The Psychology of Language From Data to Theory

I welcome this opportunity to write a second edition of The Psychology of Language, and I would like to
thank Mike Forster of Psychology Press for giving it to me.
As I remarked in the preface to the first edition, although language might not be all that makes us human,
it is hard to imagine being human without it. Given the importance of language in our behaviour, it is
perhaps surprising that until not so long ago, relatively scant attention was paid to it in undergraduate
courses. Often at best it was studied as part of a general course on cognitive psychology. That situation has
changed. Furthermore, the research field of psycholinguistics is blossoming, as evinced by the growth in the
number of papers on the subject, and indeed, in the number of journals dedicated to it. With this growth and
this level of interest, it is perhaps surprising that there are still relatively few textbooks devoted to
psycholinguistics. I hope this book will fill this gap. It is aimed at intermediate and advanced-level
undergraduates, although new postgraduates might also find it useful, and I would be delighted if it found
other readers.