1. ‘What is language?’
Student notes for Part 2 This question asks something seemingly simple: ‘What is language?’
The question however is more complicated than it first appears, because it requires you to
critically evaluate two very different ways in which this question has been addressed: the
way of experimental psychology and the way of discursive psychology. You need, in other
words, to be able to take two quite different perspectives on language and to convey both
perspectives to the reader of your essay. You are also being asked to give examples used by
cognitive, developmental and social psychologists, so you will need to refer to at least one
study from each of these domains within your essay. Note however that it is not necessary
nor expected that you include an example from both perspectives (experimental and
discursive) for each of the psychological domains (cognitive, developmental and social).
With respect to experimental psychology, you have encountered some examples of how
language has been explored from this perspective in Week 5 of the module (for example, in
the AV material in the Week 5 Study Guide, and the corresponding textbook chapter,
Chapter 4). The second perspective, that of discursive psychology, was introduced in Weeks
12 and 13 (Chapters 9 and 10). You are asked to critically evaluate the differences at play in
these two ways of addressing the question ‘What is language?’ Doing this is partly a matter
of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, but in so doing you should
make clear the important differences between them, both theoretically (how they think
about the nature of language) and practically (the methods used in studying it). ‘The
introduction to the Week 5 Study Guide presents itself as continuing ‘your exploration of
the use of experimentation, applying it to language’. So here language is very much the topic
and experimentation is the means by which we gain knowledge of that topic. For this
reason, Chapter 4, Section 2 asks the direct question ‘What is language?’ The answer that is
offered sets the scene for the main body of the chapter, which deals with the relationship
between language and thought, on the assumption, spelled out on p. 157, that ‘thinking
underlies language’. Not all of the methods discussed in this material are experimental, and
so you will need to be discerning about which you use, but there are plenty of examples of
experimental work discussed. For example, within Chapter 4 you will find discussions of
experimental work on the impact of language on colour discrimination (Section 4.1) and
time perception (Section 4.2), and in Week 5 you will find AV material discussing how
laboratory experiments can be used to understand how babies learn to perceive language.
For the discursive psychology part of your answer, you can use either Week 12 (and
Chapter 9) or Week 13 (Chapter 10) or, if you prefer, draw material from both. You will not
2. get more marks simply because you draw material from both, so whichever option you
choose should be about finding your preferred way of answering. As Alison Davies makes
clear in the welcome audio of the introduction to the Week 12 Study Guide, discursive
psychology offers an alternative theoretical approach to cognitive psychology.This includes
an alternative method (i.e. discourse analysis), which is quite different from
experimentation. She describes discourse analysis as a focus on the performative aspects of
language, and this issue is also discussed and illustrated in the textbook chapters. Paul
Stenner puts forward a similar point in the welcome audio to Week 13, stating that
discursive methodologies study the organisation of talk in daily life, and not the
psychological processes assumed to exist beneath the talk. This means that, unlike with
Chapter 4, language as such is not the direct topic of Chapters 9 and 10, and this difference
is important to the question set. Chapter 9 deals with the topic of identities related to ADHD
and Chapter 10 deals with the topic of autobiographical remembering. You will need to
understand how and why discursive psychologists approach these topics as ‘topics within
discourse’, and hence as part of language. As the question requires you to draw on studies
from at least two weeks of the module, you will need to present an overview of both ways of
thinking about language and carefully select some illustrative examples to focus on in your
essay. As the word limit is only 2000 words, you will need to keep your points directly
relevant and to summarise your evaluation effectively. There is no requirement for your
answer to come down on one side or other of the two ways of thinking about language, but
it is important that you convey a critical sense of the difference between the approaches.
