Psychological structure, functions and types of speech activity. The structure of speech The structure of speech in psychology

The concept of speech in psychology is deciphered as a system of sound signals used by a person, written symbols for the transmission of information baggage. Some researchers have also characterized speech as a process of materialization and transmission of thoughts.

Speech and language in psychology is a system of conditionally accepted symbols that help to convey words in the form of a combination of sounds that have a certain meaning for people. The difference between language and speech is that language is an objective, historically formed system of words, while speech is an individual psychological process of forming and transmitting thoughts through language.

Functions of speech in psychology

Psychology considers speech, first of all, as one of the highest mental functions of a person. Its structure coincides with the structure of any other activity. The speech includes:

• planning;
• implementation;
• control.

Language acts as a tool for mediating speech.

1. Significant or nominative. Its essence is to designate, give a name to objects and phenomena around us. Thanks to it, mutual understanding between people is based on an initially common system for designating objects, both speaking and perceiving information.
2. Generalizing. It is engaged in the fact that it highlights the leading features, essence, objects and combines them into groups according to some similar parameters. The word denotes not a single object, but a whole group of objects similar to it and is always the bearer of their distinguishing features. This function is inextricably linked with thinking.
3. Communicative. Provides information transfer. It differs from the two above functions in that it has a manifestation both in oral and written speech. This difference has to do with internal psychological processes.

Types of speech - psychology

In psychology, there are 2 main types of speech activity:

1. External. It includes both oral and written speech.

• dialogue- face-to-face conversation between 2 people.
• monologue- a long, consistent presentation of the thoughts or opinions of one person. The associative side of monologue speech should be compared with the expressive one.
• written language- is a detailed version of the monologue, but at the same time it can only influence with the help of words.

2. Internal. A special kind of speech activity. For inner speech, on the one hand, fragmentation and fragmentation are characteristic, on the other hand, it excludes the possibility of misperception of the situation. However, if desired

Communication and speech in psychology combine these 2 types of speech activity, since inner speech is involved in the initial stages, and then external speech is used.

Psychology and culture of speech are inextricably linked. The culture of speech is such an organization of language means, which in modern conditions allows you to express yourself in the most concise and informative way in a certain life situation in such a way that the listener correctly perceives the information received. That is why, if you want to appear as a cultured and highly intelligent person, you need to watch not only your appearance and behavior, but also your speech. The ability to speak correctly is highly valued at all times, and if you can master this skill, then all doors will be open to you.

One of the main differences between man and animals, reflecting the laws of his physiological, social and mental development, is the presence of a special mental process called speech. Speech is the process of communication between people using language. Everything that speaking people understand by the word speech is actually language and speech proper.

Speech activity is a process of purposeful, active, language-mediated and situation-conditioned communication and interaction between people. The main mechanism of speech activity is the process of comprehension. Considering the higher mental functions, speech is one of their most complex forms. In addition to the content, speech expresses the emotional state of a person and his attitude to what he says. This phenomenon is called the emotional-expressive side of speech and is determined by the tone of the spoken words. Speech activity, namely, the mental patterns of the generation and perception of speech, the mechanisms that control these processes and ensure language acquisition, as well as the language ability of a person in the context of his mental and intellectual abilities, are studied by psycholinguistics, which emerged as a linguistic discipline in the middle of the 20th century.

The psychological side of speech is expressed by its semantic subtext, which reflects the purpose (motive of speech) of the speech with which the phrase was said.

L.S. Vygotsky, in his studies of the relationship between speech and thinking, proved that speech is an instrument of thinking. According to his theory of signs, at higher levels, visual-figurative thinking turns into verbal-logical thinking thanks to the word, which generalizes in itself all the signs of a particular object. It is in the meaning of the word that the unity of speech and thinking lies. Thus, the highest level of unity of speech and thinking is speech thinking.

Since speech is considered in psychology as an organized form of conscious activity, it means that two subjects are involved in it. One subject of speech activity forms a speech statement, the other perceives it.

Speech includes speaking (speech act) and the results of speaking (text). It is legitimate to talk about the speech of an individual, the speech of young people, oral everyday speech, artistic broadcasting, etc. All this is a different use of the possibilities of the language. Language is a system, i.e. a set of interrelated and interdependent elements.

Each system has its own structure. Structure is a way of organizing a system, its internal structure. In accordance with this postulate, speech should have a four-level (four-tiered) structure. The lowest level of speech is the phonological level, followed by the morphological level, then the lexico-semantic level. The highest level of speech is syntactic. In accordance with the definition of the structure, each of its levels has its own unit. Thus, the phonological level has a phoneme, the morphological level has a morpheme, the lexico-semantic level has a lexeme (word), and, finally, the syntactic level has a sentence. All these levels are separate systems and are studied by separate linguistic sciences: phonological - phonology, morphological - morphology, lexico-semantic - lexicology and syntactic - syntax. Language levels are not independent. They are all interconnected. So, morphemes are built with phonemes, lexemes are built from morphemes, sentences are built from lexemes. Thus, we can conclude that speech consists of four systems that form a common language system.

In psychology, there are mainly three forms of speech (as defined by I.A. Zimney):

1. External oral speech is a system of sound signals, written signs and symbols used by a person to transmit information that form the process of materialization of thought. Oral speech is communication between people through the pronunciation of words aloud, on the one hand, and their perception by people by ear, on the other.

External oral speech is divided into expressive (conversational) speech and impressive speech (perception and understanding of speech).

External speech is characterized by intonation. Intonation is a set of speech elements that phonetically organize speech and are a means of expressing various meanings, their emotional coloring.

External oral expressive speech includes the following types:

monologue speech;

Dialogic speech;

Group speech (polylogue).

A monologue is a type of speech that has one subject, is a complex syntactic whole and is not structurally related to the speech of the interlocutor. The communicative purpose of a monologue is to report on any facts, phenomena of reality, i.e. serve to convey information. The main properties of monologue speech are the one-sided and continuous nature of the statement, the arbitrariness, expansion and logical sequence of the presentation of the message.

Dialogue is an alternate exchange of sign information of two or more subjects. Dialogue is the primary form of speech in origin. As a form of speech, it consists of replicas (individual statements), from a chain of successive speech reactions. Dialogue is carried out in the form of a conversation (conversation) between two or more participants in verbal communication or in the form of alternating questions, answers and appeals. In dialogue, along with the linguistic means of sounding speech, non-verbal components also play an important role - gestures, facial expressions, means of intonation expressiveness.

2. External written speech is a graphically designed speech, which is organized on the basis of letter images. This speech is addressed to a wide range of readers, is devoid of situationality and involves in-depth skills in sound-letter analysis, the ability to logically and grammatically correctly convey one's thoughts, analyze what is written and improve the form of expression. Written language includes writing and reading. Written speech, by its nature, is predominantly monologue speech.

3. Inner speech (speech "to oneself") is a language devoid of sound design and proceeds using linguistic meanings, but outside the communicative function, associated with thinking. Inner speech is speech that does not perform the function of communication, but only serves the process of thinking of a particular person.

Some linguists oppose the language of speech as social to individual. In fact, both speech and language are social phenomena, since the main function of language is to be a means of communication, and people speak (use speech) not to demonstrate their skill, but to convey some information to someone. Speech is always individual when performed, always belongs to specific people.

Speech acquisition in all children occurs in different ways and at different times. This is an individual process that depends on many factors. The reasons for the lag in the development of speech may be the pathology of the course of pregnancy and childbirth, the action of genetic factors, damage to the organ of hearing, the general lag in the mental development of the child, factors of social deprivation (insufficient communication and education).

It should be noted that any type of speech, including oral and written speech, perform certain functions.

The communicative function of speech is the most important and historically the earliest. Communicative function (from Latin Communicatio "communication") - the function of communication. It arises on the basis of more elementary preverbal forms of communication (visual, with the help of facial expressions and hand movements). To exchange information between the child and other people, signals or signs are used - at first non-verbal, and then verbal (verbal) communication gradually acquires the main meaning. Children use speech to communicate their desires. As the opportunities for verbal communication increase, the child learns new concepts, his stock of knowledge and ideas about the outside world expands, and thinking is formed. The main communicative tool is language, which is created in order to communicate.

The communicative function of speech contributes to the development of communication skills with peers, develops the possibility of playing together, which is of great importance for the formation of adequate behavior, emotional-volitional sphere and personality of the child.

The thought-creative function of speech is the function of the formation and formulation of thought. Thinking (opinion) is not only expressed by the word, but also carried out in it. It is no coincidence that one of the great linguists of the XIX century. Humboldt called language "an organ that creates opinion."

The cognitive function of speech is closely related to the communicative one. Speech is an integral part of the life of any society and any culture. Before entering school and reading books, children receive information about their culture and the world around them from the mouths of adults and peers. Thanks to speech, ideas develop - the memory of objects and phenomena of the surrounding world. Human speech differs from the means of animal communication in that it allows you to convey an idea also about what is not in the current situation.

