and structures can hardly be separated from the study of human mind and the way it functions. Let us proceed from the assumption that there are two spheres in human soul: the conscious sphere and the subconscious one. We will talk about those spheres in the next chapter.

When studying different aspects of the subconscious sphere, modern psychologists use the term “MIND SET”.

It was D.N.Uznadze, a Georgian psychologist, who defined mind set as a state that precedes every human activity, including speaking. It is a special form of soul modification that underlies every involvement into the world. The mind set is the person’s readiness to perform an action, it is the modality of human behavior. D.N.Uznadze shows that it is in the mind set that the person’s need and the concrete situation are reflected in the form of a drive. So the mind set is the beginning of every human activity, and it underlies both conscious and subconscious behavior.
Speaking about the language, we can think of two possible mind sets that underlie the process of speaking:

1. the communicative mind set and

2. the expressive mind set,

which correspond to the two main functions of language: the communicative function and the expressive function. Of course, when we speak, both functions are realized. However, the person’s desire to say something may proceed from the necessity to get something from the hearer, which can be either of material or ideal nature: an object, an action, a piece of advice, even understanding and compassion. Of course, the speaker will do his best to be understood by the hearer. He will control what he is saying, he will keep in mind the hearer’s social status, his specific character traits as well as different parameters of the communicative speech situation, like the time and the place. So when the speaker wants to share some information with somebody, he will proceed from the communicative mind set. Most speech acts are realizations of the communicative mind set.
Therefore, any speech activity, proceeding from the communicative mind-set is well controlled, and attention is highly involved, even though certain operations are realized automatically without the speaker actually controlling them.

When the expressive mind set is realized, the person is driven by the desire to pour out his soul, to get rid of something that is tormenting him. He doesn’t care whether he will be understood or not. He perceives linguistic signs as a part of himself. The speaker creates, he is just like an artist or a composer. And it doesn’t matter what will eventually appear: a poem, a hypnotic text, a joke or a schizophrenic text. What is really important is that the expressive mind set has been realized. The speaker forgets about the hearer or the reader to some extent. Of course, there can be different stages or levels of the speaker’s drift from reality. Still it is the logic of wish-fulfillment that underlies everything that goes on. That is why the texts that are the product of speech based on the expressive mind set are, in most cases, samples of the negative speech material.

Lectures 8, 9.

Stylistics of the English Language.