Most people I meet stop to think about language for no longer than it takes them to notice that the instructions on how to program their CD- player have been written in a language that defies understanding. They care more about how their CD-player should work than how their language actually works. When I started writing this book I wanted to rise to what I saw as a challenge: to write the equivalent of a manual that would explain not the insides of a CD-player, and how it turns thousands of little indentations on the surface of the CD into sound, but the insides of the human mind, and how it turns thousands of little vibrations on the surface of the ear-drum into meaning. The difference is, CD-players are simple, even if their instruction manuals are not. Minds are complex, and they do not come with instructions. That, of course, is what makes them so challenging, and so exciting.
I wanted to write this book so that it would be readable by non- specialists. I wanted to convey to them the excitement and challenge of psycholinguistics--the study of how the mind turns language into meaning, and back again. I am mindful of the preface to Doris Lessing The golden notebook, where she invites the reader to skip as much of the book as is necessary in order to maintain interest. The reader of this book should also skip as necessary. Or at least, skip any chapters that seem less interesting. The first chapter, 'Looking towards Babel', is an attempt to convey the excitement of psycholinguistics, and the mysteries that are on offer. Probably, it should not be skipped, except in emergency. The other chapters fill in the details. I have written each chapter so that it is self-contained, although occasional pointers are given, both forwards and backwards, if there is relevant material in other chapters. Inevitably, because different chapters are about different topics, some may seem, to different readers, more interesting than others.
I have also written this book for my students, who are a good example of a non-specialist, although admittedly captive, audience. Many students find psycholinguistics a mysterious and impenetrable subject. So I have designed this book so that it could in principle accompany the kinds of psycholinguistic courses they may take. It is not written like a textbook (nor is it written in textbook-speak). There are . . .