The regulatory function of speech is formed already in the early stages of a child's development. However, the word of an adult becomes a true regulator of the activity and behavior of the child only by the age of 4-5, when the semantic side of speech is already significantly developed in the child. The formation of the regulatory function of speech is closely related to the development of inner speech, purposeful behavior, and the possibility of programmed intellectual activity.

At any age, speech disorders limit cognitive activity and the possibility of social adaptation of a person. Disorders in the development of speech affect the general formation of the personality of children, their intellectual development and behavioral characteristics often do not correspond to the age norm, communication in a peer group is difficult.

Also, the functions of speech are expression, impact, message.

The function of expression lies in the fact that with the help of speech a person expresses his attitude to a certain object, phenomenon or to himself.

The function of influence is characterized by the fact that with the help of speech a person tries to induce another to a certain action and to a certain opinion.

The function of a message is to exchange thoughts and information between people using words.

All other functions of the language, which are mentioned in the linguistic literature, are derived from the main ones. Therefore, they are a refinement of the main functions of the language and their specific classification.

All functions of speech, as a rule, are implemented in various combinations, and not separately, therefore each statement is multifunctional. Ultimately, all the functions of speech work for communication, and in this sense, the communicative function can be considered the leading one.

1.2 Features of speech development at an early age

Early childhood (the period from 1 year to 3 years) is the most intensive period in the development of speech and thinking of the child. Fine motor skills are intensively developing, with the help of which the child begins to master objective activity. The cognitive sphere is developing intensively. Towards the end of infancy, there is a tendency towards independent activity, which means that adults become models for children of actions and relationships in the existing social environment. There are also differences in the types of leading activities among boys and girls. The main need of the child in the early stages of ontogenesis is the knowledge of the world around him through actions with objects.

In the period of early childhood, perception dominates among all mental processes, elementary forms of imagination appear, and attention and memory are involuntary. Thinking is visual - effective, it is based on perception and action with objects.

Also, in the period of early childhood from one to three years, a new situation of development is formed, which consists in the emergence of joint activities of the child and the adult, and also in the fact that this activity becomes objective. Consequently, the leading type of activity becomes subject-manipulative activity. The essence of this joint activity lies in the assimilation of socially developed ways of using objects, i.e. the adult begins to teach the child to use the surrounding objects correctly. The social situation of development looks like "child - object - adult". Consequently, the object becomes the most important thing for the child, and not the adult. But we must understand that without the help of adults, the child will not be able to master human ways of using objects, as well as correct speech. Children's speech is formed under the influence of adult speech, pedagogical influence and living conditions. This influence is beneficial when the child hears normal speech, receives instructions from adults on how to speak, lives in a healthy environment. Violations of this influence delays the development of the child's speech.

The most important mental neoplasms in children of the third year of life are the emergence of speech and visual-effective thinking. Evidence of the transition from the period of infancy to the period of early childhood is the development of a new relationship to the subject, which begins to be perceived as a thing that has a specific purpose and method of use. The child begins to freely use the object for its intended purpose, i.e. subject activity develops. The successful development of objective activities is the basis for the development of gaming and productive activities.

During this period of life, the child intensively forms active speech due to joint activities with adults. It also improves the child's understanding of adult speech.

One of the psychological principles underlying the acquisition of speech by children is the principle of development, according to which all mental processes, including speech, have certain qualitative stages in their development. The development of mental processes proceeds in close interaction with each other.

The most important ability, which is formed by the age of three, is the ability to set any goal in games and behavior. The main features of a child of 2-3 years old are openness, honesty and sincerity. The child's feelings are unstable and contradictory, and the mood can change frequently.

The early age ends with a crisis of 3 years. The child begins to realize himself as a separate person, he forms the image of "I".

Often family members adapt to the language of the child, babble, lisp when talking. It seems to them extremely funny and sweet. So they not only do not stimulate the child to master normal pronunciation, but even more reinforce his childish babble. More Ya.A. Kamensky blamed parents for indulging in the inaccuracies of children's speech.

Speech arose when people needed to agree with each other. Consequently, it is a purely social acquisition of mankind. For this reason, a small child masters speech only if it fulfills its social function - the function of communication. Speech development of a child begins from the first days of his life. At first, it is not so much the content of the speech addressed to the child that is important, but its melody, tonality, rhythm, and intonation characteristics. A benevolent, caring attitude towards the child on the part of the mother or a second significant person and emotionally positive speech addressed to the child are sufficient factors for the development of the speech process at this age stage.

Developing work with children in the early stages of ontogeny should be built taking into account the leading motives and needs of a given age, as well as the actual and potential capabilities of the child.

Tasks of speech development of children of the third year of life:

1. Expansion of the child's vocabulary, and therefore his acquaintance with the outside world;

2. Develop speech as a means of communication;

3. To form an interest in active interaction with adults and other children.

4. Maintain the desire for activity, the position "I am myself."

5. Encourage the child's desire to be included in the story on their own initiative.

As I.V. Dubrovina notes, early development is by no means identical to early learning. This is, first of all, the development of mental processes and personal qualities of the child in natural conditions.

For children from 0 to 6 months, the main form of communication is situational-personal. The basic needs of a child are the attention and kindness of an adult. The leading activity at this stage of ontogenesis is directly emotional communication with an adult. The main motives for communication are personal. The main means of communication are expressive - mimic means. At the same time, it must be remembered that at each stage the process of formation and development of speech is influenced by numerous factors in which communicative factors are decisive. The child begins to speak only in a situation of communication and only at the request of an adult partner. If an adult does not provide for a verbal response when communicating with a child or does not insist on it, then the children will have a gap between the level of development of passive and active speech with a lag in the latter.

As a result of the foregoing, we can conclude that the child's early speech experience creates a background that leads to the development of speech skills, the ability to listen and think. The emotional attitude to life and people laid down at this time, the presence or absence of incentives for intellectual development leave an indelible mark on all further behavior and way of thinking of a person.

For children from 1 to 3 years old, the main form of communication is situational business communication. The basic needs of the child include the need for cooperation with adults. Motives of communication - business. The leading activity for children from 6 months to 1 year is situational-personal communication, within which the child's objective actions are formed. The leading activity of children aged 1 to 3 years is object-manipulative activity, during which there is an intensive mastery of object and instrumental actions in cooperation with adults.

The main stages that the development of speech in a child goes through at the stages of ontogenesis.

preverbal period.

This period of development falls on the first year of life. Some researchers believe that during the second year of life, non-verbal components also act as the main way of communication. In the course of preverbal communication with others, the prerequisites for the development of speech are formed. The child cannot speak. But there are conditions that ensure the mastery of speech by the child in the future. Such conditions are the formation of selective susceptibility to the speech of others - the preferential selection of it among other sounds, as well as a finer differentiation of speech influences in comparison with other sounds. There is a sensitivity to the phonemic characteristics of sounding speech. By the age of two, the child is able to classify all the sounds of perceived speech.

The preverbal stage of speech development ends with the child's understanding of the simplest statements of an adult, the emergence of passive speech.

The next step is the transition of the child to active speech.

It usually falls on the 2nd year of life. The child begins to pronounce the first words and simple phrases, phonemic hearing develops. Of great importance for the timely acquisition of speech by a child and for the normal pace of its development at the first and second stages are the conditions of communication with an adult: emotional contact between an adult and a child, business cooperation between them and the saturation of communication with speech elements.

At the next stage, the improvement of speech as the leading means of communication in speech more and more accurately reflects the intentions of the speaker, more and more accurately conveys the content and general context of the reflected events. There is an expansion of the dictionary, the complication of grammatical structures, the pronunciation becomes clearer.

Thus, by the age of about one year, the child pronounces individual words; at about age two, he speaks in two- or three-word sentences; by the age of four, children are able to talk almost as well as adults.
Of the many qualities contained in a word as in a concept, children at first learn by no means all, but only individual properties characteristic of the object with which this word was initially associated in their perception. In the future, as the experience of using this word is accumulated, children gradually acquire a deeper, generalized meaning of the concept, separating the essential from the inessential in the features displayed in it.
The next stage of speech development falls on the age of approximately 1.5 to 2.5 years. At this time, children begin to combine words, combining them into small two- or three-word phrases, and from such phrases to complete sentences they progress quite quickly. The second half of the second year of a child's life is characterized by a transition to active independent speech aimed at controlling the behavior of the people around him and at mastering his own behavior.

In the second year of life, the child's interest in the world around him sharply increases. The child wants to know, touch, see, hear everything. He is especially interested in the names of objects and phenomena, and every now and then he asks adults the question: “What is this?” Having received an answer, the child is not always satisfied with what he heard, he certainly wants to remember the name and repeats it on his own, and, as a rule, memorizes the name right away, remembering and reproducing it without much difficulty. In the 2-3 years of life, an intensive accumulation of the dictionary takes place, the meanings of words become more and more definite. The passive vocabulary of a child at this age does not differ much from the active one, and their ratio at the age of three is approximately 1:1.3.

