Hans Hörmann - Böcker

At the time of his death Hans Hormann, then Professor of Psy- chology at the Ruhr University, Bochum, West Germany, was pre- paring an English language version of his Eirifilhrung in die Psycholinguistik. The goal of this book, in both the German and English editions, was to present in compact and readily accessi- ble form the essentials of his approach to the psychology of lan- guage. Basing his work upon the materials treated at length and in depth in two previous comprehensive and more technical works, Psycholinguistics: An Introduction to Research and Theo- ry and To Mean-To Understand, Hormann had made a selection of themes and problems suitable for beginners and for those who wanted a convenient introduction to the specific framework with- in which Hormann thought psycholinguistics was to be pursued. The result is a remarkably clear, succinct, and provocative account of central issues and options of the psychology of lan- guage, that broad and not strictly delimited part of psychology that takes as its domain the multiform conditions, processes, and structures involved in the acqUisition, development, production, and grasp of linguistic meaning.Hormann's approach is admit- tedly contentious and goes directly against a great deal of Anglo- American psycholinguistics. In particular, it radically devalues the relevance of certain types of theoretical linguistics, prin- Cipally, though not exclusively, Chomskyan, for the psychology of vii viii PREFACE language.

At the time of his death Hans Hormann, then Professor of Psy- chology at the Ruhr University, Bochum, West Germany, was pre- paring an English language version of his Eirifilhrung in die Psycholinguistik. The goal of this book, in both the German and English editions, was to present in compact and readily accessi- ble form the essentials of his approach to the psychology of lan- guage. Basing his work upon the materials treated at length and in depth in two previous comprehensive and more technical works, Psycholinguistics: An Introduction to Research and Theo- ry and To Mean-To Understand, Hormann had made a selection of themes and problems suitable for beginners and for those who wanted a convenient introduction to the specific framework with- in which Hormann thought psycholinguistics was to be pursued. The result is a remarkably clear, succinct, and provocative account of central issues and options of the psychology of lan- guage, that broad and not strictly delimited part of psychology that takes as its domain the multiform conditions, processes, and structures involved in the acqUisition, development, production, and grasp of linguistic meaning.Hormann's approach is admit- tedly contentious and goes directly against a great deal of Anglo- American psycholinguistics. In particular, it radically devalues the relevance of certain types of theoretical linguistics, prin- Cipally, though not exclusively, Chomskyan, for the psychology of vii viii PREFACE language.

It is not uncommon in science that following a period of turbulent growth, a skeptical mood builds up and doubts begin to be expressed as to the rationale of progress achieved and the extent to which the position reached coincides with the original goals. This kind of discomfort is felt today by linguists and their close companions, the psycholinguists. Despite its growing intensity, this discomfort is not readily verbalizable. Still, we will try to characterize it tentatively with a few angry assertions, each of which taken separately is perhaps untenable in its extreme form, but which together convey a sense of the malaise that seems to afflict the area in question, For one thing, the models and theories current in linguistics tend to approach a level of complexity at which extreme sophistication borders on folly. Further, the present inflation of macro- and microsystems testifies to the growing arbitrariness of theorizing - in spite of the abundance of publications specifying the criteria by which to evaluate these systems against a meta theory of science; thus we are made aware of the widening gulf between linguistic theory and the realities of language.