Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon

by Jean Aitchison

This volume about words, and the extraordinary human capacity to store and retrieve them. We hold effortlessly at least 50,000 of them in our minds, the majority of which can be summoned in a split second. No computer has yet come anywhere near simulating the complexities of the internal word-store. This book provides an up-to-date introduction to man's prodigious "mental lexicon". Using evidence from "slips of the tongue", the word-finding problems of aphasics, psycholinguistic experiments and the research of theoretical linguists, it how man deals with this fluctuating mass of words; how people use fluid prototypes rather than fixed definitions for coping with meaning; how we extend old words and create new ones. The book compares the verbal resources of adults and children, and assesses recent competing theories as to how we seek out the lexical items we need. It is designed both for students embarking on psycholinguistics courses, and for anyone who has ever puzzled about the human word-store.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language, Psychology, Science

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Jean Aitchison is a Professor of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford.

Her main areas of interest include:

Socio-historical linguistics
Language and mind
Language and the media

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting content, but somewhat dry and biased in its representation, IMHO.

[Anastasia Tuple · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seems a perfect introduction to linguistics and psycholinguistics for an undergraduate or a layman who is interested in language; however, it was too much of a slow-burner for me. I grew particularly impatient with all the literature excerpts scattered around every other page...

[Minerva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting!
All about how words are stored in the brain.
I found it easy to understand with nice summaries after each chapter. It was just the right amount of detail for me, and things were explained well with nice drawings or analogies.
It actually made me laugh at some parts too (yes, I’m immature but c’mon? “the lick-ability of breasts?”)

[Jeremy Ullman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fuelled my linguistic fire for a while. I've since recommended it to a handful of people. Would revisit down the line.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. Highly recommended.

[Daria Vogrin · Rating 2 out of 5]

badly written. shame, as the topic's really interesting.