After a year and a half of life, the child begins to show his own activity in verbal communication and asks for the names of the objects around him. At first, he uses the language of facial expressions, gestures and pantomime to pose such questions, often simply pointing to an adult with his hand or finger what interests him, and expects the adult to name the corresponding object or phenomenon.

Then the child's question, expressed in a word, is added to the gesture.
It is curious that a child who has already heard the name of an object before sometimes turns to an adult again with the corresponding question concerning him. With such questions, a young child, as it were, tests his knowledge and remembers the names of interest to him.

Up to a year and a half, a child on average learns from 30-40 to 100 words and uses them extremely rarely. After a year and a half, there is a sharp jump in the development of speech. By the age of two, the child's active vocabulary increases dramatically and reaches 200-300 words. It contains many nouns and verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions. Simplified words (“tu-tu”, “woof-woof”) are replaced by ordinary ones. Sentences become three-, four-word, question words and intonations appear. The parent needs to remember that a delay in speech development can lead to a delay in the intellectual and social development of the child.

By the age of two, most children have a clear understanding of the purpose of the household and personal hygiene items around them, and use them correctly. Getting acquainted with new objects, children, first of all, try to determine their functions, asking an adult the question: “What is this called?” In response to such a question, the adult usually not only names the object, but also shows the child how to use it correctly.

After the intonation design of the child's voice reactions, the process of the formation of phonemic hearing begins. It is mostly completed by the age of two, when the child can already distinguish between words that differ from each other by just one phoneme. Further development of the process of mastering speech includes a number of aspects: semantic, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic.

At about three years of age, the child begins to listen carefully to what adults say to each other. He especially likes to listen to stories, fairy tales, poems. This is a very important moment in the speech development of the child. It testifies that the child is already able to cognize reality not only directly through the senses, but also in its ideal, conceptual reflection in language.

By the age of three, the child owns a set of approximately 1200-1500 words. The speech of a three-year-old child consists mainly of simple sentences. From this age, the first signs appear egocentric speech.
Two-year-olds understand both general yes or no questions and specific questions beginning with where, who, or what. They also correctly answer the questions "why" and "what for".

By the beginning of the 3rd year, the grammatical structure of speech is formed in children. By the end of preschool age, children practically master almost all the laws of word formation and inflection. By the age of three, the child basically uses cases correctly, builds verbose sentences, within which grammatical agreement of all words is ensured. Approximately at the same time, a conscious control over the correctness of one's own speech statement on the part of the child and the speech of another person arises.

The situational nature of speech (fragmentary and understandable only in specific conditions, attachment to the current situation) is becoming less and less pronounced. A coherent contextual speech appears - expanded and grammatically designed.

However, elements of situationality are still present in the child's speech for a long time: it is replete with demonstrative pronouns, it has many violations of coherence. In school years, the child moves to the conscious mastery of speech in the learning process. Written speech, reading are assimilated. This opens up additional opportunities for the further development of the lexical, grammatical and stylistic aspects of speech - both oral and written.

It is assumed that the three main ways of language acquisition and individual development of speech are the following: imitation, formation of conditioned reflex associations, formulation and experimental testing of empirical hypotheses.

Function conditioned reflex conditioning in speech production argues that the use of various rewards by adults accelerates the development of children's speech. However, it cannot be said that without this speech will not be formed in the child at all. It is known that some parents deliberately do not use the system of rewards that are significant for the child for a long time in the initial period of the child's mastery of speech. This is especially noticeable in those rare families where the mother and other adults surrounding the child generally devote little time to communicating with the children, and also where children are largely deprived of such attention, for example, in orphanages. And, nevertheless, under these conditions, by the right time, the child’s speech is still formalized.

Speech is closely connected with the whole organism and directly depends on the state of the psyche and the organs through which it is carried out. A variety of speech deficiencies in babies (tongue-tied tongue, noisy, rough voice, too fast or slow pace, stuttering, etc.) are fixed over time, and they can be very difficult to eradicate. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the occurrence of any kind of speech defects in time.

It is necessary to spare the child's hearing, protect it from harsh or too loud sounds, from constant noise. Even when the child is fast asleep, noise and screams, as physiologically too strong stimuli, dull his hearing.

For the normal development of speech, a healthy state of the nervous system is very important. The nervous system in children is still in the developmental stage, it is delicate, fragile and cannot withstand heavy loads. Therefore, from the first days of a child's life, it is necessary to take special care of her: to protect her from mental and physical trauma, uncontrollably violent manifestations of anger and joy, being among nervous, restless or stuttering children.

The age-related features of a child's speech can be fixed and even expanded under the influence of the imperfect speech of the children's group in which he lives, if family members and the educator do not teach him correct speech.

It can be seen from the above that the peculiarities of children's speech, in particular children's pronunciation, are a manifestation of natural age-related characteristics. Such peculiarities extend to all aspects of the child's language - phonetic, vocabulary and grammatical.

Similar information.

Speech is the process of practical application of language by a person in order to communicate with other people. Unlike speech language is a means of communication between people. In the process of communication, people express thoughts and feelings with the help of language, achieve mutual understanding in order to carry out joint activities. Language and speech, like thinking, arise and develop in the process and under the influence of labor. They are the property of only man: animals have neither language nor speech.

Speech has its content. The sounds that make up the words of oral speech have a complex physical structure; they distinguish the frequency, amplitude and shape of the vibration of air sound waves.

Of special importance in the sounds of speech is their timbre, which is based on overtones that accompany and complement the main tone of the speech sound. The overtones (“harmonics”) that make up the speech sound are always found by the number of vibrations of the sound wave in a multiple of the fundamental tone. All vowels and consonants of speech have their characteristic harmonics, which allows us to perceive them in a very differentiated way.

Speech sounds (vowels and consonants) differ from each other in the form of sound and are called phonemes. In the formation of phonemic features of speech sounds, articulation plays an important role, that is, a very differentiated change in the position of the tongue, lips, teeth, hard and soft palate during the passage of exhaled air through the oral cavity. As a result, guttural (“g”), labial (“b”), nasal (“n”), shi-ping (“sh”) and other sounds are obtained.

Phonemes occupy one of the important places in oral speech, its understanding by other people. Being included in the sound composition of various words, they make it possible to very finely differentiate their semantic meaning. It is enough to change at least one sound from the components of the word, so that it immediately acquires a different meaning. This function is performed by both vowels (compare, for example, “par” and “feast”) and consonant phonemes (“par”, “ball”).

Speech has its own properties:

intelligibility speech is achieved by syntactically correct construction of sentences, as well as the use of pauses in appropriate places or highlighting words with the help of logical stress;

expressiveness speech is associated with its emotional saturation (by its expressiveness it can be bright, energetic or, conversely, lethargic, pale);

inactivity speech lies in its influence on the thoughts, feelings and will of other people, on their beliefs and behavior.

Speech performs certain functions:

expression function lies in the fact that, on the one hand, thanks to speech, a person can more fully convey his feelings, experiences, relationships, and on the other hand, the expressiveness of speech, its emotionality significantly expands the possibilities of communication;

impact function lies in the ability of a person through speech to induce people to action;

designation function consists in the ability of a person, through speech, to give objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality their names;

message function consists in the exchange of thoughts between people through words, phrases. There are certain types of speech:

¦ oral speech- this is communication between people through the pronunciation of words, on the one hand, and their perception by people by ear, on the other;

¦ monologue speech- this is the speech of one person, for a relatively long time expressing his thoughts;

dialogic speech is a conversation in which at least two interlocutors participate;

written speech- it is speech through written signs;

inner speech is speech that does not perform the function of communication, but only serves the process of thinking of a particular person.

To reveal the physiological foundations of speech means to indicate the brain centers that control it, to characterize the peripheral systems for its provision, to show its secondary signal origin, to describe the syntagmatic and paradigmatic mechanisms of its formation, as well as the mechanisms of its perception and organization of the speech response.

TO peripheral speech systems relate:

the energy system of the respiratory organs, which is necessary for the appearance of sound;

lungs and the main respiratory muscle - the diaphragm;

generator system, i.e. sound vibrators (voice cords of the larynx), during the vibration of which sound waves are formed;

¦ resonator system, i.e., nasopharynx, skull, larynx and chest.

Speech is based on the activity of the second signal system. According to I.P. Pavlov, people have two signal systems of stimuli: the first signal system is the direct impact of the internal and external environment on various receptors (animals also have this system) and the second signal system, consisting only of words. Moreover, only a small part of these words denotes sensory effects on a person. The work of the second signal system consists, first of all, in the analysis and synthesis of generalized speech signals.

Special studies have established that a person's ability to analyze and synthesize speech is related to:

with the left hemisphere of the brain;

with the auditory-speech zone of the cerebral cortex - the posterior part of the temporal gyrus, the so-called Wernicke center:

with the so-called Broca's area, located in the lower sections of the third frontal gyrus.

In addition, speech is provided by the functioning of certain physiological mechanisms. Syntagmatic mechanisms reflect the dynamic organization of speech utterance and its physiological characteristics during the work of the cerebral cortex. Paradigmatic mechanisms reflect the connection of the posterior sections of the left hemisphere with speech codes (phonemic, articulatory, semantic, etc.).

The transition to comprehension of a speech message is possible only after the speech signal has been transformed. It is analyzed on the basis of detector coding, phonemic interpretation of the received information by the brain. This means that neurons are sensitive to different sound signals and act on the basis of building a specific word recognition model.

In an adult who speaks a language, perception and pronunciation are mediated by internal physiological codes that provide phonological, articulatory, visual and semantic analysis of words. At the same time, all the codes listed above and the operations carried out on their basis have their own brain localization.

At the same time, speech is the most complex system of conditioned reflexes. It is based on the second signaling system, the conditioned stimuli of which are words in their sound (oral speech) or visual form. The sounds and outlines of words, being at first neutral stimuli for an individual, become conditioned speech stimuli in the process of re-combining them with the primary signal stimulus that causes perceptions and sensations of objects and their properties.

As a result, they acquire semantic meaning, become signals of direct stimuli with which they were combined. The temporary neural connections formed at the same time are further strengthened by constant verbal reinforcements, become strong and acquire a two-sided character: the appearance of an object immediately causes a reaction to its naming, and, conversely, an audible or visible word immediately causes an idea of ​​what is denoted by this word subject.

Speech- a historically established form of communication between people through language structures created on the basis of certain rules. The process of speech involves, on the one hand, the formation and formulation of thoughts by language (speech) means, and on the other hand, the perception of language structures and their understanding.

Thus, speech is a psycholinguistic process, an oral form of the existence of human languages.

Meaning

The most important achievement of man, which allowed him to use universal human experience, both past and present, was speech communication, which developed on the basis of labor activity. Speech is language in action. Language is a system of signs that includes words with their meanings plus syntax - a set of rules by which sentences are built. The word is a kind of sign, since the latter are present in various kinds of formalized languages. The objective property of a verbal sign, which determines theoretical activity, is the meaning of the word, which is the relation of the sign (the word in this case) to the object designated in reality, regardless (abstractly) of how it is represented in individual consciousness.

Unlike the meaning of a word, personal meaning is a reflection in the mind of the place that a given object (phenomenon) occupies in the system of activity of a particular person. If the meaning unites the socially significant features of the word, then the personal meaning is the subjective experience of its content.

The following main functions of the language are distinguished:

• a means of existence, transmission and assimilation of socio-historical experience
• means of communication (communication)

Performing the first function, the language serves as a means of encoding information about the studied properties of objects and phenomena. Through language, information about the surrounding world and the person himself, received by previous generations, becomes the property of subsequent generations. Performing the function of a means of communication, the language allows you to influence the interlocutor directly (if we directly indicate what needs to be done) or indirectly (if we tell him information that is important for his activities, which he will focus on immediately or at another time in the appropriate situations).

Development, change in the lexical composition of the language, its grammatical and sound (see also speech sound, phoneme) system is possible only with the continuous reproduction of linguistic structures in living speech. The lack of verbal communication leads to the death of the language or, in the presence of a sufficient number of written documents, to its conservation at a certain level of development, as is the case with the Latin and ancient Greek languages. At the same time, the grammatical structure of the language remains unchanged, the vocabulary does not reflect the changes taking place in the surrounding world and human activity, and the phonetic structure can only be theoretically reconstructed on the basis of “descendent” languages.

Speech is an essential element of human activity, allowing a person to learn about the world around him, to transfer his knowledge and experience to other people, to accumulate them for transmission to subsequent generations.

Being a means of expressing thoughts, speech, in the course of its development in ontogenesis, becomes the main (but not the only) mechanism of human thinking. Higher, abstract thinking is impossible without speech activity.

IP Pavlov noted that only speech activity gives a person the opportunity to abstract from reality and generalize, which is a distinctive feature of human thinking.

Depending on the form of communication, speech activity is divided into oral(implying speaking And hearing) And written (letter And reading).

In the course of "productive" types of speech activity - speaking And letters- the following main groups of mental and physiological mechanisms are involved:

• a mechanism for programming a speech statement (transmitted meaning);
• a group of mechanisms associated with the construction of the grammatical structure of an utterance, the search for the right words by semantic features, the choice of a specific sound (in oral speech, see speech sound, phoneme) or graphic system (in written speech, see grapheme, letter); According to modern studies, the performance of these functions is localized in the CNS mainly in the area of ​​the temporal cortex, called Broca's Area (Brodmann's Area 45) and which was one of the last stages of human evolution.
• physiological mechanisms that ensure the real implementation of speech utterance (the physical process of "speaking" or "writing").

The rules of language construction have ethno-specific features, which are expressed in the system of phonetic, lexical, grammatical and stylistic means and communication rules in a given language. Speech is closely integrated with all human mental processes. The linguistic side of human speech behavior is studied by psycholinguistics.

Speech properties:

1. The content of speech is the number of thoughts, feelings and aspirations expressed in it, their significance and correspondence to reality;
2. The intelligibility of speech is the syntactically correct construction of sentences, as well as the use of pauses in appropriate places or highlighting words with the help of logical stress;
3. The expressiveness of speech is its emotional saturation, the richness of language means, their diversity. In its expressiveness, it can be bright, energetic and, conversely, lethargic, poor;
4. The effectiveness of speech is a property of speech, which consists in its influence on the thoughts, feelings and will of other people, on their beliefs and behavior.

Literature

• Vygotsky L.S. Thinking and speech.
• Zhinkin N.I. Speech as a conductor of information.

Links

• Nikolaev A. I. The meaning of the concepts of "speech" and "language" in literature

/ Psychology

General concept of language and speech.

The problem of language and consciousness. Speech and communication. The development of communication in phylogenesis. The role of speech in the course of mental processes. Types and functions of speech. The main psychological theories that consider the process of speech formation are: learning theories; preformist theory of speech development; constructivist theory of language acquisition; relativistic theories of language. Stages of constructing a detailed speech. The role of speech in the course of mental processes: speech as a tool of thinking; relationship between thought and speech.

Speech development.

Anatomical and physiological mechanisms of speech: the structure of the speech apparatus; psychophysiological mechanisms of speech. Brain organization of speech activity: the second signaling system; interaction of the first and second signal systems; interhemispheric asymmetry and speech. Features of the development of speech in ontogenesis.

The problem of language units.

The word as a unit of speech analysis. Meaning of the word. Phrase as a unit of utterance. Text as an object of analysis of psycholinguistic and psychological approaches. Aspect of the text form.

Methods of studying speech.

Research approaches to the study of speech: studies of speech as an acoustic phenomenon; psycholinguistic study of speech; linguistic study of speech; objective methods of studying multidimensional speech connections. Disorders and pathologies of speech: norm and pathology in speech; classification of forms of speech pathology; alalia (speech defect); aphasia (speech disorder); disorders of active speech (oral or written); speech perception disorders.

The problem of language and consciousness.

One of the mental cognitive processes, along with sensation, perception, representation, memory, attention, thinking, imagination, is speech (see Fig. 1).

Rice. 1 . The structure of the human psyche

In psychological science speech is understood as a system of sound signals, written signs and symbols used by a person to transmit information; the process of materialization of thought. It is important to distinguish speech from language. Their main difference is as follows. Language- this is a system of conditional symbols, with the help of which combinations of sounds are transmitted that have certain meaning and meaning for people. If language is an objective, historically established system of codes, the subject of a special science - linguistics (linguistics), then speech is a psychological process of forming and transmitting thoughts by means of language. As a psychological process, speech is the subject of a branch of psychology called “psycholinguistics”.

The language is the same for all people using it, speech is individually unique. Speech expresses the psychology of a single person or a community of people for whom these features of speech are characteristic. The language reflects the psychology of the people for whom it is native, and not only the people living today, but also all the others who lived before and spoke this language.

Speech without language acquisition is impossible, while language can exist and develop relatively independently of a person, according to laws that are not related either to his psychology or his behavior.

The following features of language and speech are distinguished:

Rice. 2. Signs of language and speech

Speech is also understood as a set of spoken or perceived sounds that have the same meaning and the same sound as the corresponding system of written signs. Sign- a symbol or object that serves as a substitute for another object. In this regard, the term "verbal" (from lat. verbalis- verbal, oral) in psychology serves to designate information expressed by a sign, namely verbal, language system (as opposed to non-verbal information, for example, figurative), and verbalization of consciousness- the process of transforming the unconscious mental, as well as the emotional, logically unformed content of consciousness into verbal-logical forms.

Speech and communication.

Most animals have signals that they use to communicate. Birds raise a call in case of danger, and they have special songs with which they call and recognize potential partners when the time comes. Bees in their hives perform special dances, thanks to which, as ethologists have found, they inform other bees about the direction and distance to the source of nectar. Some herd monkeys have more than 20 signals with a well-defined meaning. When danger threatens from the air, these monkeys make some cries, and when from the ground, others. Each of these signals is important to the survival of the group.

However, in all these cases, the signals only trigger some kind of innate behavioral responses. In other words, they are associated with a specific situation, to which the animals from the community react more or less “mechanically”. Humans also have these kinds of signals. Obvious examples of this are cries of pain or involuntary exclamations of danger.

But human speech differs from the means of communication of other animals in that it also makes it possible to convey an idea of ​​what is not present in the present situation. Therefore, with the help of speech, one can talk not only about current, but also about past or future events, even if they have nothing to do with the speaker's own experience.

However, the main thing that puts human speech above all other means of communication is the ability of a child at a very early age to understand and construct an unlimited number of speech signals from several dozen sounds of his native language, which in most cases the child has not previously pronounced or heard and which will have for him and for others a certain value.

A necessary condition for such linguistic competence is an implicit (implicit) knowledge of the laws of the language, which is still a mystery to specialists.

These patterns of language relate to three main aspects of speech:

Phonology, or knowledge of the sounds of a language;

Syntax, or understanding the relationship and combination between the words that make up a phrase;

Semantics, i.e. understanding the meaning of words and phrases.

The task of the psycholinguist is to understand how, on the basis of these three types of regularities, language is acquired, understood and reproduced by people. As for specialists in the field of language psychology, they are more interested in how a person communicates more or less effectively in his language.

Speech is the main means of human communication. Without it, a person would not be able to receive and transmit a large amount of information, in particular, one that carries a large semantic load or captures in itself something that cannot be perceived with the help of the senses (abstract concepts, not directly perceived phenomena, laws, rules, etc.). . P.). Without written language, a person would be deprived of the opportunity to find out how people of previous generations lived, thought and did. He would not have had the opportunity to communicate his thoughts and feelings to others. Thanks to speech as a means of communication, the individual consciousness of a person, not limited to personal experience, is enriched by the experience of other people, and to a much greater extent than observation and other processes of non-verbal, direct knowledge carried out through the senses can allow.

The development of communication in phylogenesis.

Considering the problem of when speech arose in a person, a number of points can be distinguished that significantly influenced the emergence of this mental phenomenon in a person. The starting point here is considered to be work, or rather a joint form of activity, as a result of which there is an urgent need for communication. In phylogenesis, speech initially acted only as a means of direct communication between people, a way of exchanging momentary information between them. This assumption is supported by the fact that many animals have developed means of communication. In chimpanzees, for example, we find a relatively highly developed speech that is in some respects human-like. Chimpanzee speech, however, expresses only the organic needs of animals and their subjective states. It is a system of emotional-expressive expressions, but never a symbol or sign of anything outside the animal. The language of animals does not have those meanings that human speech is rich in, and even more so meanings. In various forms of gesture-mimic and pantomimic communication of chimpanzees, emotional and expressive movements are in the first place, although they are very bright, rich in form and shades.

In animals, moreover, one can detect expressive movements associated with the so-called social emotions, for example, special gestures of greeting each other. Higher animals, as the experience of careful observation of communication shows, are well versed in each other's gestures and facial expressions. With the help of gestures, they express not only their emotional states, but also impulses directed to other objects. The most common way chimpanzees communicate on such occasions is by initiating the movement or action that they want to imitate or that they want to induce another animal to do. The grasping movements serve the same purpose, expressing the desire of the monkey to receive some object from another animal. Many animals are characterized by the connection of expressive emotional movements with specific vocal reactions. It, apparently, underlies the emergence and development of human speech.

Another genetic prerequisite for the development of human speech as a means of communication draws attention. For many animals, speech is not only a system of emotional and expressive reactions, but also a means of psychological contact with their own kind. Speech, which is formed in ontogenesis, initially plays the same role in a person, at least at the age of one and a half years.

But the human individual cannot be satisfied with such a communicative role of speech, which is very limited in its capabilities. In order to transfer any experience or content of consciousness to another person, to transfer the accumulated experience of life to other generations, there is no other way than the signification of speech statements, i.e. attributing the transmitted content to some known class of objects or phenomena. This certainly requires abstraction and generalization, the expression of a generalized and abstracted content in a word-concept. Only a person at a certain moment of phylogenetic development had the ability to use speech in solving intellectual problems. The communication of people developed psychologically and culturally certainly presupposes generalization, the development of verbal meanings. This is the main way to improve human speech, bringing it closer to thinking and including speech in the management of all other cognitive processes.

Types and functions of speech.

Speech performs certain features:

Rice. 3. Functions of speech

Impact function It consists in the ability of a person through speech to induce people to certain actions or to refuse them.

Message function consists in the exchange of information (thoughts) between people through words, phrases.

expression function lies in the fact that, on the one hand, thanks to speech, a person can more fully convey his feelings, experiences, relationships, and, on the other hand, the expressiveness of speech, its emotionality significantly expands the possibilities of communication.

Designation function consists in the ability of a person through speech to give objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality their own names.

According to the set of its functions (see Fig. 3), speech is a polymorphic activity, i.e. in its various functional purposes, it is presented in different forms (Fig. 4) and types (Fig. 5): external, internal, monologue, dialogue, written, oral, etc.

In psychology, there are two forms of speech: external and internal.

Rice. 4. Forms of speech

External speech- a system of sound signals used by a person, written signs and symbols for transmitting information, the process of materialization of thought.

External speech may have jargon and intonation. Jargon- stylistic features (lexical, phraseological) of the language of a narrow social or professional group of people. Intonation - a set of speech elements (melody, rhythm, tempo, intensity, accent structure, timbre, etc.) that phonetically organize speech and are a means of expressing various meanings, their emotional coloring.

External speech includes the following types (see Fig. 5):

* oral (dialogical and monologue) And

* written.

Rice. 5. Types of speech

Oral speech- this is communication between people through pronouncing words aloud, on the one hand, and listening to them by people, on the other.

Dialogue(from Greek. dialogos- conversation, conversation) - a type of speech, which consists in the alternate exchange of sign information (including pauses, silence, gestures) of two or more subjects. Dialogic speech is a conversation in which at least two interlocutors participate. Dialogic speech, psychologically the most simple and natural form of speech, occurs during direct communication between two or more interlocutors and consists mainly in the exchange of remarks.

Replica- answer, objection, remark to the words of the interlocutor - is characterized by brevity, the presence of interrogative and motivating sentences, syntactically undeveloped structures.

A distinctive feature of the dialogue is the emotional contact of the speakers, their influence on each other by facial expressions, gestures, intonation and timbre of the voice.

The dialogue is supported by the interlocutors with the help of clarifying questions, changes in the situation and intentions of the speakers. A focused dialogue related to one topic is called a conversation. Participants in the conversation discuss or clarify a specific problem with the help of specially selected questions.

Monologue- a type of speech that has one subject and is a complex syntactic whole, structurally completely unrelated to the speech of the interlocutor. monologue speech - this is the speech of one person, for a relatively long time expressing his thoughts, or a consistent coherent presentation of a system of knowledge by one person.

Monologue speech is characterized by:

Consistency and evidence, which provide coherence of thought;

Grammatically correct formatting;

Monologue speech is more complicated than dialogue in terms of content and language design and always implies a fairly high level of speech development of the speaker.

stand out three main types of monologue speech: narration (story, message), description and reasoning, which, in turn, are divided into subspecies that have their own linguistic, compositional and intonation-expressive features. With speech defects, monologue speech is disturbed to a greater extent than dialogic speech.

Written speech- This is a graphically designed speech, organized on the basis of letter images. It is addressed to a wide range of readers, is devoid of situationality and involves in-depth skills in sound-letter analysis, the ability to logically and grammatically correctly convey one's thoughts, analyze what is written and improve the form of expression.

Full assimilation of writing and written speech is closely related to the level of development of oral speech. During the period of mastering oral speech, a preschool child undergoes unconscious processing of language material, the accumulation of sound and morphological generalizations, which create a readiness to master writing at school age. With underdevelopment of speech, as a rule, there are violations of writing of varying severity.

inner speech(speech “to oneself”) is a speech devoid of sound design and proceeding using linguistic meanings, but outside the communicative function; internal speaking. Inner speech is speech that does not perform the function of communication, but only serves the process of thinking of a particular person. It differs in its structure by curtailment, the absence of secondary members of the sentence.

Inner speech is formed in a child on the basis of external speech and is one of the main mechanisms of thinking. The translation of external speech into internal is observed in a child at the age of about 3 years, when he begins to reason aloud and plan his actions in speech. Gradually, such pronunciation is reduced and begins to flow in inner speech.

With the help of inner speech, the process of turning thoughts into speech and preparing a speech statement is carried out. Preparation goes through several stages. The starting point for the preparation of each speech utterance is a motive or intention, which is known to the speaker only in the most general terms. Then, in the process of transforming a thought into a statement, the stage of inner speech begins, which is characterized by the presence of semantic representations that reflect its most essential content. Further, the most necessary ones are singled out from a larger number of potential semantic connections, and the corresponding syntactic structures are selected.

Inner speech can be characterized by predicativity. Predicativity- a characteristic of inner speech, expressed in the absence in it of words representing the subject (subject), and the presence of only words related to the predicate (predicate).

Although all these forms and types of speech are interconnected, their vital purpose is not the same. External speech, for example, plays the main role of a means of communication, internal - a means of thinking. Written speech most often acts as a way of memorizing and storing information, oral speech - as a means of transmitting information. The monologue serves the process of one-way, and the dialogue serves the two-way exchange of information.

Speech has its properties:

Speech intelligibility- this is a syntactically correct construction of sentences, as well as the use of pauses in appropriate places or highlighting words with the help of logical stress.

Expressiveness of speech- this is its emotional richness, the richness of linguistic means, their diversity. In its expressiveness, it can be bright, energetic and, conversely, lethargic, poor.

The effectiveness of speech- this is a property of speech, which consists in its influence on the thoughts, feelings and will of other people, on their beliefs and behavior.

Rice. 6. Properties of speech

A person's speech can be abbreviated and expanded, both from a conceptual and linguistic point of view. IN expanded type of speech the speaker uses all the possibilities of symbolic expression of meanings, meanings and their shades provided by the language. This type of speech is characterized by a large vocabulary and richness of grammatical forms, the frequent use of prepositions to express logical, temporal and spatial relationships, the use of impersonal and indefinite personal pronouns, the use of suitable concepts, clarifying adjectives and adverbs to indicate one or another specific state of affairs, more pronounced syntactic and grammatical structuring of statements, numerous subordination of sentence components, indicating anticipatory planning of speech.

abbreviated speech the statement is sufficient for understanding among well-known people and in familiar surroundings. However, it makes it difficult to express and perceive more complex, abstract thoughts associated with subtle distinctions and differential analysis of hidden relationships. In the case of theoretical thinking, a person more often uses expanded speech.

Basic psychological theories considering the process of speech formation.

In recent years, there has been a lot of controversy and discussion on the question of whether the ability to assimilate speech in humans is innate or not. The opinions of scientists on this issue are divided: some stand on the position of the innateness of this ability, others adhere to the point of view of its genetic conditionality.

On the one hand, there is convincing evidence that one cannot speak of any innateness of human speech. These are, for example, the facts of the absence of any signs of articulate human speech in children who grew up in isolation from people speaking their native language and who never heard a human voice. This is also evidence of numerous unsuccessful experiments in teaching higher animals the language of man, the ability to use at least elementary concepts. Only in a person, and only in conditions of properly organized training and education, can verbal conceptual speech appear and develop.

On the other hand, there are no less reliable facts that indicate that many higher animals have a developed communication system, which in many of its functions resembles human speech. Higher animals (monkeys, dogs, dolphins and some others) understand human speech addressed to them, selectively react to its emotional and expressive aspects.

There is some experimental evidence that children from birth are able to distinguish human speech and distinguish it from many other sounds, respond selectively to it, and learn very quickly. If we keep in mind that the main difference between congenital and acquired forms of behavior is that hereditarily determined (having appropriate inclinations) types of behavior develop faster in the presence of appropriate external conditions, then it is quite possible to assume that some genotypic factors contributing to rapid to the child's assimilation of such a complex form of behavior as speech, nevertheless exist.

Completely acquired behavior, which does not have innate inclinations for development, is formed and progresses slowly, not at all in the same way as it takes place in the case of the acquisition of speech. First, when it is unfolded, the simplest elements of acquired behavior appear, which become peculiar inclinations, and only then more complex forms of behavior are constructed on their basis. This process, as a rule, is long and covers a very significant period of time in the life of an individual. An example of this is the process of assimilation of concepts by children, which is completed only by adolescence, although speech is already formed at the age of about three years.

Another proof of the possible existence of innate prerequisites for the acquisition of speech in humans is the typical sequence of stages of its development. This sequence is the same for all children, regardless of where, in what country and when they were born, in what culture they developed and what language they speak. An additional, indirect proof of the same thought is the following fact: as is well known, a child cannot learn speech before a certain period of time, for example, before one year of age. This becomes possible only when the corresponding anatomical and physiological structures mature in the body.

The main difficulty that needs to be resolved in order to find a definitive answer to the question of whether a person has or does not have innate (genotypic) factors that determine his language acquisition is that the facts that are usually used to prove or refute statements related to issue under discussion is open to different interpretations. And the facts themselves are sometimes quite contradictory.

Let's give examples.

1. In the USA, in California, a child was found at the age of about 14 years, with whom no one communicated humanly, i.e. with the help of speech, from about 2 months of age. Naturally, he did not speak and did not show any knowledge of the language. Despite the considerable effort expended, it was not possible to really teach him to use speech.

2. In one of the studies conducted by psychologists, the process of speech development was studied in six children who were deaf from birth. Their parents had quite normal hearing and for a long time did not allow their children to use language in communication, but only facial expressions and gestures. However, even before these children had the opportunity to perceive and understand the speech of people by the movements of the lips, to independently pronounce the sounds of speech, i.e. before they acquired any knowledge of their mother tongue, they had already begun to use gestures. These children, having eventually mastered speech quite well, went through the same stages in its development as healthy children. First, they learned to correctly use gestures denoting individual words, then they moved on to two- or three-word gestures-sentences, and finally, to whole multi-phrase statements.

Very interesting, but no less complicated, is the following question: are higher animals able to master human speech? Numerous early experiments in teaching monkeys to speak did not give a satisfactory answer to this question. The anthropoids in these experiments were taught verbal language and the use of concepts, but all these attempts failed.

Subsequently, scientists dealing with this problem abandoned teaching animals the highest form of human speech associated with thinking, and decided to try to teach animals to use the human language of facial expressions and gestures, the one used by people who are deaf from birth. And the experience was a success.

One of the most famous and fruitful studies of this type was carried out in 1972. Its authors, American scientists B. T. Gardner and R. A. Gardner, attempted to teach female chimpanzees to use some special characters borrowed from the American language of the deaf. The training began when the chimpanzee was about one year old (about the same time that a human child begins to actively acquire speech), and continued for four years. All those who cared for the animals were supposed to use only the language of facial expressions and gestures in communicating with them.

The concept of speech. Functions and types of speech. Speech and thinking

One of the main differences between man and the animal world is the presence of a special mental process called speech. Speech is most often defined as the process of communication between people through language.

In order to be able to speak and understand someone else's speech, you need to know the language and be able to use it.

Language- a system of conditional symbols, with the help of which combinations of sounds are transmitted that have a certain meaning and meaning for people.

The language is common to the people who speak it, while speech is always subjective and unique, depending on the individual. Every language has a certain system of words with corresponding meanings ( lexical composition of the language), a certain system of forms of words and phrases ( language grammar) and a certain sound composition ( language phonetics).

There are 4 main ones:

Expression - indicates that thanks to speech we have the opportunity to express our attitude to a particular object, situation, person;

Message - due to the fact that it is through words that information is exchanged between people;

Designation - is expressed in giving names to objects and phenomena;

Impact - through speech, we influence the thoughts, emotions, behavior of other people.

The functions of speech are directly related to its main properties:

Clarity - the ability of an individual to use words, sentences that are adequate to the situation and the partner, to use the necessary concepts;

Expressiveness - emotional saturation and coloring, the content of figurative expressions, metaphors, the ability to evoke a response in the interlocutor;

Impact - the ability to influence other people (their beliefs, emotions, motivation, etc.).

Allocate various kinds speech.

According to whether speech is connected with an appeal to other people or not, they distinguish internal And external speech.

inner speech associated with the use of language outside the processes of real communication between people. At the same time, they distinguish three types of inner speech:

1) "speech to yourself"- internal pronunciation, observed, for example, when solving difficult mental problems; in this case, it corresponds to the structure of external speech;

2) speech as a means of thinking; at the same time, various concepts and judgments can be “folded”, encoded in the form of appropriate schemes, images, and, accordingly, this type does not correspond to the structure of external speech;

3) speech as a means of internal programming- the use of words to influence one's state, emotions, motivation.

External speech is focused on other people and is characterized by the transfer of necessary information using the language. External speech, in turn, can be written And oral.

Written speech- communication through words expressed in written texts. This type of speech is characterized by: a rather complex compositional and structural organization, special (unlike oral speech) style and grammatical construction. Reading is the perception of textual information. Reading written speech to oneself is distinguished by high speed (the speed of reading exceeds the process of speaking on average three times).

Oral speech- verbal communication using a language perceived by ear. In oral speech, two processes can be conditionally distinguished: speaking And listening.

speaking- the process of directly addressing the interlocutor with the help of words. There are two main characteristics of this process - volume of spoken phrases And rate of speech.

listening- the process of perception of oral speech, due to the characteristics of the subject and object of communication, the content of the transmitted information, the situation, etc. It is important that in the course of communication a person not only understands the content of the message, but is also able to perceive the hidden subtext and emotional state of the speaker.

Oral speech can be in the form dialogue or monologue. Dialogic(colloquial) speech- a type of speech characterized by the fact that in the course of communication there is an active exchange of information between two or more interlocutors. As a rule, this speech is based on the use of the simplest forms of speech, does not require detailed provisions, contains emotional coloring.

monologue speech A speech delivered by one person to a specific audience. Unlike dialogic speech, monologue speech is usually more complex, logical, and meaningful.

In psychology, there are also active And passive speech. active speech associated with the speaker passive speech with the listener (it is believed that the listener often repeats what he hears to himself).

To understand the characteristics of the mental development of a child, it is also important to determine another type of speech - egocentric.

egocentric speech- the speech of the child, addressed to himself, allowing him to manage and control his activities. According to L. S. Vygotsky, egocentric speech is a kind of transitional stage between external and internal speech. Those. At first, the child passively perceives the speech of other people, then turns to himself aloud to regulate his actions, and on the basis of this, internal speech is subsequently formed and his thinking develops.

Thus, speech, being a means of communication between people, also performs another important function - it acts means of human thought. In his works, L. S. Vygotsky convincingly showed that the formation of higher mental functions (arbitrariness and awareness of cognitive processes) is carried out thanks to speech. This is evidenced by the facts when speech disorders affect the development of all aspects of a person's mental organization, and especially on the intellectual sphere.

Types and functions of speech. Functions of speech in psychology

Speech is a human activity with the help of language, aimed at communication, communication, obtaining information and expanding the consciousness of one's own and those around them by transferring the experience gained.

It appeared in the process of joint work and constant exchange of information. At the same time, the first functions of speech appeared.

The beginning of speech development

Speech as a science began to be studied in depth in the 20th century. At the same time, since antiquity, there have been sciences that were also aimed at understanding speech, such as linguistics, logic, poetics, theory of literature, rhetoric and the theory of stage speech. As for the 20th century, it brought new directions in the study of speech, such as psycholinguistics, communication theory, research on child speech, bilingual theory, sociolinguistics. Functional stylistics, colloquial studies, phonology, functional and communicative approaches in grammar, statistics of language and speech, semiotics, phonology and computer languages ​​have received an impetus in development. At the same time, the functions and forms of speech began to be actively studied. Psychology studies the process of information exchange in close relationship with thinking and consciousness.

Theories of the origin of speech in humans

Since the development of psychology as a science, interest in the study of the phenomenon of speech has not weakened. Thanks to this popularity, a number of theories of its origin have arisen, most of them are absurd and have no right to exist, because they do not solve the problem of the genesis of the language and do not confirm what functions speech performs. Here are some of the most popular theories at different times:

• The social contract theory was popular in the 18th century and said that speech arose for the conclusion of this very contract.
• The theory of the instinctive emergence of language - cannot explain the difference between human speech and the language of animals in that part that the first is conscious and indicated.
• The theory of the “onomatopoeic” origin of the language is that speech is based on onomatopoeic words that are found in different languages ​​(for example, children's words tick-tock, meow-meow and others). But it has not received development, since these words are designed to depict the subject, and the function of speech is to display it.
• Theory Noiret - according to this theory, speech was formed in the process of hard work and is based on a combination of sounds emitted when performing a certain type of work, thus in the team the connection between the action and the sound associated with it caused the formation of speech.
• Marr's theory - based on the works of Marx and Engels and is the following concept. Language is a product of socio-historical development in the process of production and undergoes refraction through social consciousness. It is impossible to consider the language only from the physiological and phonetic point of view; when studying it, one should definitely take into account its semantic side. Since it consists of phonemes - separate conscious parts, and not of instinctively emitted sounds.

Audio communication features

Any child, gradually developing, begins to master first gestures and movements, and then proceeds to the perception and use of sounds, which later become connected speech, taking into account all the rules and traditions adopted in this ethnic group.

Communication through sounds has its own functions, which emerged gradually and do not reflect the functions of speech:

1. An investment in the utterance of emotional coloring, which allows you to influence the perception of the opponent and in some cases increases the possibility of obtaining benefits from contact.
2. Imitation of sounds - thanks to sound imitation, some objects, creatures and phenomena got their names, since this phenomenon is designed to display the sound they make.
3. The expression of thoughts is associative. Some objects got their names due to their similarity to other objects. So, for example, a leaf of a tree is called so due to the sound it makes, a paper sheet took its name from it - the sounds of folding were similar to the rustle of trees. But the rolled sheet is outwardly associated with paper and is named the same. Thus, a series of associations gave three completely different objects the same name.

What are the types of speech

Over time, more branches of science have appeared that study the types and functions of speech. So, recently it was possible to distinguish the main types of speech:

• Autonomous - the phenomenon of the child's speech. This type is remarkable in that it arises situationally and does not have a special syntactic connection with the concepts of words and syllables repeated after adults.
• Egocentric - speech without taking into account the presence of the interlocutor, directed at oneself, characterizes and controls one's own actions. It occurs in preschool children when they are still talking to themselves, commenting on their actions or asking questions without receiving an answer from outside. As a rule, the manifestation of this type of speech in children disappears by the age of 7.
• Oral - speech with the use of language, perceived by ear.
• Written - communication occurs through the use of graphic structures that reflect the meaning of oral speech.
• Gesture - used to communicate with people who are deaf, has its own grammatical and lexical patterns.
• Dactyl - has a resemblance to gestural speech, while it has mimic accompaniment.
• Internal - supports thinking and is not aimed at communication.
• External - serves to communicate with other persons and transfer information both orally and in writing.

inner speech

Inner speech serves to support the thinking of the individual; it does not include sound accompaniment. Due to the fact that it is deprived of the primary function of speech - the transmission of a message, inner speech becomes a form of thought work. In this case, in a person's thinking, a process of internal dialogue, or an imaginary dialogue, takes place with some object with which it is not possible to communicate personally.

It is often devoid of a number of elements typical of the communicative function of speech, and is also significantly compressed.

External speech

External speech is used mainly to convey information to other individuals, being the transformation of thought into something tangible. The types and functions of speech in this case are more extensive.

Types of external speech:

• Monologue - a type of speech in which there is only one subject, serves to transfer knowledge and information of a large volume, is considered a very complex process and implies a high speech development of the subject.
• Dialogue is a mutual, alternating exchange of information between two or more individuals.
• A replica is an emotional response to an opponent's statement or action.

The functions that speech performs

The process of information exchange, like any other, performs its tasks. The functions of speech in psychology are its features as an activity. They are used by the subject consciously and unconsciously to achieve certain goals.

Main functions of speech:

1. Indicative function - an indication of an object occurs explicitly or veiled.
2. Predicative - serves to express subjective judgments on a specific topic.
3. Semantic - expresses the thoughts of the speaker, due to which it denotes objects and actions, as well as phenomena.
4. The communicative function of speech serves both to convey information to other people and to encourage them to actions that are beneficial to the speaker.
5. Emotionally expressive - expresses the emotional attitude of a particular person to another individual or event. In some cases, it can be a call to action.

Functions of speech styles

There are five main styles of speech:

• Scientific - necessary for the transfer of complex scientific knowledge.
• Publicistic - performs the function of propaganda, agitation and influence. Used in public speaking, news and periodicals.
• Artistic - used when writing works for a wide range of readers, affects them emotionally.
• Business style - used when writing business documentation and concise transmission of information, completely devoid of emotional overtones.
• Spoken - used both in oral and written forms, the functions of speech in this case are reduced to informal communication.

Features of the child's speech

As mentioned earlier, the child's speech is initially autonomous. Following the autonomous stage of speech development in children, an egocentric type of speech begins to appear. In addition to communicating with others, the child accompanies his actions with sound speech, this lasts until the age of seven, at which time the child's vocabulary also increases to approximately 4500 words. Gradually, egocentric speech turns into internal speech, and then the functions of the child's speech change.

At the first stages, children learn nouns and verbs, and later adjectives are added. It has also been proven that it is precisely at preschool age, in the process of developing a child’s speech, that he fully masters both the sound of his native language and the chain of constructing a grammatically correct sentence, that is, the child learns to initially build full-fledged sentences, this happens almost subconsciously.

The functions of speech in psychology, like science itself, are still being actively studied. Much attention is paid to the study of the characteristics of children's speech, since it is believed that it is at this age that the formation of thinking and consciousness of an adult begins.

General characteristics of speech. The formation of consciousness in the historical process is inextricably linked with the beginning and development of social and labor activity of people. The need for cooperation gave rise to the need for a verbal way of communicating people with each other. The use of linguistic means of communication is a distinctive feature of human society. Thanks to language, people could not only influence each other, but also pass on the experience accumulated over generations. The purpose of a person's actions was formalized in the word. Denoted by the word, the goal gave them a reasonable directional character. Words fixed those laws, connections and dependencies that people revealed in their practical activities. Thanks to speech, a person cognized himself as a subject of activity and as a subject of communication. Mastering the language has changed all the relationship of a person with the outside world, rebuilt his cognitive and practical activities, communication with other people.

For a deeper understanding of the role of speech in mental development, one should first of all clarify such close, but not identical, concepts as "language", "speech", "second signal system".

Language - a public phenomenon. Language is understood as a system of means of communication developed in the course of historical development. Having arisen at that distant time, when primitive people united for joint labor activity felt the need to say something to each other, the language developed along with the development of society. New discoveries in science and technology, new relationships that develop between people, were reflected in the language. It was enriched with new words, each of which denoted some concept. The development of thought was traced in a change in language, in the increasingly complex structure of sentences. Therefore, mastering the language as a means of communication, the child infinitely pushes the narrow limits of personal cognitive activity, joining the level of knowledge achieved by mankind, gets the opportunity to fix in the word and generalize his personal experience.

The study of the process of origin and meaning of words and grammatical forms in the languages ​​of different nations is carried out by representatives of linguistics - linguists, linguists.

Speech– one of the types of communicative activity carried out in the form of linguistic communication. Everyone uses their native language to express their thoughts and understand the thoughts expressed by others. The child not only learns the words and grammatical forms of the language, but also relates them to the content that constitutes the meaning of the word assigned to him in his native language by the entire process of the history of the development of the people. However, at each stage of development, the child understands the content of the word differently. The word, along with its inherent meaning, he masters very early. The concept denoted by this word, being a generalized image of reality, grows, expands and deepens as the child develops.

Thus, speech - it is a language in action, a peculiar form of human cognition of objects and phenomena of reality and a means of communication between people.

Unlike perception - the process of direct reflection of things - speech is a form of mediated cognition of reality, its reflection through the native language. If the language is one for the whole people, then the speech of each person is individual. Therefore, speech, on the one hand, is poorer than language, since a person in the practice of communication usually uses only a small part of the vocabulary and various grammatical structures of his native language. On the other hand, speech is richer than language, since a person, speaking about something, expresses his attitude both to what he is talking about and to whom he is talking to. His speech acquires intonational expressiveness, its rhythm, tempo, and character change. Therefore, a person in communication with other people can say more than the words that he used mean (subtext of speech). But in order for a person to be able to accurately and subtly convey thoughts to another person, and in such a way as to influence him, to be correctly understood, he must be fluent in his native language.

The development of speech is the process of mastering the native language, the ability to use it as a means of knowing the world around us, mastering the experience accumulated by mankind, as a means of knowing oneself and self-regulation, as a means of communication and interaction between people.

Psychology is the study of the development of speech in ontogeny.

The physiological basis of speech is the activity of the second signal system. The doctrine of the second signal system is the doctrine of the word as a signal. Studying the patterns of reflex activity of animals and humans, I.P. Pavlov singled out the word as a special signal. A feature of the word is its generalizing nature, which significantly changes both the action of the stimulus itself and the responses of a person. The study of the meaning of the word in the formation of neural connections is the task of physiologists, who have shown the generalizing role of the word, the speed and strength of the connections formed in response to the stimulus, and the possibility of their wide and easy transfer.

Speech, like any other mental process, is impossible without the active participation of the first signal system. Being, as in thinking, leading and determining, the second signal system works in close interaction with the first. Violation of this interaction leads to the disintegration of both thinking and speech - it turns into a meaningless stream of words.

Functions of speech. In the mental life of a person, speech performs a number of functions. First of all, it is a means of communication. (communicative function), that is, the transfer of information, and acts as an external speech behavior aimed at contacts with other people. In the communicative function of speech, three sides are distinguished: 1) informational, which is manifested in the transfer of social experience and knowledge; 2) expressive, helping to convey the feelings and attitudes of the speaker to the subject of the message; 3) volitional, aimed at subordinating the listener to the speaker's intention. Being a means of communication, speech also serves as a means of influencing some people on others (assignment, order, persuasion).

Speech also functions generalizations and abstractions. This function is due to the fact that the word denotes not only a separate, specific object, but also a whole group of similar objects and is always the bearer of their essential features. Summarizing the perceived phenomenon in a word, we simultaneously abstract from a number of specific features. So, pronouncing the word "dog", we abstract from all the features of the appearance of a shepherd dog, poodle, bulldog, Doberman and fix in the word that which is common to them.

Since speech is also a means of designation, it performs significative(sign) function. If the word did not have a denoting function, it could not be understood by other people, that is, speech would lose its communicative function, would cease to be speech. Mutual understanding in the process of communication is based on the unity of the designation of objects and phenomena by the perceiver and the speaker. The significative function distinguishes human speech from animal communication.

All of these functions are closely intertwined in a single stream of speech communication.

Language and speech are specific forms of reflection of reality: reflecting, speech denotes objects and phenomena. What is missing in the experience of people cannot be in their language and speech.

Types of speech. The word as an irritant exists in three forms: audible, visible and spoken. Depending on this, two forms of speech are distinguished - external (loud) and internal (hidden) speech (thinking).

External speech includes several psychologically peculiar types of speech: oral, or colloquial (monologue and dialogic), and written, which a person masters by mastering reading and writing.

The oldest form of speech is oral dialogical speech. Dialogue is a direct communication between two or more people, which takes the form of a conversation or an exchange of remarks about current events. Dialogic speech is the simplest form of speech, firstly, because it is a supported speech: the interlocutor can ask clarifying questions, give remarks, help complete the thought. Secondly, the dialogue is conducted with the emotional and expressive contact of the speakers in the conditions of their mutual perception, when they can also influence each other with gestures, facial expressions, timbre and intonation of the voice.

monologue speech is a long presentation of a system of thoughts, knowledge by one person. This is always a coherent, contextual speech that meets the requirements of consistency, evidence of presentation and grammatically correct construction of sentences. The forms of monologue speech are a report, a lecture, a speech, a story. Monologue speech necessarily involves contact with the audience, therefore, it requires careful preparation.

Written speech is a kind of monologue speech, but it is even more developed than oral monologue speech. This is due to the fact that written speech does not imply feedback from the interlocutor and does not have any additional means of influencing him, except for the words themselves, their order and the punctuation marks that organize the sentence. Mastering written speech develops completely new psychophysiological mechanisms of speech. Written speech is perceived by the eye and produced by the hand, while oral speech functions due to auditory-kinesthetic neural connections. A single style of human speech activity is achieved on the basis of complex systems of interanalyzer connections in the cerebral cortex, coordinated by the activity of the second signaling system.

Written speech opens before a person boundless horizons of familiarization with world culture and is a necessary element of human education.

Internal speech is not a means of communication. This is a special type of speech activity, formed on the basis of external. In inner speech, a thought is formed and exists; it acts as a phase of activity planning.

Inner speech is characterized by some features:

It exists as a kinesthetic, auditory or visual image of a word;

It is characterized by fragmentation, fragmentation, situationality;

Inner speech is curtailed: most of the members of the sentence are omitted in it, only the words that determine the essence of thought remain. Figuratively speaking, she wears "telegraph style";

The structure of the word also changes in it: in the words of the Russian language, vowels drop out as carrying a smaller semantic load;

She is silent.

Preschool children have a peculiar type of speech - egocentric speech. This is the speech of the child, addressed to himself, which is the transition of external colloquial speech into internal. Such a transition occurs in a child in conditions of problematic activity, when there is a need to comprehend the action being performed and direct it towards achieving a practical goal.

A person's speech has many paralinguistic features: intonation, volume, tempo, pause and other characteristics that reflect a person's attitude to what he says, his emotional state at the moment. The paralinguistic components of speech also include bodily movements that accompany a speech statement: gestures, facial expressions, pantomime, as well as features of a person's handwriting.

The speech of people of different cultures differs even among those who speak the same language. After listening to a stranger for a certain time, even without seeing him in person, one can judge what the general level of his intellectual development and his general culture are. Obviously, people belonging to different social groups speak differently, and therefore speech can also be used to determine the social origin and social affiliation of a person.

It is also customary to distinguish between speech passive(understood) - listening and active(colloquial). As a rule, passive speech in both children and adults is much richer than active speech.

The use of speech in psychodiagnostics. The psycholinguistic features of speech open up wide opportunities for its use in determining the level of intellectual (cognitive) and personal development of a person.

In almost all intelligence tests there are special speech tasks, the nature of which is used to judge the level of mental development of a person (tests by D. Veksler, progressive matrices by J. Raven, STUR - a school test of mental development, CAT - a short selection test by V.N. Buzin) .

All personality tests use human speech in one way or another (C. Osgood's semantic differential, G. Kelly's repertoire grid technique).

In tests-questionnaires, the appeal to speech is direct. In them, the personality of the respondent is judged by the content of the answers to the questions posed to him (MMPI - a multi-phase personality questionnaire of the state of Minnesota, PDO - A.E. Lichko's pathocharacterological diagnostic questionnaire).

In projective tests, spontaneous speech statements of a person, caused by specific situations or pictures, are subjected to meaningful analysis, which includes the study of the vocabulary and meaning of the statements of the subject (TAT - thematic apperceptive test by H. Morgan and G. Murray, test by G. Rorschach). Projective tests are based on the assumption that the paralinguistic features of a person's spontaneous speech are well manifested in the projection (S. Rosenzweig's test).